U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego and about a dozen Black business leaders perched in cushioned barbershop chairs on Monday to discuss challenges facing Arizona’s Black community.
The listening session, part of Gallego’s ongoing campaign for U.S. Senate, was held at Natural Impressions Barbershop in Phoenix, where Gallego, D-Ariz., regularly gets his hair cut.
The hourlong conversation touched on topics from African-American representation on corporate boards, to discriminatory behavior by credit unions, to Republican-led school curricula that downplay the role of racism and slavery in U.S. history.
Eventually the conversation settled on the influx of federal cash arriving in Arizona. Fuelled by President Joe Biden’s manufacturing-focused legislation, Arizona is awash in federal money to upgrade its aging infrastructure and build out green technologies, and it is seeing some of the largest private investments ever in state history for microchip manufacturing.
Roy Tatem Jr., a consultant and former head of the East Valley NAACP, said he fears the Black community is not positioned to benefit from those investments.