Why a minority businessman in Boston says "I'm optimistic." - Ernest Washington Jr

Nation's Business, Sept, 1990 by Michael Barrier

Why A Minority Businessman In Boston Says, "I'm Optimistic"

Last winter in Boston, a white man named Charles Stuart claimed that a black man had shot him and murdered his pregnant wife. The police made massive searches of the predominantly black neighborhood where the shootings took place, and a suspect was arrested.

Then it turned out that Stuart himself had killed his wife. In January, he leaped from a bridge, an apparent suicide. His death led to widespread recriminations, directed at the Boston police and at the city generally, because his lies had been so readily accepted. Many people across the country, black and white, concluded that race relations in Boston were severely troubled.

Whenever the social climate shifts in any city, small-business people feel it first. Dealing with the public, and hiring from the community, they become sensitive barometers of social change. What is it like for a black person to own a small business in Boston today?

Ernest E. Washington Jr., 43, grew up in Boston, in the Roxbury section - a heavily black neighborhood now, but one he remembers fondly as mixed black, Italian, and Jewish. He served in Vietman - his best friend was killed there - and he describes his combat experience as "my source of energy."

When he returned to Boston and earned his master's in public administration by attending evening classes at Northeastern University, he says, "I really didn't have a problem, trying to juggle graduate school and a full-time job and raise a child and be married, because I had this vision of what I could do with myself."

Washington worked for General Electric for four years, and then for two public agencies on transportation projects. Along the way, he developed expertise in designing parking facilities and controlling the revenue that they generate. In 1986 he struck out on his own, first as a parking consultant, and then as the contractor in charge of Northeastern's 1,600 parking spaces.

He started working under annual agreements with Northeastern; now he has a three-year contract, ending in 1992, and, he says, "I'm looking for a five-year deal the next time around." He has about two dozen full- and part-time employees. A Northeastern official says that the university may soon give Washington an expanded role in campus security.

Washington wants to win more contracts, but in Boston, as in other big cities, most parking spaces are controlled by companies much larger than his Vanguard Parking Services. He hopes to increase his share by bidding for contracts in joint ventures with other small parking-management companies.

For a minority businessman to break into parking management would be difficult under any circumstances, Washington says, "but it's very, very tough trying to operate in the climate that exists in Boston today." He is quick to add, though, that his company's small size and limited experience would work against him "even in a good climate. So I have to make sure that my act is together." Since it is, he says, "the situation is perfect for me to take advantage of some of these opportunities."

That outlook seems to surface every time Ernie Washington offers a sober assessment of racial tensions in Boston or of the struggles his own business faces; he cannot help but shift to a brighter key before he finishes.

For example, he has already made some unsuccessful bids for management contracts, but he says making those bids was "good experience for me. We will be successful the next time around. I think the bidding process indicated to those prospective clients that we could do the job." When he is talking about Boston and his business, he says "I'm optimistic" over and over again - and he clearly means it.

For a small-business person, optimism goes with the territory. Time and again, when small-business people answer survey questions, they see brighter prospects for their own companies than for the economy as a whole. But when a minority small-business person says, "I'm optimistic," the words have a special resonance.

Many minority entrepreneurs provide not just goods and services but also a healing power that many American cities need. Ernie Washington, for example, has hired as attendants and cashiers young people who have had minor brushes with the law - who have, as he says, "crossed the fence" - but now want to stay straight.

Washington speaks of the "second-chance mentality that my company has," and of its "social-service component." His service in Vietnam is a plus, he says, because he sees "in young people's eyes and the tones of their voices" evidence of the same "trauma of war" that so many veterans experienced.

"I'm going to continue to remain strong as an entrepreneur," he says, "to see to it that I'm in a position to provide entry-level employment that can keep people motivated, keep people enthusiastic about themselves. The wages I can offer can turn a person's life around."

PHOTO : Ernest Washington Jr., center, runs parking facilities with the help of Manuel Ramirez, Genevieve Stewart, Richard Ashby, John Jones, and Fatima Smith.