Even before COVID-19 forced non-essential businesses across America to shut down, Asian business districts like Chinatown in NYC, were already seeing a decline in revenue because of anti-Asian sentiment. More than a year later, as shops and restaurants begin to reopen, business leaders are hoping their community can rebound. Laura Fong reports on their hopes from the reopening.
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The pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on people of color across the board. Rates of COVID-19 infection are higher, death rates are higher and vaccinations are rolling out more slowly in Black and Latino communities.
The same can be said for the pandemic’s impact on New York’s small businesses. “We are mired, right now, in pandemics,” said Michael Garner, chief diversity officer at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, at City & State’s Diversity Summit in February. “A health pandemic, a fallout economically. When this country is in a recession, Black America is in a depression.”
A report last summer found that nationally, 41% of Black-owned businesses, 32% of Latino-owned businesses and 26% of Asian-owned businesses had closed either temporarily or permanently, compared to 17% of white-owned businesses. And in New York, businesses owned by people of color have struggled to access funds from federal relief programs. A report by New York City Compt