June 4, 2024 • 50 mins
Grant program for Black women business owners is discriminatory, appeals court rules: https://www.npr.org/2024/06/03/g-s1-2649/fearless-fund-grant-program-appeal-ruling
Fearless Fund is a Black woman-led venture capital firm that offers investment, financial support, and mentorship to Black women-owned businesses.
But they are under attack for providing support for traditionally marginalized entrepreneurs.
Edward Blum, the professional hater at the heart of the Supreme Court’s legal challenge of affirmative action, is suing them for what he says is racial discrimination.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgie Todd, and this
is there Are No Girls on the Internet. After the
Supreme Court ruling deeming affirmative action discriminatory, we were following
the pending Supreme Court ruling on whether or not grant
(00:26):
programs that support black women entrepreneurs are discriminatory too. And
just like that Affirmative action suit, this one was brought
to us by certified enemy of the show, conservative activist
Edward Blum. Now at the heart of this case is
the Atlanta based group Fearless Fund, a grant program that
supports black women entrepreneurs. And I have a little sad news,
(00:46):
which is that a US Federal Court of Appeals panel
has suspended Fearless Fund's critical work of giving financial support
to black women own businesses, a ruling that I'm sorry
to say seems to suggest that Blum is likely to
prevail in his lawsuit claiming that such programs are discriminatory.
This could have a ripple effect, threatening any program designed
to support certain marginalized or underrepresented communities. Now, the ruling
(01:10):
against Fearless Fun is just another victory for conservative groups
who are waging a sprawling legal battle against things like
corporate diversity programs and in doing so, of targeted companies
and government institutions. So here's a conversation that I had
with my friends Samantha and Anny over at the podcast
stuff Mom never told you about how exactly we got
here and what could be next.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The man who.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Brought us the legal challenge that struck down affirmative action
earlier this summer is back, and this time he is
coming for grants and the fellowships that support marginalized people.
So you all probably recall that earlier this summer, back
in June, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, ruling
that race can no longer play a part in college admissions. Notably,
(01:58):
the decision just applied to race. It did not apply
to gender or things like legacy status or donor status
being considered in the college admissions process. Separately, some colleges,
like Harvard have signaled that they might start re examining
the role that things like legacy status plays in college
admissions in light of that Supreme Court ruling. Do you
(02:19):
all remember this? I remember when the ruling was struck down.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
How big.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It felt, especially being a big Supreme Court ruling about
a year after the after Row was struck down. It
felt like, you know, one big torrent of rain and
then another big torrent of rain to continue your metaphor, Anie.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yes, metaphor nicely done.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yes, Yeah, No, it definitely did because that was at
the end of the Supreme Court session and there had
just been a lot of I mean, they turned out
to be true, but a lot of fear around like
what will they do?
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Right?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
It just made like all of these many decisions.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
In one day.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
In one day.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Yeah, you know, it's odd because I was absolutely alive,
and I think, like talking about trying to get into
school and having this whole conversation when I'm a firmative
action was coming into debate to begin with, and to
see it like this, I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna
be very transparent here as growing up in a white
household who are very conservative, not around any marginalized groups
(03:23):
outside of me who they rescued and put that in
air quotes out of like a marginalized a bad situation.
Seeing what they were saying was feded into me and
being like, yeah, I absolutely agreed that I should not
get I don't want to be given a special spot
because of my race.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I want to earn it.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Like I said that out loud to my family before
I started college, in any of that, not understanding what
it really was. And I truly believe my parents believe that.
I don't think my siblings believe that because they're they
are educated and they'd understand, but I truly believe that
because that was what was fed into me.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
So I have this real, like ugh ick feeling.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
About this whole action because the face of the suit
was an Asian man who was bitter little baby that
I feel like so many ways about it, and then
coming into college on my own and then understanding what
it truly was and realizing, oh, yeah, that stuff that
I spewed out as a kid was actual white supremacy
(04:18):
coming out of my mouth because I was trying to
impress my white family and being fed a bunch of lies.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So it was it felt like so gross.
Speaker 5 (04:28):
To know that I was manipulated like that at my
young age, At my young age, also that I think
I don't know how old the students. I guess he
was trying to get into college, so I guess maybe
around the same time and then coming into this now
that I'm like, oh my god, what have we done
essentially like with allowing these types of lies to perpetuate
and not looking at the true statistics behind these actual
(04:51):
numbers and why affirmative action was and is necessary. But again,
because of that rhetoric being around, it wasn't surprising that
it was undone because it was true hanging on by
a thread because of those types of lies.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
But yeah, I have like this.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Ache and like mourning and guilt, guilt by association and
guilt by like past actions that I'm like, oh my god,
what is this? Like part of what I was spewing
is part of the reason this is undone. Of course,
the bigger picture is again white supremacists and their power
that they wanted to play and the overall arcing like
(05:26):
oh who was doing the main grab and trying to
make sure that what a marginalized people stay down and
stay unable to get to any of these places because
they do not have the connections essentially just all connections,
not even money anymore so connections and it's just disgusting.
So yeah, I have very strong feelings.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, I first of all, thank you for sharing that,
and I can kind of identify, I know how you feel.
I don't think that you need to have guilt for
having felt that way, because, first of all, we live
in a society where it's so easy to pit marginalize
people against each other in service of upholding white supremacy.
(06:06):
Like that is a tried and true method that bad
actors and people interested in upholding white supremacy have engaged
for a very long time. And so the reason they
do it is because it's effective, and so it's not
surprising that it will be effective on you, a young person. Also,
the way that we talk about it, I think just
does not set people up to have a full understanding
(06:28):
of the conversation. Right, So we talk so much about
affirmative action, and when we talk about affirmative action, usually
the face of affirmative action is a black person, right,
And so we're talking about, like, oh, well, do you
think that black people should get a leg up in
admissions processes? Of course people are not gonna agree with that,
But the reality is is that that is a myth
because the Department of Labor shows that the primary beneficiaries
(06:52):
of affirmative action are actually white women. That is not
what the way that our the way that we talk
about it would lead you to believe, right. And so
another idea is that when we talk about admissions.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So I would say, this is just.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
My opinion, but I would say that there is an
outsized space given to conversations about affirmative action, which, as
I said, are sort of translated through like oh, black people,
that they're the face of it, and so much less
space given to things like legacy status, which I think
I had a stat earlier, but it's some astronomical amount
(07:28):
of kids in college get there because they are their
parents went to that college, or their parents are donors
to that college, or some sort of a leg up.
And essentially what that is is like affirmative action for
rich people. Yet we don't even it's not even part
of the conversation and certainly has not been part of
the conversation the way that affirmative action has been. So
(07:49):
I would argue that like you were not given a
clear picture of the issue in order to be able
to like thoughtfully come up with a critiqu or an
opinion about it, right, And I think that that has
to be by design.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Right, Absolutely, I think in the understanding, as you are saying,
is that the rhetoric I was given was all anti black.
Like we're going to be very very specific in calling
it what it was. It wasn't about anything else. It
wasn't about me being a minority, or like being Asian
and a marginalized woman. Is literally they were trying to
be anti black.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
They were staying the.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Quiet part out loud because that's all they see. That's
the big enemy that is built up against white people,
which is so disgusting and it's very prevalent.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Like that's the real understanding. We you need to have.
Speaker 5 (08:37):
That whole fact and all that conversation is this is
an anti black movement, and in that it had, it
did not It did not actually help the black community
that much at all. It really did not bring in,
as you said, statistically black people into colleges. It was
again more white women, all white women essentially. And then
(08:59):
again the legacy, those are the people who are still
remaining and going to colleges and still getting scholarships to
get into these colleges, and still getting loans at a
reasonable interest rate, all of those things. But for some reason,
they built this boogieyman. Not some reason we know why,
but they built a boogieman in order to make sure
that they put down a specific group of people because
(09:20):
they're like, hey, this is a battle we can win.
We've always won with this fact.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Let's do this.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Anti blackness is always that is a train that's always
on time. So what's interesting about what you just said
is that white women, despite being the biggest beneficiaries of
affirmative action, are also the most likely to be against it. So,
according to a twenty fourteen Cooperative Congressional Election study, nearly
seventy percent of the twenty thousand, six hundred and ninety
four self identified non Hispanic white women surveyed either somewhat
(09:47):
or strongly opposed affirmative action. Again, I think it's like
one of those situations where because the way that it
is framed is like, this is a program that helps
black people, and if you don't think black people should
be getting a leg up over you, you should not
be into it, you should be against it. That rhetoric
actually ends up hurting all marginalized people, whether you're a
(10:09):
white woman, because you know, like it's one of those
dynamics where the anti blackness becomes a way to get
people on board, but then that is not an accurate
reflection of who the beneficiaries of programs like affirmative action
actually end up being.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So, Annie, you were saying how Asian Americans were kind
of made the face of the sort of victims of
affirmative action, and that is very much by design because
of this guy who is a conservative litigant named Edward Blum.
I call him a litigant because that's like kind of
what he is, like a professional lawsuit bringer. He is
(10:46):
not a lawyer himself, but he basically connects potential plaintiffs
with attorneys who are willing to represent them in test cases,
which he then uses to try to set legal presidents.
He is the founder and sole member of an organization
called Project on Fair Representation, which he found that in
two thousand and five, which focuses on voting, education, contracting, employment,
(11:07):
racial quotas, and racial reparations. Basically, his whole thing is
bringing legal challenges to strike down laws that I would
argue protect non white, non straight, non men.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
More on this later. However, if you were to ask him,
he would.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Probably say that it's not that he wants to elevate
like one race over anybody else, but that he wants
all laws and all like public considerations to be race
or identity neutral. He has described his ethos like this quote,
our history has been tainted tragically by the use of
race in various public and private arenas. Race discrimination is odious,
(11:44):
something the founding principles of the Civil rights movement were
designed to eliminate. Personally, I would say that I don't
know if I buy what he is saying. It seems
like an awfully convenient way to justify the fact that
he keeps gutting laws that protect marginalized people. But there
you have it. That is what he says. His motivation is.
He just thinks that everything should be race neutral, right.
(12:06):
The Guardian describes him as quote a human wrecking ball
on a mission to destroy the landmark achievements of the
Civil rights era and send the country back to a
dark age of discrimination and harassment of minorities in the
workplace and higher education and at the ballot box.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Well, I mean, this is the very basis of hitting
that level of if everything was fair from the beginning,
great Great, if everything was equal and everybody had the
same equity, that would be a beautiful utopia. But as
we know, this land, this country, most countries that have
been colonized, is not based on that level, and that
(12:45):
it has never been about equity, has always been about
who has power and those who have power. Really was like,
but I love that time. That was a great time.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Okay, we have that.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Again, which is like, hmm, you know, we know what
you're really saying exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
The affirmative action ruling was not Blum's first rodeo. A
legal challenge that he brought was what led to the
gutting of the Voting Rights Act. That was the Shelby
County Versus Holder case that he sponsored in twenty thirteen,
and it led to the Supreme Court overturning a key
provision in the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act. That
legal challenge is when we saw the introduction of things
like voter ID requirements, cutting back on early voting, eliminating
(13:34):
same day voter registration.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
All of that was because of him.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
So thank you Edward Blum for ushering that into our landscape.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He's really the villain, yea.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
In all the story on my podcast, there are no
girls on the Internet. We've referred to him a lot
as just like a professional hater like he is just
someone who like just.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Like hate hate hay hate hate like go. I don't
like that hate hate hate like professional hater does.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
He is he very rich?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I think he's wealthy, like I think I think that he.
I've actually looked into him because I'm He's one of
those figures.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That I find so curious.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
He did not come from wealth, but I think that
he has wealth now and he's just interested in using
that wealth and influencing those connections into creating these different
legal precedents that I would say harm us.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
All right, he's that evil genius because we've seen that
in a lot of conservative think tanks as well as
essentially right wing groups that have been building up the
legal system to only help them, putting in uh those
in law school that they know that they can pull
back out and educating them and funding them to the
full in order to come back out and do these
(14:44):
types of cases, knowing that if they can do this,
this is going to be the basis of how they win.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh yes, Like, did you guys, did you all see
that docuseries on the Duggers on Hulu? No?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I couldn't get to their yet, so that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's a real like jeeze, as you might imagine. But sure,
one of the things they make very clear is that
it's not just about like this one problematic super religious
family on TV. It is about this vast network of
young people who are being like trained and educated and
ursol are very well connected to reach the highest levels
(15:24):
of government and influence to make laws for all of us.
So it's not enough that like their kids are homeschooled
or that their kids live a certain way. They are
training the next generation of political operatives and lawmakers to
make sure that all of us and all of our
kids live the way that they think that they should
be living. So it's pretty, I guess some diabolical.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
It's the word I would use.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You mentioned earlier, how when you were having conversations about college,
you remember watching the first wave of the affirmative action
legal challenge go down. And even if folks weren't following
affirmative action very closely, they might remember Blum's earlier attempt
to challenge it. So Blum had been working to challenge
affirmative action since twenty thirteen, when he worked with this woman,
(16:11):
Abigail Fisher, who was the daughter of a good friend
of his who was a white woman. She you might
umber shid red hair. She did not get into University
of Texas because her GPA was frankly mid. She sued
the University of Texas at Austin in two thousand and
eight after it denied her admission. She had a three
point five to nine GPA as a senior, which put
her just below the cutoff for a state law requiring
(16:36):
UT to accept any graduate in the top ten percent
of their high school class. So like mathematically speaking, she
was not in the top ten percent of her high
school class. She felt that she should have still gotten
admission because of her extracurricular activities combined with her GPA,
and that she would have gotten into UT if the
university had not used race as a factor in selecting
(16:58):
its freshman class, which she argued was a violation of
the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Do you all remember this? Like she was like a
very like memorable.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Figure, Like I feel like when I when I hear
about this, I can see this one image of her
standing at a podium outside of the Supreme Court, which
is like burned in my mind.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
I do remember this because I remember thinking, this is
the dumbest argument I've ever seen, because I'm like, girl,
you didn't make it, Like even without a firmative action,
you wouldn't have you wouldn't have made it. Do you
not understand how many people are struggling to get into
college today because a little more access has happened, not
just because of a firmative action, but like the lottery
(17:38):
and all of those things when we had more scholarships.
I was just like, why are people listening to her?
I think that was the biggest question in my head.
I was like, why are we paying attention to this?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Like she has no case, I think I thought.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
I remember thinking like is this an onion headbline? Like
she didn't get just the grades are bad and now she's.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
I think that was the begin of like, oh, this
is a Becky sorry Becky's in the world. That's really
just whining because she couldn't get.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Her away like that. I remember like that was the.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Beginning of that of like, oh, sorority girl was again
no no, no, no, hay to sorority people. I'm so sorry,
but you know that level like stereotype in that my
daddy said that I could get in, and now I'm
not in.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Why so the way that y'all are reacting is exactly
how I'm This is validating because I remember her being
treated like kind of a joke, like her GP was
like fine, but certainly at three point like it's a
lot higher than my GPA was when I was in
high school.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So like, I'll own that, but like you know, it's not.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Three point five nine is not an automatic entrance to
wherever you want to go to college.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
It's like a fine GPA.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And so I remember people calling her becky with the
bad grades, and the vibe around her was like she
was just salty that she didn't get in, and so
she was like blaming black people. And so obviously she
was not a very I guess sympathetic legal challenge to
affirmative action. So obviously Abigail's legal challenge did not work.
(19:02):
So Bum regrouped and made the strategic choice to make
the face of affirmative action or the people being harmed
by affirmative action, according to him, Asian Americans. According to
an NPR article he told a gathering of the Houston
Chinese Alliance in twenty fifteen, quote, I needed plaintiffs.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I needed Asian plaintiffs.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
NPR spoke to Hannay Lopez, a race and constitutional law
scholar at Berkeley, who described this as a deliberate switch
in strategy and that the argument was no longer centered
on how affirmative action impacts white people. Instead, quote, there's
this move to strengthen the surface argument that this is
racism against minorities.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I think it's part of the appeal.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
And so I've read like Asian American activists and advocates
saying that, like what he was doing was this intentional
shift to make Asian Americans like a proxy stand in
for white people to be like, oh no, like this
can't be about racial animis because I am trying to
add vocate for Asian Americans. And again, I think it's
(20:02):
a really great example of how effective a strategy it
is to pit marginalized groups against one another in service
of white supremacy. Because in the end, it's not like
I think, since affirmative action has been struck down, we've
already seen data trickle in that wasn't that long ago,
but already we've seen data trickle in that suggests that like, yeah,
(20:24):
it's it's white people with connections. It's white legacy students
who are continuing to get more slots in admissions. It's
not you know, it's certainly not helping the Asian Americans
who were who brought this challenge. It's actually just opening
up more slots for more rich white people, because that's
how college works in the United States, right.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
And of course it's play is being used by other
places such as Florida do doing the Asian American history
in set but blacklisting African American history. And we know
what that place is that that's the same type of narrative.
They're like, oh, this is working, Let's try this, let's
keep this going exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So, I really wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So, after on the heels of successfully getting the Supreme
Court to strike down affirmative Action, what is Blum's next move? Well,
he is back after gutting affirmative Action. His next move
is going after fellowships and grant programs that support marginalized people.
He is suing two corporate law firms on the grounds
that they're fellowship programs that are aimed at students of color,
(21:29):
those who identify as LGBTQ plus, and students with disabilities
exclude applicants based on race, and he is demanding that
those programs be shut down. He is also suing a
black venture capital firm called the Fearless Fund. So this
is kind of the meat of why I wanted to
bring this conversation to the table today, because he is
(21:50):
alleging that the Fearless Fund is practicing unlawful racial discrimination.
Blum claims the Fearless Fund is engaged in explicit racial
exclusion by operating a grant program quote only open to
black females. According to The Washington Post, the lawsuit is
asked to prevent the Fund from selecting its next round
of grant winners. The claim states that the firm is
(22:10):
quote violating Section nineteen eighty one of the Civil Rights
Act of eighteen sixty six, a US law barring racial
bias in private contracts, by making only black women eligible
in the grant competition. So yeah, he's just like coming
after anything.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
That he sees as supporting non white people.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
The Fearless fun was launched in twenty nineteen by three
prominent black women. Keisha Knight Pullman, who you might remember
as Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show, entrepreneur arian Simone
and corporate executive Ayana Parsons. They have a strong and
impressive list of investors like Bank of America, Costco, General Mills, MasterCard,
JP Morgan. They've invested in over forty businesses in the
(22:53):
past four years, including Atlanta favorite The Slutty Vegan.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Have y'all eaten there?
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah, it was near my house, so I lived.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, Samantha, I was smart and went during the Super Bowl,
so there was no one there.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So they stay open till two am.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
And so when the Super Bowl lots because it's always
packed out, and we went at it still took forever.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
They made good food. It takes a while, but yeah,
we would. I think there only been once though I
don't stand in lines.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
It was a long line.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I've never been, but I.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
And she has expanded that business everywhere, especially in Atlanta
and then Georgia.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
So good on her and owns a lot of property.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
That wouldn't be possible without the Fearless Fund And so
the lawsuit that Blum is bringing centers on the Fearless
Funds Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards black women who
own a small businesses twenty thousand dollars in grants and
digital tools to help them grow their businesses and mentorship opportunities.
So interestingly enough, Blama did not seek out the Fearless
(23:57):
fund to sue, but rather, he says that a non
black woman who runs a business reached out to him
via email and flagged like, did you know that these
black women are running a grant program that I can't
be part of?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And so the Washington.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Post reports, but the lawsuit sites three female business owners,
one from New York and two from Virginia who argued
that they could have benefited from the Fearless Funds grant program,
but they were ineligible because they are not black. So yeah,
these non black women basically just felt like they should
be entitled to this grant program that black women established
(24:34):
for themselves to support black women.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
They were like, we should have a piece of that.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
That's such an interesting take because I'm like, well, you
also didn't get it from every other business grant ever,
so why are you choosing this like you.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Want did you try for it?
Speaker 5 (24:52):
This just seems like a lazy part of like I
want this one thing, I couldn't get it.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I quit They're biased, like.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, I mean, this is just my opinion, but like
it's so hard to not see this as like just
hater vibes, like everything has to be for you, and
if it's not for you, you have to shut it down.
I think it goes back to what we were saying
earlier about the women who benefit from affirmative action are
(25:19):
also the ones who are the most likely to be
against it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I firmly believe that there is enough.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Out there for all of us. And I'm an entrepreneur, right,
so I know how hard the funding spaces for women,
all women, but I know how hard it is for
black women, in particular as a black woman.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
We'll get into some of the stats and just a moment, but.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
I believe that despite that, there is enough for everyone.
Everyone will find their lane, everyone will find their people,
Everyone will find what they need to make what they
want happen. I believe that as like a like a
meditation that keeps me in this work and keeps me
being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
But I feel like the dynamic that.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Says that women need to be pit against each other,
that if you're a white woman, you need to be
trying to shut down a grant that is for black women.
That's not a dynamic that helps anybody, right, And so
I think that we all have.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Our place, we all have our niche urs, and that
for all of us.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
But that dynamic that we are enemies only serve that
does not serve anybody. It doesn't serve me, it doesn't
serve it. It ultimately won't serve them as either. It
just keeps us pit against each other as opposed to
these larger systems that are actually holding us all down.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
It's such a mind blade that they have to people
have to go through to be like, Okay, I can't
get this one thing because they say I can't have it,
so that means no one should have it, because I'm
gonna be miserable, and so are you. Misery List company,
We're going to keep this mentality going and then also
not look at the like, here's the small thing versus
the giant amount of stuff that you also can't give
because you're not a rich white man, but you don't
(26:56):
care about that thing, Like that's the one thing that's
a little bit more accessible to tear someone down who
other people will help you tear down with instead of
this big, giant amount of cash that's just sitting here
for the white man, Like it's just I said for
the white man, like I'm a native, but like that,
you know, that's just like mind level of like how
much you're willing to ignore to be like, Okay, I'm
(27:18):
at the bottom. Who can I make lesser than me?
Who can I push down further than me? So at
the very least I'm not at the very bottom. Oh
my god, it's such a mind trick.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
This reminds me of when I was a little kid
and my brother had this like free coupon for an
ice cream from McDonald's that he got from school. So
he went to McDonald's together and he got one ice
cream and I didn't have any money because we were
little kids, and so they gave him his ice cream
and I got very jealous, and so I smacked it
out of his hand onto the ground, and.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
He was like, I was gonna give you a bite.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
That's like, because I was like, I don't want him
to get something that I can't have.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
It really got a flattering.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Story, but I was like seven years old, right, It's
like he was.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Gonna give me a bite.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
So I missed out on getting my bite because I
could not just let him have something that I wanted
and felt entitled.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
To you immediately and probably earned. I'm thinking of an
accelerated reader.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
What it was like.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was like a if you read X amount of books,
you get an ice an ice cream coupon or something.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
I weren't for this, but yeah, I think this is
so interesting. And the fact that he, of course Blum
had to pounce on this, I'm sure it was like
a gift for him.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, I must take this.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
He was like, ooh, I was looking for a way
to spread my hater vibes and yeah, sure that Supreme
Court ruling and now this lands.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
This gift, lands in my inbox.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
And also makes me stronger, stronger than the woman who's complaining.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Exactly, So Blum is using what he has called quote
the shoe on the other foot test. The rhetorical strategy
that he asked himself is if a grant program funded
(28:59):
white male business owners, would it be considered fair. But
that test, like you were saying, Sam, really assumes that
we are all equal and all have equal access, which
the data could not paint a clearer picture about the
fact that that is not happening. Black women are the
fastest rising group of entrepreneurs in the country. According to
the Harvard Business Review, in the US, an astounding seventeen
(29:22):
percent of Black women are in the process of starting
or running a new business. That's compared to just ten
percent of white women and fifteen percent of white men. Yet,
despite this lead, only three percent of women are running
mature businesses. Why well, One big reason is access to capital.
Harvard Business Reviews research found that sixty one percent of
Black women self fund their total startup capital. This is
(29:43):
in spite of the fact that, in their finding, only
twenty nine percent of Black women entrepreneurs live in households
with incomes over seventy five thousand dollars, compared to fifty
two percent of white men. This data is also combined
with data suggesting that Black women are less likely to
own our own homesick on a higher level of debt
to do things like go to college, and are often
like saddled with debt to go to college right, and
(30:06):
so ultimately that leaves us saddled with more debt and
having fewer personal resources and low collateral. Black entrepreneurs typically
receive less than two percent of all venture capital dollars
each year while companies led by black women receive less
than one percent of all funding. This is according to Crunchbase.
(30:26):
So yeah, the funding landscape is not great for black women.
Less than one percent of funding goes to us.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
And so the fact that we already.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Don't get that much, that there are grants and investment
funds specifically aimed at shifting those numbers just a tiny bit,
like the Fearless Fund, and that people are saying, no,
we need to go for that too, that less than
one percent that goes to y'all that needs to go
to us. Now, in twenty twenty, Pew found that just
three percent of US businesses were black owned, eighty six
(31:00):
percent were white owned. And so, yeah, as I said, like,
as an entrepreneur, these kind of dismal numbers completely aligned
with my own experiences trying to raise money for projects
that I want to do.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
There's just not a lot out there, and you really
have to.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Stay focused and stay positive and not really let the
sort of numbers around how dismal things can be kind.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Of get in your head.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
But then on top of it, when you have people
like Blum and these women that he's representing in this
case to challenge these funds to challenge what little is
out there for black entrepreneurs who are women. It's hard
to internalize that as anything other than they don't want
us here.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
They don't want us to have anything, you know.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Yeah, absolutely, And it's so frustrating too, because a lot
of companies like to act like they are supporting marginalized people,
they are supporting black people, and they make these like
outward promises and then just don't really follow through with them.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, y'all might remember or be thinking like I got
in twenty twenty, like, after all the racial justice uprisings
on the wake of the murder of George Floyd. I
thought that all these businesses and funds and grants were
like going to start funding more diverse people and like
having a more inclusive portfolio.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
While I remember all those promises too.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Businesses committed three hundred and forty billion dollars between May
twenty twenty and October twenty twenty two, according to McKenzie,
and The Post also reports that investments swelled in the
startup world. A record five point one billion dollars in
funding was allocated to black founded startups in twenty twenty one.
That sounds like a lot. However, all of that interest
(32:49):
and excitement and commitment pretty much eroded very quickly, with
funding for black founded startups plunging fifty percent in twenty
twenty two. So remember this is all happening against the
pendulum kind of swinging back the other way where all
of these corporate diversity efforts became a political lightning rod,
and these employers just sort of backpedaled, right, And so
(33:11):
I think that that's where we're at now, where in
twenty twenty people talk to a lot of big games
about money they were going to give and funds they
were going to give, and how they were gonna, you know,
support inclusive people and startups and YadA, YadA, YadA, and
all of those promises just fizzled out, right, And I
think that we're sort of seeing I would argue, like
a backlash to that now, where diversity and inclusion staffers
(33:34):
are being let go. I think like recently Chick fil
A just like happened to have a diversity and inclusion
person on their staff, and like there was a flurry
of like online protests because of that, Like just having
somebody thinking about that on staff is now a lightning rod.
And so Obviously, in that kind of climate, these organizations
(33:55):
are not going to be funding black women even though
they canmitted to it. Even though it seemed like that
was there was a lot of excitement around that, Like Yeah,
I just think that we're in a completely different landscape
than we were in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
I mean, this is definitely that whole level of they
want good publicity, but they're not going to follow through.
It's the black square. Let me pretend like I care,
and at the very least I'll be like, hey, let's
tell the black people in the story like that's That's
as far as their their actual actions went was putting
something on Instagram that they obviously deleted soon after because
(34:29):
they wanted to look okay for one group of people.
And I found that interesting that people are mad at
Chick fil A because it's like they're anti LGBTQ plus.
So that's not enough for you. They need to be racist,
like all of these things in Lune enough for us
to support you. You better be super super racist and
super super homophobic in order for the conservatives. You can
hate everyone except for white as people. Yeah, if not,
(34:52):
we're not going to support you, even if your chicken
is okay.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
So it and like this is a little like unrelated,
but like I think that with a lot of these people,
the Chick fil A example that you just gave is
a great example. A lot of these people like just
they'll find anything to be aggrieved about. Like you know,
I saw like Cracker Barrel was adding plant based sausage
to their menu, and people were like, plant based sausage.
(35:18):
I'm not gonna shop at Cracker Barrel and I'm never
gonna go to Cracker Barrel again. And it's like they're
not taking regular sausage off the menu.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
You don't have to order it.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Just because they're putting food on the menu that like
someone else might like, that's not you, that's cause for upset.
And so another thing I wanted to say about your point, Sam,
is that there's a makeup company, Tart, they got in
hot Water earlier this year because they were doing these
brand trips that looked as if they were not being
(35:45):
inclusive of black influencers. That they were asking black influencers
like after the fact to come and like giving them
substandard accommodations and all of that, and somebody found that
in twenty twenty, you know, they when they posted their
black square, this company was like, we pledge that we're
going to be more inclusive and give more, do more
partnerships with black and brown models, and blah blah blah.
(36:07):
And then they quietly removed that from their website, but
somebody found it on the wayback machine. It was like, oh,
let's get update on all of these like very specific
commitments that you made. And it turns out that they
basically just like didn't do any of that stuff. But
the thing is, nobody put a gun to your head
and forced you to make these commitments. You made these
(36:29):
commitments and just to quietly be like mm just kidding,
Like that doesn't sit right with me, Like, nobody told
you to do this. Nobody told you to post a
black square. You did it, You volunteered to do it.
So when people expect a little follow through, that should
be that should be a given.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Yeah, And I I think about this a lot too.
We talked about this with a lot of the like
what happened with blud Light, what happened with Target, and
you know, then they just backtrack and make everyone angry.
But is I feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding of
in this case, what it's like to be a transperson,
(37:07):
and then when they get like a little taste of
that the company, it's like, oh my god, oh never mind,
Like they can't even just for that one second, like
if they get this online hate that the cause, the person,
the community they're saying they support gets, they get it,
and then they're like, never mind, Actually, can they have
(37:29):
that privilege that rite, that ability to step out and
be like, Okay, I don't want to deal with this anymore,
which I think is just very telling of ignorance and
just like a oh, sure, let's do this, and then
they get that hate and they're like, oh, oh never mind.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Backtracking the Dylan mulvaney thing that you just mentioned, the
thing that I will never be over is that Dylan mulvany,
when she left social media at the height of all
of this and came back and made that video, said
that nobody at bud Light even called her to be like, hey,
are you all right? Like I'm seeing what's going on.
(38:12):
I that is something that will stick with me forever.
That this brand, because she said, happened to say yes
when asked to do a brand collaboration with bud Light.
She was had to go dark, had to probably go
into hiding, like was the target of very severe attacks,
and that bud Light, the company who came to her
(38:35):
to bring her into this, couldn't even follow up with
an email when they saw all of this happening, how
quickly they abandoned her.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And I feel like, if you are a brand or.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
An institution who was working with marginalized people, if you're
not going to stand by them when this stuff kind
of stuff happens and when they get into situations that
really like you have put them in. But by offering
them this, you know, these partnerships, that's just not how
you engage people like that.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Like, at a certain point.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's like I understand that bud Light is a corporation,
and I don't expect corporations to like care about any
of us, certainly not marginalized people. But the people who
run bud Lights marketing or INFLUENCERIR partnerships should really be
taking a good, hard look in the mirror, because that's
just like a failure of like how to be a
(39:24):
human to each other.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Like, I like that just sticks with me.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
I could not believe that she said that that nobody
even ever reached out to her after they just like
dropped her and never ever followed up again.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Yeah, and that's going back to your point. You know,
companies are not big companies, especially not are not allies,
and we shouldn't think of them that way.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
But they.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
If they post to the black square, if they take
these stands, if they say they're going to do something,
then yeah, they should absolutely be held accountable. That's just
away and causing real harm. We were telling you a
story before we started this out of nowhere. Someone bought
that up and like making these things so politicized that
(40:13):
just to have a diversity inclusion person at your company
becomes oh well, then hate like all of this hate,
like you keep saying, it's irresponsible and it's not taking
into account like the reality of working with these groups.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah. I think that's ultimately what these people want.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
I think that they want just working with a trans
woman to be a lightning rod. She's not saying anything untoward,
she's not doing anything untoward, she just is because her
existence is a lightning rod.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Her existence is politicized.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
I think just having a DEI person, just providing a
grant for black women, they want that to be toxic.
They want people to know that if you do that,
you might be in coren you might you know, be
targeted for a hate campaign. And so to just make
it not something that anybody would want to risk. And
(41:09):
these companies are so spineless that they're going along with it.
It is that they're being held hostage, and they're just like, okay, well,
they don't want us to have the chicken sausage. They
don't want anybody who doesn't eat sausage to be fed
at our restaurants.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
So okay, we'll drop.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Actually, Cracker Barrel did stand by their sausage choices.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
I will say that.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
But yeah, it's like I have been surprised by how
these big, huge corporations just cowtow to people who are
not serious, people who are just interested in flexing.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Their power, their political power for no real reason.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
I mean absolutely, we see all of these things actually
hurting people. They don't even want to be the face
of anything. They just want to exist. Funds like Fearless
fund is to exist and to help and lift up
people that they know need lifting up. The same thing
with Target when they had the small businesses, with the
(42:03):
LGBTQ queer content and then taking them off the shelf,
like we were just existing and feeling like we wanted
to be the representation that no one else is willing
to look at or see or stand behind. And you
literally came after them, taking away their money, taking away
their existence, causing harm because again the mulvany thing, she
(42:25):
was just holding a beer. She said, I like bud Light, simple,
why can't she choose to do that? And that ended
up being a thing of like, well, she is hurting
the beer industry and she is doing these things. No,
she's just existing with a product that they sent her.
They're not like giving her fifty percent of the shares.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Of bud Light. Like that's what is happening. Like this
whole level of like what people.
Speaker 5 (42:49):
Are having to do and they're having to come back
and being like, instead of existing, we have to fight
for our place to exist, and that's such an absurd ideal,
like the fact that this has to be done.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
So this is what Tony Morrison says about racism, and
I think it fits to all of what you're saying.
The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.
It keeps you from doing your work, it keeps you
explaining over and over again your reason for being. Somebody
says you have no language, and you spend twenty years
trying to prove that you do. Somebody says your head
isn't shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the
(43:31):
fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art,
so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdom,
so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary.
There will always be one more thing. So, like that
quote really speaks to what I think is happening. You know,
the Fearless Fund, the stats that I just read about
black women entrepreneurs and how little of the funding we get.
(43:51):
It shows that the women who are running the Fearless Fund,
they have work to do.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
They have serious work to do to right.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
The wrong and to bake a little more equity into
the funding landscape. So they don't really have time to
play around with these legal challenges. But yet here they
are having to spend their money money that could go
to the funding landscape, staffing up a legal team, holding
press conferences, all of this.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
It is such a distraction.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
At a time when marginalized people have real work to
be doing.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Fearless fun is fighting back. They have a.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Beefy legal team including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Gibson Dunn, Crutcher,
and Ben Crump, the attorney who represented families of George
Floyd and Tyree Nichols in their civil suits over the
men's killing up the hands of the police. And I
feel confident like these women are like bad as women,
They are not going down without a fight.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
But also they shouldn't have to write like they should
be able to.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Just do their work and focus on that work, and
they should not have to be spending their money on
these bogus legal challenges just because they want to exist,
just because they want to support other black women.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
And I find that again we're in this situation that
black women are the ones that have to be the
ones to fight, like they don't want to, they're tired,
they've been doing this, and now we're back again because
we know there's a lot and I know there's a
lot of fun specifically to women, like point blank women,
and they surely didn't have to go after them. And
I bet they were denied some of those and they're
(45:22):
probably better at that. But yet if they didn't, that
seems silly and that seems very targeted. Yeah, so that's
very telling. Uh, but like it again, it has to
be the black women that has to put up this
fight in order to get anything done.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I mean tail as old as time, right, and I
think right. I'm worried about this for a couple of reasons.
One is that I think that if these grants and
funds that specifically are meant to boost black women entrepreneurs
are deemed unconstitutional, I really don't know what the landscape
is going to look like because, as I said, like already,
so little of that funding goes to us in.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
The first place. But further, one of the reasons I.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Wanted to talk about it on the show today is
that I don't think it's getting near the same amount
of traction and attention that Blum's affirmative action challenges did.
And I really think that we need to see white
male and white women and really everybody in the startup space.
We need to see vcs and entrepreneurs speaking up about this,
(46:21):
because Blum is essentially arguing that the startup space should
basically just be for white people, and I think it's
up to everybody in the space to push back and
say like that is not the kind of funding space
that we want. That is not the kind of startup
space that we want. And to really make that really clear,
like what kind of a space do we want to
have for the next generation of entrepreneurs. We want to
(46:42):
tell them that the tiny little bit that they that
might go to them isn't even for them anymore.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
I don't I don't think that's the space that.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
We want right and absolutely in the same space again,
this is going to hurt white women as well and
the like. If we're saying that all of this is
to specific and it leads out other people of race,
it's gonna hrt gender as well.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
So this is not even just for white people. It's
gonna be for white men.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
We're gonna have more elon musks running running programs into
the ground.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
That's what we're gonna been thousand percent.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
And I mean kind of like what you were alluding
to before time and time again in tech, particularly when
black women challenge things or do things or start things,
they uplift all women. And so even if that specific
program is for black women owned businesses, you're gonna tell
(47:34):
me that a black woman who is financially supported is
not going to go on to do something that's going
to lift up all women and all marginalized people. Time
and time again we see that that's how it goes
with black women, and so yeah, I just think that
this is just this is me smacking that ice cream
out of my brother's hand when I could have gotten
a buy it instead. I really want to see more
folks in the space speaking up about this because what
(47:55):
the Fearless Fund has done has been really great, and
it's they're really like a good force in the space,
and I think the day we need them, frankly, we
need them.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
We do.
Speaker 5 (48:07):
And it's it's a drop in the bucket. Let's just
be real honest, like it's it's nothing in comparison to.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
What other people get.
Speaker 5 (48:14):
Essentially, it is like, wow, you really are going after
the little groups for nothing, just just to make a
point and obviously to keep that little bit, as you
are saying, in your pocket, instead of seeing what this is.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Actually could do for the entire humanity. Humanity is lost.
Speaker 6 (48:30):
I'm sorry what Yeah, yeah, And I mean this is
very important too because obviously professional litigant blom here like
it's going to keep trying and if this succeeds, then
it's going to make things worse for everyone except for
certain people, and then easier for him to win.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
The next thing and the next thing.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
So yes, this is really really important, and thank you,
as always Bridget for bringing it to us.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Oh, thank you for having me. Everyone who is listening
should go out and buy stuff. I've never told you
the book.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
I just bought it. Let's read it together.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
Yes, yes, we're hoping to do a little crossover. We'll
get to go on your show.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Oh I'm so excited. But in the meantime, Bridget, where
can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 2 (49:22):
You can listen to my podcast. There are no girls
on the internet.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
You can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie and
DC or on Twitter at Bridget Marie. And you can
find me on TikTok at Bridget makes Podcasts.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
Yes, and we really do. You appreciate your support with
the book. We love it so much. Thank you, Thank
you having you.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
On as always.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
Feeling is so mutual, So listeners, if you would like
to contact us, you can our emails Stephania mom Stuff
at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram, at TikTok at
stuff I Never told you. We have a tea.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Public store and well yeah we have a book. We
can get it.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Stuff we should read books dot com. Thanks that's always
to our super producer Christina, executive producer Maya, and our
contributor Joey.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Thank you and.
Speaker 4 (50:04):
Thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You is
projection of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
For a podcasts from my heart Radio.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
You can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast
or if you listen to your favorite shows
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridgie Todd, and this
is there Are No Girls on the Internet. After the
Supreme Court ruling deeming affirmative action discriminatory, we were following
the pending Supreme Court ruling on whether or not grant
(00:26):
programs that support black women entrepreneurs are discriminatory too. And
just like that Affirmative action suit, this one was brought
to us by certified enemy of the show, conservative activist
Edward Blum. Now at the heart of this case is
the Atlanta based group Fearless Fund, a grant program that
supports black women entrepreneurs. And I have a little sad news,
(00:46):
which is that a US Federal Court of Appeals panel
has suspended Fearless Fund's critical work of giving financial support
to black women own businesses, a ruling that I'm sorry
to say seems to suggest that Blum is likely to
prevail in his lawsuit claiming that such programs are discriminatory.
This could have a ripple effect, threatening any program designed
to support certain marginalized or underrepresented communities. Now, the ruling
(01:10):
against Fearless Fun is just another victory for conservative groups
who are waging a sprawling legal battle against things like
corporate diversity programs and in doing so, of targeted companies
and government institutions. So here's a conversation that I had
with my friends Samantha and Anny over at the podcast
stuff Mom never told you about how exactly we got
here and what could be next.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The man who.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Brought us the legal challenge that struck down affirmative action
earlier this summer is back, and this time he is
coming for grants and the fellowships that support marginalized people.
So you all probably recall that earlier this summer, back
in June, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, ruling
that race can no longer play a part in college admissions. Notably,
(01:58):
the decision just applied to race. It did not apply
to gender or things like legacy status or donor status
being considered in the college admissions process. Separately, some colleges,
like Harvard have signaled that they might start re examining
the role that things like legacy status plays in college
admissions in light of that Supreme Court ruling. Do you
(02:19):
all remember this? I remember when the ruling was struck down.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
How big.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It felt, especially being a big Supreme Court ruling about
a year after the after Row was struck down. It
felt like, you know, one big torrent of rain and
then another big torrent of rain to continue your metaphor, Anie.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yes, metaphor nicely done.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yes, Yeah, No, it definitely did because that was at
the end of the Supreme Court session and there had
just been a lot of I mean, they turned out
to be true, but a lot of fear around like
what will they do?
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Right?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
It just made like all of these many decisions.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
In one day.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
In one day.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Yeah, you know, it's odd because I was absolutely alive,
and I think, like talking about trying to get into
school and having this whole conversation when I'm a firmative
action was coming into debate to begin with, and to
see it like this, I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna
be very transparent here as growing up in a white
household who are very conservative, not around any marginalized groups
(03:23):
outside of me who they rescued and put that in
air quotes out of like a marginalized a bad situation.
Seeing what they were saying was feded into me and
being like, yeah, I absolutely agreed that I should not
get I don't want to be given a special spot
because of my race.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I want to earn it.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
Like I said that out loud to my family before
I started college, in any of that, not understanding what
it really was. And I truly believe my parents believe that.
I don't think my siblings believe that because they're they
are educated and they'd understand, but I truly believe that
because that was what was fed into me.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
So I have this real, like ugh ick feeling.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
About this whole action because the face of the suit
was an Asian man who was bitter little baby that
I feel like so many ways about it, and then
coming into college on my own and then understanding what
it truly was and realizing, oh, yeah, that stuff that
I spewed out as a kid was actual white supremacy
(04:18):
coming out of my mouth because I was trying to
impress my white family and being fed a bunch of lies.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
So it was it felt like so gross.
Speaker 5 (04:28):
To know that I was manipulated like that at my
young age, At my young age, also that I think
I don't know how old the students. I guess he
was trying to get into college, so I guess maybe
around the same time and then coming into this now
that I'm like, oh my god, what have we done
essentially like with allowing these types of lies to perpetuate
and not looking at the true statistics behind these actual
(04:51):
numbers and why affirmative action was and is necessary. But again,
because of that rhetoric being around, it wasn't surprising that
it was undone because it was true hanging on by
a thread because of those types of lies.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
But yeah, I have like this.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Ache and like mourning and guilt, guilt by association and
guilt by like past actions that I'm like, oh my god,
what is this? Like part of what I was spewing
is part of the reason this is undone. Of course,
the bigger picture is again white supremacists and their power
that they wanted to play and the overall arcing like
(05:26):
oh who was doing the main grab and trying to
make sure that what a marginalized people stay down and
stay unable to get to any of these places because
they do not have the connections essentially just all connections,
not even money anymore so connections and it's just disgusting.
So yeah, I have very strong feelings.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, I first of all, thank you for sharing that,
and I can kind of identify, I know how you feel.
I don't think that you need to have guilt for
having felt that way, because, first of all, we live
in a society where it's so easy to pit marginalize
people against each other in service of upholding white supremacy.
(06:06):
Like that is a tried and true method that bad
actors and people interested in upholding white supremacy have engaged
for a very long time. And so the reason they
do it is because it's effective, and so it's not
surprising that it will be effective on you, a young person. Also,
the way that we talk about it, I think just
does not set people up to have a full understanding
(06:28):
of the conversation. Right, So we talk so much about
affirmative action, and when we talk about affirmative action, usually
the face of affirmative action is a black person, right,
And so we're talking about, like, oh, well, do you
think that black people should get a leg up in
admissions processes? Of course people are not gonna agree with that,
But the reality is is that that is a myth
because the Department of Labor shows that the primary beneficiaries
(06:52):
of affirmative action are actually white women. That is not
what the way that our the way that we talk
about it would lead you to believe, right. And so
another idea is that when we talk about admissions.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So I would say, this is just.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
My opinion, but I would say that there is an
outsized space given to conversations about affirmative action, which, as
I said, are sort of translated through like oh, black people,
that they're the face of it, and so much less
space given to things like legacy status, which I think
I had a stat earlier, but it's some astronomical amount
(07:28):
of kids in college get there because they are their
parents went to that college, or their parents are donors
to that college, or some sort of a leg up.
And essentially what that is is like affirmative action for
rich people. Yet we don't even it's not even part
of the conversation and certainly has not been part of
the conversation the way that affirmative action has been. So
(07:49):
I would argue that like you were not given a
clear picture of the issue in order to be able
to like thoughtfully come up with a critiqu or an
opinion about it, right, And I think that that has
to be by design.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
Right, Absolutely, I think in the understanding, as you are saying,
is that the rhetoric I was given was all anti black.
Like we're going to be very very specific in calling
it what it was. It wasn't about anything else. It
wasn't about me being a minority, or like being Asian
and a marginalized woman. Is literally they were trying to
be anti black.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
They were staying the.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Quiet part out loud because that's all they see. That's
the big enemy that is built up against white people,
which is so disgusting and it's very prevalent.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Like that's the real understanding. We you need to have.
Speaker 5 (08:37):
That whole fact and all that conversation is this is
an anti black movement, and in that it had, it
did not It did not actually help the black community
that much at all. It really did not bring in,
as you said, statistically black people into colleges. It was
again more white women, all white women essentially. And then
(08:59):
again the legacy, those are the people who are still
remaining and going to colleges and still getting scholarships to
get into these colleges, and still getting loans at a
reasonable interest rate, all of those things. But for some reason,
they built this boogieyman. Not some reason we know why,
but they built a boogieman in order to make sure
that they put down a specific group of people because
(09:20):
they're like, hey, this is a battle we can win.
We've always won with this fact.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Let's do this.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Anti blackness is always that is a train that's always
on time. So what's interesting about what you just said
is that white women, despite being the biggest beneficiaries of
affirmative action, are also the most likely to be against it. So,
according to a twenty fourteen Cooperative Congressional Election study, nearly
seventy percent of the twenty thousand, six hundred and ninety
four self identified non Hispanic white women surveyed either somewhat
(09:47):
or strongly opposed affirmative action. Again, I think it's like
one of those situations where because the way that it
is framed is like, this is a program that helps
black people, and if you don't think black people should
be getting a leg up over you, you should not
be into it, you should be against it. That rhetoric
actually ends up hurting all marginalized people, whether you're a
(10:09):
white woman, because you know, like it's one of those
dynamics where the anti blackness becomes a way to get
people on board, but then that is not an accurate
reflection of who the beneficiaries of programs like affirmative action
actually end up being.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So, Annie, you were saying how Asian Americans were kind
of made the face of the sort of victims of
affirmative action, and that is very much by design because
of this guy who is a conservative litigant named Edward Blum.
I call him a litigant because that's like kind of
what he is, like a professional lawsuit bringer. He is
(10:46):
not a lawyer himself, but he basically connects potential plaintiffs
with attorneys who are willing to represent them in test cases,
which he then uses to try to set legal presidents.
He is the founder and sole member of an organization
called Project on Fair Representation, which he found that in
two thousand and five, which focuses on voting, education, contracting, employment,
(11:07):
racial quotas, and racial reparations. Basically, his whole thing is
bringing legal challenges to strike down laws that I would
argue protect non white, non straight, non men.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
More on this later. However, if you were to ask him,
he would.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Probably say that it's not that he wants to elevate
like one race over anybody else, but that he wants
all laws and all like public considerations to be race
or identity neutral. He has described his ethos like this quote,
our history has been tainted tragically by the use of
race in various public and private arenas. Race discrimination is odious,
(11:44):
something the founding principles of the Civil rights movement were
designed to eliminate. Personally, I would say that I don't
know if I buy what he is saying. It seems
like an awfully convenient way to justify the fact that
he keeps gutting laws that protect marginalized people. But there
you have it. That is what he says. His motivation is.
He just thinks that everything should be race neutral, right.
(12:06):
The Guardian describes him as quote a human wrecking ball
on a mission to destroy the landmark achievements of the
Civil rights era and send the country back to a
dark age of discrimination and harassment of minorities in the
workplace and higher education and at the ballot box.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Well, I mean, this is the very basis of hitting
that level of if everything was fair from the beginning,
great Great, if everything was equal and everybody had the
same equity, that would be a beautiful utopia. But as
we know, this land, this country, most countries that have
been colonized, is not based on that level, and that
(12:45):
it has never been about equity, has always been about
who has power and those who have power. Really was like,
but I love that time. That was a great time.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Okay, we have that.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Again, which is like, hmm, you know, we know what
you're really saying exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
The affirmative action ruling was not Blum's first rodeo. A
legal challenge that he brought was what led to the
gutting of the Voting Rights Act. That was the Shelby
County Versus Holder case that he sponsored in twenty thirteen,
and it led to the Supreme Court overturning a key
provision in the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act. That
legal challenge is when we saw the introduction of things
like voter ID requirements, cutting back on early voting, eliminating
(13:34):
same day voter registration.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
All of that was because of him.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
So thank you Edward Blum for ushering that into our landscape.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He's really the villain, yea.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
In all the story on my podcast, there are no
girls on the Internet. We've referred to him a lot
as just like a professional hater like he is just
someone who like just.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Like hate hate hay hate hate like go. I don't
like that hate hate hate like professional hater does.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
He is he very rich?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I think he's wealthy, like I think I think that he.
I've actually looked into him because I'm He's one of
those figures.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That I find so curious.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
He did not come from wealth, but I think that
he has wealth now and he's just interested in using
that wealth and influencing those connections into creating these different
legal precedents that I would say harm us.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
All right, he's that evil genius because we've seen that
in a lot of conservative think tanks as well as
essentially right wing groups that have been building up the
legal system to only help them, putting in uh those
in law school that they know that they can pull
back out and educating them and funding them to the
full in order to come back out and do these
(14:44):
types of cases, knowing that if they can do this,
this is going to be the basis of how they win.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh yes, Like, did you guys, did you all see
that docuseries on the Duggers on Hulu? No?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I couldn't get to their yet, so that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's a real like jeeze, as you might imagine. But sure,
one of the things they make very clear is that
it's not just about like this one problematic super religious
family on TV. It is about this vast network of
young people who are being like trained and educated and
ursol are very well connected to reach the highest levels
(15:24):
of government and influence to make laws for all of us.
So it's not enough that like their kids are homeschooled
or that their kids live a certain way. They are
training the next generation of political operatives and lawmakers to
make sure that all of us and all of our
kids live the way that they think that they should
be living. So it's pretty, I guess some diabolical.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
It's the word I would use.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
You mentioned earlier, how when you were having conversations about college,
you remember watching the first wave of the affirmative action
legal challenge go down. And even if folks weren't following
affirmative action very closely, they might remember Blum's earlier attempt
to challenge it. So Blum had been working to challenge
affirmative action since twenty thirteen, when he worked with this woman,
(16:11):
Abigail Fisher, who was the daughter of a good friend
of his who was a white woman. She you might
umber shid red hair. She did not get into University
of Texas because her GPA was frankly mid. She sued
the University of Texas at Austin in two thousand and
eight after it denied her admission. She had a three
point five to nine GPA as a senior, which put
her just below the cutoff for a state law requiring
(16:36):
UT to accept any graduate in the top ten percent
of their high school class. So like mathematically speaking, she
was not in the top ten percent of her high
school class. She felt that she should have still gotten
admission because of her extracurricular activities combined with her GPA,
and that she would have gotten into UT if the
university had not used race as a factor in selecting
(16:58):
its freshman class, which she argued was a violation of
the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Do you all remember this? Like she was like a
very like memorable.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Figure, Like I feel like when I when I hear
about this, I can see this one image of her
standing at a podium outside of the Supreme Court, which
is like burned in my mind.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
I do remember this because I remember thinking, this is
the dumbest argument I've ever seen, because I'm like, girl,
you didn't make it, Like even without a firmative action,
you wouldn't have you wouldn't have made it. Do you
not understand how many people are struggling to get into
college today because a little more access has happened, not
just because of a firmative action, but like the lottery
(17:38):
and all of those things when we had more scholarships.
I was just like, why are people listening to her?
I think that was the biggest question in my head.
I was like, why are we paying attention to this?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Like she has no case, I think I thought.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
I remember thinking like is this an onion headbline? Like
she didn't get just the grades are bad and now she's.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
I think that was the begin of like, oh, this
is a Becky sorry Becky's in the world. That's really
just whining because she couldn't get.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Her away like that. I remember like that was the.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Beginning of that of like, oh, sorority girl was again
no no, no, no, hay to sorority people. I'm so sorry,
but you know that level like stereotype in that my
daddy said that I could get in, and now I'm
not in.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Why so the way that y'all are reacting is exactly
how I'm This is validating because I remember her being
treated like kind of a joke, like her GP was
like fine, but certainly at three point like it's a
lot higher than my GPA was when I was in
high school.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So like, I'll own that, but like you know, it's not.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Three point five nine is not an automatic entrance to
wherever you want to go to college.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
It's like a fine GPA.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
And so I remember people calling her becky with the
bad grades, and the vibe around her was like she
was just salty that she didn't get in, and so
she was like blaming black people. And so obviously she
was not a very I guess sympathetic legal challenge to
affirmative action. So obviously Abigail's legal challenge did not work.
(19:02):
So Bum regrouped and made the strategic choice to make
the face of affirmative action or the people being harmed
by affirmative action, according to him, Asian Americans. According to
an NPR article he told a gathering of the Houston
Chinese Alliance in twenty fifteen, quote, I needed plaintiffs.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I needed Asian plaintiffs.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
NPR spoke to Hannay Lopez, a race and constitutional law
scholar at Berkeley, who described this as a deliberate switch
in strategy and that the argument was no longer centered
on how affirmative action impacts white people. Instead, quote, there's
this move to strengthen the surface argument that this is
racism against minorities.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I think it's part of the appeal.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
And so I've read like Asian American activists and advocates
saying that, like what he was doing was this intentional
shift to make Asian Americans like a proxy stand in
for white people to be like, oh no, like this
can't be about racial animis because I am trying to
add vocate for Asian Americans. And again, I think it's
(20:02):
a really great example of how effective a strategy it
is to pit marginalized groups against one another in service
of white supremacy. Because in the end, it's not like
I think, since affirmative action has been struck down, we've
already seen data trickle in that wasn't that long ago,
but already we've seen data trickle in that suggests that like, yeah,
(20:24):
it's it's white people with connections. It's white legacy students
who are continuing to get more slots in admissions. It's
not you know, it's certainly not helping the Asian Americans
who were who brought this challenge. It's actually just opening
up more slots for more rich white people, because that's
how college works in the United States, right.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
And of course it's play is being used by other
places such as Florida do doing the Asian American history
in set but blacklisting African American history. And we know
what that place is that that's the same type of narrative.
They're like, oh, this is working, Let's try this, let's
keep this going exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So, I really wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
So, after on the heels of successfully getting the Supreme
Court to strike down affirmative Action, what is Blum's next move? Well,
he is back after gutting affirmative Action. His next move
is going after fellowships and grant programs that support marginalized people.
He is suing two corporate law firms on the grounds
that they're fellowship programs that are aimed at students of color,
(21:29):
those who identify as LGBTQ plus, and students with disabilities
exclude applicants based on race, and he is demanding that
those programs be shut down. He is also suing a
black venture capital firm called the Fearless Fund. So this
is kind of the meat of why I wanted to
bring this conversation to the table today, because he is
(21:50):
alleging that the Fearless Fund is practicing unlawful racial discrimination.
Blum claims the Fearless Fund is engaged in explicit racial
exclusion by operating a grant program quote only open to
black females. According to The Washington Post, the lawsuit is
asked to prevent the Fund from selecting its next round
of grant winners. The claim states that the firm is
(22:10):
quote violating Section nineteen eighty one of the Civil Rights
Act of eighteen sixty six, a US law barring racial
bias in private contracts, by making only black women eligible
in the grant competition. So yeah, he's just like coming
after anything.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
That he sees as supporting non white people.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
The Fearless fun was launched in twenty nineteen by three
prominent black women. Keisha Knight Pullman, who you might remember
as Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show, entrepreneur arian Simone
and corporate executive Ayana Parsons. They have a strong and
impressive list of investors like Bank of America, Costco, General Mills, MasterCard,
JP Morgan. They've invested in over forty businesses in the
(22:53):
past four years, including Atlanta favorite The Slutty Vegan.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Have y'all eaten there?
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah, it was near my house, so I lived.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, Samantha, I was smart and went during the Super Bowl,
so there was no one there.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
So they stay open till two am.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
And so when the Super Bowl lots because it's always
packed out, and we went at it still took forever.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
They made good food. It takes a while, but yeah,
we would. I think there only been once though I
don't stand in lines.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
It was a long line.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I've never been, but I.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
And she has expanded that business everywhere, especially in Atlanta
and then Georgia.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
So good on her and owns a lot of property.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
That wouldn't be possible without the Fearless Fund And so
the lawsuit that Blum is bringing centers on the Fearless
Funds Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards black women who
own a small businesses twenty thousand dollars in grants and
digital tools to help them grow their businesses and mentorship opportunities.
So interestingly enough, Blama did not seek out the Fearless
(23:57):
fund to sue, but rather, he says that a non
black woman who runs a business reached out to him
via email and flagged like, did you know that these
black women are running a grant program that I can't
be part of?
Speaker 2 (24:09):
And so the Washington.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Post reports, but the lawsuit sites three female business owners,
one from New York and two from Virginia who argued
that they could have benefited from the Fearless Funds grant program,
but they were ineligible because they are not black. So yeah,
these non black women basically just felt like they should
be entitled to this grant program that black women established
(24:34):
for themselves to support black women.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
They were like, we should have a piece of that.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
That's such an interesting take because I'm like, well, you
also didn't get it from every other business grant ever,
so why are you choosing this like you.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Want did you try for it?
Speaker 5 (24:52):
This just seems like a lazy part of like I
want this one thing, I couldn't get it.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
I quit They're biased, like.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, I mean, this is just my opinion, but like
it's so hard to not see this as like just
hater vibes, like everything has to be for you, and
if it's not for you, you have to shut it down.
I think it goes back to what we were saying
earlier about the women who benefit from affirmative action are
(25:19):
also the ones who are the most likely to be
against it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I firmly believe that there is enough.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Out there for all of us. And I'm an entrepreneur, right,
so I know how hard the funding spaces for women,
all women, but I know how hard it is for
black women, in particular as a black woman.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
We'll get into some of the stats and just a moment, but.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
I believe that despite that, there is enough for everyone.
Everyone will find their lane, everyone will find their people,
Everyone will find what they need to make what they
want happen. I believe that as like a like a
meditation that keeps me in this work and keeps me
being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
But I feel like the dynamic that.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Says that women need to be pit against each other,
that if you're a white woman, you need to be
trying to shut down a grant that is for black women.
That's not a dynamic that helps anybody, right, And so
I think that we all have.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Our place, we all have our niche urs, and that
for all of us.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
But that dynamic that we are enemies only serve that
does not serve anybody. It doesn't serve me, it doesn't
serve it. It ultimately won't serve them as either. It
just keeps us pit against each other as opposed to
these larger systems that are actually holding us all down.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
It's such a mind blade that they have to people
have to go through to be like, Okay, I can't
get this one thing because they say I can't have it,
so that means no one should have it, because I'm
gonna be miserable, and so are you. Misery List company,
We're going to keep this mentality going and then also
not look at the like, here's the small thing versus
the giant amount of stuff that you also can't give
because you're not a rich white man, but you don't
(26:56):
care about that thing, Like that's the one thing that's
a little bit more accessible to tear someone down who
other people will help you tear down with instead of
this big, giant amount of cash that's just sitting here
for the white man, Like it's just I said for
the white man, like I'm a native, but like that,
you know, that's just like mind level of like how
much you're willing to ignore to be like, Okay, I'm
(27:18):
at the bottom. Who can I make lesser than me?
Who can I push down further than me? So at
the very least I'm not at the very bottom. Oh
my god, it's such a mind trick.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
This reminds me of when I was a little kid
and my brother had this like free coupon for an
ice cream from McDonald's that he got from school. So
he went to McDonald's together and he got one ice
cream and I didn't have any money because we were
little kids, and so they gave him his ice cream
and I got very jealous, and so I smacked it
out of his hand onto the ground, and.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
He was like, I was gonna give you a bite.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
That's like, because I was like, I don't want him
to get something that I can't have.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
It really got a flattering.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Story, but I was like seven years old, right, It's
like he was.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Gonna give me a bite.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
So I missed out on getting my bite because I
could not just let him have something that I wanted
and felt entitled.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
To you immediately and probably earned. I'm thinking of an
accelerated reader.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
What it was like.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was like a if you read X amount of books,
you get an ice an ice cream coupon or something.
Speaker 5 (28:17):
I weren't for this, but yeah, I think this is
so interesting. And the fact that he, of course Blum
had to pounce on this, I'm sure it was like
a gift for him.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, I must take this.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
He was like, ooh, I was looking for a way
to spread my hater vibes and yeah, sure that Supreme
Court ruling and now this lands.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
This gift, lands in my inbox.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
And also makes me stronger, stronger than the woman who's complaining.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Exactly, So Blum is using what he has called quote
the shoe on the other foot test. The rhetorical strategy
that he asked himself is if a grant program funded
(28:59):
white male business owners, would it be considered fair. But
that test, like you were saying, Sam, really assumes that
we are all equal and all have equal access, which
the data could not paint a clearer picture about the
fact that that is not happening. Black women are the
fastest rising group of entrepreneurs in the country. According to
the Harvard Business Review, in the US, an astounding seventeen
(29:22):
percent of Black women are in the process of starting
or running a new business. That's compared to just ten
percent of white women and fifteen percent of white men. Yet,
despite this lead, only three percent of women are running
mature businesses. Why well, One big reason is access to capital.
Harvard Business Reviews research found that sixty one percent of
Black women self fund their total startup capital. This is
(29:43):
in spite of the fact that, in their finding, only
twenty nine percent of Black women entrepreneurs live in households
with incomes over seventy five thousand dollars, compared to fifty
two percent of white men. This data is also combined
with data suggesting that Black women are less likely to
own our own homesick on a higher level of debt
to do things like go to college, and are often
like saddled with debt to go to college right, and
(30:06):
so ultimately that leaves us saddled with more debt and
having fewer personal resources and low collateral. Black entrepreneurs typically
receive less than two percent of all venture capital dollars
each year while companies led by black women receive less
than one percent of all funding. This is according to Crunchbase.
(30:26):
So yeah, the funding landscape is not great for black women.
Less than one percent of funding goes to us.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
And so the fact that we already.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Don't get that much, that there are grants and investment
funds specifically aimed at shifting those numbers just a tiny bit,
like the Fearless Fund, and that people are saying, no,
we need to go for that too, that less than
one percent that goes to y'all that needs to go
to us. Now, in twenty twenty, Pew found that just
three percent of US businesses were black owned, eighty six
(31:00):
percent were white owned. And so, yeah, as I said, like,
as an entrepreneur, these kind of dismal numbers completely aligned
with my own experiences trying to raise money for projects
that I want to do.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
There's just not a lot out there, and you really
have to.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Stay focused and stay positive and not really let the
sort of numbers around how dismal things can be kind.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Of get in your head.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
But then on top of it, when you have people
like Blum and these women that he's representing in this
case to challenge these funds to challenge what little is
out there for black entrepreneurs who are women. It's hard
to internalize that as anything other than they don't want
us here.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
They don't want us to have anything, you know.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Yeah, absolutely, And it's so frustrating too, because a lot
of companies like to act like they are supporting marginalized people,
they are supporting black people, and they make these like
outward promises and then just don't really follow through with them.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, y'all might remember or be thinking like I got
in twenty twenty, like, after all the racial justice uprisings
on the wake of the murder of George Floyd. I
thought that all these businesses and funds and grants were
like going to start funding more diverse people and like
having a more inclusive portfolio.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
While I remember all those promises too.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Businesses committed three hundred and forty billion dollars between May
twenty twenty and October twenty twenty two, according to McKenzie,
and The Post also reports that investments swelled in the
startup world. A record five point one billion dollars in
funding was allocated to black founded startups in twenty twenty one.
That sounds like a lot. However, all of that interest
(32:49):
and excitement and commitment pretty much eroded very quickly, with
funding for black founded startups plunging fifty percent in twenty
twenty two. So remember this is all happening against the
pendulum kind of swinging back the other way where all
of these corporate diversity efforts became a political lightning rod,
and these employers just sort of backpedaled, right, And so
(33:11):
I think that that's where we're at now, where in
twenty twenty people talk to a lot of big games
about money they were going to give and funds they
were going to give, and how they were gonna, you know,
support inclusive people and startups and YadA, YadA, YadA, and
all of those promises just fizzled out, right, And I
think that we're sort of seeing I would argue, like
a backlash to that now, where diversity and inclusion staffers
(33:34):
are being let go. I think like recently Chick fil
A just like happened to have a diversity and inclusion
person on their staff, and like there was a flurry
of like online protests because of that, Like just having
somebody thinking about that on staff is now a lightning rod.
And so Obviously, in that kind of climate, these organizations
(33:55):
are not going to be funding black women even though
they canmitted to it. Even though it seemed like that
was there was a lot of excitement around that, Like Yeah,
I just think that we're in a completely different landscape
than we were in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
I mean, this is definitely that whole level of they
want good publicity, but they're not going to follow through.
It's the black square. Let me pretend like I care,
and at the very least I'll be like, hey, let's
tell the black people in the story like that's That's
as far as their their actual actions went was putting
something on Instagram that they obviously deleted soon after because
(34:29):
they wanted to look okay for one group of people.
And I found that interesting that people are mad at
Chick fil A because it's like they're anti LGBTQ plus.
So that's not enough for you. They need to be racist,
like all of these things in Lune enough for us
to support you. You better be super super racist and
super super homophobic in order for the conservatives. You can
hate everyone except for white as people. Yeah, if not,
(34:52):
we're not going to support you, even if your chicken
is okay.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
So it and like this is a little like unrelated,
but like I think that with a lot of these people,
the Chick fil A example that you just gave is
a great example. A lot of these people like just
they'll find anything to be aggrieved about. Like you know,
I saw like Cracker Barrel was adding plant based sausage
to their menu, and people were like, plant based sausage.
(35:18):
I'm not gonna shop at Cracker Barrel and I'm never
gonna go to Cracker Barrel again. And it's like they're
not taking regular sausage off the menu.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
You don't have to order it.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Just because they're putting food on the menu that like
someone else might like, that's not you, that's cause for upset.
And so another thing I wanted to say about your point, Sam,
is that there's a makeup company, Tart, they got in
hot Water earlier this year because they were doing these
brand trips that looked as if they were not being
(35:45):
inclusive of black influencers. That they were asking black influencers
like after the fact to come and like giving them
substandard accommodations and all of that, and somebody found that
in twenty twenty, you know, they when they posted their
black square, this company was like, we pledge that we're
going to be more inclusive and give more, do more
partnerships with black and brown models, and blah blah blah.
(36:07):
And then they quietly removed that from their website, but
somebody found it on the wayback machine. It was like, oh,
let's get update on all of these like very specific
commitments that you made. And it turns out that they
basically just like didn't do any of that stuff. But
the thing is, nobody put a gun to your head
and forced you to make these commitments. You made these
(36:29):
commitments and just to quietly be like mm just kidding,
Like that doesn't sit right with me, Like, nobody told
you to do this. Nobody told you to post a
black square. You did it, You volunteered to do it.
So when people expect a little follow through, that should
be that should be a given.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Yeah, And I I think about this a lot too.
We talked about this with a lot of the like
what happened with blud Light, what happened with Target, and
you know, then they just backtrack and make everyone angry.
But is I feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding of
in this case, what it's like to be a transperson,
(37:07):
and then when they get like a little taste of
that the company, it's like, oh my god, oh never mind,
Like they can't even just for that one second, like
if they get this online hate that the cause, the person,
the community they're saying they support gets, they get it,
and then they're like, never mind, Actually, can they have
(37:29):
that privilege that rite, that ability to step out and
be like, Okay, I don't want to deal with this anymore,
which I think is just very telling of ignorance and
just like a oh, sure, let's do this, and then
they get that hate and they're like, oh, oh never mind.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Backtracking the Dylan mulvaney thing that you just mentioned, the
thing that I will never be over is that Dylan mulvany,
when she left social media at the height of all
of this and came back and made that video, said
that nobody at bud Light even called her to be like, hey,
are you all right? Like I'm seeing what's going on.
(38:12):
I that is something that will stick with me forever.
That this brand, because she said, happened to say yes
when asked to do a brand collaboration with bud Light.
She was had to go dark, had to probably go
into hiding, like was the target of very severe attacks,
and that bud Light, the company who came to her
(38:35):
to bring her into this, couldn't even follow up with
an email when they saw all of this happening, how
quickly they abandoned her.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And I feel like, if you are a brand or.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
An institution who was working with marginalized people, if you're
not going to stand by them when this stuff kind
of stuff happens and when they get into situations that
really like you have put them in. But by offering
them this, you know, these partnerships, that's just not how
you engage people like that.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Like, at a certain point.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's like I understand that bud Light is a corporation,
and I don't expect corporations to like care about any
of us, certainly not marginalized people. But the people who
run bud Lights marketing or INFLUENCERIR partnerships should really be
taking a good, hard look in the mirror, because that's
just like a failure of like how to be a
(39:24):
human to each other.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Like, I like that just sticks with me.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
I could not believe that she said that that nobody
even ever reached out to her after they just like
dropped her and never ever followed up again.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Yeah, and that's going back to your point. You know,
companies are not big companies, especially not are not allies,
and we shouldn't think of them that way.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
But they.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
If they post to the black square, if they take
these stands, if they say they're going to do something,
then yeah, they should absolutely be held accountable. That's just
away and causing real harm. We were telling you a
story before we started this out of nowhere. Someone bought
that up and like making these things so politicized that
(40:13):
just to have a diversity inclusion person at your company
becomes oh well, then hate like all of this hate,
like you keep saying, it's irresponsible and it's not taking
into account like the reality of working with these groups.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah. I think that's ultimately what these people want.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
I think that they want just working with a trans
woman to be a lightning rod. She's not saying anything untoward,
she's not doing anything untoward, she just is because her
existence is a lightning rod.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Her existence is politicized.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
I think just having a DEI person, just providing a
grant for black women, they want that to be toxic.
They want people to know that if you do that,
you might be in coren you might you know, be
targeted for a hate campaign. And so to just make
it not something that anybody would want to risk. And
(41:09):
these companies are so spineless that they're going along with it.
It is that they're being held hostage, and they're just like, okay, well,
they don't want us to have the chicken sausage. They
don't want anybody who doesn't eat sausage to be fed
at our restaurants.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
So okay, we'll drop.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Actually, Cracker Barrel did stand by their sausage choices.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
I will say that.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
But yeah, it's like I have been surprised by how
these big, huge corporations just cowtow to people who are
not serious, people who are just interested in flexing.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Their power, their political power for no real reason.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
I mean absolutely, we see all of these things actually
hurting people. They don't even want to be the face
of anything. They just want to exist. Funds like Fearless
fund is to exist and to help and lift up
people that they know need lifting up. The same thing
with Target when they had the small businesses, with the
(42:03):
LGBTQ queer content and then taking them off the shelf,
like we were just existing and feeling like we wanted
to be the representation that no one else is willing
to look at or see or stand behind. And you
literally came after them, taking away their money, taking away
their existence, causing harm because again the mulvany thing, she
(42:25):
was just holding a beer. She said, I like bud Light, simple,
why can't she choose to do that? And that ended
up being a thing of like, well, she is hurting
the beer industry and she is doing these things. No,
she's just existing with a product that they sent her.
They're not like giving her fifty percent of the shares.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Of bud Light. Like that's what is happening. Like this
whole level of like what people.
Speaker 5 (42:49):
Are having to do and they're having to come back
and being like, instead of existing, we have to fight
for our place to exist, and that's such an absurd ideal,
like the fact that this has to be done.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
So this is what Tony Morrison says about racism, and
I think it fits to all of what you're saying.
The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction.
It keeps you from doing your work, it keeps you
explaining over and over again your reason for being. Somebody
says you have no language, and you spend twenty years
trying to prove that you do. Somebody says your head
isn't shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the
(43:31):
fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art,
so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdom,
so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary.
There will always be one more thing. So, like that
quote really speaks to what I think is happening. You know,
the Fearless Fund, the stats that I just read about
black women entrepreneurs and how little of the funding we get.
(43:51):
It shows that the women who are running the Fearless Fund,
they have work to do.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
They have serious work to do to right.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
The wrong and to bake a little more equity into
the funding landscape. So they don't really have time to
play around with these legal challenges. But yet here they
are having to spend their money money that could go
to the funding landscape, staffing up a legal team, holding
press conferences, all of this.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
It is such a distraction.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
At a time when marginalized people have real work to
be doing.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Fearless fun is fighting back. They have a.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Beefy legal team including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Gibson Dunn, Crutcher,
and Ben Crump, the attorney who represented families of George
Floyd and Tyree Nichols in their civil suits over the
men's killing up the hands of the police. And I
feel confident like these women are like bad as women,
They are not going down without a fight.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
But also they shouldn't have to write like they should
be able to.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Just do their work and focus on that work, and
they should not have to be spending their money on
these bogus legal challenges just because they want to exist,
just because they want to support other black women.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
And I find that again we're in this situation that
black women are the ones that have to be the
ones to fight, like they don't want to, they're tired,
they've been doing this, and now we're back again because
we know there's a lot and I know there's a
lot of fun specifically to women, like point blank women,
and they surely didn't have to go after them. And
I bet they were denied some of those and they're
(45:22):
probably better at that. But yet if they didn't, that
seems silly and that seems very targeted. Yeah, so that's
very telling. Uh, but like it again, it has to
be the black women that has to put up this
fight in order to get anything done.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I mean tail as old as time, right, and I
think right. I'm worried about this for a couple of reasons.
One is that I think that if these grants and
funds that specifically are meant to boost black women entrepreneurs
are deemed unconstitutional, I really don't know what the landscape
is going to look like because, as I said, like already,
so little of that funding goes to us in.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
The first place. But further, one of the reasons I.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Wanted to talk about it on the show today is
that I don't think it's getting near the same amount
of traction and attention that Blum's affirmative action challenges did.
And I really think that we need to see white
male and white women and really everybody in the startup space.
We need to see vcs and entrepreneurs speaking up about this,
(46:21):
because Blum is essentially arguing that the startup space should
basically just be for white people, and I think it's
up to everybody in the space to push back and
say like that is not the kind of funding space
that we want. That is not the kind of startup
space that we want. And to really make that really clear,
like what kind of a space do we want to
have for the next generation of entrepreneurs. We want to
(46:42):
tell them that the tiny little bit that they that
might go to them isn't even for them anymore.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
I don't I don't think that's the space that.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
We want right and absolutely in the same space again,
this is going to hurt white women as well and
the like. If we're saying that all of this is
to specific and it leads out other people of race,
it's gonna hrt gender as well.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
So this is not even just for white people. It's
gonna be for white men.
Speaker 5 (47:08):
We're gonna have more elon musks running running programs into
the ground.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
That's what we're gonna been thousand percent.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
And I mean kind of like what you were alluding
to before time and time again in tech, particularly when
black women challenge things or do things or start things,
they uplift all women. And so even if that specific
program is for black women owned businesses, you're gonna tell
(47:34):
me that a black woman who is financially supported is
not going to go on to do something that's going
to lift up all women and all marginalized people. Time
and time again we see that that's how it goes
with black women, and so yeah, I just think that
this is just this is me smacking that ice cream
out of my brother's hand when I could have gotten
a buy it instead. I really want to see more
folks in the space speaking up about this because what
(47:55):
the Fearless Fund has done has been really great, and
it's they're really like a good force in the space,
and I think the day we need them, frankly, we
need them.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
We do.
Speaker 5 (48:07):
And it's it's a drop in the bucket. Let's just
be real honest, like it's it's nothing in comparison to.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
What other people get.
Speaker 5 (48:14):
Essentially, it is like, wow, you really are going after
the little groups for nothing, just just to make a
point and obviously to keep that little bit, as you
are saying, in your pocket, instead of seeing what this is.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Actually could do for the entire humanity. Humanity is lost.
Speaker 6 (48:30):
I'm sorry what Yeah, yeah, And I mean this is
very important too because obviously professional litigant blom here like
it's going to keep trying and if this succeeds, then
it's going to make things worse for everyone except for
certain people, and then easier for him to win.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
The next thing and the next thing.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
So yes, this is really really important, and thank you,
as always Bridget for bringing it to us.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Oh, thank you for having me. Everyone who is listening
should go out and buy stuff. I've never told you
the book.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
I just bought it. Let's read it together.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
Yes, yes, we're hoping to do a little crossover. We'll
get to go on your show.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Oh I'm so excited. But in the meantime, Bridget, where
can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 2 (49:22):
You can listen to my podcast. There are no girls
on the internet.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
You can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie and
DC or on Twitter at Bridget Marie. And you can
find me on TikTok at Bridget makes Podcasts.
Speaker 4 (49:31):
Yes, and we really do. You appreciate your support with
the book. We love it so much. Thank you, Thank
you having you.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
On as always.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
Feeling is so mutual, So listeners, if you would like
to contact us, you can our emails Stephania mom Stuff
at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram, at TikTok at
stuff I Never told you. We have a tea.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Public store and well yeah we have a book. We
can get it.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
Stuff we should read books dot com. Thanks that's always
to our super producer Christina, executive producer Maya, and our
contributor Joey.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Thank you and.
Speaker 4 (50:04):
Thanks to you for listening. Stefan Never Told You is
projection of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
For a podcasts from my heart Radio.
Speaker 4 (50:08):
You can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast
or if you listen to your favorite shows
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