African American Entrepreneurs

Michelle Ingram Spain, J. Mark Munoz

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781606493588
• eBook ISBN: 9781606493595
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

African American entrepreneurs are key contributors to the American economy. Faced with numerous challenges, many African American entrepreneurs have learned to transcend tough obstacles, leverage resources, and strategically pursue opportunities to achieve business success. This book captures the stories and mindsets of contemporary African Americans in their quest for the American dream.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

When we finally achieve the full right of participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason the heritage of world culture—which represents a continuum—should be confused with the notion of race.

—Ralph Ellison

In 2017, when mainstream Americans start or expand a business, they explore the information and resources made available to all business owners, attend business development workshops, information sessions, and register with small business assistance programs in their local community. This book explores the inconsistency between access to opportunities and information by African American entrepreneurs and non-African American entrepreneurs in the United States of America.

When an entrepreneur opts to classify their business as 51 percent minority-owned and operated, the entrepreneur has also decided to adhere to the local, state, and national legislation, and regulations for minority-owned and operated businesses. The rules of engagement harness the inclusion of the minority business owner. Inclusion, however, is not always fair. Business owners choosing to operate their business as minority-owned are assigned a designated set-aside playing field for minority business, simultaneously conducting business on mainstream America’s playing field and comply with dual rules of engagement. The guidelines and adherence to specific rules of engagement for two separate and distinct playing fields are demanding. The playing fields specify what, where, when, how, and with whom a minority business owner can pursue opportunities.

The duality of the rules of engagement requires active learning, emotional intelligence, just in time strategies and calculated risk-taking. Moreover, businesses classified as minority-owned and operated endure mainstream America’s race-based assumptions that the classification providing equal access to business opportunities is at a premium.

The strict federal state and local laws and regulations define the percentage set aside for minority business owners’ options for engagement, based on their legally defined status as a minority business. This process results in African American and other minority entrepreneurs of color experiencing the “boomerang” effect.

The boomerang for African American entrepreneurs in 2017 underscores the significance of being descendants of slaves, the unwilling immigrants to the United States of America. The boomerang incisively affected what their ancestors experienced during slavery and the post-civil war era. The slaves were assigned a designated task with defined rules and regulations on the plantations, based on the slave owners or slave merchant’s assumptions about the slave’s capability, the potential for service or product delivery, based on their external characteristics and gender.

March 5, 1969, the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) within the United States of America Department of Commerce) was established by President Richard M. Nixon to promote business opportunities for minorities. President Nixon recognized the importance of minority businesses on the nation’s economy. In 1983, President Reagan signed Executive Order 11458,34, FR 4937,169, WL9645(Pres) to overcome race-based inequities. He directed federal agencies to develop goals and plans for minority businesses to sell their services and products to the federal, state, local government. Presidents Nixon and Reagan laws generated a boomerang designed to move back and forth between African American and mainstream American entrepreneurs. African American entrepreneurs because of their social learning history, at once understood the importance and the consequences of the federal legislation regarding local engagement.

The participants in the survey emphasized the dichotomy “duality” of their business and lifestyle. As their businesses developed, the business and the entrepreneur changed. These changes occurred in both their social and business environments. Social history provided the owners with a business and lifestyle frame for duality. Most of the owners grew up with a strong social history throttled by care, values, faith, and the desire to self-reward through achieving their goals and dreams. As entrepreneurs, they developed an understanding of the linkages between the chain of events binding the inequities to their social status, race, and ethnicity, the regulations, and requirements throttling the minority business owners’ access to opportunities with and through mainstream America.

The uneasiness of these mixed situational cues places pressure on African American entrepreneurs within their own social and race-based groups. These owners are from similar backgrounds, locale, or cultural origin. They often interconnect interest, traditions, and mutual business and family ties. They share bonds that may work to their advantage and disadvantage, often resulting in a mosaic of groups within a group. The interconnection necessitates duality in roles and behaviors resulting in the entrepreneur experiencing a boomerang effect.

In the book, Invisible Man, Ellison (1952, p. 3) captures this mindset in this statement:

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself.

In this study and book project, the authors wanted to understand the positivism of African American entrepreneur. Specifically, answers to the questions: If African American entrepreneurs pursue the American dream as a race-based business, does it positively affect the business? If not, why not? What is the impact of race-based programs on their pursuit of the American dream?

African Americans have understood the implications of discrimination and access to the necessary resources for business ventures for centuries. They have also recognized that as entrepreneurs, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, they share the same motivation and desire to achieve the American dream as the owner of any profitable and sustainable business. The authors explored the interconnection between the elements and parts of the laws and legislation, which appear to push African American entrepreneurs forward and pull them backward linking them to mainstream American history. The African American entrepreneurs’ stories are the starting point for this exploration.

In 2017, when an entrepreneur starts or expands a small business, there is significant preparation. They explore the information and resources available on the Internet, attend microenterprise information sessions, and enroll in small business workshops, or virtual or classroom small business courses. The entrepreneur also generally finds a qualified small business consultant or registers with a small business assistance program in their local community or a program committed to servicing entrepreneurs. When the entrepreneur exploring the opportunities for launching or expanding small businesses is of African descent, the government and mainstream America signals the owner to tap into programs designated for the minority entrepreneur and their business. The programs are classified and subcategorized by their gender, race, ethnicity, and business industry. The business person quickly senses that their race and ethnic identity defines the duality works and distinctions in the resources, consultants, business assistance, and projects and procurement opportunities available to them.

When an entrepreneur categorizes the business as minority-owned, launches or expands business in adherence to the government legislation, regulations, and directions to designated business set-aside zones for doing business, they develop their business within the guidelines and specific rules of engagement that are constructed carefully defining who they are as minority business owners.

Native American, Asian, Hispanic, and women entrepreneurs experience strict scrutiny as business owners. The result is the aforementioned “boomerang” effect. Specifically, the rules of microenterprise–small business engagement include, but are not limited to the following:

• When, where, and how they do business;

• What opportunities are available;

• How, when, where, and with whom they can develop joint venture projects and collaborations.

This book argues that measures of success, while often subjective, are also seemingly consistent indicators of their probability for achievement. The authors define the entrepreneur as “a person engaged in the process of gathering resources to create and build a microenterprise by leveraging creativity, risk, and innovation.” Why? These entrepreneurs link their businesses to a throttle, regardless of their race or gender designated by state and local public laws, executive orders, regulations, requirements, for doing business as business owners. The links, regardless of race or gender, become the throttle that directs and controls their designated business zones. If categorized as an African American entrepreneur, a race-based throttle leads him or her to a designated playing field–business zone in a carefully constructed area set-aside for minority businesses. The playing fields set-aside for businesses owned and operated by minorities become the location of success or failure and business development. The set-aside zone produces threads, creating a web designed to catch business opportunities designated for minorities. The threads used to construct the web, however, are activated by the mainstream American entrepreneur in compliance with the minority set-aside laws, legislation regulations, and rules of engagement.

Mainstream American business owners enjoy unlimited access to supportive services, and resources such as access to capital, insurance, bonding business support services, and access to business options controlled by mainstream America. African American entrepreneurs pursue inclusion and duality that frequently results in an inverted reality.

Most of the interviewees are urban, and they continuously referenced how entrepreneurship, for them, is a process driven by their race and desire for economic independence. Entrepreneurship for this group of men and women is a process without boundaries, which requires the continuous review of their status based on changes in mainstream America and assumptions about their status as qualified business owners, regardless of the race.

Programs designated to provide support services receive funding from the government and other agencies, foundations, and corporations engaged in social responsibility. Political, social, economic, and public transformations and social action in the American culture have forced mainstream America to develop strategies for inclusion of all business owners, regardless of their race and ethnicity. In many communities, local and national, social, and economic development and financial agencies integrate this agenda as part of their economic sustainability strategy.

During the reflective dialogues, the authors discovered that the viewpoints and perceptions of mainstream America’s expectations often need duality of mindsets and actions by African American owners. Maintaining roots in the African American community and transitioning into the mainstream American business world is complex and unforgiving. Interviewees also shared how they begin to assume the role of mentors and providers of service, information, and resources in their community, while simultaneously seeking mentors, information, resources, and decision makers in the mainstream American community. Most of the entrepreneurs said that they invest in their communities, purchase property, and others stated that they bought visible portable wealth items such as homes, automobiles, and portable wealth articles to blend in with successful mainstream American entrepreneurs. The owners discussed their inability to develop mainstream American social networks, receive opportunities information promptly, and identify qualified independent business supports resources and databases. The lack of access frequently disrupted the African American male and female entrepreneur’s lifestyle, business, and access to the threads required to stabilize their web.

The African American entrepreneur starts with nothing more than a dream. They self-educate or re-educate even if they have formal education, degrees in business, accounting, or law. African American women included in the book share their experiences as not only African American entrepreneurs but also as women entrepreneurs, and how they are expected to assimilate into the “mainstream American woman’s” perspective of gender while keeping their “roots” in the African American culture. The authors quickly learned that African American women continue a unique ability to self-regulate based on their description of their social learning history and cultural roots, emotional intelligence, and social capital. The women confirmed their business, personal profiles, and responses to the questionnaires during the follow-up dialogues. They share the impact of the expectations imposed by mainstream America and thei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Research Overview and Context
• Chapter 3 African American Entrepreneur Interviews
• Chapter 4 Analysis of the Findings
• Chapter 5 Conclusion and Discussion
• About the Authors
• Index
• Backcover