"An honest living": street vendors, municipal regulation, and the black public sphere.

• Author: Austin, Regina
• Position: Symposium: The Informal Economy

Regina Austin presents the example of urban street vending to illustrate how expanding the black public sphere will require that blacks defy a legal system that has effectively foreclosed them from the realm of production and commerce.

I, like many blacks, believe that an oppressed people should not be too law abiding, especially where economics is concerned.(1) The economic system that has exploited us is not likely to be effectively exploited by us if we pay too much attention to the law. Moreover, for some poor blacks, breaking the law is not only a way of life; it is the only way to survive. Thus, what is characterized as economic deviance in the eyes of a majority of people may be viewed as economic resistance by a significant number of blacks.

I am not asserting that blacks advocate anarchy, nor do I believe that they romanticize lawbreaking more than anyone else. Rather, I am simply arguing that many blacks rightly understand that the line between the legal and the illegal in the area of economic activity is ephemeral and that the determination of the precise point at which the line is drawn is a matter of political struggle. Accordingly, blacks need to be in the thick of the battle, fighting for their interests. That means condoning, abetting, and sometimes even engaging in illegal activity.

Blacks must be especially vigilant with regard to the local regulation of entrepreneurial activity, because the well-being of the black public sphere hinges upon it. When I speak of the black public sphere, I refer to a realm that includes not just politics, but also economics.(2) Blacks must develop outlets, both audiences and markets, for the products of their labor and creative genius. Black people need jobs. They need institutions and business concerns that black people control. They need the protection of an ethic that discourages exploitation in commercial and personal relationships. All of this requires that blacks come together to defy the system that has almost entirely foreclosed them from the realm of production and commerce.

The call for a reinvigorated, expanded black public sphere is the result of a growing realization among blacks that the problems of those on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder do not result totally from disparities in income and impediments to consumption that can be solved by allowing workers to recapture more of the surplus produced by their labor. The maldistribution and free mobility of capital and wealth threaten those whose economic security is tied to their status as wage earners. Blacks who have not secured employment in the formal labor market are in the worst possible position. Furthermore, the line between employer and employee is blurring, as is clear from the extent of subcontracting, for example. The only way blacks can maintain even the relative status quo in this economy is to play a more significant role in production and commerce. The success that other groups have found in pursuing activities in the informal economy suggests that blacks must undertake new forms of "civil disobedience" in the name of economic survival.

Street vending amply illustrates my hypothesis. At this late date in modernity or post-modernity, many indigenous blacks continue to use urban sidewalks for commercial purposes. In places like New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, most black street vendors work without a license and in violation of applicable vending regulations and sales tax laws. Yet, when asked about their illegal status, the vendors maintain that vending is an "honest living" that they should be allowed to pursue legally.(3)

In the past several years, legislators and municipal authorities in a number of cities throughout the country have tackled the problem of street vending, and the general direction of their reform and enforcement efforts has been unfavorable to vendors.(4) If regulations do not explicitly ban street vending, they hamper it by limiting the number of vending licenses, raising the licensing fees, restricting vending locations, or prescribing modes of operation (including hours of operation, cart design, or table dimensions).

Struggles over the regulation of street vending are nothing new. Cities have a long history of trying to drive vendors from the streets or to restrict their access to pedestrian traffic.(5) Wherever and whenever street vendors appear, controversies over street vending almost always pit the same groups against each other. On one side are the vendors, their loyal customers, and those who are interested in the welfare of recent immigrants or the marginally employed. On the other side are city authorities concerned about taxes, congestion, sanitation, aesthetics, and property values; fixed-location merchants, who must compete with vendors whose only overhead concern is the weather; producers and distributors, who want to know how their wares wind up on vendors' tables; and middle-class residents who prefer streets marked by order and decorum, rather than by the chaos and confusion of Old World bazaars. Naturally, the interests of these contending forces are balanced differently in every instance, the outcome being determined according to the relative political clout of the opposing parties.

While no single best solution emerges to the problems posed by contemporary urban street selling,(6) I would argue that in the American economy of today, race makes a difference. Debates over the regulation of street vending should accordingly include some discussion of exactly how race makes a difference. This does not mean that black vendors ought to prevail in every case. The mix is more complicated than that. Whereas in the past the forces opposing black street vendors were almost exclusively white, increasingly the fixed-location merchants are black, brown, or Asian; the producers are black; and the municipal authorities are black too. With blacks on both sides of the equation, class differences within "the black community" assume new prominence. This interplay of race and class influences where the balance between the rights of vendors and those of others ought to be struck. What I am arguing here is that the history of blacks' foreclosure from production and commerce, and the need to invigorate and further develop the black public sphere, warrant that special attention be paid to even the pettiest form of black entrepreneurial activity.

One cannot assess the importance of black street vending to the black public sphere without first considering a few basic macroeconomic facts. Official rates of black unemployment are nearly twice those of whites.(7) Moreover, relative to other groups, blacks are underrepresented among business owners and the self-employed.(8) Although black households spend an estimated $216 billion per year, the total sales of black businesses equal only 10% of that amount.(9) At the same time, shoppers in inner city black communities confront a retail market characterized by poor quality, high prices, and a limited choice of goods offered by a limited number of accessible retail outlets.(10) Blacks also demand certain culture-specific products, like books and apparel, that mainstream suppliers do not or will not supply.(11)

Street vending fills a small part of the void created by the economic marginalization of black Americans as workers, owners, and consumers. Illegal, informal street vending employs people. It supplies blacks with goods they need and want. It contributes to the maintenance of black culture. It challenges nonblack businesses in black enclaves. It helps people gain the capital and know-how to operate businesses in the formal sector. Finally, it is the site of grassroots activity that could lead to new initiatives uniting the political and economic concerns of blacks.

It is impossible to determine the impact of vending on black under- and unemployment. Black street vendors are a disparate lot; they defy profiles. Some folks are vending because they have an entrepreneurial bent and want to work for themselves. Many show the dedication and commitment that it would take to hold down a regular job. Some vendors, however, maintain that if they were not on the streets selling they would be on welfare or homeless.(12) Moreover, black vendors include persons from marginalized groups within the black community, such as religious adherents, artists, and women.(13) Finally, native-born vendors are joined on the streets by recent arrivals from Africa and the Caribbean, whose limited English proficiency and questionable immigration status limit their options for earning a living.

Street vending efficiently delivers certain kinds of wares to the inhabitants of black enclaves. A walk down 125th Street in Harlem on a cold overcast weekday reveals tables loaded with knit hats, gloves, and scarves (mostly in the standard colors, but some with color combinations that seem distinctly African); sweatshirts (bearing Polo and Timberland logos or the insignias of black universities); flannel vests; video tapes (on tables with video players going); audio tapes (some wrapped in...