According to the International Co-operative Alliance, more than 12 percent of the global population belong to the world’s three million cooperatives. The African diaspora has contributed to this legacy. Many Caribbean people view cooperatives as trustworthy because these institutions put people’s local needs first. Both Haiti and Grenada have deeply embedded cooperative values and identities that are rooted in the ancient African systems of Sol and Susu. The African diaspora has a strong history of organizing solidarity financial economies to counter exclusion in business and society. This article draws on interviews with 138 direct users of cooperative institutions, bankers, and experts. Based on the findings, it argues that the African diaspora has had a key role in cooperative development and that Susu and Sol are the preferred financial institutions because they give people a way to help each other in times of adversity. This research uses the theory of the Black Social Economy to analyze Caribbean cooperators and their use of informal and formal cooperatives to stymie exclusion in business and society. Documenting the Haitian and Grenadian people’s cooperative legacy reveals that the choice of the people of the Black diaspora to politicize their economic solidarity, and this has been a major contribution to the global cooperative movement.

This article explores the impact of increased political disillusion on support for a Black regime within a city shaped by Black empowerment. Building on findings from previous research on the 2010 mayoral election in New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA), we examine how the intersection of race and economic stratification influences political disillusion in a Black community. W.E.B. Du Bois’s double consciousness guides our examination of the Black political sphere relative to the election of Mayor Mitch Landrieu in 2010. We conduct a quantitative content analysis to illuminate the communicative elements resulting from Black empowerment and the political incorporation of Black residents of New Orleans in relation to political disillusion. All participants (n=22) in this sample are Black New Orleanians who were eligible to vote in the 2010 New Orleans mayoral election. Our findings convey a Black electorate both disillusioned by post-Katrina economic and political developments and yet pragmatic about the possibilities for greater success with a white mayor. Also, the findings suggest that government disillusion influences why Black voters are willing to elect a white mayor. Lastly, we assert that participants, while being seen as outsiders to their community, develop a second-sight. This second-sight is generated by intra-racial political considerations that take on cultural, as well as political, form.