Black Women Entrepreneurs

My research proposal will focus on the different issues African American women face while trying to advance within society. I will discuss how these women are paid less because they are women as well as African American. I will also be comparing their struggles to Black men, and White men and women. My next topic will include how these women are often discriminated against. And finally I will discuss how these women are often over looked for receiving promotions at work, even if they obtain more experience.

Along with racism’s effect on the economic status of communities, it also impacts African Americans in other aspects of the financial realm. As Peggy McIntosh explains in her essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” she, as a white person, “can count on [her] skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability” (McIntosh). Thus, institutionalized racism still makes it more difficult for Blacks to become financially stable compared to whites. According the Pew Research Center, the net worth of a white person was 13 times greater than that of a Black person in 2013, even though slavery had been abolished nearby 150 years prior (Fry, Kochlar). Likewise, in 1970 about 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of Blacks

Each of 30 interviewers was asked to recruit 14 subjects (convenience sample of 7 males and 7 females aged between 18 and 80 years old)

This first lecture gave us a close look into the unequal share of wealth and the factors that determine the wealth of individuals in the American society. One of the first factors that affect immensely the inequality in America is the obsessiveness of wanting to classify people and make them mark a box for their gender, race and class. Where men and whites have more privileges than any other person and are not only paid higher, but would most likely spend less time in prison for committing the same crime as an African American. The United states is so unequal that the top 1% of the population has 38.1% of the wealth and the bottom 40% which is a little less than half of the people living in America only have 0.2% of the wealth. And as if that statistic alone was not scary enough, we learn in this

There were also cultural specificities that African-American entrepreneurs engaged in the funeral process had to respect. As a result, African-Americans became over represented in the field of undertaking (Table 1.1) in the years following the Great Migration. Again, it is important to recognize that most opportunities for African-American entrepreneurs were similar to this one in that they were market specific service economy oriented. “In short, changes in the ethnic compositions of (N)orthern cities in the early twentieth century made it difficult for African Americans to establish an economic interface in entrepreneurial occupations during the crucial period of their initial migration to these cities. The lack of such an interface may have set African Americans on a course of economic disadvantage for the rest of the twentieth century.”4 An important piece in shaping this model of economic disadvantage is the pervasiveness of white supremacist theory in the dominant society of the time.5 The common belief of the inherent inferiority of blacks limited their entrance into the entrepreneurial economy, even in the North. One economist when speaking of the disadvantage of trying to create an African-American owned business in a white supremacist environment goes further to say that, “This disadvantage, moreover, continues to inhibit the entry of African Americans into entrepreneurial occupations.”6

The United States prides itself on being a land of opportunities, and in many ways it is. We look at countries like South Africa, which not long ago was segregated through the laws of Apartheid, and we are glad that we are so much further along than the land of Mandela. However, every now and then we need to stop and ask ourselves just how far along we really are, and we have to wonder if many of the once oppressed countries we helped free are not passing us up in the area of civil rights and opportunity.

The majority of African American women have a college level education and work in white collar jobs, “over 64% of African American women … are white collar workers” (Deshay). while news and other media sources would try to tell you otherwise. This means that the majority works in high level jobs, for example CEOs, doctors and professers. Another key point to this is the fact that African American women are an important section of business owners that created their business on their own, “97% of African American women who owned businesses were sole proprietors” (Holmes). This means that African American women own their own businesses. This shows through the challenges, that African American women work to get to their white-collar jobs and businesses. In addition to this, there have been a lot of female African American celebrities and politicians. For instance, Shirley Chisholm was the first African American lady to be elected into the United States congress. Condoleezza Rice was the United States Secretary of State in 2005 – 2009. Another example is well known celebrity Beyoncé. These women have shown that African American women can and have held power and become role models. This juxtaposes how life was in the 1930s, where these magnificent ladies wouldn’t have had the chance to mold the

In Elise Johnson McDougald’s essay “The Task of Negro Womanhood,” she elaborates on the difficulties of being a black, working woman in society. In order to understand the struggles of a black woman in America, “one must have in mind not any one Negro woman, but rather a colorful pageant of individuals, each differently endowed” (McDougald, 103). This is because to be able to understand the problems they face as individuals one must think of black women as a collective unit. McDougald focuses on the women living in Harlem because they are more free and have more opportunity to succeed than in the rest of the United States. Though they are considered more

The struggle for social and economic equality of Black people in America has been long and slow. It is sometimes amazing that any progress has been made in the racial equality arena at all; every tentative step forward seems to be diluted by losses elsewhere. For every "Stacey Koons" that is convicted, there seems to be a Texaco executive waiting to send Blacks back to the past. Throughout the struggle for equal rights, there have been courageous Black leaders at the forefront of each discrete movement.

Disparities show up in the workplace and not just in the education system. Nesbit (2015) states “In the workplace, black college graduates are twice as likely as whites to struggle to find jobs – the jobless rate for blacks has been double that of whites for decades.” This means that multiple difficulties stand in the way of the average Black person being successful. With few jobs available and when faced with the seemingly impossible pursuit of making a living, an instantaneous income can seem appealing. Instant money through illegal

Women are the pillars of the society. They give rise to the society, each one of us was conceived in the womb of a particular woman. They take care of the entire family, the children and the grown up. The mother figure is quite critical in the life of each and every individual. There is a saying that goes” behind every successful man there is a woman.” Therefore, their significance in the lives of their husbands or children cannot be ignored. The great readers across the world for instance United States of America President Obama and United Kingdom Prime minister David Cameron regularly attends government and private affairs together with their wives Mitchell and Samantha respectively.

African American women never receive the true recognition they deserve; and as women we need to know who we are, and why we are important to this nation and to the world. African American women have several contributions to the United States. Their contributions are in fashion, entertainment, art, literature, economics, education, and so much more. Throughout the years these contributions have increased and are continuing to skyrocket as the days go by. Many African American women have made history due to their hard work, and dedication and most of the time it goes unnoticed due to their skin tone and their sexuality. Black women also face several negative stereotypes. They are often seen as angry, ignorant, hostile human beings. It often makes it harder for them to be taken seriously. There are several factors to the stereotypes and are often false, and give black women a bad outlook. Black women are our fighters against slavery, representation of women’s suffrage, the majorettes for the march on civil rights, and the hardworking women in both world wars.

First, African American business owners tend to experience less success than their ethnic counterparts because they lack support from their community. As exemplified in a study among 846

Ideally, my study would have 150 adolescent, middle school and high school participants. The participants would be put into three groups of 50 participants each (25 males and females). The first group will consist of early adolescent’s ages 13-14 years, the second group will be middle adolescent’s ages 15-16 years and the third group will be late adolescent’s ages 17-19 years. The ethnicity for this study does not matter. The matter of recruiting the participants will be by posting and passing out flyers which gives information on the study, the name of the study, who to contact if they would like to participate, and what they would benefit upon participating in the study. The adolescents who choose to participate would receive

Building wealth becomes increasingly unmanageable without steady employment, but the unemployment rate for people of color has been consistently twice that white people, regardless of the fluctuations in the economy. An education is a way to help you achieve that goal. However, the rate for unemployment for blacks with college degrees is twice as high to be unemployed than all other graduates, according to The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, a book published by Nancy DiTomaso, a professor of sociology, at Rutgers University who lectures inequality and organizational diversity. This is because applications with white-sounding names have a fifty percent chance higher than black sounding names to get callbacks, even when the resume does not change. Previous to the business opportunities, a person must obtain an education.