The recent report that details how little the City of Boston spends with businesses owned by people of color revealed that over the last six years, Black businesses have received just 0.4% of Boston's procurement/contract spending — or $9.4 million of the $2.1 billion total. Overall, minority-owned business got $53 million in city contracts, or just 2.5%. Contracts awarded to women accounted for 8.5% of all city procurement/contract dollars.
This reflects poorly on our city’s leadership — especially as Mayor Marty Walsh, prepares to go off to Washington as labor secretary to implement President Joe Biden’s economic plan. That's a plan that, as Biden himself said, "includes communities that have historically been left out of government procurement — Black, brown, Native American small businesses and entrepreneurs in every region of the country.”
In 2019, when Walsh appeared on The BEJI Report, Brother Lo Banks asked him about the reported less than 1% of city contracts that went to Minority and Women Business Enterprises, or M/WBEs.
“I think the numbers are understated, and I know we have to do better," Walsh replied. Yet today, he we confirmed that only 0.4% of city contracts go to Black owned businesses.
Do you believe the numbers now? How much time do you need to do better? And just how seriously are we to take the new goals City Hall issued yesterday? With a grain of salt.
Other cities, big and small, do a much better job of awarding contracts to M/WBEs — including New York, with 19%; Chicago, Illinois, with 29%; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with 30%; and Memphis, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, both with close to 19% participation.
Why don’t we live in a city that invests in all its citizens? In 2017, to provide good-paying jobs for people of color, the Boston Residence Job Policy, a concerted effort by the Black Economic Justice Institute and the Boston Jobs Coalition under the leadership of the late Councilor Chuck Turner, was established. It mandated construction contractors to hire 40% people of color, 51% Boston Residents and 12% women. There has yet (with the eception of several Cruz Construction projects) to be a contractor who complies with this policy. And due to lack of enforcement, no penalties have been imposed. This policy has been blatantly violated without consequence.
Another piece to Biden’s economic plan is to “work to rebuild the backbone of America: manufacturing, unions and the middle class.” Walsh’s experience and relationship with unions is a key reason why he was nominated for labor secretary. Unfortunately, unions do not report diversity numbers. Although they provide a way to rise out of poverty, they appear to be an avenue open mainly to white Bostonians. There is no accountability for diversity.
Let’s face it — labor in Boston is white. The Black Economic Justice Institute, which has been fighting this fight for nine years, is calling it what it is: out-and-out, deliberate racism. There is no unconscious bias here. Racism is clear; it has been studied, measured, documented and observed. Pass by any construction site in Boston, go to any Chamber of Commerce meeting or attend a business symposium and in any setting. You will see a wide majority of white faces, which is depressingly disproportionate in a city with a 55% minority population.
This schism exists because “Boston” will not demonstrate leadership — not the mayor, not the City Council, not the Boston Employment Commission, not the contractors and not the unions. This is collusion — and it is directed against us!
How do we reach social and economic justice? The City of Boston has failed its citizens in its attempt to answer this question. In the past, we used your tools, your ways and your policies. Now we know that the words of Aude Lorde are true: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Mr. Mayor, do they know in Washington that in the beloved City of Boston, a city that you govern, Black people have a net worth of only $8?
It is distressingly clear that the overt failure of city procurement and construction hiring practices have hurt Boston’s Black, Latino, Asian and other minority communities for far too long. The amount of wealth being lost in communities of color as a result easily equals more than $1 billion.
We demand the undoing of unearned privilege that has been a result of the city’s historical and present-day processes. Nonenforcement of city anti-discrimination policies, for example, leave people of color out. Structural racism is blamed, but too often people forget that there are people behind the structure and that the people in power keep the structure running.
Community advocates face daunting challenges: We must work within our community to help unravel the manipulations of those who believe the system has not systematically oppressed Black people and people of color. We must get minoritized people to believe that they themselves are not responsible for their struggles. And we must demand results. Consider them demanded!
Over the years, city leadership has been presented with the solutions. Leaders have not had the will nor the courage to implement those solutions. Do your job!
We write this piece in the hope that our federal, state and city elected officials will be put on notice: Walsh cannot and should not be allowed to repeat his abysmal record on economic injustice at the national level.
We leave you to ponder the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr: “Once he [the Negro] thought of himself as an inferior and patiently accepted injustice and exploitation. Those days are gone.“
Priscilla Flint Banks, Brother Lo Banks, Mukiya Baker Gomez and Mary Malaszek are members of The Black Economic Justice Institute. BEJI's mission is to serve the needs of economically and socially underserved people through advocacy. Learn more at www.bejii.org.
