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National News
Black Businesses Help reduce Black Youth Crime
By Jazelle Hunt
Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – One
of the most powerful agents in
curtailing Black youth crime in
major cities is the presence of
Black business owners, according
to Karen Parker, professor of soci-
ology and criminal justice at the
University of Delaware.
“Not only have [criminologists]
not looked at all the aspects of the
urban economy by focusing on
unemployment and poverty and
joblessness, but then we also pres-
ent this picture that African
Americans are not invested, are
detached, are not involved with
the community. This suggests that
they very much are,” says Parker,
author of the study, “The African
American Entrepreneur – Crime
Drop Relationship: Growing
month’s
Urban
Affairs
Review and analyzes the growth
in Black entrepreneurship com-
pared to Black juvenile arrests in
large cities, as well as a few inde-
pendent variables such as
deindustrialization and income
inequality.
The data comes from the begin-
ning of the 1990s and the
beginning of the 2000s. Both peri-
ods saw specific job losses
(manufacturing jobs in the ‘90s,
professional jobs in the 2000s) and
rises in Black entrepreneurship.
According to the report, the num-
ber of Black-owned businesses
increased by more than 32 percent
between 1992 and 1997; Black-
owned businesses that employed
others increased 43 percent.
During the weak economic
times following the September 11
attacks, the number of Black-
‘Minority-owned businesses, through
the lives of their owners, employees,
and families, can serve an important
function – as role models to urban
youth in the community’
African American Business Own-
ership and Declining Youth
Violence.”
She explained, “By looking at
business ownership, we’re seeing
[Black business owners’] presence
in their neighborhoods…and how
they are having a very positive
impact on the violence there,
specifically among youth.”
Her research appears in last
owned businesses rose more than
60 percent – “more than triple the
national rate of 18 percent for all
U.S. businesses according to the
U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of
Business Owners,” Parker points
out in the study.
At the same time, violent offens-
es involving Black youth dropped
about 29 percent in large cities
across the nation.
(JOHN H. WHITE/NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
Report links the growth in Black entrepreneurship and Black juvenile arrests in large cities
Black business owner on Chicago’s South Side, 1970.
“The thing that was surprising –
and it came from [criminologists’]
view that look, maybe it’s not the
African American owned busi-
nesses at all. Maybe it’s just that
there are jobs now when jobs
weren’t there before, and that’s
what leading to the [drop in] crime
rate,” Parker said. “But I actually
tested for that. I tested for employ-
ment of African Americans in
business and service and manufac-
turing, and that did not explain
away the presence of the African
American businesses specifically.
It wasn’t the fact that they were
simply there to employ, it was
more than that.”
By her analysis, the positive
influence of visible Black business
owners seems to flow in two
ways.
“First, minority-owned busi-
nesses, through the lives of their
owners, employees, and families,
can serve an important function –
as role models to urban youth in
the community,” she writes.
“Business growth also means an
inflow of resources into the com-
munity, reducing the level of
economic disadvantage that has
been linked to urban violence.”
Culturally, the presence of Black
business owners in a community,
particularly if there is poverty or
other socioeconomic disadvan-
tage, often raises morale and
staves off the cynicism that social
scientists have tied to high crime
among youth. The study also
asserts that Black business owners
tend to be involved in maintaining
other positive areas of their com-
munities, such as schools,
churches, and recreation centers.
Although Parker’s study did not
conclusively find that employing
other Black people had an affect
on youth crime, it did cite other
research that Black business own-
ers hire other people of color
almost always, whether their busi-
ness is situated in non-White
communities. Black-owned busi-
nesses also offer culturally
relevant services and products to
their Black and brown neighbors,
and recycle Black dollars within
their communities longer.
The study summarizes, “Thus,
their presence in the community is
critically important, providing
jobs, social networks, and increas-
ing
the
economic
base,
particularly during recent times of
deindustrialization and elevating
levels of Black concentrated dis-
advantage.”
Parker says, “Rarely in the work
that I do as a criminologist looking
at urban crime, is there a positive
message. There’s something so
positive about saying, look at the
presence of these individuals and
the positive [impact] they’re hav-
ing and they’re contributing
significantly to the crime rate.”
There were more than 1.9 mil-
lion Black-owned businesses in
the most recent Census Survey of
Business Owners (2007), up from
1.1 million in the 2002 survey.
This growth is despite poor access
to financial services, weaker pro-
fessional networks, and a host of
other challenges that hinder Black
Americans from using traditional
routes to entrepreneurship.
“Given all the odds of lack of
resources, lack of support, lack of
survivability – the impact on their
own families in terms of having to
use their own incomes, their own
family money, their own personal
credit cards – let’s acknowledge
the role they’re serving,” Parker
said.
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