Obama plus 1: innovation and equity
October 30, 2009
The one -year anniversary of the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States of America coincides with the announcement that the economy has returned to positive growth after the worst financial crisis of our generation.
In the process, the term “black business” has scarcely been heard from the Chief Executive, but the improving outlook still has bright signs for African-American entrepreneurs.
As passengers on the ship of state, we have an interest in it remaining afloat, particularly since we’ve been consigned to the lower decks of the economy.
Recently, there were concerns raised that the President waited nine months to visit New Orleans, one of the sore spots of economic equity after Hurricane Katrina, but a realistic look indicates that it is far more important that he nominated a native of the Ninth Ward to head the Environmental Protection Agency and has repeatedly sent teams of Cabinet secretaries to the area to cut through the bureaucracy.
In general, black businesses and the black community are not going to get a lot of theatrics. There was hardly any announcement of a letter directing that 23 percent of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding go to small and minority-owned businesses.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and a talented new director of the Minority Business Development Agency have joined with a resurgent Small Business Administration to take up that agency.
Our challenge is to monitor the implementation of these directives, to engage policymakers with input about what is most effective and to propose ideas for improvements.
The old ways of going through the motions of supplier diversity are about to give way to a new sense of possibility for real transformation. However, black businesses have not been given a gilded path, but instead an open door. That’s all we need.
Financial regulation and health insurance reform have the potential to improve the environment for community-based entrepreneurship by allocating resources to much more productive pursuits, rather than leaking out of the country.
An array of science and technology leaders offer the role models to pursue the cutting edge industries of the future.
The policy ideas in the State of Black Business series will be helpful as the administration begins to address the specific sectors of the economy which continue to lag behind the national outlook.
