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Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Race, gender, and class in entrepreneurship:intersectional counterframes and black businessowners

Adia Harvey Wingfield & Taura Taylor

To cite this article: Adia Harvey Wingfield & Taura Taylor (2016) Race, gender, and class inentrepreneurship: intersectional counterframes and black business owners, Ethnic and RacialStudies, 39:9, 1676-1696, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2016.1178789

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1178789

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Race, gender, and class in entrepreneurship:intersectional counterframes and black businessownersAdia Harvey Wingfielda and Taura Taylorb

aDepartment of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA; bDepartmentof Sociology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

ABSTRACTEntrepreneurship is often touted as an economic opportunity that embodiesAmerican ideals of individualism and financial gain. Yet social scientists havelong noted divergent entrepreneurial outcomes among various groups. In thispaper, we consider how race informs entrepreneurship for minority businessowners. In particular, we focus on the ways black entrepreneurs use racialcounterframes as a means of defining various aspects of the entrepreneurialexperience. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of intersectionalcounterframes to show how black entrepreneurs understand businessownership as a response to categories that interact with not only to race, butother social group categories as well, such as gender. We argue here thatthese business owners use both counterframes to construct entrepreneurshipnot simply as a potential pathway to economic stability, but perhaps moreimportantly, as a response to existing inequality.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 31 July 2015; Accepted 1 April 2016

KEYWORDS Race; gender; class; entrepreneurship; frames and counterframes; black entrepreneurs

Introduction

Entrepreneurship is often touted as an opportunity that represents Americanideals of individualism and financial gain; a pathway that allows anyone toachieve the ‘American Dream’ regardless of background. Yet sociologicalresearchers have long noted challenges associated with opportunities forentrepreneurship among various ethnic groups (Butler 2005; Light and Gold2000; Portes and Zhou 1996). Most of the research in this area identifiesethnic group disparities in rates of business ownership (Light and Rosenstein1995), as well as factors that facilitate or inhibit entrepreneurship (Portes andRumbaut 2006; Waldinger 1989). In most cases, however, these studiesexamine ethnic groups to consider the social group processes that drivemembers’ entrepreneurial decisions.

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Adia Harvey Wingfild ahwingfield@wustl.edu

ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES, 2016VOL. 39, NO. 9, 1676–1696http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1178789

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Some researchers challenge this heavy focus on ethnicity, however. Studiesby Kloosterman, Van Der Leun, and Rath (1999, 2001), Jones and Ram (2007),Valdez (2011), and Rath (2000) draw from sociological arguments that dis-tinguish between ethnicity (shared cultural heritage) and race (socially con-structed groups defined by certain physical characteristics). The research inthis camp suggests that the social processes that characterize ethnicgroups’ pathways to entrepreneurship are not necessarily applicable or gen-eralizable to racial groups, and finds that racial groups’ entrepreneurialdecisions are heavily influenced by the ways that racial structures, patterns,and systemic processes inform behaviours, opportunities, and outcomes.

We build on these arguments to explore how racial processes not only actalone, but in conjunction with gender and class to shape the significanceblack business owners attach to their’ entrepreneurial choices and decisions.Using the systemic racism perspective (Feagin 2006), we argue that blackentrepreneurs use both racial counterframes and what we term ‘intersectionalcounterframes’ to explain the social realities that shape why and how theybecome business owners. Thus, we extend the literature that examines howrace drives entrepreneurship to examine how these racial processes are gen-dered and classed in ways that shape black business owners’ decision- andmeaning-making processes.

Theoretical framework

Sociologists have identified two dominant paradigms that are typically usedto classify patterns of ethnic entrepreneurship. Middleman minoritybusinesses are those where a minority group acts as an intermediarybetween whites and a racial/ethnic minority clientele (Bonacich 1973). Inthese cases, entrepreneurs often do relatively low-status work that whitesare loath to perform themselves (Lee 2006; Min 1996). Examples of middle-man minority businesses include dry cleaners or convenience stores. Alterna-tively, ethnic enclaves are defined as collectives where members of an ethnicgroup develop multiple businesses that primarily employ and service coeth-nics. Portes and Bach (1985) have identified the Cuban business communityas a classic example of the ethnic enclave economy. They contend thatemployment in the enclave helps strengthen ethnic ties and facilitate socialsupport among newer and more established immigrants in the city.

As these are the dominant patterns of ethnic enterprise typically identifiedin the literature, researchers have devoted attention to trying to understandwhy some ethnic groups display a propensity for entrepreneurship whileothers do not. Light and Gold (2000) advance the resource disadvantagetheory, which argues that groups who tend to have fewer resources are lesslikely to be able to marshal the capital (economic, social, and human) necess-ary for entrepreneurship. Resource disadvantage theory is then used to

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explain disparities in business ownership, particularly the high rates of entre-preneurship among Greek, Cuban, and Korean immigrants relative to Mexicanand black Americans.

Other researchers highlight the importance of social networks in shapingentrepreneurship. Building on Granovetter’s (1983, 1985) research on socialties, Sanders and Nee (1996) contend that these ties are more pronouncedamong certain immigrant communities and that this helps them developthe networks that lead to business ownership. Using this approach, theyexplain Korean immigrants’ higher rates of business development by attribut-ing this phenomenon to this group’s greater use of far-reaching social ties.

Taking resources and social networks into consideration, the ‘modes ofincorporation’ framework is one of the most important recent theoreticalmodels that seek to explain variations in ethnic enterprise. Here, Portes andRumbaut (2001, 2006) argue that individual, group, and structural factorsmatter in influencing business ownership. Individual-level factors like theextent of human capital, coupled with the social and economic resourcesavailable to members of the ethnic community, along with structural factorssuch as the societal reception and available opportunities for groupmembers, all work to influence likelihood of business ownership.

Notably, Portes and Rumbaut (2001, 2006) place greater emphasis on thestructural factors that may inhibit or facilitate entrepreneurship. For them,the type, extent, and support of federal government public policy are mostsalient in shaping group trajectories towards ethnic enterprise. Likewise, ina move away from the myopic focus on cultural and ethnic explanations,scholars Kloosterman, Van Der Leun, and Rath (1999, 2001), Rath (2000),and Jones and Ram (2007) underscore the opportunity structures immigrantentrepreneurs are embedded in within their host economies to elaborateon constraints, successes, and innovations in minority entrepreneurship. Viathe framework of ‘mixed-embeddedness’, they too argue that patterns ofentrepreneurship among immigrant entrepreneurs are reflections of micro-,meso-, and macro-level dynamics (i.e. resources, market conditions, politicaleconomy, and social structure). However, groups that have more collectiveresources can mitigate an adverse or unwelcoming reception from the domi-nant group. In the case of Cuban refugees, for instance, public policy workedfavourably to grant them legal status and access to government resources likestudent and business loans that are unavailable to other immigrant groupssuch as Haitians or Mexicans. Furthermore, Cubans who immigrated whilefleeing Castro’s regime brought a host of economic and social capital thatfacilitated dense networks and the establishment of the flourishing enclavecommunity.

Our research builds on the studies that elaborate on the distinctionsbetween ethnic and racial categories. These studies move away from theassumption that the motivations, patterns, and practices that shape

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entrepreneurship for ethnic groups (e.g. Cubans, Greeks, or Koreans) canexplain the entrepreneurial behaviours of racial groups like black Americans.As ethnicity and race are not synonymous constructions, the historical andcontemporary trajectories of various ethnic groups do not necessarily mirrorthose of specific racial groups. Our study adds to this literature that exploresparticularly racialized patterns of entrepreneurship.

We add an important dimension to this literature, however, by using inter-sectionality theory to assess how racialized processes that shape entrepre-neurship also are gendered and classed. While some researchersacknowledge that patterns like residential segregation, racialized social net-works, or wealth inequality shape blacks’ entrepreneurial behaviour, wenote that most of the existing literature does not explore how these processesare also shaped by gender and class interdependently, in ways that couldinform black business owners’ entrepreneurial activity differently. In otherwords, if racial discrimination is more likely to reduce blacks’ access to theeconomic capital necessary to start businesses, then both class and race areoperative factors in shaping their entrepreneurial activity. How then doboth these factors inform entrepreneurship? How is gender part of thispicture?

A few recent studies attempt to examine how race intersects with genderand class to shape entrepreneurial dynamics. For instance, Valdez’s (2011)recent study of Latino/a immigrant entrepreneurs compares black, white,and Latino/a business owners in Houston in an effort to identify racial andethnic differences among these groups. Valdez (2011) finds that intersectionsof race, gender, ethnicity, and class influence various aspects of the entrepre-neurial process, such as access to types of capital and economic success.Additionally, Wingfield’s (2008) study of black women business ownersfinds that race, gender, and class operate at a structural level to create aconcept she describes as systemic gendered racism, which then informsworking-class black women’s business decisions.

In this study, we focus on how black business owners describe and under-stand the role race plays in determining their entrepreneurial decisions. Wethen highlight the ways that race operates along with other categories(gender and class in particular) in shaping business ownership.

Building on systemic racism theory

Sociologists have advanced several theoretical approaches to understandingand making sense of race and racism. For the purposes of our study, we buildon Feagin’s theory of systemic racism. Feagin (2006) proposes the theory ofsystemic racism as a way of understanding the embedded, structuraldynamics of racial hierarchies in US society. This approach argues that racialinequality is not an appendage to an otherwise functional democracy, but

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is a foundational, systemic part of the American legal, economic, social, andpolitical systems. In making this claim, Feagin (2006, 2013) argues that theoverall anti-black messages, images, and stereotypes that perpetuate sys-temic racism remain remarkably consistent over time.

Systemic racism can thus be conceptualized as one of the structural factorsthat influence the context in which black entrepreneurs become businessowners. Inasmuch as Portes’ modes of incorporation framework emphasizesthe structural dynamics that influence ethnic minority patterns of businessownership, racialized processes in the labour market (Roscigno 2007), edu-cational systems (Ferguson 2001; Tyson, Darity, and Castellino 2005), andvarious other social institutions and sectors have an impact on shaping thechoices, actions, and pathways for black entrepreneurs (Wingfield 2008).Additional theorizing, however, can potentially help explain the ways thatrace, along with gender and class, becomes part of black business owners’entrepreneurial practices.

White racial framing and counterframing

In addition to making the case that racial inequity is inherent in the US socialstructure, Feagin (2006, 2013) also argues that systemic racism gives rise to awhite racial frame that shapes the worldview, perspectives, and ideologiesthat maintain systemic racism. White racial framing, then, becomes a usefulconceptual tool for assessing structural inequalities as the result of non-whites’ lesser moral, ethical, and intellectual standing rather than as a conse-quence of systemic patterns of racialized inequality. For instance, the whiteracial frame characterizes racial wealth disparities as a reflection of blacks’ pre-ference for conspicuous consumption (and consequently their lower moralstandards) rather than whites’ pervasive use of transformative assets(Shapiro 2004). Similarly, general racialized differences in IQ are construedas a reflection of blacks’ and Latinos’ inherent genetic inferiority rather thanstructural, social, and economic biases that are reflected in the tests (Kohn1995). The white racial frame thus informs the stereotypes, emotional reac-tions, and beliefs that help explain micro-level interactions and processesthat occur in everyday life. It justifies the broader mechanisms of systemicracism by explaining the daily patterns of racial inequality as normative,acceptable, and legitimate.

Feagin has further argued that racial minority groups, to varying degrees,develop counterframes that challenge the white racial frame. These counter-frames are often passed down generationally and contest ideas of non-whites’inferiority and lower status. Instead, they draw attention to ‘racial meanings,social-psychological dimensions of racialized relations, and the power andstructural realities of racism’ (Feagin and Elias 2013, 6). For instance,someone employing a racial counterframe might not accept racial wealth

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disparities as evidence of blacks’ propensity for frivolous spending, but mightbe more inclined to consider possible biases and structural causes that makeintergenerational wealth transmission more challenging for black families.Counterframes provide a narrative that undermines the messages, beliefs,and ideologies present in the white racial frame that disparage people ofcolour and unduly enrich whites. They thus can empower blacks to rejectadverse ideologies and set the stage for developing more affirmative under-standings of social circumstances and life chances.

In this paper, we identify the ways racial counterframes undergird blackbusiness owners’ entrepreneurship. We focus primarily on salient factors inentrepreneurial motivations – reasons for starting a business, choices aboutmentorship, and target market. We also extend the concept of counterframingto introduce a paradigm we describe as intersectional counterframing. Webuild on Feagin’s (2006, 2013) concept of counterframes to define intersec-tional counterframes as a critical, interrogative lens through which social pro-cesses, behaviours, and institutions are analysed for the ways that theyreproduce not just racial, but gendered and classed hierarchies. Feaginargues that counterframes emphasize racial meanings, language, andbroader power relations that disadvantage people of colour while maintain-ing white advantage. We extend this theorization to argue that intersectionalcounterframes take into consideration the ways that race intertwines withclass, gender, and other social group categories to offer a more nuancedassessment of policies, structures, and everyday behaviours that maintainthese hierarchies. Continuing from our previous example, then, an intersec-tional counterframe would highlight not just racial processes that inhibitthe intergenerational transfer of wealth, but would also emphasize genderedand class dynamics (e.g. motherhood wage gaps, pay disparities, specificallyracialized and gendered employment discrimination, and child care costs)that leave black women with the least amounts of wealth relative to blackmen, white women, and white men (Browne and Misra 2003; Conley 1999;Richard 2014; Shapiro 2004). This perspective allows us to unite research inthe ethnic entrepreneurship tradition that focuses exclusively on ethnicitywith critical race research that at times fails to consider how other categoriesintersect with race. In this paper, we use the concepts of counterframes andintersectional counterframes to help explain how black entrepreneurs cometo conceptualize the behaviours associated with business ownership.

Research design/methodology

The primary purpose of our study is to assess how black entrepreneursunderstand entrepreneurship as a socially significant endeavour influencedby race, class, and gender. We focus on nineteen black participants’nascent experiences as entrepreneurs; particularly their initial decisions for

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becoming business owners, principal financial and social supporters, andintroductory start-up process. Participants were recruited from five Metropo-litan cities in the mid-Atlantic, Southern, and Western United States. Themajority of the data was collected via face-to face interviews in locationsthat were convenient for both the interviewer and the participants,whereas four interviews were conducted via phone. All interviews weretape-recorded and all respondents are referred to by pseudonyms toprotect their privacy and anonymity. The interviews lasted approximatelybetween one to two hours.

The average age of participants was thirty-seven years, with ages rangingfrom twenty-four years to fifty-eight years of age. Eleven of the nineteen par-ticipants were married, one participant was widowed, and seven were single.Ten participants were women and nine were men. Less than half of the par-ticipants admitted to having immediate family members who were entrepre-neurs. With the exception of one respondent, all study participants had atleast an undergraduate degree, with four having earned graduate degrees.The majority of participants shared that their educational degrees did notdirectly impact their entrepreneurship experiences, however, over half ofthe participants owned businesses related to their field of study. Forexample, one respondent owned an engineering firm and did not have abusiness degree, though he did have a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Inspite of participants reporting similar educational achievements, their experi-ences reflected a range in socioeconomic constraints. Participants’ access toeconomic resources were varied, with older and several married participantshaving more accumulated wealth to accommodate their entry into entrepre-neurship (i.e. home equity and savings) in comparison to younger and singleparticipants. Over half the participants did not have employees, and mostshared that they relied upon contractors, sub-contractors, and interns toassist with projects and regular day-to-day operations.

Interview probes included questions regarding work histories as paidlabourers (if applicable), initial exposure and motivations for business owner-ship, entry into entrepreneurship, challenges associated with timing, and per-ceived advantages and disadvantages related to business ownership. Overall,over half of the participants shared that entrepreneurship was their pre-eminent career choice; whereas others shared they involuntarily becameentrepreneurs due to lack of job satisfaction or the inability to advance pro-fessionally. We closed interviews by first asking participants if race played arole in their trajectory towards entrepreneurship and secondly, we invited par-ticipants to share additional insights, experiences, and anecdotes about theentrepreneurship experience.

Initially, the sampling process was designed to include relatively equalnumbers of black, white, and Latino entrepreneurs. However, of our finalsample of twenty-two participants, nineteen were black, one was white,

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and two were Latino (Table 1). Considering our disproportionately smaller rep-resentation of white and Latino participants, we thus restrict our analysis tothe experiences of the nineteen black participants. We attribute our inabilityto recruit additional white and Latino participants to business owners’ avail-ability, limitations of snowball sampling, and language barriers.

Whereas our intentions were to draw comparisons between the entrepre-neurial experiences of black, white, and Latino business owners, the focuson black entrepreneurs still enables us to identify ways that these respon-dents see race as a factor in their decision-making. While we cannot offera comparative, interracial analysis, our data still enable us to explore theways respondents believe racial dynamics had an impact on variousaspects of the entrepreneurial process. Our data do not allow us to gener-alize our findings broadly. However, we do gain insights into how respon-dents, in their own words, frame issues that characterize theirentrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, by highlighting the experiences ofblack entrepreneurs along class and gender lines, this study is able todraw attention to commonalities and differences among black entrepre-neurs that may otherwise be unobservable when comparing aggregateddifferences across racial/ethnic categories.

Findings

Our findings indicate that black entrepreneurs employed both counterframesand intersectional counterframes in describing their business decisions. Coun-terframes were ones that, as Feagin (2006) described, challenged the existingpractices and behaviours that legitimize racial hierarchies. Intersectional coun-terframes were those that took into consideration how race related to otherfactors, such as gender or class, in shaping entrepreneurial decisions. Assuch, our interviews revealed the use of one racial counterframe and twointersectional counterframes. The racial counterframe involved using entre-preneurship as a way to overcome perceived discrimination. The intersec-tional counterframes encompassed evoking racial solidarity to combat class-based disadvantages, or using entrepreneurship to benefit black womenand children by supporting them economically and educationally.

Racial counterframe: fighting perceived discrimination

For some respondents, entrepreneurship was a result of a desire for economicimprovement, autonomy, or a way to turn personal interests and skills intofinancial gain. Consider this quote from Chase, who describes pursuingbusiness ownership because of his early childhood interests and avidity forpersonal authority:

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Table 1. Demographics of characteristics of respondents.Business type Race Age M/status Education Sex Years/months in business Race/clientele Employee Prv Wr

T1 Event Planning White 34 Married BA (PoliSci) Female August 2009 All 0 RelatedB3 Tech Consult Hispanic 32 Married BA (CIT) Male 2008 All 0 RelatedJ1 MEP Firm Mex Am. 34 Married BA (Eng) Male 4½ years All 2 RelatedA1 Film-maker Black 27 Married High school Male January 2010 ?All 0 Y/NB2 Financial Adv Black 34 Married MBA Male 2007 Global/niche 0 RelatedC1 Financial Adv Black 34 Single BA Male 7 years *Blk (all) 0 (contr) Y/NHW1 Home Cleaning Black 35 Married BA Female 2004 All/blk 2 NoHW1 Home Cleaning Black 35 Married BA Male 2004 All/blk 2 NoC2 Bakery Black 52 Married BA Female 2007 All 2 RelatedJD Tech Design Black 36 Married BS Male 2 years All 0 RelatedK1 Brand Consult Black 35 Single MBA Male 2006 All Cons/interns RelatedS1 Train/tech Co. Black 58 Widow MA Female 12 years All 0 RelatedS2 Fundraising Co. Black 24 Single BA Male 2011(3–4 months) All/Blk/Ethnic 0 Y/NV1 Graphic Design Black 48 Married BS Female 2004 All Hus/3 cont NoT2 PR/Marketing Black 32 Single BA Female 5 years Blk Contract RelatedK2 Retail Store Black 37 Married BA Female 2004 Niche 7–15 NoG1 Software Co. Black 36 Married BS Male 8 years All 0 RelatedJ2 SmallBusConsu Black 36 Single BS Male 1 year All 0 RelatedC4 Interior Design Black 36 Married MA Female 6 months All/blk 0 NoB1 Event Planning Black 33 Single BS Female January 2010 All 0 NoD1 Party Center Black 36 Married BS Female 2½ years All NoC3 MedAdm Cons Black 37 Single BA Female 6 months All 0 Yes

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I was probably six or seven [when I first thought of becoming an entrepreneur](laughing). My stepfather had his own business. For a while I wanted to follow inhis footsteps. Wanted to have my own business at a very very early age. Once Iactually graduated from college and got my first nine-to-five corporate job [I] feltlike I was smarter than a lot of the individuals that were there. My personality isthat I don’t like being told [what to do], especially if I don’t understand therhyme or reason. I felt ‘you know what, I can actually be doing this on my own.’

When asked, Chase imparted that race did not affect his trajectory into entre-preneurship and further reiterated that ‘personality type’ drives some peopleto be ‘employees’ versus ‘employers’. Although Chase and five other partici-pants attributed their ascent into business ownership to dynamics outsideof race, four of the six relayed that their businesses were tethered to servicinga predominately African American clientele, in spite of their express desires to‘get a client regardless of [the client’s] race and regardless of [their own] race’.Through their experiences with unintentional market segmentation, theserespondents demonstrate the extemporaneous consequences of race onentrepreneurship.

However, for many other respondents, reasons for moving into entrepre-neurship were explicitly racialized. These respondents described what theyperceived to be race-related barriers in their chosen career trajectories.They argued that race-specific hurdles existed in their efforts to advance pro-fessionally, and thus, many participants considered entrepreneurial venturesas a way of responding to these impediments in the paid labour force. Insome ways, their experiences are similar to Portes and Rumbaut’s (2001,2006) analysis of the ways that structural processes facilitate or curtail entre-preneurship. However, our respondents suggest that for black businessowners, their racialized perception of these barriers helps define the waysthey understand the entrepreneurial process. In other words, we argue herethat these respondents used a racial counterframe that shaped how theyidentified existing barriers and through that counterframe, business owner-ship became a means of actively offsetting what they saw as racialdiscrimination.

Raheem, a thirty-six-year-old information technology (IT) professional,shares how his perception of systemic racism in the forms of unfair employ-ment and business practices influenced not only his business partner’s andhis decision to start a web-based business, but also provoked their decisionto conceal their racial identities to further circumvent racial discrimination:

[Y]ou know already that you’re at a disadvantage as a black person in businessand there’s academic studies that can empirically show you exactly howmuch ofa disadvantage. To the point where I would interview as Norman R. Gilbert onmy resume, never put my middle name on my resume. That might identifyyour ethnicity [and] you won’t even get called in. But just thinking about thatenvironment and being aware and cognizant of it, why would you try to go

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upward, like you already can say it’s going to be harder for you to advance thansomebody else, you already know that. So, I was like, why would you play thisgame if you don’t have to? So, that’s why [our business] is an Internet basedservice. People don’t know who we are on the Internet. They don’t care. Theythink we’re a big giant company and that’s fine, but more importantly,nobody’s not buying our service because of who, what they think our ethnicbackground is… nobody’s doing that. Matter of fact we’ve been in businesseight years, [but] our pictures are not on our website.

Raheem employs a counterframe that observes how racialized misconcep-tions affect one’s career opportunities. As Raheem is aware, opportunitygaps exist between white males and their counterparts even when theyacquire the same education and work in the same industries (McGuire andReskin 1993; Sokoloff 1992; Weber and Higginbotham 1997). Raheemframes this as an example of racial biases, which helps explain some of hisentrepreneurial decisions. By opting to withhold his and his business partners’pictures and thus racial identities, he responds to white racial framing thatcasts blacks as unskilled and unsuitable for white collar employment (seefor instance Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003). He uses counterframing thatcasts this stereotyping as a race-based inaccuracy, and decides based onthat to take entrepreneurial decisions that defy it.

Bilal, a thirty-four-year-old principal partner in a four-year-old financialadvisory and asset management trading company, also describes using acounterframe to assess general race-based stereotypes in corporate settings,and the way that this counterframe can push black workers to pursue theindependence that accompanies entrepreneurship. He states:

I think there is a level of disenfranchisement [that] comes from success, [for]well-educated African Americans. There is a level of saying, ‘I’m good, but I’mnever going to be recognized the way that some of my counterparts aregoing to be recognized, say white or Asian or whatever. I’m not going to berecognized in the same way. There are parts of this that is going to hold meback, based on my ethnicity.’ So it leads those that are high performers to say‘Let me take control of my own destiny. Let me do my own thing, because itwill allow me to be more successful.’

For Bilal, issues of racial discrimination are a ‘push’ factor that drives him topursue entrepreneurship. In some ways, this parallels Light and Rosenstein’s(1995) contention that disadvantages in other sectors (employment, glass ceil-ings, and so forth) can be a factor influencing reasons for starting businesses.Our work builds on this, however, by showing that not only does this becomea motivating factor, but these perceptions of discrimination and inequality areviewed through a counterframe where black entrepreneurs see these factorsas hindrances to their mobility and thus conceptualize business ownership asa cogent response. Respondents are sensitive to potential discrimination in

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professional settings, and view it through part of a broader narrative that cri-tiques possible racial inequalities more generally.

These entrepreneurs’ responses indicate that some black entrepreneursemploy racial counterframes to make sense of the ways they are treated inthe broader society. Entrepreneurship then becomes a logical response toracism. This observation diverges from the traditionally held view of ethnicentrepreneurship, which sees ethnicity or ethnic resources as facilitatingentrepreneurship. Instead, racial discrimination and the counterframes thatdevelop from it are central to the decision to enter entrepreneurship.

Intersectional counterframes

In the previous section, we discussed how perceptions of racial disadvantageconstitute a racial counterframe that shaped black business owners’ paths toentrepreneurship. Here, we show how respondents also employ intersectionalcounterframes that problematize not just race, but related issues of class orgender. We also show how these intersectional counterframes influenceentrepreneurial decisions. First, we discuss respondents’ use of intersectionalcounterframes that draw attention to race and class. Then, we explore inter-sectional counterframes that emphasize gender and age as categories thatintersect with race and shape business decisions.

Criticizing racial and class disadvantage

For nascent entrepreneurs, start-up capital and affordable labour are the mostcoveted resources. Whereas many entrepreneurs are quick to list capital as themost needed resource, a significant number of black entrepreneurs take a‘bootstrapping’ approach to financing their ventures. Individuals are said tobootstrap an enterprise when they utilize their personal finances to starttheir business, relying upon little if any external investments (Basu andWerbner 2001). For black entrepreneurs, access to personal wealth is oftenlimited and, in lieu of desiderating investors, many appraise the importanceof mentoring relationships to help them overcome the hurdles of startingand/or growing a business.

Yet while respondents understood the value of mentoring ties for success-ful entrepreneurship, they intentionally sought out other black entrepreneursas mentors and peers. Many respondents proactively worked to developsocial networks that specifically included black business owners. As chal-lenges securing external funding and start-up capital presented themselves,respondents came to view ties to other black entrepreneurs as a way todevelop social capital that would help alleviate both racial and class-basedchallenges. Respondents, then, employed an intersectional counterframewhere they critiqued class-based obstacles that disproportionately affected

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black business owners, and elevated black solidarity and networks as a meansto successful entrepreneurship. This intersectional framework highlights theinterdependence between class and race in ways that are missing from theethnic entrepreneurship literature that conflates race and ethnicity. Specifi-cally, Portes and Rumbaut (2006) suggest that ethnic solidarity helps fostersocial capital that can drive entrepreneurship. An intersectional perspectivehere, however, highlights something more layered: that for black entrepre-neurs, the absence of class resources makes the need for intraracial solidarityand the attendant benefits it can provide even more pronounced.

Avery, a twenty-seven-year-old film-maker and videographer, is reflectiveand disconcerted by his families’ intergenerational working-class status andconsequently his lack of familiarity with black entrepreneurs:

Nobody in my family has ventured off into being an entrepreneur before methat I can [think of]. Everybody has worked for something… I don’t knowanybody personally that is doing the same thing that I’m doing, or many justblack entrepreneurs period.

The lack of ties to other black business owners was troubling for Avery.Although he was able to ‘start-up’ his business in three days by acquiringhis business licence and ‘tax i.d number’, Avery was conscientious about hislegitimacy and future success as a first-generation entrepreneur. Like othernascent entrepreneurs, Avery was concerned with establishing ‘good businesspractices’, and ‘being valid competition’. However, implicit within Avery’s con-cerns was his acute awareness of how his absences of role modelling limitedhis capacity to overcome racialized and classed stereotypes about his pro-fessional credibility. It shaped his desire to establish social ties and mentoringrelationships with black peers and those with more entrepreneurshipexperience.

When asked which resources or types of social support he wished werereadily available to him, Avery shared:

I guess somebody who is a little bit further in their entrepreneurship that cangive me some tips and advice. Just as far as I am – being a young, black entre-preneur, that being different, I think in a lot of areas, than maybe a white, youngentrepreneur who has the financial backing, or a part of the family business…Well, just access to certain resources, such as capital. Even if it just be familysupport. There might be somebody there that may guide… or a friend of thefamily does this thing, let me point you, go to him, go to uncle Dave and hecan show you, can take you down to his office or whatever things like that.(Emphasis added.)

Avery perceives entrepreneurship as a pathway to socioeconomic advance-ment, and expresses an awareness of the different challenges that markAfrican Americans’ entry into entrepreneurship compared to white Americans’entry into business ownership. Whereas Avery highlights the more structural

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resources that blacks tend to lack compared to white entrepreneurs (namelytransformative assets and social networking power), he does not overlook theimportance of establishing intimate relationships with black business owners.In particular, he identifies this as a strategy that helps to offset the challengesblack entrepreneurs may face in accessing the necessary start-up capitalrequired to launch a business. Note that despite having a college degree(and the class privilege that such a degree can often afford), Avery stillnotes that the lack of access to start-up capital remains an obstacle. Assuch, he critiques the fact that blacks tend to lack both access to economiccapital and racialized networks that can facilitate successful entrepreneurship.

Kendra, who is thirty-eight years old and owns a cosmetic boutique, alsospeaks about her desire to form social networks with other black businessowners and recalls her initial perspective about black business ownerswhen pioneering into entrepreneurship:

Black people don’t start businesses and do well, and I don’t even know any blackpeople with businesses, and I just, limited exposure, limited exposure. I wascoming across all kinds of rich white people, but not enough people wholooked like me.

Although Kendra has a business degree and was raised in a middle-classhousehold, she expresses remorse that neither of her parents nor any ofher extended family members owned businesses. Similar to Avery, Kendra’sperception of entrepreneurship was viewed through a racialized andclassed lens in which unequal distributions of wealth across racial categoriescontribute to her inferences about black people’s invisibility in entrepreneur-ship and disproportionate lack of entrepreneurial success. Note that Kendraspecifically emphasizes the importance of encountering not just wealthypeople, but rich black people in particular. In turn, she intentionally seeks todevelop a network of black entrepreneurs.

Later in the interview, Kendra expounded upon this theme further whenshe stated:

By ‘look like me,’ I mean young black women. I needed those examples, I stillneed those examples…One of my close girlfriends, her parents owned abusiness. She’s white, so again, I’m like, ‘we’re coming from different worlds.’

Kendra places value in networking with established entrepreneurs. It is herimpression that had she interacted with black entrepreneurs during herstart-up stage, she would have been further along with her success. Shethus employs a counterframe that values intraracial solidarity as a means tosuccessful business ownership, particularly given the economic disadvantagesthat many black entrepreneurs face. From Kendra’s perspective, both race andclass are salient factors that can adversely affect entrepreneurship.

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Eventually, Kendra was taken under the wing of three young black businessowners, all whomwere considered veterans in her industry. From her perspec-tive, these intraracial mentoring networks proved instrumental in providingcareer coaching, sponsorship, and acceptance:

The vendors who were already out there… helped me. I didn’t think I could owna boutique, she was like ‘yes you can.’ When they would get something theywould share in the wealth and that had a lot to do with [propelling] myexperience.

Kendra was encouraged to expand her business by several black vendors whowere also doing the same type of work she was doing. She explained they notonly offered social support but shared marketing contacts, public relationsagents, and even provided her name for the cable news channel, CNN tocontact her as an expert. For Kendra, then, developing these ties enabledher to develop strong networks that facilitated advancement. Note that devel-oping ties to black business owners in particular allows them to support andencourage each other. When respondents observe that class inequalitiesmake it difficult to access capital, intraracial networks become a criticalsource of support. As such, Kendra uses an intersectional counterframe thatemploys an awareness of class and race-based obstacles to entrepreneurship,and seeks to offset these by intentionally maintaining connections to otherblack business owners.

As our respondents’ remarks show, they employ intersectional counter-frames that are critical of both the ways race and class operate to the detri-ment of black entrepreneurs. Their observations that black business ownersfrequently have less access to capital and social networks that can help facili-tate entrepreneurial knowledge is borne out by research (Light and Rosen-stein 1995). It also echoes research that indicates that college educationmay not necessarily erase income and wealth disparities that plague blackAmericans (Beasley 2011; Shapiro 2004). Despite the fact that all respondentsin this sample were college educated, they still perceived themselves at aneconomic disadvantage relative to similarly situated white entrepreneurs.For these respondents, then, perceptions of racial- and class-based challengesoverlapped to construct a counterframe that highlights the importance andnecessity of seeking out other black business owners for social support.

Valuing black women and children

Thus far, we have argued that black business owners employ counterframesthat problematize general racial biases along with intersectional counter-frames that consider how race and class disadvantage black businessowners. However, some entrepreneurs also use intersectional counterframesthat emphasize caretaking, social support, and giving back. Specifically, this

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intersectional counterframe promotes the importance of valuing black com-munities, particularly women and children.

Cynthia is the thirty-seven-year-old owner of a medical billing company.While her business has been financially successful, her ultimate desire is toopen an affordable foreign language school to help black children competein the age of globalization:

The inspiration for the company is underprivileged African American children.Now if I find that it benefits me to have others maybe paying, who are in theposition to pay for the service to be involved as well, then I absolutely willmarket to everyone. But they are the inspiration for this. (Emphasis added.)

Cynthia’s entrepreneurial goals are clearly motivated in part by a desire to era-dicate racial disparities in education, specifically to help increase black chil-dren’s opportunities for educational success and advancement. Herstatements indicate how she develops specific entrepreneurial goals as away of addressing systemic biases present in the educational system. Forher, business ownership is driven by the counterframe of wanting toimprove educational conditions for black children. This counterframe thusemphasizes not just race, but the ways that race and youth place black chil-dren in a particularly vulnerable position in educational environments, andthe importance of challenging these structural constraints.

Similarly, Kendra, the boutique owner mentioned earlier, talks aboutpricing their skincare products as a way of ensuring their affordability forblack women she seeks as their primary customer base. She says:

I told my husband this morning, ‘Ok we’re creating a product line that’s $9.99,that’s the price point, that’s what we can afford, that’s what black women canafford.’ We can’t spend $40 – some of us can, but most of us cannot.

Though Kendra could set the price for her products higher and reach abroader client base, she specifically wants to make her products availablefor black women who are disproportionately represented in lower incomebrackets. As with Cynthia, this aspect of Kendra’s business decision is explicitlydriven by a counterframe that values the particular needs of a predominantlyblack female customer base. Kendra uses a counterframe that emphasizes theways both race and gender leave black women in a precarious financial pos-ition, and structures her business decisions to offset this.

The idea of targeting certain co-ethnic (or co-racial) communities is notnecessarily new. Many other researchers have noted that this is a commonstrategy among minority business owners (Gold 2012; Portes and Bach1985; Wingfield 2008). Our results, however, suggest that black entrepreneursseek to respect and address the particular needs of black women and children.Black women, in fact, may be especially likely to endorse this counterframegiven racial/gendered socialization that encourages them to do various

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types of community work (Collins 1990). Thus, the decision to structurebusinesses with this particular market in mind is not strictly an economicdecision, but one shaped by an intersectional counterframe that problema-tizes the social issues that disproportionately affect black women and chil-dren. This counterframe thus drives key aspects of their business decisions.

Current sociological research on race and racism provides a useful para-digm for making sense of the potential ways race may shape nascent entre-preneurs’ motivations for business ownership. Importantly, our participants’accounts demonstrate that people of colour, particularly black women,develop intersectional counterframes that are motivated by their ownshared experiences with multiple dimensions of social marginalization. Theiraccounts suggest that by focusing on gender/racial solidarity in their entre-preneurial pursuits, they are able to mitigate the economic and social dispar-ities that disproportionately affect black men, women, and children acrossclass and gender. Furthermore, entrepreneurship offers black women acontext to model alternative career options for their less economically privi-leged peers and children, an aspect of entrepreneurship that is rarelyaddressed in the existing literature.

Discussion/conclusion

The results of this study suggest that both racial and intersectional counter-frames are important for shaping many aspects of black entrepreneurship.Racial counterframes that critique potential discrimination lead black businessowners to consider entrepreneurship. Yet intersectional counterframes high-light the ways other categories like gender, age, and class inform entrepre-neurs’ racial assessments. These intersectional counterframes leadrespondents to consider how class operates in conjunction with race to disad-vantage black entrepreneurs, and the importance of valuing black womenand children in a society that frequently does not. This study thus contributesto existing research by showing how counterframes inform black businessowners’ entrepreneurial decisions, and demonstrating the ways intersectionalcounterframes lead to a more nuanced assessment of the challenges thesebusiness owners observe in their entrepreneurial trajectories. In so doing,this research challenges the traditional approach to ethnic entrepreneurship,which identifies ethnicity as a salient category of identity and collectivity thatprovides the basis for the development of ethnic resources that facilitateethnic entrepreneurship. Our research, in contrast, suggests that black entre-preneurs’ experiences with racism and racial discrimination often act as a cat-alyst to business ownership. Moreover, they understand their experiences notonly through the lens of race, but class and gender as well. A consideration ofracial and intersectional counterframes allows us to understand the role ofrace and racism better, as well as the ways in which black entrepreneurs

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underscore multiple dimensions of identity and collectivity in their decisionsto become entrepreneurs. We suspect that such dynamics would also beuncovered among more traditional ethnic entrepreneurial groups, and encou-rage the use of these frameworks by scholars of ethnic enterprise.

Understanding entrepreneurship in this way also helps advance our knowl-edge in several areas. Attempts to boost business ownership, particularlyamong racial minorities, have been a hallmark of several successive presiden-tial administrations and are often part of policy initiatives at the state and locallevels. Highlighting the role of counterframes in entrepreneurship suggeststhat inasmuch as these frames underscore broader patterns of discrimination,intraracial solidarity, and support for black communities, efforts to increaseblack business ownership may be well-served by taking race, gender, andclass explicitly into consideration. In other words, policy-makers might wantto consider that black business owners may see entrepreneurship as aresponse to discrimination and structure resources and outreach effortsaccordingly. In analyses in this area, Bates and colleagues (Bates 2011; Batesand Robb 2013) have noted that most minority-owned firms are concentratedin low-profit retail and service industries that do not allow for much growth orlong-term expansion. It could be valuable for policy-makers to expand theiranalysis to assess not only why this is the case, but whether this is arational-choice decision that reflects intersectional counterframes that valueservice to black women or intentionally intraracial networks.

Additionally, conceptualizing minority entrepreneurship as an outgrowth ofintersectional counterframes advances sociological understanding of aspects ofsystemic racism in important ways. The theory of systemic racism argues thatinequality and racial hierarchies are built into the core structure of US society,but acknowledges that people of colour develop critical ways of counteringthe ideologies associated with the white racial frame that are used to sustainthis inequality. Our research shows that such counterframing is not limited toan understanding of racial dynamics alone, but reflects the often complicatedways that race is shaped by gender, age, and class. Furthermore, these counter-frames cananddodrive various aspects of blackbusiness owners’ entrepreneur-ship. This indicates that counterframes have the potential not just to buttressminorities against ideologies, perceptions, and assumptions that may be detri-mental to them,but also to impacteconomic structures aswell. The respondentsin our study are all small business owners, but the general sentiments theyexpress about entrepreneurship as a response to systemic issues may, uponfurther research, be present among black business owners more broadly.

This project also has additional significance in that it builds on intersection-ality theory to address how this perspective can concretely challenge extantpower structures. Collins (1990) has argued that it is essential to consider notjust how intersections of race, gender, and class operate in various social struc-tures, interactions, and processes, but more importantly, how these

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intersectionsmaintain power dynamics and inequalities. Our study adds to thistheoretical approach by showing ways that black entrepreneurs’ attention tothese overlapping factors could potentially affect existing power dynamics.Entrepreneurs who are driven by a counterframe that values black womenand children, for instance, may be motivated to establish businesses thatoffer critical support and resources to this group, thus helping to offset blackwomen’s disadvantaged position in society. Though future research wouldbe necessary to address this, black business owners’ use of intersectional coun-terframes could possibly position them to establish businesses that similarlychallenge structural racial, gendered, and classed inequalities.

Our work has drawn greater attention to the frames minority entrepreneursuse in conceptualizing aspects of business ownership, and has sociological andpublic policy implications. This study helps further develop the concept of racialcounterframes by highlighting the ways they can be intersectional and linkingthem to economic activity. This paper also offers insights into black businessowners’ processes of entrepreneurship that could be useful to policy-makers,particularly mentoring programmes and/or incentives to promote greater rec-ognition of longstanding black business owners and networking among blackentrepreneurs. We suggest greater research attention to these dynamics ofblack entrepreneurship in future studies to help develop these areas further.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Joe Feagin and Steve Gold for reviewing earlier drafts of this manuscript. Wealso very much appreciate Zulema Valdez’s extensive editorial guidance, as well as thatof the anonymous reviewers. A portion of this paper appeared previously in Wingfield,Adia Harvey, and Taura Taylor. (2014). “Entrepreneurship as Empowerment: Agency,Counterframing, and Black Business Owners’ Decision Making.” In Racism: Global Per-spectives, Coping Strategies, and Social Implications, edited by Tracey Lowell, 21–36.Hauppage, NY: Nova Science.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundationthrough the University of North Carolina’s Entrepreneurship Research Bootcamp.

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