Black Entrepreneurship in America.

• Author: Boston, Thomas D.

Government social programs, equal employment opportunity laws, and political protests have not broken the cycle of poverty, joblessness and income disparity plaguing black Americans. In light of this failure, it is reasonable to ask if black entrepreneurship provides a more viable solution. The authors of this book think so and their major objective is to examine the role of the entrepreneur as an engine for economic development in the black community. The uniqueness of the book is that the entrepreneur is seen not just as an agent for capital accumulation, but also as the prime mover for social reconstruction.

Studies of black business development are typically classified into one of four categories according to the emphasis in their approach. These are economic, business management, psychological, and sociological. The authors have chosen the sociological approach to explain the prerequisites for greater black entrepreneurship. In doing so they develop an extremely interesting paradigm to conceptualize black business development. In particular, they place the latter within the context of a more general notion of economic development where the Schumpeterian thesis on the creative role of the entrepreneur plays a primary part. Yet they go beyond Schumpeter's definition by arguing that black entrepreneurship also involves transforming families, churches, social, economic, educational, and political institutions. In this way, their black entrepreneur really becomes the builder of the entire community.

The sociological discussion measures contemporary black entrepreneurship against this broader paradigm. Anecdotal evidence is provided on individuals and organizations that have been particularly successful and historical and descriptive discussions seek to explain the circumstances that continue to constrain the growth of black entrepreneurs. It is my feeling that this new paradigm alone makes the book worthy of serious consideration. In one sense, it is an attempt to fuse past sociological approaches to the study of black businesses, as best reflected in the writings of E. Franklin Frasier and Abram Harris, with more contemporary theories of economic development. But this unique paradigm, which is the book's best attribute, is in my mind also its weakest spot.

At several places, the discussion of black entrepreneurship loses its focus because the authors tend to get bogged down in outlining too many details of the sociological and economic...