A Flawed Study
Recent report of racial disparity in Oakland contracting has fatal defects.
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Full Disclosure already reported that a much-hyped study claiming black contractors were shut out of Oakland city contracts was based on dubious numbers ( "Numbers Game," 5/30). But a closer look reveals that the study is even more flawed than we'd realized. In fact, the $550,000 study, conducted by politically connected black businesswoman Eleanor Ramsey and her firm Mason Tillman Associates, contains an analytical error so egregious as to render its conclusions meaningless.
The firm's report claims a huge disparity between the number of construction and professional services contracts awarded to black businesses by the city of Oakland from 2002 to 2005, and the number of such businesses "willing and able" to do the work. At a public hearing last month, Ramsey claimed that the disparities were so wide they could not have been accidental. For example, she found that 14.7 percent of professional services companies in Oakland are black, yet during those years black companies received just 2 percent of professional services contracts valued at less than $500,000.
Last week, we noted that Ramsey's pool of "willing and able" black contractors included a large number who hadn't previously shown any interest in bidding on city contracts. Now comes this inconvenient fact, buried deep within the two-hundred-plus-page report: Oakland routinely awards more than half of its professional services contracts to out-of-town businesses — 53.3 percent, according to the study.
This is pivotal, because it means black companies do not, in fact, make up 14.7 percent of the professional services companies vying for contracts. So what is the true percentage of black-owned professional services companies? The only way to know that is to look at the ethnicity of all such contractors in the region. The report is silent on the issue because Ramsey's firm did not examine businesses outside Oakland. The study, in other words, cannot say with certainty if there was any racial disparity at all.
Editor's Note: Comments are not edited or fact-checked by the East Bay Express.
C'mon, you and I both know that there are racial disparities regarding African American and other racial minorities access to contracting-regardless of the flaws in the study. It seems as if by pointing out the flaws in the analysis, you can say "hey the elephant isn't actually in the room." Which is a bunch of crock. Check around the nation regarding the history of "set-aside," programs and their application and you will find that even in the cities where whites are a minority, they still get way beyond other racial groups in city, state, or federal contracts for that matter. Even when the law dictated that a certain amount of contracts were set aside for "minority" businesses in most major cities, those contracting amounts never equaled up to the amount actually set aside as a baseline percentage. So, in most cases prior to the supreme court's ruling, say in a city like Washington, DC which was 70-80% black, maybe 12% of contracts were set aside (as a goal), which left basically 80-90% of the rest of the contracts available for white firms-which normally got all of the big money contracts to begin with. If that is "equality" or the goals of our system to rectify previous state-sponsored racism and discrimination-then we can continue to play the games played by pseudo--liberals. If 53.3% of the contracts go to "outside" firms, does that mean that 14.7% of those "outside" contracts go to African Americans? Or goes to Latinos or Asians? We don't need a study to figure out who the majority of these contracts go to and/or their race? That is unless Oakland has found a way to do something "unamerican." There are numerous cities with much higher populations of African Americans and Latinos compared to whites who have yet to find a way to distribute these contracts somewhat equally, regardless of the ideal and attempts. Conduct your own study and u make a determination of whether or not racial disparities exist-or just continue along playing this hidden-racism game and deny that white privilege continues to exist in all facets of "American" life, even in contracting. Normally when many of these studies come out, and there are several out each year that reinforce the fact that society is far from a "meritocracy," Black people tend to go, "oh they needed a study for that? I could have told you that for free." I look forward to your study and future studies on racial disparities in Oakland and appreciate the work of publications such as yours to challenge institutionalized racism and your commitment to providing a look at life in contrast to what we get from the major daily newspapers.
Comment by Anonymous - June 7, 2007 @ 05:10 PM