Obama Economic Stimulus/40 Acres and a Mule

Forums and seminars to educate the public about tapping into the stimulus dollars have been held, and with the Act being the most transparent federal financial legislation ever, the internet provides an array of information about the governmental pipelines stimulus dollars are being pumped through.

What is missing, however, is a sense of how these stimulus dollars will prove transformational for the minority community. While the vast federal dollars spent under the Public Works Act of 1977 mandated 10% of those dollars being set aside for minority businesses - causing, according to Congressional testimony, "$600 million to be awarded to minority businesses" - there is nothing in the seven-hundred page stimulus Act that even mentions minorities.

Astonishingly silent on this, the stimulus Act leaves it to the federal agencies and states through which the stimulus dollars are funneled to apply whatever minority inclusion laws they might have. Consequently, neither the $446 million in stimulus dollars slated for the Missouri Department of Transportation nor the still undetermined millions to flow through the governor’s office have any minority inclusion requirements.

MODOT’s funds are controlled by federal regulations (that dropped during the Reagan era the use of the word “minority”), which require that a certain percentage of contract dollars be awarded to “Disadvantaged Business Enterprises” (DBEs). Not surprisingly, the data is overwhelming that those who have mostly obtained contracts under the DBE standard, as opposed to the M[inority]BE standard, have been white women.

Missouri has never had any statewide legislation requiring minority inclusion in its public expenditures. In disbursing stimulus funds to the St. Louis area, the governor’s office says it will rely on the City and the County’s respective laws regarding minority inclusion. That is encouraging because the law of the land in the City since 1990 has been that minorities receive 25% and women 5% of all city contracts, but discouraging because the County has never had any such inclusion law.

All of this illustrates that the massive stimulus spending, which is supposed to be transformative, is being injected into governmental programs for minority inclusion that themselves need transformation.

When the 10% minority set aside provision of the 1977 Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, its intended transformational effect on the American economy – to diversify it – became recognized as an economic objective in the national interest, as well as a way to address the disparity instilled by a once slave-based economy. That provision transformed the landscape of minority economic empowerment, as across the nation states, cities, counties, school districts, universities, and public agencies of all sorts initiated inclusion mandates.

Now, after thirty years of legislative, legal and activist wrestling to stake out a share of the public contracting market for minorities, another transformation needs to occur.

Beyond establishing at the horizontal level a 10% market base, the mission of Maryland Congressman Parren Mitchell, in sponsoring this provision of the 1977 Act, was to build minority businesses into being competitive and innovative forces. He pictured minority business development "as a means of dealing with the high rate of unemployment among minority workers." Thus, building the capacity of minority firms is now the vertical economic challenge.

If the stimulus Act can accomplish this, then perhaps at long last the government will deliver on its forty acres and a mule promise – independence through entrepreneurship.

Eric E. Vickers
Attorney, Minority Inclusion Alliance
St. Louis Metropolitan.