Short Research Paper Final
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic, Essential Workers, Eritrean immigrants, Liquor Store Owners
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental impact on small business owners across the country, especially those who are considered essential workers. Historically, small business owners and essential workers are primarily populated by low-income immigrant communities and people of color. This short research paper will explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the business methods of an immigrant Eritrean family that operates a liquor store in East Oakland, California. Specifically, I conducted an interview with the wife and husband, who will be given the pseudonyms Arsema and Solomon respectively. Through utilizing these interviews in conjunction with the article The Triple-Sidedness of “I can’t breathe” by Don
Nonini and select chapters from Kyeyoung Park’s book titled LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos After Civil Unrest, I seek to investigate the intersections between health, class, and race contextualized by small business owners in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methodological and Ethical Approaches
When I initially proposed my research topic, I informed Arsema and Solomon that they will remain anonymous and my findings will remain confidential. They both consented to participate in this study. I ensured that I was fully vaccinated and will keep my mask on at all times during our interactions.
Prior to conducting interviews with Arsema and Solomon, I directly observed the business by sitting in the liquor store for approximately 5 hours to take field notes. Arsema suggested I observe the store on Friday evening between 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm because it is the busiest time of the week. Although this time was considered “busy,” business was actually very slow. There were barely any customers, which Arsema and Solomon both addressed in their individual interviews. This was quite shocking since the liquor store is located at a populated intersection in East Oakland.
A few days following the in-person investigation of the liquor store, I visited the store again to interview Arsema and Solomon. I conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with each person in the Tigrinya language, and each interview was around 30 minutes. To minimize potential interruptions, we conversed in a nearby cafe instead of the liquor store. I recorded the interview alongside taking notes. During the interview I made concerted efforts to be an active listener, allowing the conversation to naturally flow instead of following a rigid question-andanswer structure. I guided the conversation to approach overarching topics such as health risks and financial burdens.
Analysis and Research Findings
Health Risks
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the COVID-19 infection rate of the United States (US) population is 0.7 percent and the mortality rate of those infected are 7.1 percent, however, there is a much higher mortality rate for people with underlying conditions like immunocompromised individuals and the elderly (Nonini 3). When interviewing Solomon, his largest concern was his health condition. He is 65 years old and suffers from various underlying chronic illnesses that make him more susceptible to contracting COVID-19. He shared with me that he feels mentally and physically exhausted from long hours of work and insufficient monetary return. Solomon is not alone, many essential workers have voiced similar concerns: essential workers are legally required to work despite the risk of infection, and Black people are predominantly represented in this labor force (Nonini 10). Solomon must continue to work even though it is severely risking his health, especially because Arsema and Solomon run the business alone and they do not have any employees.
Arsema is 54 years old and does not have any pre-existing health conditions. Although she is a very healthy woman, she expressed the same amount of concern as her husband Solomon. Several studies have reported that approximately 30-60 percent of COVID-19 carriers were infected by asymptomatic carriers (Nonini 3). While speaking with Arsema, I could hear the worry in her voice. She feared that she might become an asymptomatic carrier, which would threaten her husband’s life. Arsema and Solomon’s anxieties are heightened due to their work schedule. They both work 7 days a week, from 8:00 am until 11:30 pm, thus, they are unable to regularly receive COVID-19 tests as a precautionary effort. Arsema described her experience during the past year and a half of the pandemic as “a constant feeling of fear and uncertainty.” Financial Burdens
When discussing financial burdens during the COVID-19 pandemic, Arsema and Solomon both shared that there is an increased amount of shoplifting at the liquor store. The liquor store sells various products such as food/snacks, laundry supplies, clothes like beanies and t-shirts, liquor, etc. however the vast majority of people primarily steal beer and food (particularly canned goods, milk, and eggs). In fact, while I was observing the liquor store, I saw a middle aged man steal a few cans of beans. Later during the interview, I asked Arsema how she responds to shoplifting, and she was much more forgiving than I expected. She described shoplifters as “teenage or middle-aged Black people that are just trying to survive.” Her reply was reminiscent of a Korean merchant’s perspective on Black people, as told in chapter six of Kyeyoung Park’s book. The Korean merchant initially believed Black people to be “lazy and undisciplined,” however she eventually realized there are systemic and institutionalized forces that may be contributing to certain actions and behaviors (Park 181). After speaking more with Arsema, she disclosed similar opinions: when she first arrived in the US, she believed Black people were lazy and undisciplined as well, until she became the target of the same system that resulted in those stereotypes of Black people. She is much more understanding of Black middleaged shoplifters than she is of white teenage shoplifters from the nearby SAT/ACT test academy, the latter who used to dominate the shoplifting demographic at the liquor store pre-pandemic.
As I previously mentioned, I noticed there were barely any customers during my fieldwork observation. Solomon touched on this as well, he mentioned that many of his regular customers have lost jobs due to COVID-19, and naturally are purchasing less and stealing more from the liquor store. When I asked Solomon about shoplifting, he had a similar yet different response from Arsema. Firstly, he was adamant about refusing to call the police. He mentioned the police several times throughout the interview, even though I did not bring it up. Solomon liberally expressed his distrust with the police, he specifically stated that they “don’t do anything for the community” and “do more harm than good.” In fact, Solomon has been robbed at gunpoint multiple times during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not called the police. I asked him why, and he replied that putting people in jail would not solve any problems, “especially during this pandemic.” Solomon is correct in that the police has not helped his community at all, and arresting people during the pandemic would simply cause more harm: Don Nonini states that jails and prisons are mega centers for COVID-19 infection outbreaks, in addition to being disproportionately populated by Black people (Nonini 10).
Furthermore, Solomon did not feel compelled to call the police for shoplifting because he regularly reviews the liquor store’s CCTV footage. With this footage, he is able to identify the shoplifters and ban them from entering the liquor store if they show up again (most of the time, they do). In chapter five of Kyeyoung Park’s LA Rising, she details the customers’ “experiences of subordination via commercial surveillance” as a cause of tension between Korean merchants and Black and Latino customers (Park 161). Although Solomon often reminds his customers that they are being watched through surveillance, it is mainly interpreted by the customers in a joking manner. His customers did not seem uncomfortable with Solomon reviewing the security footage every night, in fact, the customers joked around and told Solomon to “look out for the middle finger I flashed to the camera!” The relationship between Solomon and his regular customers was casual and lighthearted, unlike the cautious tension that was described between the merchant and customers in LA Rising. This could be a result of multiple possibilities, including the fact that Solomon and his customers share the same race and socioeconomic status or simply because the context is different considering LA Rising was written post-1992 LA Civil Unrest.
Conclusion
Although I spent a limited amount of time studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small business owners through Arsema and Solomon, I reached some valuable conclusions. Firstly, Arsema and Solomon, like many other essential workers, have compromised their own health and the health of their loved ones at the expense of survival during an unprecedented global pandemic. Moreover, they are experiencing financial losses since their customers are facing labor insecurities, much like the broader US, and therefore unable to purchase items as frequently as they did pre-pandemic. Shoplifting rates at the liquor store have increased as a result. However, Arsema and Solomon are still attempting to protect their community by avoiding the police.
Potential Impact, Contribution, and Questions for Future Study
Despite these valuable findings, this study is unable to draw valid conclusions due to the nature of the assignment. There are not enough participants and the time is too limited, among other things, to conduct real qualitative research. Although my findings are an adequate starting point that leads to certain correlations, a longer study is necessary to draw worthy conclusions. Due to limited circumstances, the findings can not be accurately generalized to the wider essential worker and small business community. In the future, further research can be pursued to gather more information on the intersections between health, class, and race during the COVID19 pandemic. In addition, it would be beneficial to conduct another study on the ways that these communities have combatted or approached the detrimental outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
References:
Nonini, Don. “The Triple-Sidedness of ‘I Can’t Breathe.’” Focaal, vol. 2021, no. 89, 2021, pp. 114–129., doi:10.3167/fcl.2021.890109.
Park, Kyeyoung. LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest.
Lexington Books, 2019.
