OPINION: North Carolina Just Closed the Door on My Business and Thousands Like It

In July, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a state budget. While there has been plenty of discussion around teacher pay raises and whether Charlotte will have to pay for canceling the I-77 toll lane project, not much has been said about the fact that the General Assembly quietly abolished the Department of Administration’s Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses (HUB). 

I can still remember when I first got my HUB certification. I remember the feeling of pride when the letter came through. I was young, running my company out of determination and a dream. Then the state of North Carolina was telling me that my business counted for something, something larger than myself. 

My company earned a spot on the same lists as firms with decades of history behind them. It didn’t feel like a formality; it felt like permission to dream bigger. I was officially recognized as a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) by the state. 

That one certification made a bigger difference for my company than any pitch competition or mentorship cohort ever did. 

First, it put my company’s name on the state’s HUB vendor list. Within months, two out-of-state firms invited me to subcontract on two large-scale municipal consulting projects in Charlotte. 

Not long after that came my first prime contract, and eventually consistent work that put my company on a national stage and helped us earn stable contract revenue. 

But it wasn’t only the revenue earned; the doors that HUB opened for me were critical, as were the relationships built and training that became accessible to me as a young business owner who had never even thought ownership was a possibility. 

My story is not unique. 

The HUB offered visibility in a procurement system that, left to its own defaults, sends the same local government bids to the same handful of large firms year after year. MBE business owners still had to show up, qualify, compete and deliver. 

Simply put, the certification meant we got to be in the room. The HUB Office was launched in 1999 via Executive Order 150 by Gov. Jim Hunt and was later codified under North Carolina General Statute §143-128.2 within the Department of Administration to promote economic opportunities and state contracts for historically underutilized businesses: firms owned by people who are African American, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, female, disabled or economically disadvantaged. 

The office granted MBE, WBE and SBE certifications, which were vital for helping us measure disparity and track policy implementation as far as MBE goals (set aside dollars in the state and local procurement opportunities).  

In 2024, I wrote a guest column for Pride Magazine warning that the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action would not stay confined to college admissions. I said then that I was disappointed but not surprised, and that I feared dire consequences for the business world. Those fears have proven warranted. 

Looking back at the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered hundreds of businesses for good and nearly closed mine, small businesses that, with proper support and infrastructure, helped keep our country running smoothly. 

And the HUB Office played its part. RETOOLNC, the statewide grant program administered by the HUB Office for certified minority- and women-owned firms hit hardest by COVID-19, delivered more than $37 million to historically underutilized businesses across the state. 

Many of us were there during COVID witnessing exactly what it looked like to prioritize small businesses, which elected leaders called a “backbone of the economy.”  

In July, North Carolina eliminated the office that made all of that possible. 

MBE and WBE certifications will no longer exist while the SBE certification program is being folded into the Division of Purchase & Contract with a promise of details “in the months to come.” Certified vendors like me learned the news from an email letter and a social media post. 

The folks who made the change say the market should be colorblind and merit should decide. I agree that the best bid should win, but our own data says the field was never level. 

North Carolina’s most recent disparity study found minority-owned firms received just 5.79% of state contract dollars and women-owned firms just 3.23%, with those gaps persisting even after accounting for firm capacity. 

Nationally, the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency has documented that minority-owned firms are far less likely than white-owned firms to be approved for small business loans. 

As Toni Morrison put it, the very function of racism is distraction. It keeps you “explaining over and over again, your reason for being.” Dismantling these offices has the same effect, all under the cloak of fairness.

Here is what worries me most. Most minority-owned businesses never grow past their founder. Nationally, only about 3.4% of Black-owned firms have any paid employees at all. The overwhelming majority are one person working alone. 

I am one of the exceptions, and I did not get there by accident. Over the years I have hired more than 40 contractors. Every one of those paychecks traces back to contracts that a certification helped me win. Take away that opportunity and you do not just lose one firm; you lose the jobs, the taxes and the next generation of owners who could have followed.

My business will adapt because that is what small businesses do. But around 7,000 certified North Carolina firms just watched the one office built to help them completely disappear. 

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The origin of these programs is closer to home than many of us realize. Coincidentally, I’m currently reading You Can’t Go Wrong Doing Right: How a Child of Poverty Rose to the White House and Helped Change the World, a memoir by Robert J. Brown, originally from High Point. 

Brown not only worked as a special assistant to the president, but walked the front lines of the Civil Rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., advocating for Black businesses. 

Brown led the establishment of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in 1969. These efforts encourage all federal agencies to establish their own goals for expanding purchasing goals for minority-owned firms. 

For all of these accomplishments, he was recently recognized by The International Civil Rights Center & Museum, which honored him with the Alston/Jones International Civil & Human Rights Award at its annual gala on July 18. 

The program he started lasted one generation. What a shame to see it dismantled with such little fanfare. 

We all ought to be madder than we are. We are entrepreneurs and used to clawing our way through struggle, but the promise of these programs was that the small businesses would enter onto a more level playing field. But North Carolina lawmakers just decided our future could do without it. I think we are about to find out how wrong that is.