Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm bridgetad and this is
Speaker 1: there Are No Girls on the Internet. Fearless Fund is
Speaker 1: a black woman led venture capital firm that offers investment,
Speaker 1: financial support, and mentorship to black women owned businesses. But
Speaker 1: they're under attack for providing this support for traditionally marginalized
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs because Edward Blum, the professional hangar at the heart
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court's legal challenge against affirmative Action, is
Speaker 1: suing them for what he says is racial discrimination. Now,
Speaker 1: this could set a precedent that completely changes the landscape
Speaker 1: for entrepreneurs. And there are so many different podcasts and
Speaker 1: influencers who talk about tech and startups and entrepreneurship. It's
Speaker 1: a really credit spase. But if I'm being honest, I
Speaker 1: haven't really seen a ton of folks talking about this
Speaker 1: hugely important case. Everyone in entrepreneurship should be talking about this,
Speaker 1: not just black women, all of us because it could
Speaker 1: impact all of us. I joined my friends Samantha and
Speaker 1: Annie at the podcast Stuff's Mom Never told you to
Speaker 1: explain what I mean? And stay tuned because we'll be
Speaker 1: hearing from some of the folks at the center of
Speaker 1: this case. Later this season, the man who brought us
Speaker 1: the legal challenge that struck down affirmative action earlier this
Speaker 1: summer is back, and this time he is coming for
Speaker 1: grants and the fellowships that support marginalized people. So you
Speaker 1: all probably recall that earlier this summer, back in June,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, ruling that race
Speaker 1: can no longer play a part in college admissions.
Speaker 2: Notably, the decision just applied to race.
Speaker 1: It did not apply to gender or things like legacy
Speaker 1: status or donor status being considered in the college admissions process. Separately,
Speaker 1: some colleges, like Harvard have signaled that they might start
Speaker 1: reexamining the role that things like legacy status plays in
Speaker 1: college admissions in light of that Supreme Court ruling.
Speaker 2: Do you all remember this?
Speaker 1: I remember when the ruling was struck down, 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.
Speaker 2: To continue your metaphor.
Speaker 3: Anie, Yes, good 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, it turned out
Speaker 4: to be true, but a lot of fear around like
Speaker 4: what will they do?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It just made like all.
Speaker 4: Of these decisions in one day.
Speaker 3: In one day. Yeah, you know, it's odd because I
Speaker 3: was absolutely alive, and I think, like talking about trying
Speaker 3: to get into school and having this whole conversation when
Speaker 3: I'm a firmative action was coming into debate to begin with,
Speaker 3: and to see it like this, I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be very transparent here as growing up in
Speaker 3: a white household who are very conservative, not around any
Speaker 3: marginalized groups outside of me who they rescued and put
Speaker 3: that in air quotes out of like a marginalized a
Speaker 3: bad situation. Seeing what they were saying was feded into
Speaker 3: me and being like, yeah, I absolutely agree that I
Speaker 3: should not get I don't want to be given a
Speaker 3: special spot because of my race. I want to earn it.
Speaker 3: Like I said that out loud to my family before
Speaker 3: I started college, in any of that, not understanding what
Speaker 3: it really was. And I truly believe my parents believe
Speaker 3: that I don't think my siblings believe that because they're
Speaker 3: they are educated and they'd understand. But I truly believe
Speaker 3: that because that was what was fed into me. So
Speaker 3: I have this real, like ugh itck feeling about this
Speaker 3: whole action because the face of the suit was an
Speaker 3: Asian man who was bitter, bitter little baby that I
Speaker 3: feel like so many ways about it, and then coming
Speaker 3: into college on my own and then understanding what it
Speaker 3: truly was and realizing, oh, yeah, that stuff that I
Speaker 3: spewed out as a kid was actual white supremacy coming
Speaker 3: out of my mouth because I was trying to impress
Speaker 3: my white family and being fed a bunch of lies.
Speaker 3: So it was it felt like so gross to know
Speaker 3: that I was manipulated like that at my young age,
Speaker 3: at my young age. Also that I think, I don't
Speaker 3: know how old this student is. I guess he was
Speaker 3: trying to get into college, so I guess maybe around
Speaker 3: the same time. And then coming into this now that
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh my god, what have we done, essentially
Speaker 3: like with allowing these types of lies to perpetuate and
Speaker 3: not looking at the true statistics behind these actual numbers
Speaker 3: and why affirmative action was and is necessary. But again,
Speaker 3: because of that rhetoric being around, it wasn't surprising that
Speaker 3: it was undone because it was truly hanging on by
Speaker 3: a thread because of those types of lies. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I have like this ache and like mourning in guilt,
Speaker 3: guilt by association and guilt by like past actions that
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh my god, what is this? Like part
Speaker 3: of what I was spewing is part of the reason
Speaker 3: this is undone. Of course, the bigger picture is again
Speaker 3: white supremacists and their power that they wanted to play
Speaker 3: and the overall arcing like who was doing the main
Speaker 3: grab and trying to make sure that what marginalized people
Speaker 3: stay down and stay unable to get to any of
Speaker 3: these places because they do not have the connections essentially
Speaker 3: just all connections, not even money anymore, but connections, And
Speaker 3: it's just disgusting. 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.
Speaker 2: 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 engaged for
Speaker 1: a very long time. And so the reason they do
Speaker 1: it is because it's effective, and so it's not surprising
Speaker 1: 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 are, 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, so
Speaker 1: I would say this is just my opinion, but I
Speaker 1: would say that there is an outsized space given to
Speaker 1: conversations about affirmative action, which, as I said, are sort
Speaker 1: of translated through like oh black people that go the
Speaker 1: face of it, and so much less space given to
Speaker 1: things like legacy status, which I think I had a
Speaker 1: stat earlier, But it's some astronomical amount of kids in
Speaker 1: college get there because they are their parents went to
Speaker 1: that college, or their parents are donors to that college,
Speaker 1: or some sort of a leg up. And essentially what
Speaker 1: that is is like affirmative action for rich people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't even it's not even part of the conversation
Speaker 1: and certainly has not been part of the conversation the
Speaker 1: way that affirmative action has been. So I would argue that, like,
Speaker 1: you were not given a clear picture of the issue
Speaker 1: in order to be able to like thoughtfully come up
Speaker 1: with a critique or an opinion about it, right, And
Speaker 1: I think that that has to be by design.
Speaker 3: Right absolutely. I think in the understanding, as you were saying,
Speaker 3: is the rhetoric I was given was all anti black.
Speaker 3: Like we're going to be very very specific and call
Speaker 3: it what it was. It wasn't about anything else. It
Speaker 3: wasn't about me being a minority or like being Asian
Speaker 3: and a marginalized woman is literally they were trying to
Speaker 3: be anti black. They were staying the quiet part out
Speaker 3: loud because that's all they see. That's the big enemy
Speaker 3: that is built up against white people, which is so
Speaker 3: disgusting and it's very prevalent. Like that's the real understanding.
Speaker 3: You need to have that whole fact and hold that
Speaker 3: conversation is this is an anti black movement, and in
Speaker 3: that it did not it did not actually help the
Speaker 3: black community that much at all. It really did not
Speaker 3: bring in, as you said, statistically black people into colleges.
Speaker 3: It was again more white women, all white women essentially.
Speaker 3: And then again the legacy people that those are the
Speaker 3: people who are still remaining and going to colleges and
Speaker 3: still getting scholarships to get into these colleges, and still
Speaker 3: getting like loans at a reasonable interest rate, all of
Speaker 3: those things. But for some reason, they built this boogeyman,
Speaker 3: some reason we know why. But they've built a boogeyman
Speaker 3: in order to make sure that they put down a
Speaker 3: specific group of people because they're like, a, hey, this
Speaker 3: is a battle we can win. We've always won with
Speaker 3: this exactly, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Anti blackness is always that is a train that it's
Speaker 1: always on time. So what's interesting about what you just
Speaker 1: said is that white women, despite being the biggest beneficiaries
Speaker 1: of affirmative action, are also the most likely to be
Speaker 1: against it. So, according to a twenty fourteen Cooperative Congressional
Speaker 1: Election study, nearly seventy percent of the twenty thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety four self identified non Hispanic white women
Speaker 1: surveyed either somewhat or strongly opposed affirmative action. Again, I
Speaker 1: think it's like one of those situations where because the
Speaker 1: way that it is framed is like, this is a
Speaker 1: program that helps black people, and if you don't think
Speaker 1: black people should be getting a leg up over you,
Speaker 1: you should not be into it, you should be against it.
Speaker 1: That rhetoric actually ends up hurting all marginalized people, whether
Speaker 1: you're a white woman, because you know, like it's one
Speaker 1: of those dynamics where the the anti blackness becomes a way.
Speaker 2: To get people on board.
Speaker 1: But then that is not an accurate reflection of who
Speaker 1: the beneficiaries of programs like affirmative action actually end up being. Right, So, Annie,
Speaker 1: you were saying how Asian Americans were kind of made
Speaker 1: the face of the sort of victims of affirmative action,
Speaker 1: and that is very much by design because of this
Speaker 1: guy who is a conservative litigant named Edward Blum. I
Speaker 1: call him a litigant because that's like kind of what
Speaker 1: he is, like a professional lawsuit bringer. He is not
Speaker 1: a lawyer himself, but he basically connects potential plaintiffs with
Speaker 1: 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. More on
Speaker 1: this later. However, if you were to ask him, he
Speaker 1: would probably say that it's not that he wants to
Speaker 1: elevate like one race over anybody else, but that he
Speaker 1: wants all laws and all like public considerations to be
Speaker 1: race or identity neutral. He has described his ethos like
Speaker 1: this quote, Our history has been tainted tragically by the
Speaker 1: use of race and various public and private arenas race discrimination,
Speaker 1: is odious, something the founding principles of the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement were designed to eliminate. Personally, I would say that
Speaker 1: I don't know if I buy what he is saying.
Speaker 1: It seems like an awfully convenient way to justify the
Speaker 1: fact that he keeps gutting laws that protect marginalized people.
Speaker 1: But there you have it. That is what he says.
Speaker 1: His motivation is. He just thinks that everything should be
Speaker 1: race neutral, right. The Guardian describes him as quote a
Speaker 1: human wrecking ball on a mission to destroy the landmark
Speaker 1: achievements of the civil rights era and send the country
Speaker 1: back to a dark age of discrimination and harassment of
Speaker 1: minorities in the workplace and higher education and at the
Speaker 1: ballot box.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, well, I mean this is the very basis
Speaker 3: of hitting that level of if everything was fair from
Speaker 3: the beginning, great great, if everything was equal and everybody
Speaker 3: had same equity, that would be a beautiful utopia. But
Speaker 3: as we know, this land, this country, most countries that
Speaker 3: have been colonized, is not based on that level, and
Speaker 3: that it has never been about equity, has always been
Speaker 3: about who has power and those who have power. Really
Speaker 3: was like, but I love that time that was a
Speaker 3: great time. Bay we have that again, which is like, Hm,
Speaker 3: you know, we know what you're really saying exactly.
Speaker 1: The affirmative action ruling was not blumps rodeo. A legal
Speaker 1: challenge that he brought was what led to the gutting
Speaker 1: of the Voting Rights Act. That was the Shelby County
Speaker 1: versus Holder case that he sponsored in twenty thirteen, and
Speaker 1: it led to the Supreme Court overturning a key provision
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act. That legal
Speaker 1: challenge is when we saw the introduction of things like
Speaker 1: voter ID requirements, cutting back on early voting, eliminating same
Speaker 1: 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 villainy in all.
Speaker 1: The story on my podcast there are no girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. We've referred to him a lot as just
Speaker 1: like a professional hater, Like he's just someone who like
Speaker 1: just like hate hate hay hate hate, like go. I
Speaker 1: don't like that hate hate hate like professional hater.
Speaker 3: Is he does? He is? He very rich.
Speaker 2: I think he's.
Speaker 1: Wealthy, Like I think I think that he I've actually
Speaker 1: looked into him because I'm he's one of those figures
Speaker 1: that I find so curious. He did not come from wealth,
Speaker 1: but I think that he has wealth now and he's
Speaker 1: just interested in using that wealth and influencing those connections
Speaker 1: into creating these different legal precedents that I would say
Speaker 1: harm us.
Speaker 3: All right, he is that evil genius because we've seen
Speaker 3: that in a lot of conservative think tanks as well
Speaker 3: as essentially right wing groups that have been building up
Speaker 3: the legal system to only help them, putting in those
Speaker 3: in law school that they know that they can pull
Speaker 3: back out, educating them and funding them to the full
Speaker 3: in order to come back out and do these types
Speaker 3: of cases, knowing that if they can do this, this
Speaker 3: is going to be the basis of how they win.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, did you guys?
Speaker 1: Did you all see that docuseries on the Duggers on Hulu?
Speaker 3: No? I couldn't get to their yet.
Speaker 1: So that's the whole thing. It's a real like Jez
Speaker 1: as you might imagine.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: It is about this vast network.
Speaker 1: Of young people who are being trained and educated and
Speaker 1: ursoll 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.
Speaker 2: She you might umber shid red hair.
Speaker 1: She did not get into University of Texas because her
Speaker 1: GPA was frankly mid. She sued the University of Texas
Speaker 1: at Austin in two thousand and eight after it denied
Speaker 1: her admission. She had a three point five to nine
Speaker 1: GPA as a senior, which put her just below the
Speaker 1: cutoff for a state law requiring UT to accept any
Speaker 1: graduate in the top ten percent of their high school class,
Speaker 1: so like mathematically speaking, she was not in the top
Speaker 1: ten percent of her high school class. She felt that
Speaker 1: she should have still gotten admission because of her extracurricular
Speaker 1: activities combined with her GPA, and that she would have
Speaker 1: gotten into UT if the university had not used race
Speaker 1: as a factor in selecting its freshman class, which she
Speaker 1: argued was a violation of 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 when I hear about this,
Speaker 1: I can to see this one image of her standing
Speaker 1: at a podium outside of the Supreme Court, which is
Speaker 1: like burned in my mind.
Speaker 3: I do remember this because I remember thinking, this is
Speaker 3: the dumbest argument I've ever seen, because I'm like, girl,
Speaker 3: you didn't make it, Like even without a firmative action,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have. You wouldn't have made it. Do you
Speaker 3: not understand how many people are struggling to get into
Speaker 3: college today because a little more access has happened, not
Speaker 3: just because of a firmative action, but like the lottery
Speaker 3: and all of those things when we had more scholarships.
Speaker 3: I was just like, why are people listening to her?
Speaker 3: I think that was the biggest question in my head.
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 1: Like she did.
Speaker 2: The grades are bad and now she's I.
Speaker 3: Think that was the beginning of like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: a Becky Sorry, Becky's in the world. That's really just
Speaker 3: whining because she couldn't get her away like that. I
Speaker 3: remember like that was the beginning of that of like, oh,
Speaker 3: sorority girl was again no no, no hate to sorority people.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. So you know that level like stereotype
Speaker 3: in that my daddy said that I could get in
Speaker 3: and now I'm 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 a lot higher
Speaker 1: than my GPA was when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: so like, I'll own that, but like you know, it's
Speaker 1: not three point five nine is not an automatic entrance
Speaker 1: to wherever you want to go to college. It's like
Speaker 1: a fine gpa.
Speaker 2: And so I remember people calling her becky with the
Speaker 2: bad grades, and the vibe around her.
Speaker 1: Was like she was just salty that she didn't get in,
Speaker 1: and so she was like blaming black people. And so
Speaker 1: obviously she was not a very I guess, sympathetic legal
Speaker 1: challenge to affirmative action.
Speaker 2: 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: MPR 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: advocate for Asian Americans. And again, I think it's a
Speaker 1: really great example of how effective a strategy it is
Speaker 1: to pit marginalized groups against one another in service of
Speaker 1: white supremacy. Because in the and it's not like I think,
Speaker 1: since affirmative action has been struck down, we've already seen
Speaker 1: data trickle in that wasn't that long ago, but already
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Right, And of course this play is being used by
Speaker 3: other places such as Florida doing the Asian American history
Speaker 3: in set but blacklisting African American history. And we know
Speaker 3: what that play is that that's the same type of narrative.
Speaker 3: They're like, Oh, this is working, let's try this, let's
Speaker 3: keep this going exactly.
Speaker 1: So, I really wanted to talk about So, after on
Speaker 1: the heels of successfully getting the Supreme Court destry down
Speaker 1: Afirmative Action, what is Blum's next move?
Speaker 2: Well, he is back after gutting affirmative Action.
Speaker 1: His next move is going after fellowships and grant programs
Speaker 1: that support marginalized people. He is suing two corporate law
Speaker 1: firms on the grounds that they're fellowship programs that are
Speaker 1: aimed at students of color, those who identify as LGBTQ plus,
Speaker 1: and students with disabilities, exclude applicants based on race, and
Speaker 1: he is demanding that those programs be shut down. He
Speaker 1: is also suing a black venture capital firm called the
Speaker 1: Fearless Fund.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of the meat of why I.
Speaker 1: Wanted to bring this conversation to the table today, because
Speaker 1: he is alleging that the Fearless Fund is practicing unlawful
Speaker 1: racial discrimination. Blum claims the Fearless Fund is engaged in
Speaker 1: explicit racial exclusion by operating a grant program quote only
Speaker 1: open to black females. According to The Washington Post, the
Speaker 1: lawsuit is asked to prevent the fund from selecting its
Speaker 1: next round of grant winners. The claim states that the
Speaker 1: firm is quote violating Section nineteen eighty one of the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act of eighteen sixty six, a US law
Speaker 1: barring racial bias in private contracts, by making only black
Speaker 1: women eligible in the grant competition. So yeah, he's just
Speaker 1: like coming after anything that he sees as supporting.
Speaker 2: Non white people. The Fearless fun was launched.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen by three prominent black women, Keisha Knight
Speaker 1: Pullman who you might remember as Rudy Huxtable on The
Speaker 1: Cosby Show, entrepreneur arian Simone, and corporate executive Ayana Parsons.
Speaker 1: They have a strong and impressive list of investors like
Speaker 1: Bank of America, Costco, General Mills, MasterCard, JP Morgan. They've
Speaker 1: invested in over forty businesses in the past four years,
Speaker 1: including Atlanta favorite The Slutty Vegan have y'all eaten there?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was near my house that I lived.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Samantha was smart and went during the Super Bowl,
Speaker 4: so there was no one there.
Speaker 3: So they are. They stay open till two am, and
Speaker 3: so when the Super Bowl lots because it's always packed out.
Speaker 3: And what we went at it still took forever. They
Speaker 3: make good food. It takes a while, but yeah, we would.
Speaker 3: I think it only been once though it is. I
Speaker 3: don't stand in lines.
Speaker 4: It was a long line. I've never been.
Speaker 3: But and she has expanded that business everywhere, especially in
Speaker 3: Atlanta and then Georgia. So good on her and owes
Speaker 3: 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 small businesses twenty thousand dollars in grants and digital
Speaker 1: tools to help them grow their businesses and mentorship opportunities.
Speaker 1: So interestingly enough, Blahma 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? And so the Washington Post reports, but
Speaker 1: the lawsuit sites three female business owners, one from New
Speaker 1: York and two from Virginia who argued that they could
Speaker 1: have benefited from the Fearless Funds grant program, but they
Speaker 1: were ineligible because they are not black. So yeah, these
Speaker 1: non black women basically just felt like they should be
Speaker 1: entitled to this grant program that black women established for
Speaker 1: themselves to support black women.
Speaker 2: They were like, we should have a piece of that.
Speaker 3: That's such an interesting take because I'm like, well, you
Speaker 3: also didn't get it from every other business grant ever,
Speaker 3: So why are you choosing this like you want did
Speaker 3: you try for it? This just seems like a lazy
Speaker 3: part of like I want this one thing, I couldn't
Speaker 3: get it. I quit.
Speaker 1: They're biased, Like yeah, I mean this is just my opinion,
Speaker 1: and but like it's so hard to not see this
Speaker 1: as like just hater vibes, like everything has to be
Speaker 1: for you, and if it's not for you, you have
Speaker 1: to shut it down. Think it goes back to what
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier about the women who benefit from
Speaker 1: affirmative action are also the ones who are the most
Speaker 1: likely to be against it. I firmly believe that there
Speaker 1: is enough out there for all of us. And I'm
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, right, so I know how hard the funding
Speaker 1: spaces for women, all women, but I know how hard
Speaker 1: it is for Black women, in particular as a black woman.
Speaker 1: We'll get into some of the stats in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but 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 meditation that
Speaker 1: keeps me in this work and keeps me being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: But I feel like the dynamic.
Speaker 1: That 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: dynamic that helps anybody, right, And so I think that
Speaker 1: we all have our place, we all have our niche
Speaker 1: us enough for all of us. But that dynamic that
Speaker 1: we are enemies only serve that does not serve anybody.
Speaker 1: It doesn't serve me, it doesn't serve it, It ultimately won't
Speaker 1: serve them as either.
Speaker 2: It just keeps us pit against.
Speaker 1: Each other as opposed to these larger systems that are
Speaker 1: actually holding us all down.
Speaker 3: It's such a mind play that they have to people
Speaker 3: have to go through to be like, Okay, I can't
Speaker 3: get this one thing because they say I can't have it,
Speaker 3: so that means no one should have it because I'm
Speaker 3: gonna be miserable, and so are you. Misery lift company.
Speaker 3: We're gonna keep this mentality going and then also not
Speaker 3: look at the like here's the small thing versus the
Speaker 3: giant amount of stuff that you also can't get because
Speaker 3: you're not a rich white man, but you don't care
Speaker 3: about that thing, Like that's the one thing that's a
Speaker 3: little bit more accessible to tear someone down who other
Speaker 3: people will help you tear down with, instead of this
Speaker 3: big giant amount of cash that's just sitting here for
Speaker 3: the white man. Like it's just is I said for
Speaker 3: the white man, like I'm a native but like, but
Speaker 3: you know, does like mind level, like how much you're
Speaker 3: willing to ignore to be like, Okay, I'm at the bottom.
Speaker 3: Who can I make lesser than me? Who can I
Speaker 3: push down further than me? So at the very least,
Speaker 3: I'm not at the very bottom. Oh my god, that's
Speaker 3: just 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.
Speaker 2: So he went to McDonald's together and he got one.
Speaker 1: Ice cream, and I didn't have any money because we
Speaker 1: were 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 on to the ground, and he
Speaker 1: was like, I was gonna give you a BikeE so like,
Speaker 1: because I was like, I don't want him to get
Speaker 1: something that I can't have.
Speaker 2: It really got a flattering story.
Speaker 1: But I was like seven years old because it's like
Speaker 1: he was going to.
Speaker 2: 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. It was like a if you
Speaker 2: read X amount of books.
Speaker 1: You've get an ice an ice cream coupon or something.
Speaker 3: I weren't for this, but yeah, I think this is
Speaker 3: so interesting and the fact that he of course Blum
Speaker 3: had to pounce on this. I'm sure it was like
Speaker 3: a gift for him. 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, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling and now this lands.
Speaker 2: This gift lands in my inbot.
Speaker 3: And also makes me stronger, stronger than the woman who's complaining.
Speaker 1: Exactly, so Blum is using what he is 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 wouldn't be considered fair. But that test,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Sam, really assumes.
Speaker 2: That we are all equal and all have equal.
Speaker 1: Access, which the data could not paint a clearer picture
Speaker 1: about the fact that that is not happening. Black women
Speaker 1: are the fastest rising group of entrepreneurs in the country,
Speaker 1: according to the Harvard Business Review. In the US, an
Speaker 1: astounding seventeen percent of Black women are in the process
Speaker 1: of starting or running a new business. That's compared to
Speaker 1: just ten percent of white women and fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: white men. Yet despite this lead, only three percent of
Speaker 1: women are running mature businesses. Why Well, one big reason
Speaker 1: is access to capital. Harvard Business Reviews research found that
Speaker 1: sixty one percent of Black women self fund their total
Speaker 1: startup capital. This is in spite of the fact that,
Speaker 1: in their finding, only twenty nine percent of black women
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs live in households with incomes over seventy five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: compared to fifty two percent of white men. This data
Speaker 1: is also combined with data suggesting that Black women are
Speaker 1: less likely to own our own homes, pick on a
Speaker 1: higher level of debt, do things like go to college,
Speaker 1: and are often like saddled with debt to go to
Speaker 1: college right, and so ultimately that leaves us saddled with
Speaker 1: more debt and having fewer personal resources and life collateral.
Speaker 1: Black entrepreneurs typically receive less than two percent of all
Speaker 1: venture capital dollars each year, while companies led by black
Speaker 1: women receive less than one percent of all funding.
Speaker 2: 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, and
Speaker 1: so the fact that we already don't get that much.
Speaker 1: That there are grants and investment funds specifically aimed at
Speaker 1: shifting those numbers just a tiny bit, like the Fearless
Speaker 1: Fund and that people are saying, no, we need to
Speaker 1: go for that too, that less than one percent that
Speaker 1: goes to y'all that needs to go to us. Now,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, Pew found that just three percent of
Speaker 1: US businesses were black owned, while eighty six percent were
Speaker 1: white owned. And so, yeah, as I said, like, as
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, this 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. There's just not a lot
Speaker 1: out there, and you really have to stay focused and
Speaker 1: stay positive and not really let that sort of numbers
Speaker 1: around how dismal things can be kind of get in
Speaker 1: your head. But then on top of it, when you
Speaker 1: have people like Blum and these women that he's representing
Speaker 1: in this case to challenge these funds, to challenge what
Speaker 1: little is out there for black entrepreneurs who are women,
Speaker 1: it's hard to internalize that as anything other than they
Speaker 1: don't want us here, They don't want us to have anything,
Speaker 1: 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 thought
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, like after all the racial justice uprisings,
Speaker 1: I'm 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. While I remember all those
Speaker 1: promises too. Businesses committed three hundred and forty billion dollars
Speaker 1: between May twenty twenty and October twenty twenty two, according
Speaker 1: to McKenzie. And The Post also reports that investment swelled
Speaker 1: in the startup world. A record five point one billion
Speaker 1: dollars in funding was allocated to black founded startups in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a lot.
Speaker 1: However, all of that interest and excitement and commitment pretty
Speaker 1: much eroded very quickly, with funding for black founded startups
Speaker 1: plunging fifty percent in twenty twenty two. So remember this
Speaker 1: is all happening against the pendulum kind of swinging back
Speaker 1: the other way, where all of these corporate diversity efforts
Speaker 1: became a political lightning rod, and these employers just sort
Speaker 1: of backpedaled, right, And so I think that that's where
Speaker 1: we're at now, where in twenty twenty, people talked a
Speaker 1: lot of big games about money they were going to
Speaker 1: give and funds they were gonna give, and.
Speaker 2: How they were gonna, you know, support inclusive people.
Speaker 1: And startups and YadA, YadA, YadA, and all of those
Speaker 1: promises just fizzled out, right, And I think that we're
Speaker 1: sort of seeing I would argue, like a backlash to
Speaker 1: that now, where diversity and inclusion staffers are being let go.
Speaker 1: I think like recently Chick fil A just like happened
Speaker 1: to have a diversity and inclusion person on their staff,
Speaker 1: and like there was a flurry of like online protests
Speaker 1: because of that. Like just having somebody thinking about that
Speaker 1: on staff is now a lightning rod. And so obviously
Speaker 1: in that kind of climate, these organizations are not going
Speaker 1: to be funding black women, even though they committed to it,
Speaker 1: even though it seemed like that was there was a
Speaker 1: lot of excitement around that. Like, yeah, I just think
Speaker 1: that we're in a completely different landscape than we were
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I mean, This is definitely that whole level of they
Speaker 3: want good publicity but they're not going to follow through
Speaker 3: is a black square. Let me pretend like I care,
Speaker 3: and at the very least I'll be like, hey, let's
Speaker 3: tell the black people in the story like that's That's
Speaker 3: as far as their their actual actions went was putting
Speaker 3: something on Instagram that they obviously deleted soon after because
Speaker 3: they wanted to look okay for one group of people.
Speaker 3: And I found that interesting that people are mad at
Speaker 3: Chick fil A because it's like they're anti LGBTQ plus,
Speaker 3: So that's not enough for you. They need to be
Speaker 3: racist and all of these things have tould be in
Speaker 3: LUNs enough for us to support you. You better be
Speaker 3: super super racist and super super homophobic in order for
Speaker 3: the conservatives. You can hate everyone except for white says people.
Speaker 3: If not, we're not gonna support you, even if your
Speaker 3: chicken 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.
Speaker 2: A lot of these people like just they'll.
Speaker 1: Find anything to be aggrieved about, Like you know, I
Speaker 1: saw like Cracker Barrel was adding plant based sausage to
Speaker 1: their menu, and people were like, plant based sausage, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna shop at Cracker Barrel and I'm never gonna
Speaker 1: go to Cracker Barrel again. And it's like, they're not
Speaker 1: 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 2: And so another thing I wanted.
Speaker 1: To say about your point, Sam, is that there's a
Speaker 1: makeup company, Tart. They got in hot water earlier this
Speaker 1: year because they were doing these brand trips that looked
Speaker 1: as if they were not being inclusive of black influencers.
Speaker 1: That they were asking black influencers like after the fact
Speaker 1: to come and like giving them substandard accommodations and all
Speaker 1: of that, and somebody found that in twenty twenty, you know,
Speaker 1: they when they posted their black Square, this company was like,
Speaker 1: we pledged that we're going to be more inclusive and
Speaker 1: give more, do more partnerships with black and brown.
Speaker 2: Models, and blah blah blah, and.
Speaker 1: Then they quietly removed that from their website, but somebody
Speaker 1: found it on the wayback machine. It was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: let's gonna 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 you made
Speaker 1: these commitments and just to quietly be like mm just kidding,
Speaker 1: Like that doesn't sit right with me, Like, nobody told.
Speaker 2: You to do this. Nobody told you to post a
Speaker 2: 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 blood 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,
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, nevermind, Actually, can they have that
Speaker 4: privilege that rite, that ability to step out and be like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I don't want to deal with this anymore, which I
Speaker 4: think is just very telling of ignorance and just like
Speaker 4: a oh, sure, let's do this, and then they get
Speaker 4: that hate and they're like, oh, oh never mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Backtracking that Dylan mulvaney thing that you just mentioned, the
Speaker 1: thing that I will never be over is that Dylan Mulvaney,
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. And I feel like, if you
Speaker 1: are a brand or an institution who is working with
Speaker 1: marginalized people, if you're not going to stand by them
Speaker 1: when this stuff kind of stuff happens and when they
Speaker 1: get into situations that really like you have put them in.
Speaker 1: But by offering them this, you know, these partnerships, that's
Speaker 1: just not how.
Speaker 2: You engage people like that.
Speaker 1: Like, at a certain point, it's like, I understand that
Speaker 1: bud Light is a corporation, and I don't expect corporations
Speaker 1: to like care about any of us, certainly not marginalized people.
Speaker 1: But the people who run bud Lights marketing or influencer
Speaker 1: partnerships should really be taking a good hard look in
Speaker 1: the mirror because that's just like a failure of like
Speaker 1: how to be a 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 are not are not allies,
Speaker 4: and we shouldn't think of them that way.
Speaker 2: But they.
Speaker 4: If they posted the black square. If they take these stands,
Speaker 4: if they say they're going to do something, then yeah,
Speaker 4: they should absolutely be held accountable. That's just backing away
Speaker 4: and causing real harm. We were telling you a story
Speaker 4: before we started this out of nowhere. Someone bought that
Speaker 4: up and like like making these things so politicized that
Speaker 4: just to have diversity inclusion person at your company becomes
Speaker 4: oh well, then hate, like all of this hate, like
Speaker 4: you keep saying, it's irresponsible and it's not taking into
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 2: She's not saying anything untoward, she's not.
Speaker 1: Doing anything untoward, she just is because her existence is
Speaker 1: 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 court, 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's that they're being held hostage, and they're just like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: they don't want us to.
Speaker 2: Have the chicken sausage.
Speaker 1: They don't want anybody who doesn't eat sausage to be
Speaker 1: bad at our restaurants.
Speaker 2: So okay, we'll drop.
Speaker 1: Actually, Cracker Barrel did stand by their sausage choices, I
Speaker 1: will say that. But yeah, I have been surprised by
Speaker 1: how these big, huge corporations just cowtow to people who
Speaker 1: are not serious, people who are just interested in flexing
Speaker 1: their power, their political power, for no real reason.
Speaker 3: I mean absolutely, we see all of these things actually
Speaker 3: hurting people. They don't even want to be the face
Speaker 3: of anything. They just want to exist. Funds like Fearless
Speaker 3: fund is to exist and to help and lift up
Speaker 3: people that they know need lifting up. The same thing
Speaker 3: with Target when they had the small businesses with the
Speaker 3: LGBTQ queer content and then taking them off the shelf.
Speaker 3: We were just existing and feeling like we wanted to
Speaker 3: be the representation that no one else is willing to
Speaker 3: look at or see or stand behind. And you literally
Speaker 3: came after them, taking away their money, taking away their existence,
Speaker 3: causing harm. Because again the mulvany thing she was just
Speaker 3: holding a beer. Yeah, she said, I like bud Light, simple,
Speaker 3: why can't she choose to do that? And that ended
Speaker 3: up being a thing of like, well, she is hurting
Speaker 3: the beer industry and she is doing these things. No,
Speaker 3: she's just existing with a product that they sent her.
Speaker 3: 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 are having to do
Speaker 3: and they're having to come back and being like, instead
Speaker 3: of existing, we have to fight for our place to exist,
Speaker 3: and that's such an absurd ideal, like the fact that
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: All of this.
Speaker 1: It is such a distraction at a time when marginalized
Speaker 1: people have real work to be doing. Fearless Fun is
Speaker 1: fighting back. They have a beefy legal team, including the
Speaker 1: NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Gibson Dunn, Crutcher, and Ben Crump,
Speaker 1: the attorney who represented families of George Floyd and Tyree
Speaker 1: Nichols in their civil suits over the men's killing out
Speaker 1: the hands of the police, and I feel confident like
Speaker 1: these women are like bad as women, they are not
Speaker 1: going down without a fight. But also they shouldn't have to, right,
Speaker 1: Like they should be able to just do their work
Speaker 1: and focus on that work, and they should not have
Speaker 1: to be spending their money on these bogus legal challenges
Speaker 1: just because they want to exist, just because they want
Speaker 1: to support other black women.
Speaker 3: And I find that again we're in this situation that
Speaker 3: black women are the ones that have to be the
Speaker 3: ones to fight, like they don't want to, they're tired,
Speaker 3: they've been doing this and now we're back again because
Speaker 3: we know there's a lot and I know there's a
Speaker 3: lot of fun specifically to women, like point blank women,
Speaker 3: and they surely didn't have to go enough after them.
Speaker 3: And I bet they were denied some of those and
Speaker 3: they're probably better at that. But yet if they didn't,
Speaker 3: that seems silly and that seemed very targeted. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: that's very telling. But like it again, it has to
Speaker 3: be the black women that has to put up this
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: But further, one of the reasons I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about it on the show today is that I don't
Speaker 1: think it's getting near the same amount of traction and
Speaker 1: attention that Blum's affirmative action challenges did. And I really
Speaker 1: think that we need to see white male and white
Speaker 1: women and really everybody in the startup space. We need
Speaker 1: to see vcs and entrepreneurs speaking up about this, because
Speaker 1: Blum is essentially arguing that the startup space should basically
Speaker 1: just be for white people, and I think it's up
Speaker 1: to everybody in the space to push back and say, like,
Speaker 1: that is not the kind of funding space that we want,
Speaker 1: That is not the kind of startup space that we want,
Speaker 1: and to really make that really clear, like what kind
Speaker 1: of a space do we want to have for the
Speaker 1: next generation of entrepreneurs. We want to tell them that
Speaker 1: the tiny little bit that they that might go to them.
Speaker 2: Isn't even for them anymore. I don't think that's the
Speaker 2: space that we.
Speaker 3: Want, right and absolutely in the same space again, this
Speaker 3: is gonna hurt white women as well and the like.
Speaker 3: If we're saying that all of this is too specific
Speaker 3: and it leads out other people of race, it's gonna
Speaker 3: hurt gender as well. So this is not even just
Speaker 3: for white people. It's gonna be for white men. We're
Speaker 3: gonna have more elon musks running running programs into the ground.
Speaker 1: That's what we're gonna see thousand percent. And I mean
Speaker 1: kind of like what you were alluding to before, time
Speaker 1: and time again in tech, particularly when black women challenge
Speaker 1: things or.
Speaker 2: Do things or start things, they uplift all women.
Speaker 1: And so even if that specific program is for black
Speaker 1: women owned businesses, you're gonna tell me that a black
Speaker 1: woman who is financially supported is not going to go
Speaker 1: on to do something that's going to lift up all
Speaker 1: women and all marginalized people. Time and time again we
Speaker 1: see that that's how it goes with black women. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I just think that this is just this
Speaker 1: is me smacking that ice cream out of my brother's
Speaker 1: hand when I could have gotten a bit instead, I
Speaker 1: really want to see more folks in the space speaking
Speaker 1: up about this because what the Fearless Fund has done
Speaker 1: has been really great, and it's they're really like a
Speaker 1: good force in the space, and I think that they
Speaker 1: we need them.
Speaker 2: Frankly, we need them.
Speaker 3: We do and as a drop in the bucket, let's
Speaker 3: just be real honest, like it's it's nothing in comparison
Speaker 3: to what other people get. Essentially, it is like, wow,
Speaker 3: you really are going after the little groups for nothing,
Speaker 3: just just to make a point, and obviously to keep
Speaker 3: that little bit, as you are saying, in your pocket
Speaker 3: instead of seeing what this is actually could do for
Speaker 3: the entire humanity. Humanity is lost. I'm sorry what yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean this is very important too because
Speaker 4: obviously professional litigant blow here like it's going to keep
Speaker 4: trying and if this succeeds, then it's going to make
Speaker 4: things worse for everyone except for certain people and then
Speaker 4: easier for him to win the next thing, 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's listening should
Speaker 1: go out and buy stuff. I've never told you the book.
Speaker 2: I'd have bought it. Let's read it together.
Speaker 3: Ya.
Speaker 4: Yes, we're hoping to do a little crossover. We'll get
Speaker 4: to go on your show. Yes, oh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 4: But in the meantime, Bridget, where can the good listeners
Speaker 4: find you?
Speaker 1: You can listen to my podcast there are no girls
Speaker 1: on the internet. You can find me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Bridget Marie and DC or on Twitter at Bridget Marie.
Speaker 1: And you can 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.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you having.
Speaker 4: You on as always. Feeling is so mutual, So listeners,
Speaker 4: if you would like to contact us, you can our
Speaker 4: emails Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
Speaker 4: find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on
Speaker 4: Instagram at TikTok at stuff.
Speaker 2: I never told you.
Speaker 4: We have a tea public store and we yeah, we
Speaker 4: have a book. Can get it stuff We should read
Speaker 4: books dot com. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina,
Speaker 4: executive producer.
Speaker 2: Maya, and our contributor Joey.
Speaker 4: Thank you and thanks to you for listening Stuff on
Speaker 4: your Pertilos direction, should I heart Radio? For more podcasts
Speaker 4: in my heart Radio, you can check out the heart
Speaker 4: radio app, Apple podcast or, if you listen to your
Speaker 4: favorite shows, y