Zora Neale Hurston's scholarship exemplified resistance to white-centered anthropological practices, yet her solitary inclusion in graduate curricula highlighted wider exclusion of Black and brown scholars. The discipline routinely recenters whiteness and marginalizes nonwhite researchers, producing disillusionment with academic careers. Personal experience as a Ghanaian American on Wall Street and as an entrepreneur revealed how Black people strategically employ capitalist tools to generate collective thriving. Research on Black Capitalists defines them as intentional, strategic participants in capitalism focused on community benefit, offering an alternative framework for engagement beyond traditional disciplinary structures.
But the fact that Hurston was the sole Black woman anthropologist whose work we studied suggested that she was the only Black woman anthropologist whose work was worthy of the ivory tower. As if she was the only Black person committed to using the tools of anthropology to create knowledge about the people relegated to the Global South in ways that are mutually beneficial to the researcher and their interlocutors.
My experience as a Ghanaian American on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs and JPMorganChase exposed me to the ways in which Black people use the tools of capitalism to create new outcomes centered on collective thriving. They led me to my definition of what it means to be a Black Capitalist: a Black person who is a strategic participant in capitalism with the intention to benefi
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