May 5, 2021
Page 9
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O
PINION
In this Crisis is an Opportunity
Black-owned
businesses have
been hard hit
d edriCk a sante -M uhaMMad
With over half
of American adults
now at least partially
vaccinated, many of
us are beginning to
imagine a future be-
yond the pandemic.
But for the many small businesses
that didn’t survive, there’s no “af-
ter.”
Black-owned businesses have
been especially hard-hit. That’s
because even after three pandemic
relief packages, there’s an elephant
in the room that every resource,
policy, and program is failing to
address: the preexisting conditions
of Black entrepreneurs.
Despite strong entrepreneurial
traditions in Black America, the
pre-COVID state of Black busi-
ness — and indeed of Black eco-
nomics generally — was itself in
need of redress. In economic crises
throughout our history, African
Americans are impacted first and
by
worst, yet they’re the last to recov-
er. COVID-19 has been no excep-
tion.
The severity with which
COVID-19 continues to ravage
Black businesses has everything to
do with this preexisting condition.
A stronger recovery for Black
business requires policymakers
and resource providers to address
not just the economic results of
the COVID recession, but also
these deeper inequalities.
Here are a few of them.
The business revenue pre-condi-
tion: Black entrepreneurship great-
ly increased between 1992 and
2012, from 3.6 percent of all firms
to almost 10 percent. Yet even with
Black entrepreneurship increasing
almost threefold, the proportion of
Black revenue decreased by half —
from 1 percent to just 0.5 percent.
The income inequality pre-con-
dition: For the last 50 years, Black
Americans have received only
about 60 percent of the income of
white Americans. Even tripling the
share of Black-owned businesses
did little to change this.
This affects not just families, but
entire businesses. Since most en-
trepreneurs use their social circles
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The wealth inequality precondi-
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Black businesses have suffered
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