Law and Race Commons^™

Policies To Expand Minority Entrepreneurship: Closing Comments, Michael S. Barr

Book Chapters

This essay is based on comments delivered at the Conference on on Entrepreneurship in Low- and Moderate-Income Communities, November 3-4, 2005. This has been a productive conversation. In my closing comments, I want to shift our focus somewhat, from entrepreneurship in low-income communities to minority entrepreneurship generally. I want to do so because many minority entrepreneurs are connected to or hire from low-income communities, and because minority entrepreneurs face critical barriers even when they attempt to create and grow firms outside of distressed communities. In this comment, I want to highlight key barriers and suggest five steps for Congress, the …

Time To Step Up: Modeling The African American Ethnivestor For Self-Help Entrepreneurship In Urban America, Roger M. Groves

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

When the United States Congress passed legislation in late 2000 to revitalize the urban core with incentives for equity investors, African Americans were inconspicuously absent as stakeholders in the enterprise. Subsidies in the form of tax credits were instead gobbled up by investor groups who developed upscale hotel-convention centers, high priced condominiums, and symphony orchestra venues that the pre-existing poor residents could not afford. The focus of this Article is not to blame those investors who took advantage of the opportunity, though they perverted the purpose of the subsidy. Rather, this Article seeks to identify a new substrata of the …

Race, Class, And Suburbia: The Modern Black Suburb As A 'Race-Making Situation', Mary Jo Wiggins

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In her Article, Professor Wiggins discusses the complex social phenomenon of "Black suburbanization, " focusing on the commercial "disinvestment" in and around predominately Black suburbs. She traces the historical relationship between Black Americans and the suburbs, and describes in detail the commercial disinvestment in two contemporary Black suburbs, Prince George's County, Maryland, and south DeKalb, Georgia. In her Article, she offers possible explanations for disinvestment, including the application of protective zoning; inefficient zoning laws and practices; prior investment decisions; demographic explanations; and independent effects .of race. Wiggins analyzes some of the resulting negative social and economic consequences, including a sense …

Eliminating The Labyrinth: A Proposal To Simplify Federal Mortgage Lending Discrimination Laws, Stephen M. Dane

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The object of this Article is to demonstrate that the statutory and regulatory framework established by the federal government in its efforts to fight mortgage-lending discrimination is an extremely complicated labyrinth of dead ends, false passages, and elusive goals. Instead of addressing the mortgage-lending discrimination problem directly and comprehensively, Congress has taken a piecemeal and incomplete approach that generally has failed to bring the mortgage-lending industry into equal access compliance.

After pointing out the problems and deficiencies in the current statutory and regulatory scheme, this Article suggests a bold, comprehensive solution to the problem that, if implemented effectively, should ensure …