Joint Center Warns White House AI Plan Leaves Black Entrepreneurs at Risk

By Stacy M. Brown Senior Global Correspondent

A new federal blueprint for artificial intelligence has drawn criticism from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which says the White House proposal fails to confront how AI could deepen economic disparities for Black Americans.

“The AI Action Plan and related executive orders either downplay or leave out clear protections against discrimination and bias in national AI policy, which could reinforce existing inequalities in this new technology,” the Joint Center wrote in its policy brief. The White House plan, described in the March 2026 “National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” focuses on making the U.S. more competitive, improving access to federal data, training workers, and easing regulations to help the industry grow, including creating regulatory sandboxes and allowing the federal government to override some state AI laws.

The Joint Center’s analysis points to a disconnect between the framework’s workforce development goals and the structural realities facing Black Americans. While the federal plan promotes reskilling and education, it fails to address the potential impact of AI-driven job displacement on Black workers or their transition into ownership opportunities in the emerging AI economy, leaving unanswered the question of who will ultimately benefit from the technology’s rapid expansion.

The worry goes beyond business ownership. Black-owned businesses are growing but remain underrepresented among employer firms and face persistent barriers to capital, infrastructure, and market access. Well over three million Black-owned businesses operate without employees, limiting their ability to scale in an economy increasingly shaped by advanced technology, while venture funding for Black founders has sharply declined, restricting access to the resources needed to compete in AI-driven markets.

Joint Center officials said Black-owned businesses remain an essential and growing part of the American economy. In 2022, about 194,585 majority-Black or African American-owned employer firms generated approximately $211.8 billion in annual receipts, had payrolls of about $61.2 billion, and employed roughly 1.6 million people. Researchers said these firms are growing faster than any other group of employer businesses, posting a 30 percent increase in revenue and seven percent growth in employees in 2021 alone.

Further, employer firms represent only a small share of Black business overall. The vast majority of Black-owned businesses operate as non-employer firms—businesses with no paid employees apart from the owner.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau data, there are more than three million Black-owned non-employer businesses, accounting for well over 95 percent of all Black-owned firms. Researchers said these businesses are typically sole proprietorships operating in sectors such as personal services, transportation, retail, and professional services.

While they generate smaller revenues individually, collectively they represent a significant source of economic activity, income generation, and community stability. Yet, Black-owned firms with employees still comprise only 3.3 percent of all employer firms, even though Black Americans represent 14.4 percent of the U.S. population.

In its framework, the White House outlines safeguards in areas such as child protection, intellectual property rights, fraud prevention, and national security, along with calls to expand AI infrastructure and federal technical capacity. Still, the Joint Center notes that the plan does not directly address disparities in broadband access, computing power, or technical training that continue to shape participation in the AI economy.

“Recent federal policy proposals do not consider equity, climate, and racial bias in the federal AI policy agenda,” researchers for the Joint Center contended. They noted that by not accounting for these safeguards, federal policymaking risks embedding existing biases into the core of AI systems and leaving historically excluded Black entrepreneurs without a seat at the table.

The Joint Center’s report offers a roadmap to work around gaps in the administration’s framework, including leveraging state and local policymaking, philanthropic investments, private-sector innovation, and community-led strategies to build an inclusive AI economy in the absence of federal mandates.

The report identifies four key barriers that will determine who benefits from AI: gaps in knowledge and training, uneven digital infrastructure, limited capital, and a lack of representation in policymaking. “Without intervention, those barriers could concentrate opportunity among already dominant firms while leaving smaller, community-based businesses behind,” the Joint Center noted.

The framework’s push to preempt certain state AI laws has also drawn scrutiny. While designed to create a national standard, the approach could limit efforts by states and local governments to address inequities or build inclusive pathways into the AI economy. The Joint Center points to alternatives led by states, local governments, and private partners, including expanded applied AI training for small businesses, investment in community-based infrastructure, reforms to capital pipelines, and stronger representation for Black entrepreneurs in shaping policy and standards.

“The evidence presented in this brief is clear. AI has the capacity to act as a force multiplier for small, resource-constrained enterprises and these benefits will not be distributed evenly unless deliberate measures are taken to close structural inequality,” Joint Center experts determined. “If current inequities are left unaddressed, the rise of AI will deepen the very disparities it could help solve. Economic modeling suggests that without deliberate intervention, the racial wealth divide could widen by as much as $43 billion each year by 2045.”