The Store—and the Nail Salon—in the Hood

Abstract

Two recent books, The Store in the Hood and The Managed Hand, are compared and reviewed as sociological in-roads to diverse, inner-city economies. The books both show how the conditions under which ethnic entrepreneurs and their customers meet are shaped by forces beyond the control of either group.

The Store in the Hood: A Century of Ethnic Business and Conflict. By Steven J. Gold, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010 328 pages

The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Beauty Service Work. By Miliann Kang, University of California Press, 2010 328 pages

Even 50 years after the termination of legalized segregation in the American South, a large fraction of this country’s African American population remains isolated in dangerous, impoverished, resource-poor urban ghettos. These ghettos are not well served by the chains of supermarkets, banks, and retail outlets so ubiquitous in affluent suburbs. Instead, goods and services are often available only from small businesses, sometimes owned by blacks, but often belonging to immigrants and ethnic minorities. Although these businesses fill vital needs, relations between customers and ethnic business owners have often been tense. Tensions peaked most recently in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with events that included a 17-month-long boycott against two Korean green grocers in Brooklyn starting in 1990 and the widespread looting and destruction of Korean and other immigrant-owned businesses during Los Angeles’ 1992 riots.

These incidents left many Americans believing conflict between African American customers and ethnic entrepreneurs is a recent, but widespread phenomenon, and that the presence of immigrant entrepreneurs in urban ghettos demonstrates that blacks somehow lack the drive and cultural wherewithal to build their own businesses. Sociologist Steven J. Gold marshals a wealth of historical evidence to dismantle these impressions.

In The Store in the Hood, Gold shows that immigrant/ethnic entrepreneurs have been victims of hostility and violence going back well over a century. Before 1920, however, the perpetrators were most frequently members of the white majority. In fact, contrary to claims of deep-seated antagonism between African Americans and immigrant business owners, Gold cites evidence that relationships have frequently been cordial; any hostility has generally been directed against specific businesses that treated customers poorly or refused to hire black workers. He also shows that violence against immigrant businesses has typically been “opportunistic,” initiated during unrelated lapses of social order, similar to what we saw during the 2011 rioting in London. Gold points out that African Americans, indeed, have often taken the risk of opening their own businesses, and those businesses have been quite successful in specific times and places. It’s white hostility, discriminatory lending practices, and a lack of capital and expertise that have generally thwarted black efforts to build an ethnic economy that stretches beyond “informal” types of self-employment such as street vending, odd jobs, and in-home child care.

Correcting these misunderstandings is Gold’s primary purpose, and he dedicates roughly a third of The Store in the Hood to giving readers an historical and sociological perspective on conflicts between and shared interests of customers and ethnic entrepreneurs in America. Another third traces the ups and downs of African American business since the beginning of the 20th century, and, in the remainder of the book, Gold ties these two strands together by discussing the larger social forces that have shaped the rise and maintenance of segregated African American ghettos and have given ethnic entrepreneurs incentives to open businesses there. He also provides a case study (co-authored by renowned geographer Joe Darden) of black and immigrant businesses and customer-entrepreneur conflict in Detroit, the largest black majority city in the U.S. Little of Gold’s analysis is truly novel—aside, perhaps, from the suggestion that some of the apparent tension between black customers and ethnic businesses actually reflects competition between informal (and therefore largely invisible) black businesses and established ethnic businesses. What makes this book unique is its elegant synthesis of historical data and sociological theories on entrepreneurship and ethnic conflict.

What makes The Store in the Hood unique is its elegant synthesis of historical data and sociological theories on entrepreneurship and ethnic conflict.

Like Gold’s text, Miliann Kang’s The Managed Hand is principally concerned with relations between native customers and immigrant entrepreneurs. In contrast to the national scope and century-long span of Gold’s study, though, Kang’s book is narrowly focused on Korean nail salons in New York City at the turn of the 21st century. Often a joy to read, The Managed Hand is smart, wide-ranging, and insightful. Kang seriously addresses a wide array of topics ranging from the conditions in Korea that specifically encouraged women to seek their fortunes in the United States to the racial stereotypes that lead middle-class American customers to expect specific kinds of deference and docility from Korean women to the ways that non-white women struggle against and reinterpret white middle-class standards of beauty in order to affirm their femininity.

The Managed Hand is based on Kang’s field work in six nail salons, including interviews and ethnographic observations between 1996 and 2009. As a Korean American sociologist whose immigrant mother ran a small store while she was young, Kang brings to her study both Korean language fluency and an appreciation for the difficulties faced by small business owners. She also brings keen observational skills and an admirable degree of empathy for the women she interviews and observes. In one of the book’s more poignant passages, Kang describes how she offered English lessons to some of the Korean women she was studying. She assumed that they would most appreciate instruction on practical tasks such as asking for directions. No, they told her, what they really wanted to know was how to say, “This color looks good with your dress,” and ”Your boyfriend will think you look pretty!”—in short, they wanted to know how to massage their customers’ egos and highlight the real or imagined benefits of the manicure in order to ensure repeat business.

Kang divides the manicuring business into a three-part hierarchy with respect to price and level of service. The women who wanted lessons on how to flatter their customers worked in a nail spa that mainly served middle-class white women, providing elegant and understated nail styles along with “pampering”—hand massages, emotional support, and attentive service, all at a premium price. Nail art salons predominantly serve working class black women and Latinas, delivering elaborate custom nail decorations along with respectful but impersonal service. At the bottom are discount nail salons that serve a multicultural clientele of working-class and lower-middle-class women with fast, low-cost, no-frills, and, according to some, unhygienic services. Kang studied two salons from each of the three industry segments, allowing her to make comparisons both within and across segments.

The conditions under which ethnic entrepreneurs and their customers meet, these books assert, are shaped by powerful forces well beyond the command of either group.

Looking specifically at the nail art salons that served mainly African Americans, Kang outlined several factors that helped to reduce and contain conflict between customers and the businesses. First, unlike the retail stores that have so often been the locus of hostility and violence, nail parlors offer a service that can only be delivered through prolonged personal contact. Even if there is no real bonding, customers and owners gain familiarity. Second, with no physical product, there is no reason for the intense surveillance that causes so much resentment among customers of immigrant-owned retail stores. Third, the manicure is given and received by women; the same-gender character of the transaction may overshadow its mixed-race character. Fourth, owners and nail technicians are very aware of their African American customers’ sensitivity to racial slights and do their best to contain the anti-black prejudices that many brought with them from Korea. With contact over time, these prejudices often fade. In fact, several of the workers report being better disposed toward blacks, who they see as easy-going and friendly, than to whites, seen as racist and overly demanding. Fifth, owners’ efforts to show respect to black customers and their neighborhoods are appreciated. For example, customers responded well to one salon’s owners who displayed African American art and offered an annual Christmas party. Finally, as long as they were given a quality product and treated with respect, black customers appreciated the artistry of Korean nail technicians. They also appreciated the reasonable prices they were charged, and had no interest in paying extra for the “pampering” services expected by middle-class white women. For all of these reasons and because black customers, like New Yorkers of all backgrounds, have come to perceive manicures as something that “Orientals” naturally excel at, they see Korean nail parlors as positive community additions rather than unwelcome invaders.

In the end, Kang and Gold agree on much. Both agree that blacks as a group harbor no special antipathy towards immigrant/ethnic entrepreneurs and that the entrepreneurs have substantial control over how they are perceived by customers—they can choose to defuse conflict by treating customers respectfully, hiring locals, or making visible contributions to the community. On the other hand, as Kang points out, business realities may restrict entrepreneurs’ ability to defuse conflict, as for example, in discount nail salons where the quick working pace makes the respectful resolution of disputes difficult or in retail establishments where there is a need to guard against shoplifting. Further, the conditions under which ethnic entrepreneurs and their customers meet are shaped by powerful forces well beyond the command of either group. These two books imply that as long as ghettoization persists, and immigrants face barriers that channel them into small businesses in ghetto communities, and blacks lack the resources and know-how to form successful small businesses or bring their informal businesses into the mainstream, the fate of the “store in the hood” is likely to remain contentious.