Black Owned Businesses & the “American Dream”
The idea that America is the place where dreams come true, everyone has a shot at success, and “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps,” has been negated time and time again. Systemic racism and prejudice has kept social hierarchies fixed in society preventing racial minorities from having access to the same rights and privileges that are readily available to white Americans. The American dream is not attainable by all citizens in this country. Thus, there is a long history of African American men and women missing out on opportunities that they may be qualified for based on race. There have also been big strides made to prevent these kinds of situations from continuing. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was put in place to ensure equal opportunity employment, but some people made the argument that African Americans were receiving jobs they weren’t qualified for simply because companies did not want to get branded as being discriminatory. Either way there have always been invisible sets of rules in place keeping minorities from getting ahead.
While conducting my research, I became interested in the history of how African American entrepreneurship became something that was widely accepted. Was this something that was born out of necessity, where people believed that if they couldn’t be hired for a job then they would have to create their own? We know that from the time slavery ended black communities have been popping up all over America, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places. These places become hub for the African American people in the area, and they are notorious for being taken over and tore down by the government who have literally written the laws to allow them to do things like this. Eminent domain has been the excuse that the government has used to take over black communities that are thriving and claiming that it is necessary to put something else in its place, like a highway for instance. Therefore, there is a such pushback against things like gentrification because there is a lot of history to support the idea that these efforts to “build the community up” are racially motivated.
Black entrepreneurs have provided steady employment for African American communities over the years, providing more access to jobs for those that other people may consider undesirable in the workplace. In my research, I asked the women that I interviewed if they faced discrimination while making efforts to open their business. Partly, because I assume that as black women in America discrimination is a part of everyday life, but also because I was curious if the attitudes surrounding African American entrepreneurship have shifted or changed over time. Surprisingly I found that no one faced any discrimination that was tied to the process of opening their businesses. However, this may have something to do with the fact that the women that opened their businesses in industries that are dominated by women. Childcare and healthcare services are typically full of women and involve work that is highly gendered. Women are expected to do the kinds of jobs that these women were doing and maybe that is why no one thought twice about them opening businesses in these fields. However, I still think that there is some assumption being made that women are expected to fulfill these roles, and there is some level of discrimination in having expectations like that. Almost as if it was expected for women to be doing this kind of work. I am hoping that I can shed a different kind of light on the way that women in these fields are viewed because while they are doing “women’s work” they are also running their businesses and doing so much other work behind the scenes, that not everyone gets the chance to see.
