Pursuit: How Black Tech Entrepreneurs Make Headway in Times of Racial and Economic Inequality explores the experiences of Black professionals in the technology industry. Technology is one of the nation’s fastest growing and most transformational industries, yet the sector is plagued with racial disparities. Black workers represent an extreme racial minority and face various barriers from blocked advancement on the job to micro-aggressions from co- workers. These challenges are compounded in entrepreneurship as less than one percent of U.S. venture capital dollars, $130 billion in 2018, went to Black tech entrepreneurs. How do they navigate this unequal terrain? To address this question, I link literatures on racial capitalism, racialized organizations, and strategic action fields and apply it to a comparative case study in Silicon Valley and Atlanta. These two sites represent two distinct technological ecosystems. Wealth in Silicon Valley is plentiful, but Black people comprise a numerical minority and face racial barriers in the industry. Conversely, investment funding in Atlanta is comparatively sparse but it is a majority Black city with an established Black middle class and historically Black institutions. I posit that these differences will shape not only how Black tech entrepreneurs understand the challenges they experience, but also their strategies for advancement.

To investigate, I interviewed 96 Black tech entrepreneurs, investors, and those who cultivate Black tech spaces in the two locations. Additionally, I relied on nearly 100 hours of participant observation at tech meetups and gatherings to gain insight into how Black tech entrepreneurs engaged with one another, investors, and the wider entrepreneurial community. Finally, I analyzed over 100 sources of media data from sources like Tech Crunch and Forbes to comprehend the latest technological news and wider industry practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Together, these three methodologies allowed me to triangulate my findings, thereby presenting a fuller and “thicker” picture of the lived experience of Black tech entrepreneurs.

Through these methods, I found that Black tech entrepreneurs in both locations perceived similar challenges, most notably the concentration of wealth and networks within White communities. Despite this, they adopted different approaches to entrepreneurship depending on their region, ethnicity, class-status, and gender. Thus, this work underscores how racial capitalism and other interlocking systems shape the lives of Black tech entrepreneurs and the tactics they use to get ahead.

My dissertation adds to the growing scholarship on race and organizations. Racism does not solely operate through individual-level hostility or state-sanctioned exclusion. Organizational fields construct racial barriers for Black tech entrepreneurs to overcome, yet at the same time, their advancement strategies are constrained by racism. Substantively, my research expands scholarship on Black entrepreneurs, which is largely centered around service sector professions, like salon owners and restaurateurs. My research thus shows the additional, distinct, and novel strategies this population uses to start and grow their businesses. My work also has implications for the technology industry. The sector is going through a racial awakening in which it’s trying to figure out how best to support Black professionals. Numerous funds have been announced from various prestigious firms, which addresses the funding issue, but a more holistic approach is necessary to truly transform the experiences of Black tech entrepreneurs and create an equitable playing field.

Con Sueños Que Ya Son Viejos illustrates how a community of Latinx seniors grapple with the challenges of aging in poverty and create opportunities to thrive as they grow old in Union City, New Jersey. As labor immigrants from Latin America and the Hispanic Caribbean, who (im)migrated to the United States in the 1960s-1980s to work in what was once revered as the “embroidery capital of the world,” the older Latinx immigrants of the study have had limited opportunities to achieve upward social mobility and to prepare for their retirement. As a result, the dream of returning to their home country has faded, and they have faced the reality that they will live out their later years in the United States. But how do they get by on their fixed incomes? And how do friendships, family ties, and place play a role in supporting them? To answer these questions, the dissertation draws on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork, seventy-two semi-structured interviews, and a number of focus groups with older Latinxs in the community. Three key findings show how older Latinxs strategize to maintain their health and well-being in the face of enormous health and economic disparities as they age in community. First, what became evident is that older Latinxs are actively creating chosen families based on fictive kin, given that many of their adult biological children are also confronting their own struggles in the United States. Second, peer social relations for older Latinxs play a significant role as older adults become more reliant on friends who are intimately aware of their social positions (e.g., Latinxs, immigrants, and older adults) and provide critical economic, emotional, and medical/health support. Third, older Latinxs are not only relying on the support of family and friends, but the enclave itself also plays an essential role, given that it offers critical sites where older Latinxs have cultivated what I describe as Latinx Senior Hubs. In all, the dissertation argues that older Latinx immigrants are neither passive nor inactive members of our communities. Instead, they make daily negotiations that include staying in the United States, aging in their communities, and creating social relations that sustain them. By examining these three dimensions, the dissertation shows the multifaceted approach needed to support older Latinxs facing enormous financial, familial, medical, and health challenges. In all, the dissertation reveals how place and community provide vital resources for aging ethnic communities. Rather than seeing the urban ethnic enclave as an inherently disadvantaged place for older adults, the dissertation argues that it possesses vital recourses that underpin the livelihood of older Latinx immigrants.

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