The Land of Opportunity for Minority Businesses?

The American Dream. A piece of the economic pie. These are powerful concepts basic to the American experience that promise success and opportunity in return for hard work and initiative. Our country was literally built on this promise.

Yet, for many struggling minority business owners, the promise remains unfulfilled.

If we draw one lesson from the Los Angeles riots, it should be that new solutions to age-old problems are in desperate demand. Finding these solutions is an extremely complex endeavor, especially as it becomes clearer and clearer that the riots were as much a product of economic as racial factors.

In light of this realization, a real question emerges: As reform of the Los Angeles Police Department ensues, what are we doing to address an economic crisis as violent as the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King? I contend that it is time to give minority business a chance. If nothing else, this approach would be new.

It would be new because today’s world offers little evidence to convince the minority entrepreneur that gold remains at the end of that rainbow called the American Dream. Is this too cynical a view? Consider the facts. Consider some of the barriers that tell minority businesses to go home.

The federal judiciary has imposed strict limits on programs aimed at encouraging government to do business with minority concerns. State and local government must, as a result, contend with a cumbersome process of studying and documenting the obvious: that discrimination which has kept minorities from equal access to education and the workplace has yielded a mirror result in the business world.

Charged with the task of documenting discrimination, governments simultaneously pursue policies and practices that hinder minority businesses. Minority businesses are subjected to heightened scrutiny and skepticism; they are forced to comply with written and unwritten standards of conduct; and they are penalized for their lack of experience.

The private sector can be even less helpful. Antipathy to minority business ranges from overt hostility to passive neglect. Other barriers raised by the private sector work their pernicious results more subtly, though no less intensely. Few will disagree and none could disprove that it is tougher for minorities to obtain the insurance, credit and expertise to develop a viable business.

Finally, another notable barrier to minority business is beginning to emerge. It amounts to an expectation that minority business can only be so successful. If such a business is too successful, then something must be wrong. Reinforced by the press and its penchant for painting every situation in primary colors, this barrier is perhaps the cruelest of all. It tells the breakthrough minority business that it need not apply to the major leagues.

A recent example was the Los Angeles Times’ treatment of Cordoba Corp., a successful Latin Business Assn. member, one of those breakthrough minority companies that sadly is all too rare. In this article, the Times laid the blame for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s data processing problems on the shoulders of a company that was hired by the district only a few years ago.

It did not matter that the district has wrestled with an inadequate computer system for decades, or that the amount paid to the Cordoba Corp. amounted to a minuscule fraction of the amount spent to improve the system, or that “big-kid” firms had been awarded tens of millions of dollars for results that compelled the district to hire the company in the first place.

No, instead, the article concluded that the company had received work for the district because the company was well-connected politically. To whom? To a handful of Latino elected officials who made the mistake of trying to fight discrimination against minority businesses. The article provided a telling view of the double standard applied to “uppity” minority companies that dare to succeed and that support leaders in public office who believe these companies should have the opportunity to do so.

The message is clear for minority businesses: act humbly. Be grateful for the opportunities you are allowed. When allowed, be perfect or you won’t get another chance. Count on the beneficence of others to succeed. Don’t do what other, larger firms do to compete in the marketplace. And above all, do not violate the paradigm of the quaint but struggling minority business enterprise operating with briefcase and Rolodex.

At a time when extraordinary events compel extraordinary actions, our city must question its ambivalence to minority business. Our city must act boldly to give minority business a serious role in our city’s economic revitalization. We must develop a policy consensus that enables minority businesses to take responsibility for their communities by providing jobs, prosperity and, above all, hope. It is a tall order that requires our city leaders to do no less than breathe new life into the American Dream.