Steve
02-05-2007, 03:51 PM
This is a fascinating story that discusses racial make up in lawn care businesses.
Lawn-Care Entrepreneur Faces A Changing Racial Landscape (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020401088.html) - In the months that landscaper Nikita Floyd's employees tended the 50-acre grounds at a large African American church, he received no complaint about their work.
So it surprised and stung him when a minister at the Prince George's County congregation told him she was appalled that Floyd, who is black, sent a crew of a half-dozen Latin American immigrants to do the job. It was the mid-1990s, and Congress was considering immigration reform, but Floyd never imagined that his small company would be caught in the national debate.
"Why don't you have any black workers?" Floyd recalls the minister asking as she threatened to snatch the contract. With many blacks living in the neighborhood and sitting in the church's pews, shouldn't Floyd be hiring them, she wanted to know.
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/02/04/PH2007020401316.jpg
Lawn-Care Entrepreneur Faces A Changing Racial Landscape (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020401088.html) - In the months that landscaper Nikita Floyd's employees tended the 50-acre grounds at a large African American church, he received no complaint about their work.
So it surprised and stung him when a minister at the Prince George's County congregation told him she was appalled that Floyd, who is black, sent a crew of a half-dozen Latin American immigrants to do the job. It was the mid-1990s, and Congress was considering immigration reform, but Floyd never imagined that his small company would be caught in the national debate.
"Why don't you have any black workers?" Floyd recalls the minister asking as she threatened to snatch the contract. With many blacks living in the neighborhood and sitting in the church's pews, shouldn't Floyd be hiring them, she wanted to know.
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/02/04/PH2007020401316.jpg