Written by: Peyton and Alexander. Advocacy & Journalism Team – AADM Collective Media Group

Minority- and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs) often face many barriers to participating and succeeding in the market all across the country, and Athens-Clarke County is no exception. Local government is the primary agent for rectifying these disparities, a role which the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government has attempted to occupy by commissioning the MGT Consulting Firm for a disparity study in August of 2023.

This study focused on the availability and utilization of M/WBEs by ACCGov. Utilization equaled 1.01% across all business categories, such as construction, professional services, and goods. However, M/WBEs represent a total of 18.8% of available vendors, regardless of category. Among these available vendors, African American firms are most present, at 6.76% of available firms.

Clearly, ACCGov is underutilizing M/WBEs, which the disparity study corroborates. Even though a little under a quarter of minority- and women-owned businesses are available to work with government agencies, very few are given the ability to do so, and when they are, it is often for projects with specific M/WBE goals. If the project does not seek to further minority- or women-related goals, then M/WBEs are rarely the first to be solicited.

Furthermore in the public sector, 10% of businesses quantitatively detail accounts of discriminatory behavior in the Athens-Clarke County governmental market, with African American firms reporting the most discriminatory barriers. This disparity is also evident in the private sector in the presence of “private good old boy networks” which exclude M/WBEs from conducting business, according to the qualitative and anecdotal results of the study. Additionally, price discrimination and bid shopping run rampant. 33% of all M/WBEs will experience these predatory business practices, and 14% of African American-owned businesses will, as well.

As seen in the above table, African American-owned businesses are also disproportionately impacted by double standards in performance, with 57% of these businesses experiencing this type of discrimination. African American-owned businesses are subject to far more scrutiny than their non-M/WBE counterparts.

This presents a major problem for small businesses. Starting a business as an African American is already difficult — one has to contend not only with the upstart phrase of the business, but wrestle with discrimination in both the public sector and private sectoral  marketplace. 

Through ACCGov’s commissioned study, though, potential solutions have been identified, with some being race- and gender-neutral, and others being race- and gender-conscious. Ultimately, MGT deduced that ACCGov should aid not only minority- and women-owned businesses, but non-M/WBE, as well. This would be considered to be race- and gender-neutral and can be accomplished by adopting audit clauses for contracts (thereby broadening access to contract data) and creating a Business Inclusion Office and Small Business Enterprise Program.

Nevertheless, it is important for ACCGov to emphasize race- and gender-conscious solutions. This can be done by creating programs conscious of these identities to ameliorate disparities and introducing subcontracting so that more parts of the contract are available for M/WBEs to bid on.

With this knowledge in hand, ACCGov has the statistical background upon which to base changes. While minorities in Athens were already well aware of disparities and discriminatory practices, having these grounded in research will help to launch remedies that have been long-awaited and, hopefully, will allow minority- and women-owned businesses to flourish.

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Source from the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government 2023 Disparity Study: https://www.accgov.com/DocumentCenter/View/94032/Athens-Clarke-County-Disparity-Study-2023-Final-Report