Race,gender, and class in entrepreneurship: intersectional counterframes and black business owners

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurship is often touted as an economic opportunity that embodies American ideals of individualism and financial gain. Yet social scientists have long noted divergent entrepreneurial outcomes among various groups. In this paper, we consider how race informs entrepreneurship for minority business owners. In particular, we focus on the ways black entrepreneurs use racial counterframes as a means of defining various aspects of the entrepreneurial experience. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of intersectional counterframes to show how black entrepreneurs understand business ownership as a response to categories that interact with not only to race, but other social group categories as well, such as gender. We argue here that these business owners use both counterframes to construct entrepreneurship not simply as a potential pathway to economic stability, but perhaps more importantly, as a response to existing inequality.