About one year ago, I and millions of other Americans were waiting with great anticipation, excitement and hope as Barack Obama was about to take office. I along with hundreds of thousands of well wishers crowded onto that beautiful Mall between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument that cold and sunny January day. Although I was too far away to see without the aide of the big screens set up for the occasion, the important thing was that I was there at that time, in that space absorbing and transmitting vibrations from people who were there and people who had long passed from the stage of life. The incoming Obama Administration embodied the hopes and prayers of generations of Americans of all ethnicities and races that somehow we had overcome, and the nation was finally able to come together under the leadership of a man that was both black and white.

The hope of the new administration was contrasted by a background of war and economic turmoil and financial collapse. Comparisons were appropriately made between this inauguration and that of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 during the height of the Great Depression. FDR reassured us that the only thing we had to fear is fear itself. More appropriate words could not have been spoken last January. America needed a new voice and new energy. I and millions of Americans put our trust in President Obama.

Now a almost a full year later from that historic inauguration, the country is still at war, albeit with a new focus on Afghanistan. The economy, by all measures has stabilized and there are signs of improvements despite the unacceptably high unemployment rates. Congress has passed health care reform, and sometime over the next few weeks, a struggle that began with FDR will finally be passed, and the United States will join the rest of the developed world with a national health care system that theoretically covers all Americans. The last two accomplishments would be enough to assure a measure of greatness to the Administration, but clearly we are only at the beginning, with no time to rest on laurels, even when presented by the Nobel Committee.

There are still very real and continuing problems with the economy, health care, global warming, the war, and homeland security. The minority business community has been patient this year, understanding full well that the priorities of the administration are national priorities and that the priorities of minority businesses require first and foremost a strong economy and a safe country. Now that it looks like we are on the path to accomplish these primary objectives, the time has come for the minority business development community to proudly and unashamedly state our case for immediate and significant action by the administration to deal with policies that have whittled away the rights, the resources and the commitment to minority business growth and development.

Over the past thirty years, minority business development has been on the defensive. One case after another has almost uniformly attacked the goals and the basis of assisting minority owned and operated businesses. It has gotten to the point now that the framers of minority business programs in the 1960s and 1970s would probably not recognize what passes for minority business development by the federal government today. The case can be made that the federal government supports every type of business except minority businesses. Federal programs no longer even use the term minority when it comes to procurement. Now the phrase is Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) or Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE), or women owned enterprises (WBE) or Hub Zone Enterprises or Veteran Owned Enterprises, but not minority business enterprises. This transformation and evisceration of minority business programs was the goal of previous administrations hostile to the use of race in any program to ameliorate past policies or past actions based on race. It was not the coming of the Obama Administration that ushered in the “post-racial” society, it was the Reagan-Bush and Bush I and II administrations that have made this an unfortunate and premature reality.

Despite the policy and judicial attacks on minority business development since the early 1980s, minority businesses have grown in numbers, scale and sophistication. So some might argue, what is the problem?

The problems are multitudinous, but first and foremost, federal spending with certified MBEs needs to be increased dramatically. The games that are played showing MBEs partnering with Fortune 500 companies who then only receive a pittance of a contract need to be stopped. The federal government if it does not want to certify MBEs as DBEs or SDBs needs to outsource this to the National Minority Supplier Development Council. Rules allowing federal prime contractors to claim second tier dollars on federal contracts needs to be acknowledged, measured and rewarded. The survey of minority businesses needs to be conducted and redone at least every five years. The Minority Business Development Agency needs to receive a substantial increase in its budget. These are all reasonable requests that should be placed in front of the president by a supporting community of business leaders who view the development of minority businesses as supportive of the need to develop the U.S. economy in general. Politics is struggle. This struggle is not something that can be given to someone outside of the broad community concerned with minority business development. We may not get all that we need, but rest assured, in politics if you do not ask and make the case you will be assured of getting nothing no matter how just the cause. Now is the time for action. Now is the time to be less patient. Who knows how long this opportunity will last? We should not and cannot afford to accept less. I do not believe President Obama would have it any other way.

Dr. Fred McKinney is a Yale-educated Economist and Director of the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council

 

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