« Since its creation, the Small Business Administration (sometimes called the “Small Scnadal Administration”) has lurched from one embarrassment to another. Despite loans to criminals, government contracts for minority “fronts” allegations of outrageous pork barrel allocations (even Whitewater began as an SBA project), and questionable definitions of what constitutes a small business, the SBA manages not only to survive but to thrive with each change of administration. It has become a sacred cow in American politics.The SBA has remained sacrosanct amid continual controversy thanks to the agency’s longstanding record of the pioneering affirmative action. Jonathan Bean reveals the even before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the SBA promoted African American businesses, encouraged the hiring of minorities, and monitored the employment practices of loan recipients. Under Nixon, the agency expanded racial preferences with its “black capitalism” agenda. During the Reagan administration, politicians wrapped themselves in the mantle of minority enterprise even as they denounced quotas elsewhere. »