The African-American community has a huge stake in any effort to bring business activity – new jobs and investment – to the St. Louis region. After years of decline in the manufacturing sector and population flight from the city and the region, positive change is underway. The Regional Commerce and Growth Association cites as hopeful signs the dramatic turnaround of Downtown St. Louis, stabilization and some reversal of population loss in the city, and the growth of Metro East as a transportation and distribution center.
The RCGA’s five-year economic-development plan seeks to make a strong business-attraction case, because business leaders rank the ability to recruit and retain a high-quality workforce among the most important factors in analyzing options for locating business. They have based their current five-year campaign on a solid understanding, based on thorough research, that our region’s collective quality-of-life assets are highly marketable.
To its credit, the RCGA leadership rightly acknowledges the continuing need to address “race relations, public transportation and educational opportunity” as a business as well as social imperative.
The tragedy of race relations in the St. Louis area (and the nation) has its roots in conscious actions in the past that forcibly created a subculture based on race that has hobbled African Americans over many generations. Despite some progress, lagging access and limited opportunity for African Americans continue to hamper the region’s ability to compete in a shifting global economy. St. Louis must recognize better the benefits of having more smart, successful African Americans working here.
It remains to be seen if there will be sufficient resolve to meet the myriad challenges of improving race relations. The state of minority participation in business opportunities discussed in Alvin A. Reid’s report in today’s American is an issue that demands greater engagement by public and private decision makers.
The specific responses to the challenges and opportunities during this unprecedented period of accelerated capital spending will be a measure of how serious the area’s leaders are about addressing the complex and crippling disparities that undermine any business-attraction strategies. Now this community must go beyond simply acknowledging this problem and become more aggressive and innovative to rectify past and present entrenched barriers. More constructive action is long overdue, because St. Louis has been so far behind for so long.