African-American Chamber Wants to Add New Members : Minorities: The business group’s president says he wants to ‘tap into the talent of the local community.’

A financial consultant from Santa Paula wants to turn a relatively new organization into an extensive network for Ventura County African-Americans who aspire to become successful entrepreneurs.

James Hardy, the president of African-American Chamber of Commerce, said the group needs to attract black business people throughout the county in an effort to build its membership, which now numbers about two dozen people.

“We’re projecting a larger membership,” said Hardy, 41, a former Navy officer, in an interview this week in his Oxnard office.

“As we get bigger, we’ll follow the paths of other chambers and start political and small business committees and get more actively involved in small new businesses in the area,” he said.

African-Americans are almost an invisible minority in Ventura County, constituting about 2% of the population. But black entrepreneurs in this group--consisting of 14,559 residents, according to the 1990 census--can play a major role in helping other blacks who want an economic toehold in the county, Hardy said.

“Our main goal now is to increase the membership, and from that all other things chambers do will be accomplished,” Hardy said. “We’re not making a social statement at all. We want to tap into the talent of the local community.”

The chamber, formed two years ago in Oxnard, meets monthly. Bedford Pinkard, an Oxnard Union High School board trustee and candidate for City Council, is scheduled to speak at the next meeting on Saturday. It is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. in the Bethel AME Church, 855 South F St., in Oxnard.

Hardy said the chamber is strictly apolitical and certainly was not designed to be used as a civil rights forum.

Some chamber members see the Los Angeles riots as representative of deep-rooted flaws in American society. And, indeed, some talk of subtle racial bigotry in Ventura County.

But that’s not the main agenda of the chamber, said several members interviewed this week.

“That’s one of the distinctions that I really want to try and make,” Hardy said. “This is strictly about business. We want to remain apolitical. We will listen to candidates. But our concern is how candidates will help minority businesses.”

The goal, Hardy said, “is to tap into the business acumen of the black community.” Specifically, he would like to have the chamber sign up physicians, lawyers and small business people who have successful track records.

African-American businessmen, Hardy said, have the same problems as anybody else: “Lack of knowledge. They don’t know what they’re getting into. They don’t realize the work that’s involved. It’s like everything else. You get as much out of it as you put in.”

Andrew Rucker, 58, of Oxnard, a GTE supervisor who also owns his own limousine company, said the chamber can help guide aspiring black capitalists through the mountains of often intimidating red tape.

“We would show people how to get business licenses, how to go to banks,” he said.

For his part, Rucker, who once owned a restaurant in Arizona, said he is considering opening a new restaurant in riot-torn South Los Angeles.

“If I was a minority businessman living in Los Angeles, I would not leave,” he said. “This is where you’re getting more government assistance to go into business. The time is not to run from there. The time is to stay and build.”

Rucker, a Ventura County resident for eight years, and others said racial bigotry in Ventura County is more subtle than blatant. “We have to walk away from it and go on.”

Longtime Oxnard resident Berteal Dawson, who, along with her husband owns a commercial painting and decorating business, said the depth of bigotry depends on the business.

For example, she said, in her profession “people are interested in quality work” and not skin color.

The scarcity of blacks in Ventura County can be intimidating to African-Americans just starting out, said Audrey Bond, an Oxnard realtor. With so few African-Americans living in Ventura County, she said, blacks could conclude “that we’re not going to be successful, that they don’t have the pull” to make it here.

“We have to overcome this by building up the chamber,” she said.