There's never been a better time to stop and think about how we can do better and be better as a people, as a society, and as collective members of this beautiful planet we inhabit together. Why? Because the need for social and environmental sustainability has never been more urgent, including members in the beauty community.
My father's uncle invented the first fully mechanized sugarcane planter in Modeste, Louisiana, in 1964. He marketed the machine during the civil rights era, selling them for $6,000 and making a $1,000 profit. While he was eventually able to get a patent, he ended up losing about $11 million due to unauthorized copies of his machine. My father's family history is not in history books. It is pulled together from a line of oral history and newspaper clippings; stories that are untold, underappreciated, and buried deep beneath the whitewashed history learned from school books. And as a mixed-race woman, I feel deeply connected to these tragedies.
With the recent killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter protests as well as the onslaught of COVID-19 globally, it has become more apparent than ever that we need a new paradigm — one based on holistic wealth for all. Despite advances, certain groups still struggle to have basic access to human rights and dignity, and they face systemic barriers prevent the accumulation of wealth. What this means is that Black and Brown people essentially struggle (or have been prevented in many cases) from living a holistically wealthy lifestyle.