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I chose to write about this as I myself encountered the effects COVID-19 had on my father who is a black, self-employed barber back in 2020. At the beginning of the lockdown, the barber shop he worked at had closed, so he wasn't making any income, but my mother was since she worked from home for Anthem.

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Given we were under lockdown and those who worked for the public and not from home were not making any sort of income except for the occasional stimulus check. Though the check was sort of like a "pick me up", my dad still had to find a way to make money.

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In order to make money and keep doing what my dad loves best, he started accepting clients to come get their hair cut in our garage during lockdown. He didn't constantly take clients, but when the garage door was opened during the day, you knew he had opened up shop.

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Those who are affected by the effects include people of color, mainly Black Americans, Latinx, and Asian individuals (Fairlie, p. 1).

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From 2019 - 2020, business owners' earnings dropped by 5 to 17%.

Black business owners: dropped between 11-27%

Asian business owners: dropped between 15-21%

Hispanic business owners: dropped between 7-19%

White business owners' earnings dropped the least to around 2-15%.

The losses incurred by Black, Latinx, and Asian owners widened overall earnings inequality.

(Fairlie, p.1)

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When COVID-19 initially spread and even throughout the years, people have made statements that they think the virus is not real but a hoax. The topic of COVID-19 itself has become a very controversial topic to debate creating a multitude of arguments on the matter.

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Around the time of COVID-19, police brutality and protests started to increase due to the loss of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other individuals who lost their lives to police brutality as the officers were initially getting away with it making the victims look like the black guys. There was even more controversy around the statements "Black Lives Matter", "White Lives Matter", and even "All Lives Matter" during that time as well and whichever statement you chose essentially caused a spark in arguments for many individuals.

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Many protests and riots took place in 2020 around this time, some even became dangerous to walk in as people broke out in fights and tear gas was brought out. Many city buildings and businesses were ruined due to the riots leading to those creating barricades and wood boards to put on their doors and windows to protect them.

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Many of our businesses today are run by minorities. A lot of small business localized shops are run by minorities trying to express themselves and even share the greatness of their cultures. Some businesses are online too, with COVID-19, a lot of small business owners went online and started selling things via mail. The economy of midwestern states was impacted the most during the lockdown as businesses were shut down, and over 3.7M unemployment claims in the midwest region were made during the lockdown in 2020 (John, 2020).

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COVID-19 is essentially the new flu that has new strains that are constantly being discovered. One regulation that was initially introduced in the beginning and is sometimes still used today in different businesses is social distancing.

They used this regulation during lockdown to reopen operations during the pandemic. The required distance to be free of germs spreading to you is six feet (Fairlie, 2020).

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This is not the first time we have seen a pandemic in the United States. In the 80s HIV/AIDS was a huge pandemic that compromised the immune system. As a result of the mass number of individuals affected by AIDS who cannot be "cured" HIV/AIDS has become an endemic just like COVID-19 has. The world sees COVID-19 as another flu or the common cold considering how common it is to get it now and spread from person to person. Just like the flu, to prevent COVID-19, you can get immunizations, but there are still chances of contracting COVID-19 because there is no set cure.

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Other laws and regulations that were implemented around the time of the pandemic were small business grants and PPP loans. The assistance given from these loans and grants provides those who own businesses during the pandemic an opportunity to keep the owners' businesses open and pay their employees.

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As talked about in the last section on those who own small businesses that were largely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, we see that the statistics of the different racial groups differ when it comes to their earnings during that period and those of the white community had less of a loss than those of different racial backgrounds.

It was also reported that those who were self-employed lost a significant amount of hours than those who were generally employed, we saw this a lot in communities of individuals who are of color. Black self-employed individuals lost around 9.1k hours per month, and those of multiple races who were self-employed lost a total of 27,880 hours per month (Richter & Patel, 2021).

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In the module "Economies & Political Representation", we read through several articles that touched base on racial inequalities mostly on the financial side and representation. In the article "The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality" by Thomas M. Shapiro, we are shown the comparison of wealth between Black individuals and white individuals and representation in the workforce, the general public, and in social status. Shapiro shares that white middle-class families at the time possessed between three and five times as much wealth as equally achieving middle-class families (Shapiro, p.5).

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Around the 1960s-1980s, the black middle class was more precarious than the white middle-class. It was more difficult for those who were black to have a cushion to fall back on during hard times like if they were to be laid off. Black individuals were more likely to fall from middle-class to lower-class and it was more difficult for them to change directions when it came to professions (Shapiro, p.7.)

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The next concept that relates to the topic at hand comes from the article Black Wealth/ White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro. In 1935, minority workers were covered by social security and New Deal labor policies when working in certain occupations and earned a certain amount of wages. Given that wages were so low for minorities in the 30s, workers fell disproportionately below the threshold of coverage compared to white individuals (Oliver & Shapiro, p.6).

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Black individuals were at a disadvantage in their eligibility for social security and also disproportionately paid more into they system and received less. In 1935, 42% of black employees in occupations that were eligible for social security did not earn enough to qualify for benefits compared to 22% of white individuals (Oliver & Shapiro, p.6).

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Another connection from the article that relates to the topic is that Black individuals were portrayed in sociological literature as the American ethnic group with the lowest rate and degree of success in using self-employment (Oliver & Shapiro, p.9). We still saw this emerging in 2020 during the pandemic as self-employed black individuals were earning less than self-employed white individuals.

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The next concepts come from the Identity Politics module which states that the presentation of a contradiction between recognition and redistribution, or the cultural and the economic was challenged by those who pointed out that the intersectional politics of gender, sexuality, and race had always been engaged and understood through the structures of capitalism.

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Going back to 1865 when slavery was abolished, black individuals were aware that they were free of white slavery, but they were to be represented in a way that demonstrated hatred and dislike. Origins of exploitive practices lay in a toxic confluence of postwar economic dislocation, weak state institutions, and white slavery resulting in racial inequality and an increase in criminal justice (Arsenault 2007).

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Fairlie, R. (2022, August). The Impacts of COVID-19 on Racial Disparities in Small Business Earnings. U.S Small Business Administration. https://advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Research-Summary_COVID-and-Racial-Disparities_508c.pdf

John, H. (2020, May 13). The impact of covid-19 on Midwest economies and electric energy. Power System Engineering, Inc. -. https://www.powersystem.org/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-midwest-economies-and-electric-energy/

Richter, J. I., & Patel, P. C. (2021). Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the hours lost by self-employed racial minorities: Evidence from Brazil. Small Business Economics, 58(2), 769–805. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-021-00529-x