I’m in need of this shower thought that I have.
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This is a big thing my industry – construction.
There are many programs set up to try and either funnel money to minority owned business and or employ people of local communities.
The pattern is circular and hard to break. People in these communities often *lack* skills, access to the internet (for things like applying for jobs) and often have disqualifiers like criminal backgrounds and drug problems. Sincerely, the good apple outliers, those who are out there hustling to make legitimate money find companies like my own tripping over themselves to hire them.
More significantly, while many organizations support causes like they, no one wants the responsibility. For example, my local government might declare they want me to contract with minority owned businesses that they themselves have certified as being minority owned. However PROVING that they are ACTUALLY minority owned falls on us, if we hand them back their own certificates they can sue us for falsification of business records (saying this company was minority owned and they in fact weren’t)
Finally, there is a massive amount of ineptitude in those that run this stuff. I literally had a client demand that a project had 40% “local” employment. “What’s local?” I asked. He sent me back a google map of my local city large enough to encompass neighboring states. I ended up losing the job to a company that found a college kid, paid him to start his own business (he was black) and then they Joint Ventured with him to claim they were 50% minority owned. This is absolutely what happens and it also creates a preventative ceiling on legitimate minority owned businesses trying to get into my industry.
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