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