Urban Beauty: Equity Entrepreneurship and Black Womanhood by Obianozo Chukwuma

SEEING

THE UNSEEN NARRATIVES OF THE BLACK HAIR INDUSTRY

BLACK

ENTS

CONT

1

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

PART 1: THE LIMITATIONS OF DATA

1

6

PART 2: THE URBAN BEAUTY ATLAS

15

1

DISLOCATION A threat to a system, or break in our understanding of the status quo. A point of disconnet.

BLACK FEMALE ENTREPRENURIALISM Similar to classic definitions of entrepreneur, but highlighting entrepreneurial intention and the intersectionality of race and gender.

“Opportunities for black entrepreneurs to suceed are critical for economic empowerment in black ommunities�

It is rooted in a collective socio-relational strength as a baseline for actuating innovation and creating the means to guide family and community through complex circumstances regarding their ability to obtain financial independence.

- Association Enterprise Opportunity

1

ELIZABTH KECKLEY

Most scholarly examinations of the Afro-American experience have largely ignored the business participation of blacks

1812 Elizabeth Keckley was a former slave who turned into a very successful seamstress and activist

1910 THE GREAT MIGRATION

The Great Migration describes a period in the earlier 20th century in which roughly 6 million African Americans migrated from the rural South to Northern cities in search of greater economic opportunity. While the jobs were more abundant especially in war production industries, the jobs were commonly arduous and dangerous; however, they provided a sense of stability for many black men. Women, on the other hand, were often forced into positions of domestic servitude, which were inflexible and very low-wage.

As the population of blacks grew in Northern cities race relations began to deteriorate which caused a shift to racially segregated labor markets that coincided with the spatial segregation of the urban blacks (Boyd 1996, 36). This segregation created the foundation for the establishment for the creation of ethnic niche economies, another formulation of black entrepreneurship; however, this iteration was separate from the help and the networking of the white benefactors seen in Antebellum entrepreneurship and was generally established due to ethnic isolation from the dominant group (34).

ANTEBELLUM PERIOD

The Antebellum period is the time after the War of 1812 and pre-Civil War when the United States was heavily divided due to the ideological discource regarding the right to own slaves. The South was still reliant on the cotton-industry and slave labor while the North was pivoting to industrial manufactering. During this time, it was illegal for blacks to participate in enterprise, but private property provisions were held in the highest regard and because slaves were considered private property, the slave owner was given ultimate jurisdiction over the slave. This meant that the owner, acting in their own economic self-interest allowed their slaves to participate in enterprise and buy their freedom, and the government was not allowed to interject.

Most scholarly examinations of the Afro-American historical experience have largely ignored the business participation of blacks in the context of creative capitalism (Walker 1986, 372), despite roughly 2,300 black enterprises that were established, not including those established by slaves or those that existed prior to the financial crash of 1857. They leveraged their informal networks often white family members or romantic partners to develop business connections, acquire capital and gain experience and apprenticeships in their particular industries.

1

Black enterprises during the Antebellum period were mostly in merchandising, manufacturing, real estate speculation and other extractive industries crucial to the southern ecosystem

ethnic niche economies provided minorities with opportunities for economic and social mobility

SARAH BREEDLOVE Sarah Breedlove, now referred to as Madam C.J. Walker, and Annie Malone are two of the most famous product manufacers in the black hair industry

ANNIE MALONE

These ethnic niche economies were able to provide minorities with an alternative to the secondary labor market and provide opportunities for economic and social mobility not allotted by participation in the general labor market. That being said, these new markets only catered to a segregated clientele, those belonging in the ethnic group, so their cash flow was limited, and the community was only able to support a few successful entrepreneurs at the time (42). Additionally, their skills were seen as clientele specific and thus non-transferable, failing to raise the human capital of black women (Ibid).

The most popular occupations for black women at this time were in beauty and hairdressing.

2

During the Great Depression, black women were faced with the theory of “double disadvantage”, meaning that they were being discriminated on the basis of not only their race but also their sex.

According to Robert Boyd (2000), due to the dual discrimination faced by black women, they had remarkably high unemployment compared to all other demographic groups, resulting in their only options for employment in “slave markets”, which were positions of forced subservience (650). This created the need for black women to develop their own enterprises in their own protected industries, which were characterized as “survivalist entrepreneurship”. Survivalist entreprenur’s are defined as people who become self-employed in response to desperate need to find an independent means of livelihood (648).

Black women commonly sought out occupations hairdressing and boarding house/lodge housekeeping.

3

in

Beauty Culture Class at The Bordentown School for Colored Youth circa 1930

black women were faced with “double disadvantage”, they were being discriminated on the basis of not only their race but also their sex

blacks organized in masses, demanding equality and dependence from institutional structures that had left them plagued with poverty and injustice

ESSENCE SENSUAL BLACK MAN, DO YOU LOVE ME? PLAYTIME VINES DYNAMITE AFROS REVOLT: FROM ROSA TO KATHLEEN CAREERS: DATA PROCESSING

BLACK POWER

Essence was the first magazine to target African American women. This is a replica of the first cover published in 1970.

1929

GREAT DEPRESSION

The Black Power movement in the 60s and 70s is commonly described as a period or racial pride among African Americans.

During this period, blacks began to organize in masses, demanding equality and seeking community autonomy to rid themselves of dependence on the racist institutional structures that had left their communities plagued with poverty and injustice.

At this time racial tension in America had reached an all time high as police brutality became more rampant, and the realization that military involvement did not equate to social or economic equality.

Jim Crow policies were still in affect, living conditions for black Americans in inner cities became unbearable and rioting became a form of dialog. From the 1960’s to the 80’s public programming and affirmative action legislation became more abundant which caused a transition that allowed more blacks to participate in “main-market” industries (Boston 2001, 190).

1960 For the first time, a significant number of Black businesses emerged in large-scale public-works, construction contracting and subcontracting, architectural and engineering services, management and consulting services, data processing, computer sales and services, public relations, and other industries closely tied to public-sector procurement opportunities (ibid).

4

2020 THE DISLOCATION

Black women are among the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs in the United States, and yet while their entrepreneurial contributions are expanding at an exponential rate, their visibility and voices are continually ignored and disregarded. However, this is not a new phenomenon. Black women’s participation in enterprise history has widely evaded scholar study which has prompted their general dismissal in the entrepreneurial space, both financially and ideologically (Walker, 372).

This dismissal has not only lead to an ignorance of their contributions, but tangible, negative, intended consequences that have resulted in various systemic constraints such as gaps in wealth and trust from financial institutions, that have inhibited black women’s ability to access capital and other productive resources crucial to their economic survival. However, these constraints are not only limited to their systemic implications but also mechanisms that perpetuate unequal access to capital on the basis of their race and their gender. This is why I sought out to understand how black women’s concealed participation in American enterprise has impacted present-day black female entrepreneurs’ ability to gain equitable livelihood’s in the urban., which lead to the creation of this atlas of urban beauty ecology, Seeing Black: The Unseen Narratives of the Black Hair Industry.

This atlas utilizes interviews and survey data gathered from black product artisans and black women who interact with the space, as well as census data and statistical figures to make visible this concealed ecosystem. By revealing the barriers and the operating systems of the embedded context, I begin translating these unseen barriers that frame the black beauty experience into actionable items for change to reimagine a network not built on the premise of social exclusion or economic survival but on one of deliberate creation and communal prosperity.

5

WE’VE WE’VE BEEN OTHERED BEEN OTHERED

THERE IS NO COMPRENSIVE THE SHORTCOMINGS OF TRADITIONAL DATA WAY TO In order to begin this visual exploration into black hair entrepreneurs, I began by looking at what data was publicly QUANTITATIVELY available and easily accessible, the U.S. Census.

MEASURE BLACK The Census has a generic classification schema that categorizes order industries to beginfor this the In different whichvisual they obtain data, FEMALE and to no exploration into black hair entrepreneurs, I cosmetic industry for that surprise beauty salons, or anything in the began looking at what data matterbyfalls under “Personal Care”was which resides under industry ENTREPRENEURIALSM publicly and easily accessible, code available CNS19-Other (Except Public Administration Category) theaccording U.S. Census. to the NACIS classification system.

IN THE BEAUTY Census hascomprised a generic The The “Other” sector is of establishments engaged in INDSUTRY USING classification schema where anything in providing services not specifically provided for elsewhere in the theclassification cosmetic industry under industry systemfalls (U.S. Census Bureau). Some activities that TRADITION DATA code CNS19-Other (Except Public reside within this sector are dry-cleaning and laundry services,

THE MARKET

Administration Category). dating services and of course, personal care services.

7

The “Other” sector is comprised Through this computational analysis itof became clear that: currently, establishments engaged in way providing there is no comprehensive to quantitatively measure black services. activities in thisinsector are femaleSome entrepreneurialism the beauty industry using general dry-cleaning and laundry services, dating mapping methodologies or traditional data collection approaches services and personal care becuase theyofarecourse, simply not included at a granular level. services.

This map shows an overall increase Note: This map shows an overall increase in participation in the Through this computational in participation in “Other” industry in New York’s Central Business District (midtownthe “Other” industry in analysis it became clear that: currently, York’sand Central Business District and lower manhattan), the largest CBD in New the world, a there is no comprehensive way to and lower manhattan), the decrease in the other boroughs. Suggesting the(midtown presence of a two quantitatively measure black female largest CBD in the part ecosystem at work. The Market and The Made Marketplace. world, and a decrease entrepreneurialism the beauty industry in the other boroughs. Suggesting the However, it posesinmany questions. using traditional data. presence of a two part ecosystem at work.

Market in and The Made Marketplace.

The “Other” only details those who are The employed the it poses industry, not just self-employed. So is thisHowever, suggesting thatmany questions. these care industries are only truly valued when they are the goal make it to The Market in catering to tourists or the rich? What Isabout thetolocal order to achieve higher financial communities? growth?

Is the goal to make it to, The Market, in order to achieve these “Other” industries thrive in higher financial growth by gaining access to Can a larger market?

The Made Marketplace exclusively?

THE MADE MARKETPLACE

Increase in the number of people employed in “Other” industry Decrease in the number of people employed in “Other” industry The line of demarkation between The Market and The Made Marketplace

8

URBAN CRISES CAME TO SIGNIFY “THE BLACK GHETTO”, ON THE ONE HAND, AND ON THE OTHER, THE AMERICAN DREAM

THE MARKET The Market is an abstract mechanism that is driven by mass consumption. It is a place that emulates the desires of those in power, meaning it is largely spoken for by corporations, banks and wealthy beneficiaries.

Within it resides the Primary Labor Market: the market consisting of generally high-wage jobs, social and economic security and professional longevity.

It primarily operates on the commodification and capital value of “culture”; however, this “culture” cannot be produced within The Market because it is purely a mechanism for commodification, therefore it relies on the productive capacity of The Made Marketplace to constantly manufacture goods and services for which it can extract.

THE MADE MARKETPLACE The Made Marketplace is caused by spatial, economic and social segregation and operates outside The Market. It emerges when a person no longer sees participation within The Market as a viable option for improving their economic positioning, generally due to many of the participants in The Made Marketplace being those who previously occupied the Secondary Labor Market: the market consisting of mostly low-wage jobs that are generally undervalued and fail to provide consistent economic stability.

Often times for participants within The Made Marketplace, the discontentment with their financial or professional status is combined with the identification of a problem that is not yet being addressed by The Market, generally due to the problem being centered on ethnically or community specific needs.

The recognition of the problem is key to Made Marketplace practitioners because they are not only seeking individual stability and financial growth but community improvement as well.

9

The idea of The Made Marketplace stems from the origin of the“ethnic economic enclaves”. As Judd and Swanstrom (2012) state, the “Urban Crises, in popular imagination the phrase came to signify the collision of two powerful cultural stereotypes: “the black ghetto,” on the one hand, and on the other, the American dream of homeownership and upward mobility.

THE RIGHT TO BEAUTY It is the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and some Americans are protesting the nationwide lockdown strategies intended to slow the spread of the virus. Of the many arguments they are touting as reasons to reopen our cities, “we need to get our hair done” has become the leading battle cry. These protestors are actually using the need for personal care as a fundamental component of their argument for reopening the economy and an example of the government’s infringement on their freedoms.

Many Made Marketplace businesses, such as local hair salons, have become so embedded in the urban fabric that until they were completely shut down by local governments, they were an assumed a part of life, and quite frankly taken for granted. However, now we are seeing not only what happens when there are “niche” markets and small businesses that sustain entire communities, but the overall economic impact of their disappearance which stems from their lack of adequate support from main market mechanisms.

Some industries that were once excluded from The Market, such as community-based transportation systems and ethnically specific grocers, are seeing a radical linguistic shift as they are now classified as “essential”, while those who are still linguistically diminished are being demanded by the American protestors as necessities to survive.

We are witnessing the most extreme physical visualization of the negative outcomes that have resulted from the continued market segregation. We are in the midst of a tremendous dislocation as our everyday lives are in a phase of total alteration, completely redefining our sense of normalcy. It is in this time that a newly conceptualized ecosystem can be generated, as the agency of those occupying The Made Marketplace is at a powerful peak, holding up our society in its palms.

10

THE BRONX

MANHATTAN

THE IMPLICATIONS OF RACE

QUEENS

BROOKLYN

STATEN ISLAND

The areas featured in blue are areas where black people make-up at least 50% of the total population. These neighborhoods are commonly remembered as: birthplaces of culture movements, homes to legends and hubs of black economic activity; however, after years of disinvestment many of these neighborhoods were systematically neglected.

Currently, many of these neighborhoods only make the news because of real estate romanticisms or poverty porn, failing to focus on the underlying networks that are sustaining the communities and are in need of visibility.

As perviously mentioned, a quantitative analysis of black female entreprneurialism is nearly impossible and shows an incomplete picture; however, it can provide a basis for understanding the underlying systemic circumstances that created the need for The Made Marketplace to be developed.

11

12

MEDIAN AREA INCOME 13

DENSITY OF WOMEN-LED HOUSEHOLDS 0 - $61,432

0 - 25%

$61,432 - $100,000

25 - 100%

Note* $61,432 is the U.S. average for household income

1114

THE DOUBLE DISADVANTAGE Upon inspection, you’ll notice the map of the area median income and density of women-led households per census tracts do not look very different from one another. This means that households in these predominantly black neighborhoods are generally lower-income and run by women.

These maps are a visual representation of the intersectional effects of race and gender on acquired wealth. They begin to paint a picture of the urban beauty landscape, and serve as a window into the ecosystem, understanding the motivations and drives to achieve financial independence.

Understanding our definition of The Made Marketplace, looking just at the demographic characteristics, it becomes evident that these areas are perfect grounds to pursue entrepreneurial pathway’s as an option for economic stability.

15

WHERE IS THE MONEY

THE CAPTIAL ACCESS PROBLEM

>6%

0.006% Black Women

25%

1% All Black Business

BANKS (CREDIT)

VENTURE CAPITAL

This map displays the proportion of money that black business owners get from the two levels of funding (institutional and personal).

The size of the funding pool is relative to the amount of available capital.

Notice that the blue pools do not add to up 100%, this is because business owners commonly seek funding from multiple sources.

Studies show that black entrepreneurs with the same level of wealth and credit histories as white entrepreneurs, who are starting the same-sized businesses in the same industries, are more likely to have their business loans denied by banks or to have to pay higher interest rates. White entrepreneurs can borrow approximately 15 percent more from financial institutions per dollar of equity capital in their businesses than can blacks (Scott 2008, 143). So, how can we grow when our capital institutions are not a reliable support system but control the majority of the money?

BANKS (LOAN)

76%

21%

36%

How can we organize our personal resources to grow our internal cash flow?

What kind of grassroots community fundraising can be organized to promote local small businesses?

FAMILY/FRIENDS SUPPORT

PERSONAL SAVINGS

Percent that black businesses report recieving from the funding sources

PERSONAL CREDIT CARDS

Institution funding sources Personal funding sources Note: that the percentages do not add to 100 because people commonly seek funding from multiple sources*

17

18

WHY DO WE START OUR OWN BUSINESSES? DATA COLLECTED FROM SURVEY OF 5 SMALL BRAND OWNERS

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19

DUSTRYS N I R U NTROLLING O

I WANT

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I WANT

TO

ACTIVITY: Can you spot the difference?

T H E I N D U ST R Y D

O

Turn the Page to View the Answer

20

DID YOU ONLY FIND

ONE

DIFFERENCE? 22

UNDERVALUED & UNDERSERVED 200 years have passed and our needs remain the same.

There are presently, many gaps that The Market has neglected to address, ignoring the voices of black women. However, with every unfilled gap is an opportunity for entrepreneurial venture and for black women to control how our needs are met.

22

OUR INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM DATA COLLECTED THROUGH A RANDOM SURVEY OF 34 ANONYMOUS BLACK WOMEN AGES 18 - 45+ ASKED HOW THEY DISCOVER INFORMATIO ABOUT THEIR HAIR AND HAIR PRODUCTS

YouTube Hair Blogs/ Websites Word of Mouth Social Media Magazines Google Brand Sites

Of the results, it appears that Youtube, Hair Blogs and Word of mouth are the sources most women turn to when they are searching for new information about their hair.

Suggesting we have more trust in our personal connections, and authentic content.

3%

9% 38%

NOW

12%

While black women have remained underrepresented in the beauty industry, we have managaed to create our own knowledge sharing system that allows us to build community seperate from our spatial organization and outside the big marketing tactics of big corporations.

Youtube Hair Blogs Word of Mouth

Many of the brands I spoke to lamented about their inability to fund robust marketing schemes, explaining the high costs of google ads and digital advertising. But, should these women really be focused on elevating platforms that we apprently don’t even use for information?

Why not boost our use of guerrilla marketing tactics such as word of mouth?

What if we created an entirely new marketing schema to leverage the interconnectivity of The Made Marketplace?

33%

THEN

32%

23

24

ALL BLACK EVERYTHING

ANWAAR CO. NATURAL AND ORGANIC PRODUCTS BROOKLYN, NY Lucky for me, New York has a few black owned apothecaries and natural ingredient markets so sourcing my ingredients locally shouldn’t be difficult!

Additionally, I can probably grab containers from any local hair supply and at this scale I don’t need too many.

As an experiment I tried to see at the most basic level if it was possible to have an all black-owned supply chain. I pretended that I was looking to produce a hair product and would be based out of my apartment in Manhattan. My supply chain was small but still couldn’t be fulfilled using only black owned businesses. This raised some very interesting points about the constraints to productivity. Given the layout of out commercial infrastructure we can only personalize our supply chains so much, meaning that necessities such as the post act as mandatory inputs or costs absorbed by the business or the customer.

MY HOME MANHATTAN, NY Since I’m only really using natural ingredients I can use regular kitchen products to create my formulations.

Additionally, I want control of my brand image so I will be doing all my branding and label production in-house.

We have become so reliant on one particular form of infrastructure in order to conduct business as a way to bypass needs for physical commercial space, how can we furthur develop our digital systems to reshape the retail experience and develop our own community pipeline for distribution?

?

My journey has ended here. Unfortunately at this scale, having my own shipper isn’t real option and all major shipping services aren’t black owned.

25

26

Currently Not Black Owned Currently Black Owned Annual Revenue Unknown Note* Bubble size is porportionate to annual revenue

ill Capital

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ave b. M nH

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27

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So, what is the true cost of pivoting your ownership and why is there this misconception that you need to open up your market in order to appeal to everyone, not just our community?

aughter 40M sD

Lust

ink er P

We are now seeing brands that have gained tremedous popularity and still remain under the ownership of their original founders.

We are seeing black brands become more popular not only in the hair industry but all industrys as our community gathers behind to support one another.

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oothe N’ S Sm

tasia Indu Fan

es - ob. The stri

M - ob. Unilever .5M 61

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Inherently, if your brand is sold you will gain more connections within the industry, more visibility in stores and obiouvsly more capital for marketing and growth. That being said, it also challenges the expectations in the market.

ilever . Un - ob

Sua ve

4.4MM e2

This map shows estimated annual revenue (data found using owler) and ownership for every brand available in the “texture” aisle at cvs. To avoid location based data, I used the general cvs website to find the brands. This map was created to address the question, does selling your brand always equate to larger growth and more financial success?

MM

lywo Hol od

Beauty - o

WHO OWNS YOUR HAIR?

Shea Moist ure $24 0

Cantu 7.5MM ob. PDC Brands

Ecoco 4.5MM ob. Aaron Tiram As I am 1.8MM Dr. Ali N Syed

28

"As I Am Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile." Owler., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.owler.com/company/asiamnaturally.

"Beauty Brand Carol's Daughter Exploring Sale of Company -Sources." 2013.Reuters, -03-27. https://www.reuters.com/article/carolsdaughter-sale-idUSL2N0CI25D20130327.

"Cantu Beauty Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile." Owler., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.owler.com/company/cantubeauty.

The Curl Queen: CURLS CEO Mahisha Dellinger Builds a $15 Million Brand 2012. MadameNoire. https://madamenoire.com/239453/the-curl-queen-curls-ceo-mahisha-dellinger-builds-a-15-million-brand/.

"Ecocoinc Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile." Owler., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.owler.com/company/ecoco.

CONCLUSION

"Head & Shoulders Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile." Owler., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.owler.com/company/headandshoulders.

"How to Scale without Crashing and Burning? Secrets of 8 Smart Entrepreneurs #sbwchi." Crain's Chicago Business., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.chicagobusiness.com/static/section/how-to-scale-your-business.html.

"The Mane Choice Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile." Owler., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.owler.com/company/themanechoice.

Seeing Black was purposefully designed to be perfectly incohesive and unapologetically bold, to contrast the almost clinical diagnostics of generic business nomenclature. With each map, a unique representation of the once invisible voices of black female entrepreneurialism, a glimpse at the everyday inside a hidden ecology.

Through providing visibility to the urban beauty city, an underlying network of community innovation was uncovered, the need for a shift in representation within the entrepreneurial space became extremely evident, and our embedded guide for progress was emphasized.

"Pantene Competitors, Revenue and Employees - Owler Company Profile." Owler., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.owler.com/company/pantene.

"Sales of the Leading Shampoo Brands in the U.S. 2019." Statista., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/195579/leading-us-regular-shampoo-brands-in-2007-and-2008-based-on-sales/.

U.S. Census Bureau (2018). Race, 2014-2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates U.S. Census Bureau (2018). MEDIAN INCOME IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS (IN 2018 INFLATION-ADJUSTED DOLLARS) ,2014-2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Alsever, Jennifer. "Case Study: To Sue Or Not to Sue." Inc.com., last modified -01-24 00:01:00, accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.inc.com/magazine/201202/case-study-the-rival-mixed-chicks-sally-beauty.html.

Berg, Madeline. "These Mother-and-Son Entrepreneurs Went from Selling Soap on Harlem Streets to an $850 Million Fortune."

Forbes., accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2018/09/21/these-black-entrepreneurs-went-from-selling-soap-on-harlem-streets-to-a850-million-fortune/.

Boston D. Thomas. 2001. "Trends in Minority-Owned Businesses." In Read "America Becoming: Racial Trends and their Consequences: Volume II". doi:10.17226/9719. https://www.nap.edu/read/9719/chapter/10.

Boyd, Robert L. 2000. "Race, Labor Market Disadvantage, and Survivalist Entrepreneurship: Black Women in the Urban North during the Great Depression." Sociological Forum 15 (4): 647-670. https://search.proquest.com/docview/61465484.

BOYD, ROBERT L. 1996. "The Great Migration to the North and the Rise of Ethnic Niches for African American Women in Beauty Culture and Hairdressing, 1910—1920." Sociological Focus 29 (1): 33-45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20831766.

Judd R., Dennis and Todd Swanstrom. 2009. City Politics, Seventh Edition Taylor & Francis.

Juliet, E. K. Walker. 1986. "Racism, Slavery, and Free Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship in the United States before the Civil War." The Business History Review 60 (3): 343-382. doi:10.2307/3115882. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3115882.

Scott A, Shane. 2008. "Why is Black Entrepreneurship so Rare?" In The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: Yale University Press.

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1

URBAN BEAUTY EQUITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND BLACK WOMANHOOD

CONTENTS “Opportunities for black entrepreneurs to suceed are critical for economic empowerment in black ommunities” - Association Enterprise Opportunity

1

INTRODUCTION

6

VISUALIZATION: AN IMPETUS FOR CHANGE

10

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

27

URBAN BEAUTY MARKETPLACE PERFORMANCE

34

UNFREEZING THE URBAN BEAUTY ENCLAVE: BLACK WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

40

BUILDING THE LADSCAPE: QUANTIFIABLE METRICS

44

THE MAKING OF SEEING BLACK

47

CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY

Black women are among the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs in the United States, and yet while their entrepreneurial contributions are expanding at an exponential rate, their visibility and voices are continually ignored and disregarded. However, this is not a new phenomenon. Black women’s participation in enterprise history has widely evaded scholar study which has prompted their general dismissal in the entrepreneurial space, both financially and ideologically (Walker 1986, 372).

This dismissal has not only lead to an ignorance of their contributions, but tangible, negative, intended consequences that have resulted in various systemic constraints such as gaps in wealth and trust from financial institutions, that have inhibited black women’s ability to access capital and other productive resources crucial to their economic survival. However, these constraints are not only limited to their systemic implications but also mechanisms that perpetuate unequal access to capital on the basis of their race and their gender.

This is why I sought out to understand how black women’s concealed participation in American enterprise has impacted present-day black female entrepreneurs’ ability to gain equitable livelihood’s in the urban.

INTRODUCTION

Urban Beauty begins with a historical analysis that serves as the foundation for understanding the black business experience through centuries of American history and explores their evasion from scholarly study and how this dismissal may have contributed to the incessant use of diminishing language such as “Other” in the U.S. Census and “niche” in the business space. Through an in-depth theoretical analysis, I navigate the conception of ideological formation, the danger in demographic “freezing” as it pertains to the assumed homogeneity of a group, the power of language and its ability to perpetuate black inferiority, the presence of a community consciousness and its capacity to drive assimilation and develop transformative agency, and the criticality surrounding asset accumulation and its connection to community advancement, all in 2

order to articulate that reductive language and the degendering of labor have contributed to the minimization of the contributions from black female entrepreneurs and now hinders their ability to establish sustainable urban livelihoods.

Understanding Entrepreneurialism Defining the term entrepreneur is complex and generally results in overly simplistic and incredibly vague characterizations. For example, Merriam Webster defines an entrepreneur as one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines an entrepreneur as someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity. Collectively, these definitions touch on the inherent risk in developing your own enterprise and the necessity for a “gap” in order to generate opportunity; however, they both fail to address entrepreneurial intention and the intersectionality of race and gender.

That being said, in acknowledging that the term itself is reasonably reliant on socially constructed narratives of the meaning of success within this romanticized façade of the American businessman, we can begin to comprehend how the exclusion of black women has evolved into widely accepted institutional practice, and how black female entrepreneurship has manifested its own unique delineation.

Black female entrepreneurialism is rooted in collective socio-relational strength as a baseline for actuating innovation and creating the means to guide family and community through complex circumstances regarding their ability to obtain financial independence. It is not a narrative concerning the heroic individual, but rather the cumulative advancement of an entire community through the incremental achievement of each community member. It sits apart from the American businessman, its glorification of exploitation and the reinforcement of patriarchal dominance, and instead elevates the narratives of those who’ve surpassed insurmountable discrimination and socioeconomic barriers in order to 3

better their chance at equitable livelihoods through the establishment of enterprise. It personifies black femininity, revolutionizes the meaning of success and was birthed from the instinctual drive to organize their own economic framework when their needs were unmet. Unfortunately, this innate ambition has been disregarded and intentionally masked by generalizing terms, such as “niche”.

The terminology, “niche” derives from the advent of the “ethnic niche” or “ethnic enclave” economies that surfaced around the time of the Great Migration as a way to categorize segregated industries in which black needs were excluded from the services provided by the primary labor market of the larger economy. In most cases, many black women flocked to these specified enclave industries to escape the inflexible and arduous jobs such as domestic servitude, in search of economic mobility and freedom. One of the oldest “ethnic enclave” sectors is the black hair industry, and thus was selected as the lens for which I explored the underlying mechanisms for black, female, entrepreneurial exclusion and the systemic implications that have created unequal access to capital on the basis of race and gender as a result of reductionist language and stereotypical generalizations.

Additionally, it should be known that this classification, while offering economic alternatives to low-wage work, actually disabled them from partaking in the main labor market (later referred to as The Market in Urban Beauty Market Place Performance) and perpetuated the ideology of a racial binary within our society, leaving a legacy of economic division. To further explicate the power of the enclave, a complimentary visual ethnography, Seeing Black: The Unseen Narratives of the Black Hair Industry was constructed.

Transformative Agency and the Power of Visibility Seeing Black is an atlas of urban beauty ecology centered around the concept of visibility and change. It is an exploration into the world of entrepreneurship specifically within the cultural context of women in the black hair industry. It surfaces the historical legacy of 4

women’s contributions to American enterprise and emphasizes the importance of this recognition in order to eliminate the socioeconomic inequities that continue to deplete the community and invokes conversation and productive dialogue intended to put forth actions for reimagining their economic futurity.

Deviating from the generic, homogenizing form of data visualization used for classical data, Seeing Black utilizes both traditional and feminist mapping methodologies to unpack the layers of intersectionality that have resulted in the undercapitalization of black businesses and the capital access gap that are ultimately responsible for their compromised success. Additionally, it illustrates the urban space that these women occupy and traces the intersecting pathways of the networks that underpin an equitable vital city.

Seeing Black uses interviews and survey data gathered from black product artisans and black women who interact with the space, as well as census data and statistical figures to make visible this concealed ecosystem. By revealing the barriers and the operating systems of the embedded context, these obstacles can undergo a process of translation that frames the black beauty experience into a legible topography for change: reimaging a network not built on the premise of social exclusion or economic survival but on choice and communal prosperity.

5

VISUALIZATION: AN IMPETUS FOR CHANGE

The purpose of Urban Beauty is to increase the visibility of black female entrepreneurialism and their urban ecosystem that is presently afflicted with unequal access to capital and productive inputs due to racial and gender inequities. Furthermore, this thesis aims to showcase black women’s role as major contributors to American enterprise by articulating the historical and present-day discourse surrounding their exclusion. It is through this articulation, that the atlas serves as medium for stakeholders to not only uniformly express their exclusion but to also realize their power and capacity to mobilize and demand the standards that they deserve, serving as an entry way into actualizing new systemic manipulations through a firm understanding of the landscape they occupy.

Articulation and Visibility: Building a Foundation Present-day black, female entrepreneurs are facing real life consequences as a result of their continued rejection, surfacing as impediments to capital access, and general discrimination in the entrepreneurial space. To better improve their placement within the realm of enterprise and change the way in which they are categorically described, an understanding of their ecological territory must be vocalized and understood not only by those external to the ecosystem but also by those within.

The concept of articulation is rooted in the theory of enacting change explained by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Radical Thinkers). The theory posits this: Words are empty signifiers, meaning they do not have one specifically defined meaning. Their meaning can have many different unique associations that vary person to person based on lived experiences and interpretations of the systems in which the person belongs.

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Systems are put in place to attempt to articulate words and force mass meanings of words in order to create the hegemony or status quo.

The first step in understanding the system that has created the representation of the signifier is through constructing a chain of equivalence which is essentially a discourse analysis; finding all the different phrases and terms that make-up the understanding and the experience of a word.

Through the chain of equivalence, one can then begin to create dislocations. Dislocations are breaks in the chain that occur through disproving the need for a component of the chain to be present and an articulation of a new component that could fit the chain in place of the dislocated component. Essentially, developing new associations for the signifier by proving its cohesiveness with the rest of the chain.

A dislocation is a threat to a system because it provides an opening for change.

Change happens through the incremental dislocation of items in the chain of equivalence and their incremental replacement with components that occupy the new value system which you are trying to change too, but the first and most crucial step in the process is articulation.

This articulation can happen by creating uniform vocabulary and visibility to form a base understanding.

Through actualizing this theory of articulation by visually conveying the chain of equivalence surrounding black female entrepreneurship in the black hair industry, a basis for further exploration of the creation of dislocations and re-articulations will be produced and yield a lexicon for understanding the industry and serve 8

as a guide for further articulatory processes for understanding black female entrepreneurialism in a multitude of sectors.

Consequently, in an effort to dismantle the narrative that has dominated the majority of study surrounding black women in business and to call attention to the universal ramifications that stem from their constant rejection from life-sustaining economic activities. Seeing Black will provide a means of sharing experience, forming community through shared values and creating a foundation of communal knowledge to catalyze organizational development, transformative agency and institutional tools to work towards a means for tangibly uplifting black women, all with the power of visibility.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

9

An Overview

assimilatory practices and strive for transformative agency.

This section provides a theoretical context into the development of the modern-day experience of black female entrepreneurs by tracing the black business experience through historical and scholarly study. I touch on various scholars who have contributed specific concepts that emphasize the reasons for their bifurcating narratives. Their contributions touch on the evolution of the blatant exclusion due to old segregationist policies to its present-day, more elusive form and the societal complications resulting from the overtly simplistic racial representations, as well as the implications of gender and race on both the tangible scale: capital and financial constraints, and the intangible scale: narratives and stereotypical ideologies.

Subsequently, I assert the ways the racially biased narratives have contributed to the inability of black women to accumulate assets through Carolyn Moser’s asset accumulation theory and its connection to the development of just cities and prosperous communities, as well as the nested link between asset accumulation and capital access.

While Moser’s theory takes a gendered lens, I consider her theory through additionally assessing the intersectionality of race as it further implicates her gender-based theorization.

To begin the exploration into the embedded theoretical context, I first briefly review a component of my anthropological deep dive in order to provide context to the way in which black women’s involvement in enterprise has evaded scholarly study and how their erasure from scholastic inquiry has been justified through deliberate linguistic terms, such as “niche”.

Adding up their collective insight forms the basic design setting terms of the urban beauty ecology and reveals the following theoretical assertion that will anchor my project: reductive language and the degendering of labor gave rise to the minimization of the contributions from black female entrepreneurs and now hinders their ability to establish sustainable urban livelihoods.

Racial Imaginaries and Narratives of Blackness

Once the understanding of these racial associations was formed, I move to discuss how generalizations from the victimization of black women and their metaphorical “freezing” as objects of oppression have engendered their omission. Through this, comes the notion of the collective consciousness where I apply Fanon’s inquiry into black inferiority through language as a way to address the capacity of the consciousness to move groups to partake in

In examining the historical context of black entrepreneurship in the United States, a common theme that arose was the use of language as an instrument to discourage and divert attention from those who operated outside of the patriarchal “oppressor” and “oppressed” societal structure of the 19th and the mid-20th centuries; oppressed being someone subject to unjust or discriminatory practices that restrain opportunity economically and/or socially, and oppressor being someone who partakes in reinforcing those practices. For example, during the Antebellum period, black participation in free enterprise was mandated illegal; however, private property provisions were far stronger, giving the slaveowner ultimate jurisdiction over the slaves’ participation in the free market. While slave laws made it illegal for slaves to hire themselves out, few states interfered with the property rights inherent in slave ownership. Acting with impunity and in their own economic self-interest, slaveholders

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I then discuss Stuart Halls concept of ideological formation to illustrate how the constant repetition of belittling language has created the foundation for stereotypes and racist imaginaries that have stunted the community and contributed to their collective devaluation.

In examining the historical context of black entrepreneurship in the United States, a common theme that arose was the use of language as an instrument to discourage and divert attention from those who operated outside of the patriarchal “oppressor” and “oppressed” societal structure of the 19th and the mid-20th centuries; oppressed being someone subject to unjust or discriminatory practices that restrain opportunity economically and/or socially, and oppressor being someone who partakes in reinforcing those practices. For example, during the Antebellum period, black participation in free enterprise was mandated illegal; however, private property provisions were far stronger, giving the slaveowner ultimate jurisdiction over the slaves’ participation in the free market. While slave laws made it illegal for slaves to hire themselves out, few states interfered with the property rights inherent in slave ownership. Acting with impunity and in their own economic self-interest, slaveholders allowed their slaves to hire their own time and to participate in the commercial life of the antebellum community not only as wage earners, but also as businesspeople (Walker 377). This resulted in roughly 2,300 black enterprises that were established during this period; however, even though these 2,300 are completely anomalous, they have still evaded the majority of historical analysis. Walker reiterates this when hypothesizing why they have been left out in the broader context of American business history and says, “The low participation rate of blacks in the pre-Civil War business community and the comparatively limited profits earned seem insignificant as a basis for historical inquiry” (381). Walker, here is not herself saying that the contributions are insignificant but rather illustrating the consensus regarding black entrepreneurship in academia which she later criticizes for reducing the black experience.

when the data is present, black women still have been largely ignored in historical inquiry suggesting a “general disregard of women and women’s work in society and to the low status of occupations held by African American women following their arrival in northern cities (Boyd 1996; Marks 1989).

In this sentiment, Boyd is referring to black female entrepreneurs and their creation of ethnic “niche” economies. Boyd spends the larger portion of his hypothesis arguing the necessity of ethnic niche economies for advancement of black women in the northern ecosystem; however, focusing specifically on their value for the individual, not the collective because they were not substantial enough to raise the human capital of black women as a group. Here we see the first time where African American enterprise in markets that are predominantly meant to service and benefit the black community are classified as “niche”: denoting or relating to products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

Boyd argues that, “African American women in the urban North during the Great Migration lacked ethnic niches that could advance the whole group. The lack of such niches at the crucial period of entry into the industrial milieu of northern cities subsequently set African American women on a course economic disadvantage that has continued into the late twentieth century (Boyd 1996).”

Walker’s analysis focuses largely on black entrepreneurs as a collective and does not directly address the intersectionality of gender in enterprise participation. This could be in part due to limited information during the Antebellum period geared specifically in regards to black women; however, during the Great Migration even

While I agree that their business establishment was unable to advance the entire community, I am in turn arguing that it was not the lack of niche economies that failed to advance the group as a whole but rather the classification as a niche which disabled them to participate in the main labor market (later referred to as The Market), because in this classification they were segregated to only location and race specific clientele making large-scale growth extremely difficult to attain by most. That being said, by using “niche”, academia’s attribution to the minimization of attempts at racial liberation and advancement from black entrepreneurs via enterprise establishment and business participation is revealed. This notion

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perpetuates the ideology of the patriarchal society and in turn created a racial binary where white people are general in the main labor market which provides economic and social advancement and minorities are operating in the secondary labor market that simply provides a means to survive.

In, The Whites of their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and Media, Stuart Hall discusses the ways the media perpetuates racist ideologies and how when deconstruction of these ideologies is attempted it is often problematic because of their inability to critically address the racist ‘common sense’. This “common sense” fails to understand the various dimensions racism is manifested, leading to only certain acts being interpreted as racial violence while other aggressions go unnoticed. Hall describes the three ways an ideology is made comprehensible, stating, “redundancies are a powerful material way of influencing ‘hearts and minds’… How we ‘see’ ourselves and our social relations matters, because it enters into and informs our actions and practices” (Hall, 1981, 32). ideologies and how when deconstruction of these ideologies is attempted it is often problematic because of their inability to critically address the racist ‘common sense’. This “common sense” fails to understand the various dimensions in which racism is manifested, leading to only certain acts being interpreted as racial violence while other aggressions go unnoticed. Hall describes the three ways in which an ideology is made comprehensible, stating, “redundancies are a powerful material way of influencing ‘hearts and minds’… How we ‘see’ ourselves and our social relations matters, because it enters into and informs our actions and practices” (Hall, 1981, 32).

redundant it evolves into a stereotype and normalizes those previously constructed racial imaginaries.

For example, the common joke about black children not knowing their fathers has created a racial imaginary that equates black men to “dangerous”, “criminals” and “lazy”, rather than cultivating the understanding that they are calculated pawns in an unjust and racially motivated criminal justice system. While this joke developed through the witnessing of the prison industrial complex incarcerating more black men than any other group, thus people noticing that lots of black children were fatherless, when normalized to a form of humor, it loses all of its embedded context. These racist associations then go on to become stereotypes that frame the perspectives of black men in our society. When these constructions are perpetuated enough about the cultural and human capital of the African American community i.e. the perpetuation of the words “niche” or “insignificant” to describe their business enterprises, an association that black enterprise can only operate within the black community and offer no transferrable skills to the greater economy is formed.

Additionally, it defines those who do express business acumen as the exception and not a defining characteristic of the black community. By leaving out black entrepreneurial establishment, it builds an assumption about the black experience on purely their oppression rather than their ability to navigate within a system of oppression and still persevere. When applied to the Urban Beauty lens, it presents an angle by which they are discriminated against in the quest for business expansion and financial gain.

An ideology, Hall believes, is the result of a collective mentality not an individual and thus repetition is a powerful tool in developing an ideology because it works to naturalize the sentiment and convince the masses of its validity. Through this collective understanding we are able to make sense of social relations and construct imaginaries of race. When this repetition becomes an ideology that is found to be

Chandra Mohanty describes the nature of analyzing western feminism and colonial discourse that reinforces the way disparaging language can bolster these racial imaginaries and generate a reductionist perspective of a particular group. Mohanty is speaking specifically in terms of “Western” and “Third World” women and the ways feminism has been constructed in terms of Western women;

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however, she addresses themes that also translate when speaking about racial differences of women within the Western context. This is based on the fact that black women have had few societal similarities to white women (i.e. Western) historically. Since their inception as slaves they were not viewed as women but as laborers. In Women Race and Class, Angela Davis states; “Proportionally, more Black women have always worked outside their home than have their white sisters. As slaves, compulsory labor overshadowed every other aspect of women’s existence…

The economic arrangements of slavery contradicted the hierarchical sexual roles incorporated in the new ideology” In pre-civil war during industrialization. Black women were not debased as “housewives” as white women were. They performed equal tasks to men and expected to work…It was those women who passed on to their nominally free female descendants a legacy of hard work, perseverance and self-reliance, a legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality-in short, a legacy spelling out standards for a new womanhood (2011).”

Here Davis is breaking down a large distinction between white women and black women during slavery which has historically been clouted in order to create the appearance of female homogeneity.

Historically, slave women are commonly seen in the guise of obedience and submission similar to the notion of the white “housewife”; however, Davis frames an entirely new image that counters the commonly accepted narrative of slave women in which they fought back with the same valor and will as the men and [those women] are the ones whose characteristics formulated a new definition of black womanhood and black femininity that stands in contrast to the aforementioned “housewife” narrative. With this in mind, I stand to use Chandra’s analogy because while “Western” (being the more geographical and cultural definition) and “Third World” women stand in contrast of one another, so do “Western” (i.e.

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white) and black women.

When Mohanty discusses women as objects of male violence she says, “Defining women as archetypal victims freezes them into ‘objects-who-defend-themselves,’ men into ‘subjects-whoperpetrate-violence,’ and (every) society into powerless (read: women) and powerful (read: men) groups of people” (Mohanty 2003, 24). This “freezing” of groups into positions defined by their oppression is very similar to the way blacks during these times of economic distress have been discussed, in that the black experience during the antebellum period was characterized by slavery, the great migration was categorized by an attempt to flee the harsh discrimination and limited economic opportunity in the south, the great depression was categorized by extreme poverty and the black power movement, while occasionally synonymous with racial pride, is characterized by racial pride that stemmed from a collective understanding of the injustice and thus marches and riots tend to take center stage when talking about blacks during this era.

These characterizations offer a reason as to why those who did not remain in those positions of oppression are not seen as valuable for academic study, because their experience is assumed individualistic and outside of this oppressive framework and therefore doesn’t offer an accurate depiction of the majority of African Americans.

As mentioned above, African Americans are often described by their victimizations, detailing their harrowing ordeals, focusing of their positions as reactors to situations rather than independent thinkers partaking in the urban beauty ecology that seeks to strengthen relations and propel the community forward. Meaning that the actions of the “insignificant” are seen as reactions to their social situations and not actions that are occurring in their own community doctrine.

While

historical

analysis 18

that

speaks

to

reactionary

developments is crucial to understanding the societal contexts of these experiences, it doesn’t create a completely accurate picture of the Afro-American experience and homogenizes the community. It dramatically downplays African American agency and adds to the previously mentioned racist “common sense”. For example, during slavery, “slave men and women manifested irrepressible talent in humanizing an environment designed to convert them into a herd of subhuman labor units. They transformed the negative equality which emanated from the equal oppression they suffered as slaves into a positive quality: the egalitarianism characterizing their social relations (Davis 2011).”

Here “negative equality” is referring to their equal physical expectations as laborers and positive quality to the established social relations of slave families, where men and women were in charge of equal contributions to the home. Gathering food and tending to the home and children were tasks that were shared equally and considered of equal importance. So even in a completely dehumanizing environment, they managed to attach humanity to their lives and formulate a doctrine for raising a family. The suppressed everyday lives of the urban beauty city that have been placed out of sight and apart from the entrepreneurial equation, were active even when all external forces were attempting to irradiate their existence, illustrating a community consciousness that has otherwise would not have been addressed by categorizing black women by their oppression (Walker 1986, 374).

This consciousness is one that “transcends those constructs in which black definitions of self-advancement and achievement can be understood only within the framework of a pre-capitalist plantation social system” (ibid). It is a subconscious collective thinking that led the slaves to develop their own sense of humanity and seek out group economic progress. It is a consciousness that redefined the bounds for 19

achievement, no longer limited by the racial binary.

Franz Fanon addresses this consciousness through the exploration of language as a tool for survival and access for blacks. In the Negro and Language, Franz Fanon directly addresses the linkages between whiteness, language and power, and how its use yielded a feeling of black inferiority. He does this speaking directly in the context of Antillean blacks who had settled in France post colonization and their desire to master the French language and detach from their mother tongue. Fanon writes, “The black man who has lived in France for a length of time returns radically changed…To speak language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is… Historically, it must be understood that the Negro wants to speak French because it is the key that can open doors which were still barred to him fifty years ago… But we should be honored, the blacks will reproach me, that a white man like Breton writes such things. Let us go on. . . .”

Here Fanon is explaining the subconscious desire for blacks to renounce their blackness and be accepted into white European society. He underlies the power associated with language and its ability to improve the social capital of blacks. While the black man changes as he takes on the European aesthetic, in the last portion of the quoted text you see that even Fanon himself understands that in making such progress as to be told that a black man can speak such eloquent French, it is a step in gaining social progress even though it is inherently laced with the assumption of black inferiority, and it is this consciousness that Juliet Walker argues led blacks to start enterprise and imagine a society outside of the system in which they had belonged which placed blacks only in positions of subservience.

This consciousness understands that the success of the community as 20

a whole is crucial for this positioning to occur. It is the understanding that if you are at all categorized within the binary as part of the oppressed, your freedom is linked to one another and just as an ideology cannot be perpetuated by an individual, deconstructing an ideology cannot happen with a lone insurgent.

It is a consciousness that allows those who embody it to not only push for equality but aspire to materialize an alternative to the binary as a means of positioning themselves and the community as a whole in a place they can succeed and establish generational progress. Urban Beauty activates this consciousness by illuminating the current dislocations where alternatives can be executed and revolutionizes this consciousness from its current metaphysical state to a tool for palpable change, through the power of visibility.

Situating Urban Beauty in Present-day Inequities With the historical significance of language and their effects on the black community defined, I will now pivot to discuss how these negative effects have manifested into contemporary narratives and have led to black women’s inability to establish sustainable livelihoods in the urban and collectively improve the community as a whole.

In the historical context, black entrepreneurship has managed to improve the lives of those who partook, even minimally; however, the communities as a whole rarely saw an overall rise in their socioeconomic status, and additionally, the individuals were seldom making more than the bare minimum to survive. The communities were generally unable to successfully gain economic autonomy, i.e. survive independently of public programming or government intervention and also to transfer their assets (human, social and economic capital) from their enclave marketplaces to the main labor market.

This happened because they operate in “niche” markets that 21

are isolated from the larger economy and only served a small segregated clientele, resulting in minimal assets being gained by the community members; asset being,“ a ‘stock of financial, human, natural or social resources that can be acquired, developed, improved and transferred across generations” (Moser 2016 , 3). Essentially, an asset is social, economic or human capital that can be acquired, developed, improved and transferred across generations. The generational transference is the most important component to Moser’s definition because it stresses that the asset must be something that increases in value and remains within the family/community, thus allowing future generations to better position themselves signifying progress rather than each generation starting from the same point, unable to utilize the progress attained by the generation before.

In Gender, Asset Accumulation and Just Cities, Moser talks about how asset accumulation has been linked to the development of just cities. She speaks mostly in the context of “developing” countries but has specific concepts regarding gender and labor. With this particular framework, she uses “the majority of the population still contend with substandard housing, poor infrastructure, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and significant social isolation, all of which constrain their access to economic opportunities”, for her justification in using the Global South as her focus; however, when considering the Afro-American experience, many fall in similar categories both historically and in recent years (2011).

Below are the foundational points Moser uses to begin expressing the importance of the asset-accumulation framework and demonstrating many of the ways in which cities have been developed that have led to women’s restricted participation in the urban ecosystem.

Gender and just cities have two-sides. One hand being gender-related constraints to achieving just cities, through 22

persistent gender-based inequalities, in access to all forms of capital, structural ‘driving forces’ such as economic globalization, demographic transition, and associated urban spatial agglomeration as well as political change, climate change and disasters and violence and insecurity. On the other hand, their agency in the choice of solutions and interventions to accumulate or to adapt assets, women seek to empower themselves, with impacts both on poverty reduction and on increased equality.

Cultural norms that affect gendered divisions of labour and female mobility have implications not only for earnings but also for rights to participate in urban public life.

Accumulated assets may not only empower women, but also may successfully challenge power relations in a transformative manner, thereby contributing to just, and more inclusive, cities.

that creates agency and is linked to the empowerment of individuals and communities (3).”

Moser uses Bebbington to exemplify the correlation between agency and assets. Both tangible and intangible assets give women increased control and command which as previously mentioned, challenges power relations and empowers communities, concluding that assets are directly related to power and can contest and even disrupt the racial binary if this framework is not only applied to women but also tailored to women of different races and levels of oppression Within Moser’s framework, it becomes apparent that an increase in assets such as the human capital of a group would empower them and lead to the advancement of the group in a material way that could result in actual socioeconomic change; however, in being denied the ability to do so, they have been excluded from the urban.

Moser brings to light the biases associated with current studies on the creation of just cities and their inability to address the intersectionality of gender. “To date neither the academic debates nor the formulated policy and practice on ‘just cities’ has included a focus on gender-based inequalities, discriminations, or opportunities (ibid).” In this mention of the exclusion of academia, previous themes of insignificance begin to permeate, alluding to the fact that women have just been disregarded in city policy and the creation of the urban ecosystem which explains why not only the female experience, but the more granular black female experience was largely ignored in historical analysis, as their assumed homogeneity did not only apply to the manifestation of their narratives but also to the establishment of the urban. This emphasizes that woman in general have been shut out from participating in crucial aspects of instituting the urban fabric which Moser argues is a result of the inability to attain assets.

“Bebbington (1999) argues, assets give people the capability to be and to act. Thus, the acquisition of assets is not a passive act but one

This piece is key, because it details in a more structural way why certain narratives of “insignificant” or “niche” have been associated with black women and how they have directly impacted the ability for black women to attain transferrable assets (ex: homes, successful business ownership) which have resulted in unsustainable and inequitable livelihoods in which generational growth and community agency are drastically limited. Here, it becomes clear that urban space designations and territory characteristics are crucial because in many ways power shapes space to reflect the narrative of the desired hegemony, so the only narratives of the oppressed that are given visibility are those that live in the chain of equivalence of the oppressor. As current participants in the urban beauty economy reside outside the accepted hegemony of the main labor market, they are excluded from considerations in constructing the system of capital distribution across urban space and thus have limited access to capital and capital goods.

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Conclusion This section began by reviewing the components of my historical analysis that unearthed disparaging narratives that provided the foundation for racial imaginaries that have culminated into the exclusion of black women in the general economy through; the investigation of language as a tool for reinforcing oppressive narratives that ultimately lead to stereotypical ideologies of blackness, explaining how the embedded historical language is “freezing urban beauty” black entrepreneurship, and reshaping Moser’s wealth accumulation lessons to place them in the context of race, providing a framework into problematizing their exclusion in the broader context of economic survival and societal growth.

So long as black women are continually excluded and characterized by incomplete narratives and belittling language, we will continue to perpetuate the racial binary and develop cities in the image of oppression.

The remainder of this thesis will act not only as a guide for materializing change in the representation of black female entrepreneurs but also raise awareness about the potential consequences of their continued repudiation, in addition to potential points of discussion that will act as mechanisms for fostering ideological formation around how new sustainable ecosystems could potentially form, as well as lay the groundwork for the discourse of this ecosystem duality and suggest prescriptive directs too shift the paradigm from inequity to equity.

This understanding of the construction of these narratives has formulated a position to better understand not only why black women have been unable to transfer their skills and business prowess to the “main” labor market, but also shed light on why American cities have been constructed to perpetuate racial violence and inequality. The position reveals the following insights: Black, female entrepreneurs face barriers in achieving economic and social betterment for themselves and for their community due to the exclusion of their participation in American enterprise by categorizing them with language such as “niche” and “insignificant”, creating the illusion of unimportance and worthlessness in their work and perpetuating the ideology in which their resourcefulness and collective intelligence is minimized.

This generates additional hurdles for black, female entrepreneurs in transforming their businesses into urban livelihoods, due to their lack of access to assets and capital which are primarily attained through participation and growth within The Market.

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In section 5, part IV. Urban Beauty Data Spaces, Uncovering What Counts, a map is seen displaying a clear spatial distinction within the City of New York. The map shows a line of demarcation that foregrounds the operation of the two labor systems: one at the national, global scale (The Market) and one that exists at the community scale (The Made Marketplace), the community being your spatially situated neighbors and also in the broader sense of those who share common values, since the advent of the internet has allowed for communal connection to transcend spatialized barriers.

My analysis of these parallel systems was developed to serve as a critique for the distribution of wealth and its innately racial demarcations, as well as highlighting the importance of the presence of this “secondary market” both culturally and economically, while tying it closely with the formalized definitions of the labor markets I am speaking of.

The Market

URBAN BEAUTY MARKETPLACE PERFORMANCE

The Market is an abstract mechanism that is driven by mass consumption. It is a place that emulates the desires of the dominant narrative or those in positions of power, meaning it is largely spoken for by corporations, banks and wealthy beneficiaries. Within it resides the Primary Labor Market: the market consisting of generally high-wage jobs, social and economic security and professional longevity.

Like the classical definition of the market, The Market’s function is to collect products from scattered sources and channel them into scattered outlets, acting as a mediator for this productive activity to occur. However, as previously mentioned, because The Market is articulated through the desires of corporations, the majority of all its capital flow remains in the hands of those corporations and doesn’t reach the scattered markets with as much financial vigor.

The Market is highly exclusive and competitive, allowing only a 28

few successful “unicorns” to permeate its barriers and capitalize on its scale. It primarily operates on the commodification and capital value of “culture”; however, only allowing the pieces of culture that are cohesive within its chain of equivalence as to not tumble the societal hegemony that has placed them at the highest peak. Lastly, it is important to note that this “culture” cannot be produced within The Market because it is purely a mechanism for commodification, therefore it relies on the productive capacity of The Made Marketplace to constantly manufacture goods and services for which it can extract.

The Made Marketplace The Made Marketplace is caused by spatial, economic and social segregation and operates outside, however parallel, to The Market. It emerges when a person no longer sees participation within The Market as a viable option for improving their economic positioning, generally due to many of the participants in The Made Marketplace being those who previously occupied the Secondary Labor Market: the market consisting of mostly low-wage jobs that are generally undervalued and fail to provide consistent economic stability.

Often times for participants within The Made Marketplace, the discontentment with their financial or professional status is combined with the identification of a problem that is not yet being addressed by The Market, generally due to the problem being centered on ethnically or community specific needs. The recognition of the problem is key to Made Marketplace practitioners because they are not only seeking individual stability and financial growth but community improvement as well. This is the space where ~my~ entrepreneurs reside.

businesses because of the sometimes limited cashflow due to the size of the addressable community. It is inherently unstable due to its exploitative relationship with The Market and thus its internal value is often times not seen by anyone existing outside of its domain.

The idea of The Made Marketplace stems from the origin of “ethnic economic enclaves” that were largely popularized during the Great Migration, when some 6 million African Americans migrated from the southern portion of the United States to the north, dramatically increasing the population of African Americans in northern cities, for example; New York had seen 257.3% population growth of blacks from 1910-1930 as the population rose from 91,709 to 327,706 (Judd and Swanstrom 2009).

What the new arrivals found was opportunity—but not equal opportunity—and persistent discrimination. Whenever blacks attempted to move into white neighborhoods, they were harassed or violently assaulted. In the workplace, they were the last hired and the first fired. They were kept in the most menial occupations. Job opportunities were limited not only by employers but even more so by labor unions, which generally prohibited blacks from membership. Because the North was more heavily unionized than the South, there were actually fewer opportunities in some occupations, especially for skilled laborers. In both union and nonunion shops, white workers often refused to work alongside blacks. To avoid trouble, employers assigned blacks to the least desirable jobs (ibid, 145).

The Made Marketplace depends on the internal participation of community members and local participants, to sustain these

As race relations deteriorated in Southern cities due to the large increase in the African American population, the few African American entrepreneurs who had tailored their business endeavors to the white consumers lost that population and had to shift to serve a racially segregated consumer market (Boyd 1996). These segregated markets offered polarizing perspectives in which the racial binary was strengthened within our societal structure. As Judd and Swanstrom

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(2009) state, the “Urban Crises, in popular imagination the phrase came to signify the collision of two powerful cultural stereotypes: “the black ghetto,” on the one hand, and on the other, the American dream of homeownership and upward mobility.

Of the many culturally distinct markets that were born from this polarization, hair-dressing became a premier industry for black women seeking economic vitality. As previously mentioned, Boyd discussed how the enclave provided; • Professional opportunities with a low barrier to entry • An alternative to the general, low-wage, arduous jobs like domestic servitude • Opportunities for upward mobility (women could become owners of multiple salons, beauty schools and related enterprises, enter into product manufacturing etc.)

• Had a secure industry due to “insider” knowledge and understanding on how to work with black hair and black women’s specific beauty needs and demands • A Platform to create pressure groups for ‘racial advancement’ by standardizing pricing and forcing health legislation and in general becoming very successful businesses Unfortunately, the clientele was segregated so the cashflow was insufficient to support a large number of entrepreneurs and did little to improve human capital of African American women (Boyd 1996). However, these enclaves gave way to opportunity for some form of capital and asset accumulation that otherwise would have been near impossible, making them a crucial component to the continued resilience of the community through a multitude of social and economic hardships that they have faced.

The Made Marketplace in the Context of Economic Crises It is the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and some Americans 31

are protesting the nationwide lockdown strategies intended to slow the spread of the virus. Of the many arguments they are touting as to why cities should reopen, “we need to get our hair done” has become the leading battle cry. These protestors are actually using the need for personal care as a fundamental component of their argument for reopening the economy and an example of the government’s infringement on their freedoms.

Many Made Marketplace businesses, such as local hair salons, have become so embedded in the urban fabric that until they were completely shut down by local governments, they were an assumed a part of life, and quite frankly taken for granted. However, now we are seeing not only what happens when there are “niche” markets and small businesses that sustain entire communities, but the overall economic impact of their disappearance which stems from their lack of adequate support from main market mechanisms.

We are experiencing entire communities filing for bankruptcy because they are unable to recover from the massive financial hit this virus has caused, shutting their doors unexpectedly due to failed public infrastructure to allow them to stay afloat. That being said, not all of the industries occupying The Made Marketplace rely on intrapersonal interaction to conduct their businesses so literal storefronts are not an issue; however, they are do rely on their communities being secure which for many is clearly not the case.

At this point, it has been widely publicized that Covid-19 is disproportionately affecting low-income communities of color, not only economically but also medically and socially. Meaning that many Made Marketplace networks that have been built in those communities are struggling and left with no access to help from the federal government. Our middle class has been halted to its knees all while robust corporate bailouts continue to bless the corporations.

Yet, the economy continues plummet, suggesting that these corporations do not solely make up the backbone of our everyday 32

lives, contrary to common belief.

Some industries that were once excluded from The Market, such as community-based transportation systems and ethnically specific grocers, are seeing a radical linguistic shift as they are now classified as “essential�, while those who are still linguistically diminished are being demanded by the American protestors as necessities to survive.

We are witnessing the most extreme physical visualization of the negative outcomes that have resulted from the continued market segregation. We are in the midst of a tremendous dislocation as our everyday lives are in a phase of total alteration, where normal will be completely redefined. The very composition of our economic institutions is gracefully failing as the shortcomings are being exacerbated and only deepening our countries struggle against the pandemic. It is in this time that a newly conceptualized ecosystem can be generated, as the agency of those occupying The Made Marketplace is at a powerful peak, holding up our society in its palms.

UNFREEZING THE URBAN BEAUTY ENCLAVE: BLACK WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

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To begin understanding the entrepreneur within the intersectionality of black, female America, I first needed to discern the clandestine history of their participation in American enterprise to determine the genesis of their current positioning. Due to this, the core component of my methodology was embedded in an anthropological deep dive.

An anthropological deep dive is an attempt to curate historical contributions regarding any aspect of life and using the same methodologies employed by the scientific method to conduct an analysis. My particular process involved: investigating scholarly studies, interpreting past events and connecting them to modern theorizations and conducting first account interviews and surveys to produce generalizations that provide some light into the construction of the present narratives and societal structures surrounding black female entrepreneurialism.

provided a detailed outline of the historical contexts in which all of the intersectionality’s of black female entrepreneurialism are situated; however, it failed to bring about the evolution of the black entrepreneur as a distinctive entity.

Many of the events that are considered extremely significant milestones on these particular timelines highlight movement along a linear pathway that fits within the societal binary of “the powerful” and “the powerless”. For example, many of the featured events marked as historical landmarks for women are those in the contexts of gaining the right to vote and the move towards equality in labor, i.e. gaining the rights already attained by men. Due to this, I found these three timelines to be inadequate for researching black female entrepreneurialism which is not operating along this linear path and moves independent of the binary’s trajectory.

Part II: Embedded the Urban Beauty Context in History

The first portion of the dive was focused on the black entrepreneur independent of sex. The reason for this aggregation was due to the limited sex-specific data surrounding black entrepreneurship during the antebellum period which was the starting point for my historical inquiry. This is largely a result of men being the majority of the participants and additionally, as previously mentioned, historically, men and women were not commonly separated when recounting and discussing African American narratives, making for an analysis on black female entrepreneurs alone particularly difficult using an archival methodology.

From the aforementioned three-tiered timeline, I moved to examine the times in which there were notable amounts of black entrepreneurship present and decided to focus in on those particular eras for deeper examination. In doing this, I found four particular periods in which black entrepreneurship created labor alternatives due to exclusion for main market practices caused by racial tension, federal mandates, discriminatory practices and/or spatial and institutional segregation. These periods are the Antebellum period (1812-1865), The Great Migration (1910-1925), The Great Depression (1929-1939), and The Black Power Movement (1960’s-1970’s).

Part I: Today’s Entrepreneurial Language Rooted in Inadequate Timelines

Part III: Primary Urban Beauty Sources

I began my historical analysis by following chronological timelines and historical accounts of both black placement and segregation in the labor market, women’s liberation and the evolution of labor rights in the United States. These converging timelines

Having solidified the historical perspective on their participation in American enterprise, I moved to focus on primary source accounts regarding black female entrepreneurship and the black hair industry. I engaged in roughly 20 interviews with women

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speaking specifically about their perspectives on the industry and digitally surveyed an additional 34 on industry views specifically through the lens of a consumer and 5 black hair brand product manufacturers who are still considered in the early stages of business development regarding their motivations for pursuing an entrepreneurial venture.

households that engage in employing workers on or about the premises in activities primarily concerned with the operation of the household are included in this sector.

Part IV: Urban Beauty Data Spaces, Uncovering What Counts Initially, the goal of this project was to uncover information regarding black beauty salons in New York City in an effort to test the narrative that ethnic “niche” industries have been historically minimized and suffer from lack of public visibility, utilizing simple methodologies to allow for replicability. In order to begin this visual exploration, I first began by looking at what data was publicly available and easily accessible, for the aforementioned replicability and also to avoid creating a false sense of visibility due to access to a private database or source, so I used the U.S. Census.

The Census has a generic classification schema that categorizes the different industries for which they obtain data, and to no surprise beauty salons, or anything in the cosmetic industry for that matter falls under “Personal Care” which resides under industry code CNS19-Other (Except Public Administration Category) according to the NACIS classification system.

Increase in the number of people employed in “Other” industry Decrease in the number of people employed in “Other” industry

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Other Services (except Public Administration) sector is comprised of establishments engaged in providing services not specifically provided for elsewhere in the classification system. Establishments in this sector are primarily engaged in activities such as equipment and machinery repairing, promoting or administering religious activities, grantmaking, advocacy, and providing dry-cleaning and laundry services, personal care services, death care services, pet care services, photofinishing services, temporary parking services, and dating services. Private

This map indicates an overall increase in employment in the “Other” industry in Manhattan particularly Midtown and Lower Manhattan (the largest Central Business District in the world), but a general decrease in the remainder of the city. The “Other” industry only explains those who are employed in the sector, not necessarily specifically self-employed. So, could this map be suggesting that these care industries are only truly valued when they are catering to the needs of the tourists or the rich? That when implemented in lower-income communities or communities of color, they are not as valued? Or could it be suggesting that in these industries it has been pushed upon business owners that unless they can survive in The Market, they will have no chance at financial growth and fail?

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With all these questions surfacing as I continued to evaluate the data, it because clear that through the sole use of computational analysis, there is no comprehensive way to measure black female entrepreneurialism in the beauty industry. Most of the data currently available sticks to the traditional, Eurocentric classification of “valued industries� and essentially clumps and hides those that are not considered priority on the spectrum. This data proved effective in reinforcing the presence of an economic binary, but useless in actually surfacing the intricate landscape of the urban beauty city. However, it is within this binary that you can catch a glimpse at the underlying mechanisms that have created economic division in enterprise success in the city, through the clear visualization of the presences of the previously mentioned dual economies: The Market and The Made Marketplace.

BUILDING THE LANDSCAPE: QUANTIFIABLE METRICS

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Claim I: Capital Access Does Not Match Capital Demand

their businesses than can blacks (Scott 2008, 143).

From 2007 to 2018, the number of businesses owned by black women grew an incredible 164%, nearly three times the rate of growth for women-owned businesses (Hannon 2018). According to the Federal Reserve, in the U.S. alone there are 2.4 million African American women-owned businesses as of 2018, making black women the only racial or ethnic group with more business ownership than their male peers (ibid). However, even with the increase in entrepreneurial involvement, displaying a clear willingness for financial autonomy, they are not granted equal capital-access as their counterparts.

Financial institutions rely heavily on consumer credit scores in order to determine their eligibility to access capital at a feasible interest rate. Since credit scores may reflect the impact of inconsistent income and low wealth, which factors are associated with vulnerability to crises and predatory practices in financial markets and disproportionately affect blacks (AEO 2016, 26).

Infrastructural racism has left black business owners to not only experience the typical entrepreneurial challenges but also face the manmade roadblocks erected from systemic discrimination. Each of these challenges presents material barriers to growing a successful business, and the interplay of these barriers has created seemingly insurmountable challenges for Black business owners specifically (Association for Enterprise Opportunity [AEO] 2016).

On average, black business owners have fewer assets, lower wealth, and less disposable income to invest into the business than white business owners (24). This disparity means that black businesses are more reliant on financial entities for monetary support in their business development process and therefore more susceptible to accruing debt and facing difficulties when seeking capital such as predatory policies and institutional discrimination.

Studies show that black entrepreneurs with the same level of wealth and credit histories as white entrepreneurs, who are starting the same-sized businesses in the same industries, are more likely to have their business loans denied by banks or to have to pay higher interest rates. White entrepreneurs can borrow approximately 15 percent more from financial institutions per dollar of equity capital in 41

Due to this lack of access to start-up capital, many of these businesses become monetary sinks for the individual and many potentially brilliant ideas never even make it to consumers simply because race. So, not only is capital access limited to black entrepreneurs, but it also costs more to acquire capital as a black entrepreneur, both financially and psychologically.

Claim II: Black Entrepreneurialism is Crucial for Community Uplift If Black-owned businesses could reach employment parity with all firms in the United States, they would create nearly 600,000 new jobs (10). Assuming these businesses hired mostly Black employees, these new jobs could reduce the rate of unemployment in the Black community to around 5 percent (ibid). However, this growth could only be possible if black businesses were offered effective support to counter many of the obstacles targeting black business owners, i.e. their racial context needs to be taken into account when implementing policy. Therefore, by placing multiple barriers to hinder the success of black business owners we are not only barring the individual from success but also slowing the upward growth of the entire black community and the economy.

Claim III: Black Women are Still Underserved and Undervalued As of 2017, 35% of all black owned businesses are still in the industry of care and comfort (17). These are comprised of businesses 42

that create beauty for people, personal care, raising and nurturing the youth and aiding the sick, disabled and the elderly (ibid). These are industries that, even as automation begins overtaking many sectors and job positions, will still be heavily reliant on human connection. So, in terms of economic vitality and longevity, they have actually chosen industries with elevated job security that will likely remain longer than many other sectors that are currently more highly valued.

Additionally, these industries are predominantly made up of the same variety of professions that black women entered during The Great Migration as they set up their own enterprises. These fields are where the majority of the previously mentioned, ethnic enclaves, were rooted. Suggesting that even after decades of intentionally inclusionary practices and regulations, certain industries still remain underserved by The Market and thus remain industries with low-barriers to entry and dominate the sphere of black female business ownership.

THE MAKEING OF SEEING BLACK

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Seeing Black: The Unseen Narratives of the Black Hair Industry, is an atlas that utilizes feminist mapping methodologies for visual representation in order to bring about visibility to black female entrepreneurs in the beauty industry as a way to articulate the discourse surrounding their erasure from enterprise history and their minimal participation in The Market despite their overwhelming presence in the entrepreneurial space.

The atlas begins with traditional mapping processes, such as QGIS, to create visuals using New York City specific data in order to spatialize demographic data and provide a geographic representation of The Market and The Marketplace. It then explores the limits of traditional mapping methodologies as they relate to marginalized communities and emphasizes how these banal visualization practices extend their invisibility in the public realm through: digitized hand drawn cartographies, gamification and various other alternative visualizations.

Using multiple overlays addressing other socioeconomic factors from both quantitative data and qualitative data collected through interviews and surveys, the Urban Beauty city is illuminated and challenged.

relatable (Halpern 2014, 22). It seeks to challenge power dynamics in data selection, characterization and visualization which is crucial when dealing with a double marginalized group, black women.

The application of feminist theory is common when developing alternative forms of data visualization that are more characteristic of the data they choose to articulate (D’Ignazio and Klein n.d.).

Essentially it adds humanistic nuance to otherwise monolithic quantitative representations of collected data. Therefore, in addition to the qualitative emphasis, the decision to incorporate feminist mapping methodologies as the main mode of articulation for the atlas was due to its ability to recognize the user as a source of knowledge.

The data for this atlas was largely compiled from personal accounts shared through the aforementioned interviews and surveys, so in order to fully capture the cultural nuance I wanted to use feminist mapping because they are not only a source of knowledge but also the authorities in the space.

Seeing black was created for those internal to the urban beauty ecology. Those who are already aware of the lack of representation of black female entrepreneurs as well as their marginalization in the space of beauty but are unsure about how to begin challenging the dynamic. It is intended to facilitate discussion and catalyze the creation of innovating redesigns of the current economic situation.

Methodology Feminist mapping theory is predicated on the notion that the qualitative can contribute to the process of visual representation, embodying the concept that visualization is the language for the act of translation between a complex world and a human observer and it articulates what is beyond our sensory recognition by making it 45

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Seeing Black was purposefully designed to be perfectly incohesive and unapologetically bold, to contrast the almost clinical diagnostics of generic business nomenclature. With each map, a unique representation of the once invisible voices of black female entrepreneurialism, a glimpse at the everyday inside a hidden ecology.

Through providing visibility to the urban beauty city, an underlying network of community innovation was uncovered, the need for a shift in representation within the entrepreneurial space became extremely evident, and our embedded guide for progress was emphasized.

Seeing Black and Urban Beauty jointly construct a comprehensive description of the urban beauty ecological condition and suggest prescriptive assertions to shift the matrix to an ecology of equity and change. My research is by no means exhaustive, and merely a starting point for inquisition, but even with the blip of visibility I have managed to institute, one extremely valuable insight was exposed:

CONCLUSION

Community empowerment is an important motivation and by-product for entrepreneurial pursuits in the black community and has resulted counter imaginaries to the societal understanding of the black experience and the creation of secondary ecosystems rooted in socio-relational ties.

That being said, these secondary ecosystems are now finding themselves at a crucial point of pivot, where their current disposition and continued existence in the periphery is being challenged.

As previously mentioned, this thesis was currently being constructed during a global pandemic in which joblessness and financial uncertainty are severely impacting American citizens. A few days ago, CBS News posted an article regarding the limited access to financial safety nets for businesses owned by minorities, it read:

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“90% of businesses owned by people of color have been, or will likely be, shut out of the Paycheck Protection Program… and not because there are not a lot as we debunked that earlier, and not because they don’t want it or need it, as the need is clearly there but because…many banks participating in the low-interest, forgivable loan program are only issuing loans to existing clients to speed up the approval process that grants access to the money and…businesses owned by people of color are less likely to have commercial banking relationships (Cerullo 2020).”

Let that sink in. Not only is there still a widespread misunderstanding on black participation in enterprise (assumed to be very minimal and needed to be clarified due to the apparently well-known and utterly misleading presumption, that there are not a lot of black business owners), but on top of that, the institutional discrimination discussed earlier in section 6. Building a Landscape: Quantifying the Metrics that has forced many black businesses to seek capital through their own familial networks is the exact reason why many of these businesses might not make it through the Covid-19 pandemic.

References Association for Enterprise Opportunity. 2016. The Tapestry of Black Business Ownership in America: Untapped Opportunities for Success. Washington, DC. BOYD, ROBERT L. 1996. "The Great Migration to the North and the Rise of Ethnic Niches for African American Women in Beauty Culture and Hairdressing, 1910—1920." Sociological Focus 29 (1): 33-45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20831766.

Cerullo, Megan. "Up to 90% of Minority and Women Owners Shut Out of Paycheck Protection Program, Experts Fear." CBS News., last modified Apr 22, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-minority-business-owners-paycheck-protection-program-loans/ .

Davis, Angela Y. 2011. Women, Race, & Class. New York: Vintage.

D'Ignazio, Catherine and Lauren Klein F. "Feminist Data Visualization." .

Fanon, Franz. 1952. Black Skin, White Masks. France:.

Hall, Stuart. 1981. "The Whites of their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media." In Silver Linings Strategies for the Eighties.

Halpern, Orit. 2014. Beautiful Data_A History of Vision and Reason since 1945.

Hannon, Kerry. "Black Women Entrepreneurs: The Good and Not-so-Good News." Forbes., accessed Feb 20, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2018/09/09/black-women-entrepreneurs-the-good-and-not-s o-good-news/.

Judd R., Dennis and Todd Swanstrom. 2009. City Politics, Seventh Edition Taylor & Francis.

We truly are at an incredible moment in history where change is imminent, as an increasing number of our systemic vulnerabilities are exacerbated in light of the pandemic. This is no longer just about black female entrepreneurs’ barriers to success, but a foundational flaw in our societal structure that is ultimately stunting any hope at the establishment of equitable cities, and it is time that we break the chain.

Juliet, E. K. Walker. 1986. "Racism, Slavery, and Free Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship in the United States before the Civil War." The Business History Review 60 (3): 343-382. doi:10.2307/3115882. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3115882.

Laclau, Ernesto., Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and socialist strategy. United Kingdom: Verso, 2001.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1988. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses."

Feminist Review 30 (1): 61-88. doi:10.1057/fr.1988.42.

Moser, Caroline O. N. 2016. Gender, Asset Accumulation and just Cities. Regions and Cities. London: Routledge Ltd. doi:10.4324/9781315776118. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317689508.

Scott A, Shane. 2008. "Why is Black Entrepreneurship so Rare?" In The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: Yale University Press.

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