Successful Black Entrepreneurs example essay topic

If one were to take a look at the American business world today, much as if one were to look at it a hundred or more years ago, one fact would be easily noticeable. The majority of positions of power and authority in most American businesses are white males. In fact, white males outnumber all other races n these positions far more than they outnumber the actual populations of these other people in our country. Specifically, black men are sorely represented in executive positions in corporations and businesses across the board. So why is that?

Is there some fundamental character of black people that keeps them from success? Is society still oppressive to blacks nearly forty years after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's? Actually, the answer lies somewhere in between. Joane Nagel states, "Ethnic Identity, then, is the result of a dialectical process involving internal and external opinions and processes, as well as the individual's self-identification...

". (240). So if blacks have an anti-business ethnicity, then the responsibility for that must be shared between blacks themselves and their oppressors. Similarly, upon examining Michel Omi and Howard Winant's definition of hegemony, which they assert has been the dominant mode of rule in the United States, wee see that "hegemony [is] always constituted by a combination of coercion and consent" (152). So any societal oppression that the white males in power are able to levy against blacks must be accepted by blacks in order to be effective.

In other words, both blacks and their white oppressors must share the responsibility for the decided failure of black men (and women) to take their places as leaders in business. The issue of black success in a corporate world such as America is best understood as one of culture and ethnicity. Generally, success in business demands a certain personality and level of ability, just as does success in politics. A quick look at the current status quo of power and authority in the business world will prove that.

But existing societal conditions remnant of the evil specter of slavery have created a persona within the common black identity that is fundamentally opposed to business success. Nagel writes: "Culture is constructed... by the actions of individuals and groups and their interactions within the larger society" (251). The historical actions of whites (slavery and intense psychological degradation) have caused blacks to take on a cultural identity which is itself an obstacle to success, and black-white interaction (which has always been largely shaped and informed by a sense of racism) in such a savage, cutthroat capitalist terrain as America merely perpetuates and aggravates the condition. "Every society has individuals who are better positioned to take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities, because of their relative access to opportunity structures, their greater native ability, or both. Entrepreneurs who successfully act on available opportunities move economies and societies to new stages of development" (Green and Pryde, 13). White males have made undeniably sure that they have always been the ones better positioned by oppressing blacks to the point where they form an inferiority-complex which far removes blacks from any opportunity to access any significant opportunity structures.

Of course, strong individuals who do not acquiesce to this kind of oppression are able to achieve individual success, sometimes on levels rivaling their white counterparts, but the grater majority of blacks have fallen prey to such a powerful technique, which has led to the current status of black business - quite a dismal one. In order for one to succeed in any situation, business or otherwise, two things are necessary. Both an individual's personal ability to succeed, as a result of personality, training, willpower and determination, etc., and favorable circumstances or situational conditions are necessary ingredients of success. Since these factors, internal and external respectively, are both the sum the actions and interactions of blacks and whites, according to Nagel's model of cultural identity, it follows suit that the adverse situations which white oppression has placed blacks in must be countermanded by a strong personal ability to succeed on the part of the oppressed blacks. But what kinds of traits form that personal ability, and why don't more blacks have them? While the subject of exactly what makes a person successful is highly elusive and as yet largely undiscovered, most would agree that there are certain elements that greatly enhance, if not outright constitute, the ability to succeed.

These elements, whether actually present in black individuals or not, are part of a "toolkit" for success. Each element corresponds to a different tool, and if too many tools are missing, then success becomes at best difficult to achieve. Similarly, Nagel describes the concept of a cultural "shopping cart", complete with individual items which are the elements of a cultural identity. She explains, .".. we construct culture by picking and choosing items from the shelves of the past and present" (250).

The "tools" for success are some of the items that black would-be entrepreneurs can select as part of their "shopping cart" of cultural identity. However, since whites have already fabricated their own identity for blacks, one that presumably lacks these tools, a mere acceptance by blacks of their cultural identities from whites almost certainly would lead to imminent failure. In the case of a historically oppressed people such as African Americans, this inferior identity has become a weapon of devastating success wielded by greedy whites, unwilling to share the limited, if sweet, spoils of entrepreneurial success. An irony lies in the fact that the success fulness of the weapon depends upon hegemony; that is to say that although whites offer the inferior identity to blacks, blacks must accept the identity for it to affect them.

Since hegemony is a combined sum of "coercion and consent" (Omi and Winant, 152), it represents a 5050 split of responsibility for its effects. So then what is the identity that whites have created for blacks? It is one that lacks the proper education, self-assuredness, sufficient economic resources, and social power necessary to succeed in a business-oriented world. By systematically attacking these foundations within the canonic successful black entrepreneur executive, whites have uprooted any chances for blacks to succeed. They have taken these "items" from the "shelves" readily available to many blacks, and these blacks consequently have a hard time formulating the identity of a successful businessman. Most would agree that a key element of success in any venture in today's complex and constantly changing world is education.

A quick view of the statistical success of college graduates versus high school graduates without a degree makes that fact undeniably clear. So when we find that 19.5% of black adults lack a high school diploma (as compared to 7.9% of whites) and that only 17.8% of blacks aged 29 and over possess a college degree (versus 34% of whites), it comes as no surprise that black men face a bleak prospect for success (Education Attainment in the United States, 1). But who is to blame for the rarity of highly educated blacks? It might be easy to blame blacks themselves. After all, most people tend to see success in America as something to be attained by due hard work and persistence, and in a completely free society where everyone has equal access to the resources necessary to make that hard work pay off, that would not be too far fetched. But ours is not such a society, and there is no such equal access to these resources for blacks.

"Historically, it was long considered rebellious for African Americans to obtain education. It was argued that they had no need for any formal education to work out in the fields, which was their rightful place" (Walker, 79). Even as recently as the 1960's, there was a flagrant refusal by whites to allow blacks to enter college, and even today it remains questionable as to whether black students are truly given an equal opportunity to receive higher education. Even if any direct intervention by whites is ignored, it cannot be questioned that the economic status of poorer blacks living in urban areas often forces them to send their children to sub-standard schools, while wealthier whites ship their children off to illustrious private academies or some of the more well-respected public elementary and secondary schools, which are usually found in upper-class neighborhoods. For such disadvantaged black students, any equal opportunity for college education is an almost guaranteed impossibility. This is part of the social "package" of black "anti-business persona".

Nagel describes ethnicity as being a social device; she asserts that "the boundaries and meanings attached to ethnic groups reflect pure social constructions" (259). So the social conditions of poverty and discrimination that exist for blacks help to form their ethnically ascribed lack of education. While education is important, it is not the sole constituent of success; neither is it the only thing that whites have sought to exclude from blacks. Equally important is self-confidence. It has long been a basic tenant of white enslavement tactics that if you can take a man's self-confidence from him, you can subjugate him. Nagel explains: "The expropriation and subversion of negative hegemonic ethnic definitions and institutions is an important way that culture is used in ethnic mobilization around the world" (257).

Once again, hegemony is in effect here. And as always, hegemony signals a shared blame. Although it is widely known that a systematic attack on an individual's self-confidence is one of the most difficult forms of psychological manipulation to over come, the systematic attacks have greatly subsided and largely ceased entirely. So there should ideally come a point in time at which a group of historically oppressed people no longer under direct oppression should begin to recuperate, if not rebound. But apparently many blacks lack the resilience to challenge any remnant notions of inherent black inferiority.

Walker affirms this hypothesis: "Many African Americans today still accept the antiquated notion that black people were never meant for business. It is no accident that minorities today make up the majority of trade school enrollment" (227). As it always the case with hegemonic domination, the oppressed people eventually learn to accept their roles in society, be those roles equal or inferior. Under such conditions, no continual direct oppression is necessary. Blacks are essentially oppressed by their own mindsets. Of the four basic aforementioned elements of business success, perhaps the one that blacks are least responsible for is their economic situation.

There simply is no arguing with the fact that centuries of slavery and oppression by whites have created a lasting hole in the black man's pocket. Financial resources are unique in that they are inherited from generation to generation in our society. Unlike personal characteristics, one's financial resources are directly given by existing ethno-economical conditions. One can have great self-confidence despite all opposition, but one's wallet is limited to the devices that a society provides for obtaining money. Where methods of obtaining capital are concerned, blacks must depend on those who have the money to supply them with - namely, the successful white males who hold the positions that blacks desire. If there is any sense of racial unity among these white men, it is no great feat for them to exclude blacks from the elite circle of wealth and (the consequential) power.

Even here however, blacks are not entirely without fault. There seems to be a widely-followed practice by black entrepreneurs of doing business exclusively with other blacks or only in urban areas where poor minorities are concentrated. One might ask why any entrepreneur wishing to succeed would do such a thing - even to the average, non-business educated individual, it does not make much sense to limit one's business to a group of people who decidedly do not have the money to support a business. Yet that is exactly what many entrepreneurs have done, and it is at their own expense that they do so. To understand why black entrepreneurs would want to limit their clientele or customer base to a sheltered, low-income market, it is necessary to examine Omi's and Winant's concept of a racial project, which they define as "simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines" (6).

It has long been a fallacy of black teaching that blacks should buy only or mostly from and sell mostly to other blacks. This, some believe, will put more money in the hands of blacks as a whole, helping to offset the economic disparity that exists between blacks and whites. Indeed this is in many ways a racial project, which attempts to bring money into the hands of blacks. However, according Scott Cummings in his article "African American Entrepreneurship in the Suburbs, Protected Markets and Enclave Business Development", in the Journal of the American Planning Association, "African American entrepreneurs conducting business outside the ghetto's protected market consistently outperform their counterparts doing business within it. With minor exceptions, ... African American entrepreneurs would be wiser to orient their business activities outside rather than inside the ethnic enclave".

(1) By operating within the confines of this market, both the consumers and the entrepreneurs hurt themselves. Because the entrepreneurs will have only a small clientele or customer base, they must charge higher prices to cover their costs. This in turn means that the consumers are not paying a fair market price, which is what they would pay in a perfectly competitive market, if all possible competitors charged the lowest profitable price in a completely unrestricted market. The irony of this is that these same people paying these high prices are decidedly poor to begin with, so they often cannot truly support the business, and it folds. Thus, consumers have wasted their money because they paid a higher price for their goods than necessary, and since they can't afford to support the black business, often, the business fails and thus no one is economically any better off than when they started. So this practice of exclusive marketing is actually a failed attempt at a racial project.

The resources are simply being reorganized and redistributed (and often wasted) within the black community, not amongst blacks and whites. If the whites have the resources, then this methodology of operation proves fatal to the welfare of black business. Another element of success that blacks have a difficult time dealing with a lack of is the element of social power. Here lies the paradox of our American culture. One's ability to succeed in business, when all other factors are in place, depends on the ability to interact with others in a manner which is favorable to one's self. Whether one is dealing with a financial institution seeking a loan, or trying to expand one's customer base, or contracting independent workers to perform some business function outside of the realm of normal business operations, it is vital that a successful businessman have the social clout to make these things happen.

And yet this social power is directly liked to one's financial standings; a bank is reluctant to fund a business run primarily by people who have been historically poor. Neither are subcontractors too anxious to take financial stake in a firm that said financial institutions are afraid to subsidize. And neither of those issues even begin to deal with the undercurrents of racial superiority within the minds of white males, who are understandably yet dubiously reluctant to give up their dominance of the corporate realm. So as long as black men are not in a position to support black businesses, it seems that those businesses are doomed to failure by the passive resistance of the white businessmen already in power. The answer to this is of course, that blacks must seek to change the attitudes of those who have the power to help them. Nagel offers: "Cultural revisions and innovations occur when current cultural elements are changed or when new cultural forms or practices are created" (252).

Blacks have not aggressively sought enough after the other elements of success, so they have been prepared to overcome this obstacle. They are not taken seriously by the business world, because they have not been serious enough about overcoming the challenges that present themselves to any group of people seeking to change their current circumstances. Ultimately, a number of factors have contributed to the current state of black business. Discrimination in the educational system, financial institutions and the workplace are all still present and represent a substantial barrier to black enterprise. However, the blame cannot be solely placed on a cold, unforgiving society. Blacks have often failed to achieve in education themselves, and when they do have the ability to start businesses, they often institute poor business practices, which lead to the eventual demise of their businesses.

But between the societal and personal obstacles to success, it the inner faults which are most important, because it is those which an individual can change by him or herself. A good businessman can succeed despite opposition, but a poor businessman is doomed to fail even under the most favorable economic and societal conditions. In order to truly advance the economic status of blacks in America, aspiring entrepreneurs and businessmen must follow the same route to success that their successful white counterparts have. Despite any racism that stands in the way, they must strive to achieve academically as best they can, and gather as much education as they possibly can.

They must diligently prepare to boldly seek necessary financial resources, armed with thoroughly researched business proposals and concrete proof of their worthiness of capital. They must always institute sound and ethical business practices. And they must never be afraid to strive for their goals, no matter what the opposition. It is simply not enough to simply accept racism and give up or fail without truly trying. None of society's major problems have ever been solved with pity or inaction, and the economic status of a historically deprived people certainly won't be an exception. As many successful black entrepreneurs have proven, it is very much possible for good businessmen to succeed greatly despite the opposition, and there is still plenty of room for success.

Bibliography

Cummings, Scott. "African American Entrepreneurship in the Suburbs: Protected Markets and Enclave Business Development". Journal of the American Planning Association Winter 1999: 50-61.
Educational Attainment in the United States - March 2000 Detailed Tables.
19 December 2000.
US Census. 2 April 2001.
web Shelly and Paul Pryde. Black Entrepreneurship in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990.
Nagel, Joane. 'Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture. ' New Tribalism's: The Resurgence of Race and Ethnicity. New York University Press. 1998 Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant.
Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960's to the 1990's.
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Walker, Juliet E. The History of Black Business in America. NY: Macmillan Library Reference, 1998.