00:02:12.780I joined my friends, Samantha and Annie, at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You to explain what I mean.
00:02:19.420And stay tuned because we'll be hearing from some of the folks at the center of this case later this season.
00:02:29.140The man who brought us the legal challenge that struck down affirmative action earlier this summer is back.
00:02:35.100And this time he is coming for grants and fellowships that support marginalized people.
00:02:40.160So you all probably recall that earlier this summer, back in June, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, ruling that race can no longer play a part in college admissions.
00:02:50.980Notably, the decision just applied to race.
00:02:53.540It did not apply to gender or things like legacy status or donor status being considered in the college admissions process.
00:03:01.260Separately, some colleges like Harvard have signaled that they might start reexamining the role that things like legacy status plays in college admissions in light of that Supreme Court ruling.
00:03:13.900I remember when the ruling was struck down, how big it felt, especially being a big Supreme Court ruling about a year after Roe was struck down.
00:03:25.540And it felt like, you know, one big torrent of rain and then another big torrent of rain to continue your metaphor, Annie.
00:03:56.740You know, it's odd because I was absolutely alive.
00:04:00.460And I think like talking about trying to get into school and having this whole conversation when affirmative action was coming into debate to begin with.
00:04:07.520And to see it like this, I'm not going to lie, I'm going to be very transparent here.
00:04:41.060I don't think my siblings believe that because they are educated and they understand.
00:04:44.660But I truly believe that because that was what was fed into me.0.99
00:04:47.680So I have this real like ick feeling about this whole action because the face of the suit was an Asian man who was bitter, bitter little baby that I feel like so many ways about it.0.84
00:05:01.660And then coming into college on my own and then understanding what it truly was and realizing, oh, yeah, that stuff that I spewed out as a kid was actual white supremacy coming out of my mouth because I was trying to impress my white family and being fed a bunch of lies.0.74
00:05:18.700So it was it felt like so gross to know that I was manipulated like that at my young age, at my young age.
00:05:26.820I think I don't know how old this dude is.
00:05:28.460I guess he was trying to get into college.
00:05:29.460So I guess maybe around the same time.
00:05:31.660And then coming into this now that I'm like, oh, my God, what have we done, essentially, like with allowing these types of lies to perpetuate and not looking at the true statistics behind these actual numbers and why affirmative action was and is necessary.
00:05:47.740But again, because of that rhetoric being around, it wasn't surprising that it was undone because it was truly hanging on by a thread because of those types of lies.
00:05:56.480But yeah, I have like this ache and like mourning and guilt, guilt by association and guilt by like past actions that I'm like, oh my God, what is this?
00:06:08.760Like part of what I was spewing is part of the reason this is undone.
00:06:12.420Of course, the bigger picture is, again, white supremacists and their power that they wanted to play and the overall arcing, like, who is doing the main grab and trying to make sure that marginalized people stay down and stay unable to get to any of these places because they do not have the connections.
00:06:31.480Essentially, it's just all connections, not even money anymore.
00:06:39.880First of all, thank you for sharing that.
00:06:41.800And I can kind of identify, I know how you feel. I don't think that you need to have guilt for having felt that way because, first of all, we live in a society where it's so easy to pit marginalized people against each other in service of upholding white supremacy.
00:06:59.840Like, that is a tried and true method that bad actors and people interested in upholding
00:07:05.740white supremacy have engaged for a very long time.
00:07:08.180And so the reason they do it is because it's effective.
00:07:10.180And so it's not surprising that it will be effective on you, a young person.
00:07:13.560Also, the way that we talk about it, I think, just does not set people up to have a full
00:07:21.160understanding of the conversation, right?
00:07:23.440So we talk so much about affirmative action.0.90
00:07:26.260And when we talk about affirmative action, usually the face of affirmative action is a black person. Right. And so we're talking about like, oh, well, do you think that black people should get a leg up in admissions processes? Of course, people are not going to not going to agree with that. But the reality is, is that that is a myth because the Department of Labor shows that the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are actually white women.1.00
00:07:48.060That is not what the way that we talk about it would lead you to believe, right?
00:07:53.120And so another idea is that when we talk about admissions, so I would say, this is just my opinion, but I would say that there is an outsized space given to conversations about affirmative action, which, as I said, are sort of translated through like, oh, Black people, they're the face of it.
00:08:13.420And so much less space given to things like legacy status, which I had a stat earlier, but it's some astronomical amount of kids in college get there because they are their parents went to that college or their parents are donors to that college or some sort of a leg up.
00:08:31.840And essentially what that is, is like affirmative action for rich people.
00:08:36.420Yet we don't even, it's not even part of the conversation and certainly has not been part of the conversation the way that affirmative action has been.
00:08:43.300So I would argue that like you were not given a clear picture of the issue in order to be able to like thoughtfully come up with a critique or an opinion about it.
00:08:54.200Right. And I think that that has to be by design.
00:08:56.680Right. Absolutely. I think the understanding, as you are saying, is that the rhetoric I was given was all anti-Black. Like we're going to be very, very specific in calling it what it was. It wasn't about anything else. It wasn't about me being a minority or like being Asian and a marginalized woman. It's literally they were trying to be anti-Black.
00:09:17.100They were saying the quiet part out loud because that's all they see. That's the big enemy that is built up against white people, which is so disgusting and is very prevalent.1.00
00:09:28.800Like that's the that's the real understanding. We need to have that whole fact and hold that conversation is this is an anti-black movement.0.97
00:09:36.460And in that it had it did not it did not actually help the black community that much at all.
00:09:43.800It really did not bring in, as you said, statistically black people into colleges.
00:09:47.680It was, again, more white women, all white women, essentially.
00:09:51.740And then, again, the legacy people, those are the people who are still remaining and going to colleges and still getting scholarships to get into these colleges and still getting like loans at a reasonable interest rate, all of those things.0.81
00:10:03.400But for some reason, they built this boogeyman. Not some reason, we know why. But they built a boogeyman in order to make sure that they put down a specific group of people because they're like, hey, this is a battle we can win. We've always won with this battle. Let's do this.
00:10:18.120Anti-blackness is always, that is a train that is always on time.0.67
00:10:22.360So what's interesting about what you just said is that white women, despite being the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action, are also the most likely to be against it.0.74
00:10:31.180So according to a 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, nearly 70 percent of the 20,694 self-identified non-Hispanic white women surveyed either somewhat or strongly opposed affirmative action.
00:10:43.240Again, I think it's like one of those situations where because the way that it is framed is like, this is a program that helps black people.0.74
00:10:52.300And if you don't think black people should be getting a leg up over you, you should not be into it.0.68
00:10:58.060That rhetoric actually ends up hurting all marginalized people, whether you're a white woman, because, you know, like it's one of those dynamics where the anti-blackness becomes a way to get people on board.
00:11:11.200But then that is not an accurate reflection of who the beneficiaries of programs like affirmative action actually end up being.
00:11:20.060So, Annie, you were saying how Asian-Americans were kind of made the face of the sort of victims of affirmative action.
00:11:28.380And that is very much by design because of this guy who is a conservative litigant named Edward Blum.
00:11:34.340I call him a litigant because that's like kind of what he is, like a professional lawsuit bringer.
00:11:39.380He is not a lawyer himself, but he basically connects potential plaintiffs with attorneys
00:11:44.620who are willing to represent them in test cases, which he then uses to try to set legal
00:16:40.280Like, I think that he, I've actually looked into him because he's one of those figures that I find so curious.
00:16:47.640He did not come from wealth, but I think that he has wealth now.
00:16:52.540And he's just interested in using that wealth and influence and those connections into creating these different legal precedents that I would say harm us all.
00:17:02.980Right. He is that evil genius because we've seen that in a lot of conservative think tanks,
00:17:07.320as well as essentially right-wing groups
00:17:10.920that have been building up the legal system
00:17:37.320So it's a real like doozy, as you might imagine. But one of the things they make very clear is that it's not just about like this one problematic, super religious family on TV.0.82
00:17:52.620It is about this vast network of young people who are being like trained and educated and also are very well connected to reach the highest levels of government and influence to make laws for all of us.
00:18:06.400So it's not enough that, like, their kids are homeschooled or that their kids live a certain way.
00:18:13.100They are training the next generation of political operatives and lawmakers to make sure that all of us and all of our kids live the way that they think that they should be living.
00:18:23.140So it's pretty, I guess, diabolical is the word I would use.
00:18:29.220You mentioned earlier how when you were having conversations about college, you remember watching the first wave of the affirmative action legal challenge go down.
00:18:38.220And even if folks weren't following affirmative action very closely, they might remember Blum's earlier attempt to challenge it.
00:18:45.040So Blum had been working to challenge affirmative action since 2013 when he worked with this woman, Abigail Fisher, who was the daughter of a good friend of his, who was a white woman.
00:18:57.500She did not get into University of Texas because her GPA was frankly mid.
00:19:02.020She sued the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 after it denied her admission.
00:19:06.620She had a 3.59 GPA as a senior, which put her just below the cutoff for a state law requiring UT to accept any graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class.
00:19:19.280So like mathematically speaking, she was not in the top 10 percent of her high school class.
00:19:23.760She felt that she should have still gotten admission because of her extracurricular activities combined with her GPA and that she would have gotten into UT if the university had not used race as a factor in selecting its freshman class, which she argued was a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
00:19:44.280Like, she was, like, a very, like, memorable figure.
00:19:47.640Like, I feel like when I hear about this, I can just see this one image of her standing at a podium outside of the Supreme Court, which is, like, burned in my mind.0.52
00:19:56.220I do remember this, because I remember thinking, this is the dumbest argument I've ever seen.
00:20:02.740Because I'm like, girl, you didn't make it.0.93
00:20:04.960Like, even without affirmative action, you wouldn't have made it.
00:20:08.660Do you not understand how many people are struggling to get into college today because a little more access has happened?
00:20:14.400Not just because of affirmative action, but like the lottery and all of those things when we had more scholarships.
00:20:20.100I was just like, why are people listening to her?
00:20:22.100I think that was the biggest question in my head.
00:20:23.660I was like, why are we paying attention to this?
00:20:57.800So the way that y'all are reacting is exactly how I remember.
00:21:01.600This is validating because I remember her being treated like kind of a joke.
00:21:06.420Like, her GPA was, like, fine, but certainly a three-point—like, it was a lot higher than my GPA was when I was in high school, so, like, I'll own that.
00:21:13.980But, like, you know, it's not—3.59 is not an automatic entrance to wherever you want to go to college.
00:21:20.540And so I remember people calling her Becky with the bad grades, and the vibe around her was, like, she was just salty that she didn't get in.0.92
00:21:29.240And so she was, like, blaming Black people.
00:21:31.980And so, obviously, she was not a very, I guess, sympathetic legal challenge to affirmative action.
00:21:38.580And so, obviously, Abigail's legal challenge did not work.
00:21:41.640So, Blum regrouped and made the strategic choice to make the face of affirmative action or the people being harmed by affirmative action, according to him, Asian Americans.
00:21:50.820According to an NPR article, he told a gathering of the Houston Chinese Alliance in 2015, quote, I needed plaintiffs.
00:26:07.720that business everywhere, especially in Atlanta and in Georgia. So good on her. And owns a lot
00:26:12.900of property. That wouldn't be possible without the Fearless Fund. And so the lawsuit that Blum
00:26:19.080is bringing centers on the Fearless Fund's Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards
00:26:23.760Black women who own small businesses $20,000 in grants and digital tools to help them grow their
00:26:29.040businesses and mentorship opportunities. So interestingly enough, Blum did not seek out0.50
00:26:35.360the Fearless Fund to sue, but rather he says that a non-Black woman who runs a business reached out0.59
00:26:40.960to him via email and flagged like, did you know that these Black women are running a grant program
00:26:46.980that I can't be part of? And so the Washington Post reports that the lawsuit cites three female1.00
00:26:52.720business owners, one from New York and two from Virginia, who argue that they could have benefited0.60
00:26:57.240from the Fearless Fund's grant program, but they were ineligible because they are not Black. So
00:27:03.280So, yeah, these non-Black women basically just felt like they should be entitled to this grant program that Black women established for themselves to support Black women.0.89
00:27:15.740They were like, we should have a piece of that.0.88
00:27:18.700That's such an interesting take because I'm like, well, you also didn't get it from every other business grant ever.
00:28:27.400Everyone will find their people. Everyone will find what they need to make what they want happen.
00:28:31.680I believe that as like a like a meditation that keeps me in this work and keeps me being an entrepreneur.0.62
00:28:39.260But I feel like the dynamic that says that women need to be pit against each other, that if you're a white woman, you need to be trying to shut down a grant that is for black women.
00:28:51.660That's not a dynamic that helps any anybody. Right. And so I think that we all have our place.
00:28:56.960We all have our niche. There's enough for all of us. But that dynamic that we are enemies only does not serve anybody. It doesn't serve me. It ultimately won't serve them either. It just keeps us pit against each other as opposed to these larger systems that are actually holding us all down.
00:29:12.960It's such a mind play that they have to, people have to go through to be like, okay, I can't get this one thing because they say I can't have it. So that means no one should have it because I'm going to be miserable. And so are you. Misery loves company. We're going to keep this mentality going. And then also not look at the like, here's the small thing versus the giant amount of stuff that you also can't get because you're not a rich white man. But you don't care about that thing. Like that's the one thing.
00:29:38.080it's a little bit more accessible to tear someone down who other people will help you tear down with
00:29:42.660instead of this big giant amount of cash that's just sitting here for the white man like it's
00:29:47.160just I said for the white man like I'm a native but like but you know that's just like my level
00:29:53.400like how much you're willing to ignore to be like okay I'm at the bottom who can I make lesser than
00:29:59.360me who can I push down further than me so at the very least I'm not at the very bottom oh my god
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00:36:06.700They don't want us to have anything, you know?
00:36:08.660Yeah, absolutely. And it's so frustrating, too, because a lot of companies like to act like they are supporting marginalized people.
00:36:22.680They are supporting Black people and they make these like outward promises and then just don't really follow through with them.
00:36:32.200Yeah, y'all might remember or be thinking like, I thought in 2020, like after all the racial justice uprisings and the wake of the murder of George Floyd, I thought that all these businesses and funds and grants were like going to start funding more diverse people and like having a more inclusive portfolio.0.60
00:36:49.840Well, I remember all those promises too. Businesses committed $340 billion between May 2020 and October 2022, according to McKinsey.
00:37:00.820And the Post also reports that investment swelled in the startup world. A record $5.1 billion in funding was allocated to Black-founded startups in 2021.
00:37:11.640However, all of that interest and excitement and commitment pretty much eroded very quickly
00:37:17.820with funding for Black-founded startups plunging 50% in 2022.
00:37:23.620So remember, this is all happening against the pendulum kind of swinging back the other way,
00:37:28.400where all of these corporate diversity efforts became a political lightning rod,
00:37:32.380and these employers just sort of backpedaled, right?
00:37:35.580And so I think that that's where we're at now, where in 2020, people talked a lot of big games about money they were going to give and funds they were going to give and how they were going to support inclusive people and startups and yada, yada, yada.
00:37:48.820And all of those promises just fizzled out. Right.
00:37:51.460And I think that we're sort of seeing, I would argue, like a backlash to that now where diversity and inclusion staffers are being let go.
00:38:00.360I think, like, recently Chick-fil-A just, like, happened to have a diversity and inclusion person on their staff.
00:38:08.100And, like, there was a flurry of, like, online protests because of that.
00:38:12.480Like, just having somebody thinking about that on staff is now a lightning rod.
00:38:16.800And so, obviously, in that kind of climate, these organizations are not going to be funding Black women, even though they committed to it, even though it seemed like there was a lot of excitement around that.
00:38:28.020But like, yeah, I just think that we're in a completely different landscape than we were in 2020.
00:38:31.600I mean, this is definitely that whole level of they want good publicity, but they're not going to follow through.0.84
00:38:41.460And at the very least, I'll be like, hey, let's tell the black people in the story.0.79
00:38:46.060Like that's as far as their actual actions went, was putting something on Instagram that they obviously deleted soon after because they wanted to look OK for one group of people.
00:38:56.560And I found that interesting that people are mad at Chick-fil-A because it's like, they're anti-LGBTQ+, so that's not enough for you.
00:39:03.880All of these things have to be in line for us to support you.0.99
00:39:07.420You better be super, super racist and super, super homophobic in order for the conservatives.1.00
00:39:13.160You better hate everyone except for white cis people.1.00
00:39:16.280If not, we're not going to support you, even if your chicken is okay.0.99
00:39:19.540So it, and like, this is a little like unrelated, but like, I think that with a lot of these people, the Chick-fil-A example that you just gave is a great example.
00:39:28.620A lot of these people, like, just they'll find anything to be aggrieved about.
00:39:33.440Like, you know, I saw like Cracker Barrel was adding plant-based sausage to their menu and people were like, plant-based sausage.
00:39:42.560I'm not going to shop at Cracker Barrel and I'm never going to go to Cracker Barrel again.
00:39:45.620And it's like, they're not taking regular sausage off the menu.
00:39:48.540You don't have to order it just because they're putting food on the menu that like someone else might like.
00:39:53.540That's not you. That's cause for for upset.
00:39:56.900And so another thing I wanted to say about your point, Sam, is that there's a makeup company, Tarte.
00:40:02.160They got in hot water earlier this year because they were doing these brand trips that looked it looked as if they were not being inclusive of black influencers.
00:40:12.320They were asking black influencers like after the fact to come and like giving them substandard accommodations and all of that.
00:40:18.180And somebody found that in 2020, you know, when they posted their black square, this company was like, we pledge that we're going to be more inclusive and do more partnerships with black and brown models and blah, blah, blah.
00:40:32.120And then they quietly removed that from their website.
00:40:35.440But somebody found it on the Wayback Machine.
00:40:37.460It was like, oh, let's get an update on all of these, like, very specific commitments that you made.
00:40:43.500And it turns out that they basically just, like, didn't do any of that stuff.
00:40:46.400But the thing is, nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to make these commitments.
00:40:53.420You made these commitments and just to quietly be like, just kidding, like, that doesn't sit right with me.
00:41:05.480So when people expect a little follow through, that should be that should be a given.
00:41:11.160Yeah. And I think about this a lot, too. We talked about this with a lot of what happened with Bud Light and what happened with Target. Then they just backtrack and make everyone angry. But I feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding of, in this case, what it's like to be a trans person.
00:41:31.700And then when they get like a little taste of that, the company is like, oh, my God, never mind. Like they can't even just for that one second, like if they get this online hate that the cause, the person, the community they're saying they support gets, they get it. And then they're like, never mind.
00:41:52.680Actually, they have that privilege, that right, that ability to step out and be like, OK, I don't want to deal with this anymore, which I think is just very telling of ignorance and just like a, oh, sure, let's do this.
00:42:10.320And then they get that hate and they're like, oh, oh, never mind.
00:42:13.540Yeah. Backtracking. The Dylan Mulvaney thing that you just mentioned,
00:42:17.820the thing that I will never be over is that Dylan Mulvaney, when she left social media
00:42:25.240at the height of all of this and came back and made that video, said that nobody at Bud Light
00:42:31.680even called her to be like, hey, are you all right? Like, I'm seeing what's going on.
00:42:36.300And that is something that will stick with me forever, that this brand, because she happened to say yes when asked to do a brand collaboration with Bud Light, she had to go dark, had to probably go into hiding, was the target of very severe attacks.
00:42:56.520and that Bud Light, the company who came to her to bring her into this,
00:43:01.720couldn't even follow up with an email when they saw all of this happening,
00:43:23.840that's just not how you engage people like that like at a certain point it's like
00:43:28.580I understand that Bud Light is a corporation and I don't expect corporations to like
00:43:33.480care about any of us certainly not marginalized people but the people who run Bud Light's
00:43:40.920marketing or influencer partnerships should really be taking a good hard look in the mirror
00:43:46.020because that's just like a failure of like how to be a human to each other like I like that just
00:43:52.560sticks with me i could not believe that she said that that nobody even ever reached out to her
00:43:56.260after they just like dropped her and never ever followed up again yeah and that's going back to
00:44:04.520your point um you know companies are not big companies especially are not are not allies
00:44:09.400and we shouldn't think of them that way but they if they post the black square if they take these
00:44:17.160stands, if they say they're going to do something, then yeah, they should absolutely be held
00:44:22.820accountable. That's just backing away and causing real harm. We were telling you a story before we
00:44:29.320started this out of nowhere. Someone bought that up and like, like making these things so politicized
00:44:37.680that just to have a diversity inclusion person at your company becomes, oh, well then hate,
00:44:46.540Like all of this hate, like you keep saying, it's irresponsible and it's not taking into account like the reality of working with these groups.
00:44:55.860Yeah, I think that's ultimately what these people want.
00:44:59.180I think that they want just working with a trans woman to be a lightning rod.
00:45:53.180But I have been surprised by how these big, huge corporations just kowtow to people who are not serious people who are just interested in flexing their power, their political power for no real reason.
00:46:07.440I mean, absolutely. We see all of these things actually hurting people. They don't even want to be the face of anything. They just want to exist. Funds like Fearless Fund is to exist and to help and lift up people that they know need lifting up.
00:46:24.380The same thing with Target when they had the small businesses with the LGBTQ queer content and then taking them off the shelf.
00:46:32.540We were just existing and feeling like we wanted to be the representation that no one else is willing to look at or see or stand behind.1.00
00:46:40.900And you literally came after them, taking away their money, taking away their existence, causing harm.
00:46:47.460Because, again, the Mulvaney thing, she was just holding a beer.
00:47:11.600Like this whole level of like what people are having to do and they're having to come back and being like, instead of existing, we have to fight for our place to exist.
00:49:48.140there will always be one more thing. So like that quote really speaks to what I think is happening.
00:49:55.040You know, the Fearless Fund, the stats that I just read about Black women entrepreneurs and how0.97
00:49:59.640little of the funding we get, it shows that the women who are running the Fearless Fund,
00:50:04.940they have work to do. They have serious work to do to right the wrong and to bake a little more
00:50:11.440equity into the funding landscape. So they don't really have time to play around with these legal
00:50:17.680challenges. But yet here they are having to spend their money, money that could go to the funding
00:50:23.620landscape, staffing up a legal team, holding press conferences. All of this, it is such a
00:50:29.280distraction at a time when marginalized people have real work to be doing. Fearless Fund is
00:50:35.240fighting back. They have a beefy legal team, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Gibson,
00:50:41.500Dunn, Crutcher, and Ben Crump, the attorney who represented families of George Floyd and Tyree
00:50:46.100Nichols in their civil suits over the men's killing at the hands of the police. And I feel
00:50:50.920confident like these women are like bad women. They are not going down without a fight. But also1.00
00:50:56.880they shouldn't have to write like they should be able to just do their work and focus on that work.
00:51:03.240And they should not have to be spending their money on these bogus legal challenges just because1.00
00:51:09.020they want to exist, just because they want to support other black women. And I find that, again,
00:51:13.680were in this situation that black women are the ones that have to be the ones to fight like they1.00
00:51:18.640don't want to they're tired they've been doing this and now we're back again because we know0.96
00:51:22.740there's a lot and i know there's a lot of fun specifically to women like point blank women and
00:51:28.700they surely didn't have to go to after them and i bet they were denied some of those and they're
00:51:32.460probably better at that but yet if they didn't that seems silly and that seemed very targeted1.00
00:51:37.700yes so that's very telling uh but like it again it has to be the black women that has to put up1.00
00:51:43.040this fight in order to get anything done. I mean, tale as old as time, right? And I think1.00
00:51:48.200I'm worried about this for a couple of reasons. One is that I think that if these grants and funds
00:51:54.600that specifically are meant to boost Black women entrepreneurs are deemed unconstitutional,1.00
00:51:59.080I really don't know what the landscape is going to look like because, as I said, like already
00:52:03.720so little of that funding goes to us in the first place. But further, one of the reasons I wanted to
00:52:09.280talk about it on the show today is that I don't think it's getting near the same amount of
00:52:14.040traction and attention that Blum's affirmative action challenges did. And I really think that
00:52:20.620we need to see white male and white women and really everybody in the startup space. We need
00:52:28.300to see VCs and entrepreneurs speaking up about this because Blum is essentially arguing that
00:52:33.920the startup space should basically just be for white people. And I think it's up to everybody
00:52:39.460in the space to push back and say like, that is not the kind of funding space that we want. That
00:52:43.860is not the kind of startup space that we want. And to really make that really clear, like what
00:52:49.140kind of a space do we want to have for the next generation of entrepreneurs? We want to tell them
00:52:53.540that the tiny little bit that might go to them isn't even for them anymore. I don't think that's
00:52:58.800a space that we want. Right. And absolutely in the same space, again, this is going to hurt
00:53:04.820white women as well. And like, if we're saying that all of this is too specific and it leaves
00:53:12.780out other people of race, it's going to hurt gender as well. So this is not even just for
00:53:17.160white people. It's going to be for white men. We're going to have more Elon Musk's running0.82
00:53:20.540programs into the ground. That's what we're going to see. A thousand percent. And I mean,
00:53:25.440Kind of like what you were alluding to before, time and time again in tech, particularly when black women challenge things or do things or start things, they uplift all women.
00:53:37.840And so even if that specific program is for black women owned businesses, you're going to tell me that a black woman who is financially supported is not going to go on to do something that's going to lift up all women and all marginalized people.
00:53:51.280Time and time again, we see that that's how it goes with black women.0.98
00:53:53.700And so, yeah, I just think that this is just this is me smacking that ice cream out of my brother's hand when I could have gotten a bite instead.1.00
00:54:00.520I really want to see more folks in the space speaking up about this, because what the Fearless Fund has done has been really great.
00:54:08.460And it's they're really like a good force in the space.
00:54:13.440And I think that we need them, frankly, we need them.