(ThyBlackMan.com) One out of four funerals (blacks: one out of two) in America are held at a funeral home that is part of a chain of funerals homes owned by one of four major corporations. You might not be familiar with the corporate name, but you should recognize the corporate business principles, which is the focus of their operations. Those principles are the same ones used in the other businesses they own and controlled. The principle in question is to sell more products, at the highest prices, for the maximum profit possible. There is nothing wrong with making money, that’s 
the American way, Right? When it comes to choosing a funeral, home name recognition is like gold because people are trusting of names that are familiar and reputable in the community, especially in stressful circumstances.
The giant big-buck Conglomerates know a good thing when they see one. These giant conglomerates are sucking up independent family owned funeral home and Cemeteries like K-Mart shopper during the blue light special. The largest of the four giants is Service Corporation International (SCI) based in Houston, Texas. In 1995, SCI owned 3,136 funeral homes and cemeteries worldwide including 700 funeral homes and 175 cemeteries and growing in the USA. Recognizing the value of a familiar name SCI retains the names of the trusted funeral homes and when possible they keep the previous owners on staff to operate the home. With the name recognition of the community funeral home coupled with the volume buying power of the giant conglomerate, one would think that the cost of funerals would at least stabilize, but the opposite is true.
According to a Readers Digest article, in Houston the corporation funeral homes perform an average of over 7,000 funerals a year in contrast to a few hundred performed by independent funeral homes. Houston has become the most expensive place to have a funeral in the USA. The costs of funerals continue to rise year after year. In 2000 the average cost of a funeral was around $ 5,000 10 years ago that same funeral cost $ 3,516 that is about a 30% increase. Today‘s average cost is about $7,000 a increase of about 40% from 10 years ago. Can you spend more? Yes you can and black people spend more per-capita overall. Can you spend less? Yes you can.
Since we contribute a disproportionate share to the overspending for funeral goods and services and for a century have provided those same goods and services to our people before so called segregation allowed us to sit in the front of the bus and enjoy equals rights with other Americans.
There are black funeral homes accessible to every black person in the USA with very few exceptions. When I look at the state of the funeral industry I see a four corporate giants dominating all elements of the industry from the manufacturing of Caskets and Urns to the perpetual care of the cemetery, while commanding highly inflated prices and paying huge sums of money to political campaigns. When I juxtapose the state of black America with the funeral industry I see a class of people manipulated into overspending for funeral and cemetery goods and services.
I see black people working in every element of the funeral industry from the casket Manufacturing floor to the caring for the cemetery grounds, but in the employ of those very giant conglomerates that make billions of dollars a year partly due to black people overspending on something they could do for themselves and keep much of that money in our own communities.
Staff Writer; Nicholas McNeal
For Caskets & Urns for your deceased love ones visit this authors website; SavonCaskets.
Also may email brother McNeal at; mcnatejr@aol.com
or call (206) 390-3797
