Queer Eye: Stories Behind the Stories, Ep. 2
If you want to know why I’m writing these, click here.
This episode features Rahanna, a Black woman from the Germantown neighborhood. She has her own mobile dog grooming business, that was growing well until a series of financial setbacks derailed her business’s progress. Specifically, her truck needed significant repair. Her clients became more limited because she was no longer mobile and her business suffered. To make matters worse, her business concerns were compounded by romantic woes. Her boyfriend had been unfaithful and, though they decided to move into together, their relationship was still uneasy. Three of the Fab5 decide to tackle the business: Antoni helps her make dog snacks, Jonathan and Tan use their talents to create an effortless, practical, and business ready look. Bobby and Karamo tackle her domestic life, with a home makeover and relationship counseling respectively. Interestingly, the narrative about the boyfriend takes a bit of a backseat to the narrative about the business.
When I saw Rahanna’s introduction, I immediately fell in love with her parents. The pair of them sitting side-by-side on the porch in the Philly sun reminds me of people I know, people I love. This was a way into Black intimacy without an incursion into Black space. The porch, the stoop — those are spaces of conversation with outsiders & visitors, specifically conversations in which people give or receive information, gossip, and check-in with each other. Though it blocks you from getting inside one’s house, it does offer another kind of intimacy: the kind that acknowledges conversation is not mere or meager, but rather a gift.
Usually, the nominators’ videos take place with a background that opens themselves up to an audience: a plush living area, their business, or their neighborhood. With Rahanna’s parents, you get their porch. That’s it. The camera crew is not let inside, indicating that the family wishes to maintain some degree of privacy. Their home is not a place for public consumption. Unlike those who show off their homes or spaces they own and control, this family limits the camera crew’s access. Here and no further. There are some specific cultural reasons why Black folk make those delineations, at least one of which is that whites have a history of feeling entitled to Black spaces. To draw a line at Black private property is to draw a line in historical terms. This is mine. I am free of you.
Now. Down to business. Literally, down to Rahanna’s business. (I won’t comment on the fact that she lets dogs lick her in the face, except to say I wouldn’t, but it’s a dog groomer’s life.) Rahanna’s business, Stylish Pooch, faced issues like any other starting business. She has had to figure out pricing so as to not undercut herself, drum up clientele, and think long-term. As Tan and Bobby point out, they each experienced five years of difficulty when starting their respective businesses.
Here’s the thing: Rahanna — because she is Black in the United States — has had less room to fail than both Bobby and Tan. The reasons for that are historical: redlining. For those who are unfamiliar, redlining is the white supremacist practice whereby banks determined who would receive a loan based on who lived in which zip codes. In Philadelphia, the redlined areas for Blacks mainly consisted of the northeast parts of the city. However, the second wave of the Great Migration (movement of Blacks from the southern US to the northern US) in the 1940s saw more Blacks settle into the northwest Philadelphia area, including Germantown. This precipitated white flight, when whites left the area rather than live alongside Blacks, thereby driving down property values.
Redlining and white flight were not solely practices of exclusion for Blacks. Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro’s germinal book Black Wealth/White Wealth details that these exclusionary practices locked Blacks out of the largest opportunity for wealth accumulation in US history. These practices were also practices of inclusion for whites. Redlining and restrictive covenants (language on a deed that said no undesirables could live in that home) created communities of wealth within the United States. That is, government-sponsored (read: FHA) suburban developments often had monthly mortgage payments lower than the rent in public housing, especially if a white family received veteran’s benefits. Keep in mind, those communities did not just consist of homes, but businesses as well. Keep in mind also that wealth compounded over time.
According to 2010 census, Germantown is 77% Black and East Germantown is 92% Black, numbers which remain similar to the 1990 census where the percentages were approximately 78% and 94% respectively. The white population has decreased in these areas, 33% in East Germantown and 24% in Germantown, between 1990 and 2010. These statistics speak to historical realities of redlining, which continue to this day and affect Black business owners. Because of her neighborhood and her race, Rahanna has limited access to the possibilities of accumulating wealth because of a historical lack of access to home ownership and business loans, including access to banks, and access to the best loans. Keep in mind, this lack of access is compounded because of white supremacist atrocities like those in “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, OK or Rosewood, FL. Keep in mind, this lack of access and opportunity means many Black business owners do not necessarily have communities of Black business owners to turn to for assistance.
So, when Bobby unveiled her new mobile dog grooming van, this was not just a cool surprise from the Fab5. This was an investment in Black business ownership. The van does not undo historical wrongs, nor does it create systemic change. This is the limit of a single story (pace
Chimamanda Adiche).
However, the new van does allow Rahanna to go forward more boldly and more resourced in the direction of her dreams.
For other episodes, click here: [Ep. 1] [Ep. 3] [Ep. 4] [Ep. 5] [Ep. 6] [Ep. 7] [Ep. 8] [Ep. 9] [Ep. 10]
