00:00:38.460and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:43.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:00:47.300Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:00:51.020abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:00:54.640These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:00:58.700Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:10.380There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:18.500I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:21.240After the Supreme Court ruling deeming affirmative action discriminatory, we were following the pending Supreme Court ruling on whether or not grant programs that support Black women entrepreneurs are discriminatory, too.
00:01:36.300And just like that affirmative action suit, this one was brought to us by certified enemy of the show, conservative activist Edward Blum.
00:01:45.100Now, at the heart of this case is the Atlanta-based group Fearless Fund, a grant program that supports Black women entrepreneurs.
00:01:52.040And I have a little sad news, which is that a U.S. federal court of appeals panel has suspended Fearless Fund's critical work of giving financial support to Black women-owned businesses,
00:02:01.160a ruling that, I'm sorry to say, seems to suggest that Blum is likely to prevail in his lawsuit claiming that such programs are discriminatory.
00:02:09.560This could have a ripple effect threatening any program designed to support certain marginalized or underrepresented communities.
00:02:16.180Now, the ruling against Fearless Fund is just another victory for conservative groups who are waging a sprawling legal battle against things like corporate diversity programs and in doing so have targeted companies and government institutions.
00:02:28.280So here's a conversation that I had with my friends Samantha and Annie over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You about how exactly we got here and what could be next.
00:02:39.560The man who brought us the legal challenge that struck down affirmative action earlier this summer is back.
00:02:47.940And this time he is coming for grants and fellowships that support marginalized people.
00:02:53.680So 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.
00:03:04.080Notably, the decision just applied to race.
00:03:06.440It did not apply to gender or things like legacy status or donor status being considered in the college admissions process.
00:03:14.560Separately, 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.
00:03:26.840I 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.
00:03:38.700It felt like, you know, one big torrent of rain and then another big torrent of rain.
00:04:52.380And I truly believe my parents believed that.
00:04:54.060I don't think my siblings believe that because they are educated and they understand.
00:04:57.680But I truly believe that because that was what was fed into me.0.99
00:05:00.700So 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
00:05:14.680And 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
00:05:31.720So it was it felt like so gross to know that I was manipulated like that at my young age, at my young age.
00:05:39.800I don't know how old this dude is. I guess he was trying to get into college. So I guess maybe around the same time.
00:05:44.680And 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.
00:06:00.760But 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.
00:06:09.480But 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?
00:06:21.780Like part of what I was spewing is part of the reason this is undone.
00:06:25.440Of course, the bigger picture is, again, white supremacists and their power that they wanted to play and the overall arcing, like, who was 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.
00:06:44.500Essentially, it's just all connections.
00:06:52.920First of all, thank you for sharing that.
00:06:54.820And 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.
00:07:12.840Like that is a tried and true method that bad actors and people interested in upholding white supremacy have engaged for a very long time.
00:07:21.100And so the reason they do it is because it's effective. And so it's not surprising that it will be effective on you, a young person. Also, the way that we talk about it, I think, just does not set people up to have a full understanding of the conversation. Right.
00:07:36.460So we talk so much about affirmative action.
00:07:39.680And when we talk about affirmative action, usually the face of affirmative action is0.99
00:07:50.700Of course, people are not going to agree with that.
00:07:52.900But the reality is, is that that is a myth because the Department of Labor shows that
00:07:57.160the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are actually white women.
00:08:01.060That is not what the way that we talk about it would lead you to believe, right?
00:08:06.100And 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, like they're the face of it.
00:08:26.440And 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.0.53
00:08:44.860And essentially what that is, is like affirmative action for rich people.
00:08:49.440Yeah, 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.
00:08:56.320So 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.
00:09:07.220Right. And I think that that has to be by design.
00:09:09.680Right. 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.
00:09:30.100They were saying the quiet part out loud because that's all they see.1.00
00:09:34.300That's the big enemy that is built up against white people, which is so disgusting and is very prevalent.0.99
00:09:41.820Like, that's the real understanding.0.98
00:09:43.380We need to have that whole fact and hold that conversation is this is an anti-black movement.
00:09:49.880And in that it did not actually help the black community that much at all.
00:09:56.720It really did not bring in, as you said, statistically, black people into colleges.
00:10:00.860It was, again, more white women, all white women, essentially.
00:10:04.800And 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
00:10:16.420But 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.
00:10:31.140Anti-blackness is always, that is a train that is always on time.0.67
00:10:35.380So 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
00:10:44.200So 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.
00:10:56.240Again, 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.0.73
00:11:05.340And if you don't think black people should be getting a leg up over you, you should not be into it.0.73
00:11:11.040That 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.
00:11:24.220But then that is not an accurate reflection of who the beneficiaries of programs like affirmative action actually end up being.
00:11:33.080So, Annie, you were saying how Asian-Americans were kind of made the face of the sort of victims of affirmative action.
00:11:41.560And that is very much by design because of this guy who is a conservative litigant named Edward Blum.
00:11:47.360I call him a litigant because that's like kind of what he is, like a professional lawsuit bringer.
00:11:52.400He is not a lawyer himself, but he basically connects potential plaintiffs with attorneys
00:11:57.640who are willing to represent them in test cases, which he then uses to try to set legal
00:13:37.420If everything was equal and everybody had same equity, that would be a beautiful utopia.
00:13:42.380But as we know, this land, this country, most countries that have been colonized is not based on that level and that it has never been about equity.
00:13:54.320It's always been about who has power and those who have power really was like, but I love that time.
00:13:59.360That was a great time. Why can't we have that again?
00:14:02.620We're just like, you know, we know what you're really saying.
00:16:51.520I think he's wealthy. I've actually looked into him because he's one of those figures that I find so curious. He did not come from wealth, but I think that he has wealth now. And 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.
00:17:15.200Right. He is that evil genius because we've seen that in a lot of conservative think tanks, as well as essentially right wing groups that have been building up the legal system to only help them putting in those in law school that they know that they can pull back out, educating them and funding them to the full in order to come back out and do these types of cases, knowing that if they can do this, this is going to be the basis of how they win.
00:17:41.460essentially oh yes oh my god did you guys did you all see that um docu-series on the duggars on
00:17:48.140hulu no i couldn't get to there yet so that's a whole thing it's a real like doozy as you might
00:17:56.380imagine but one of the things they make very clear is that it's not just about like this one
00:18:02.860problematic super religious family on tv it is about this vast network of young people who are
00:18:09.420being like trained and educated and also are very well connected to reach the highest levels of
00:18:16.480government and influence to make laws for all of us. So it's not enough that like their kids
00:18:22.160are homeschooled or that their kids live a certain way. They are training the next generation of
00:18:28.680political operatives and lawmakers to make sure that all of us and all of our kids live the way
00:18:33.720that they think that they should be living.
00:18:36.320So it's pretty, I guess, diabolical is the word I would use.
00:18:42.800You mentioned earlier how when you were having conversations about college,
00:18:46.680you remember watching the first wave of the affirmative action legal challenge go down.
00:18:51.480And even if folks weren't following affirmative action very closely,
00:18:55.000they might remember Blum's earlier attempt to challenge it.
00:18:58.160So Blum had been working to challenge affirmative action since 2013
00:19:02.100when he worked with this woman, Abigail Fisher,
00:19:04.820who was the daughter of a good friend of his
00:19:57.240Like she was like a very like memorable figure.
00:20:00.660Like 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.
00:20:09.500I do remember this because I remember thinking this is the dumbest argument I've ever seen because I'm like, girl, you didn't make it.0.64
00:20:17.980Like even without affirmative action, you wouldn't have made it.0.73
00:20:21.680Do you not understand how many people are struggling to get into college today because a little more access has happened?
00:20:27.420Not just because of affirmative action, but like the lottery and all of those things when we had more scholarships.
00:20:33.120I was just like, why are people listening to her?
00:20:35.120I think that was the biggest question in my head.
00:20:36.680I was like, why are we paying attention to this?
00:20:40.640I think I thought, I remember thinking, like, is this an onion headline?
00:20:45.760Like, she didn't get it because her grades are bad and now she's suing.
00:20:50.320I think that was the beginning of like oh this is a Becky sorry Becky's in the world that's really
00:20:56.440just whining because she couldn't get her away like that I remember like that was the beginning
00:20:59.960of that of like oh sorority girl was again no no no hate to sorority people I'm so sorry but you
00:21:05.420know that level like stereotype in that my daddy said that I could get in and now I'm not in why
00:21:10.180so the way that y'all are reacting is exactly how I remember this is validating because I remember
00:21:16.800her being treated like kind of a joke like her GPA was like fine but certainly a three point
00:21:22.660like it was a lot higher than my GPA was when I was in high school so like I'll own that but like
00:21:27.380you know it's not 3.59 is not an automatic entrance to wherever you want to go to college
00:21:32.080it's like a fine GPA and so I remember people calling her Becky with the bad grades and the
00:21:37.500vibe around her was like she was just salty that she didn't get in and so she was like blaming0.96
00:21:43.940black people. And so obviously she was not a very, I guess, sympathetic legal challenge to0.64
00:21:50.060affirmative action. And so obviously Abigail's legal challenge did not work. So Blum regrouped
00:21:56.060and made the strategic choice to make the face of affirmative action or the people being harmed by
00:22:01.140affirmative action, according to him, Asian Americans. According to an NPR article, he told
00:22:05.540a gathering of the Houston Chinese Alliance in 2015, quote, I needed plaintiffs. I needed Asian
00:22:11.360plaintiffs. NPR spoke to Hane Lopez, a race and constitutional law scholar at Berkeley,
00:22:16.700who described this as a deliberate switch in strategy and that the argument was no longer
00:22:22.660centered on how affirmative action impacts white people. Instead, quote, there's this move to
00:22:27.420strengthen the surface argument that this is racism against minorities. I think it's part0.91
00:22:31.720of the appeal. And so I've read like Asian-American activists and advocates saying that like he what
00:22:37.500What he was doing was this intentional shift to make Asian-Americans like a proxy stand-in for white people to be like, oh, no, like, this can't be about racial animus because I am trying to advocate for Asian-Americans.
00:22:53.920And again, I think it's a really great example of how effective a strategy it is to pit marginalized groups against one another in service of white supremacy.
00:23:03.940Because in the end, it's not like, I think since affirmative action has been struck down, we've already seen data trickle in.0.55
00:23:12.840That wasn't that long ago, but already we've seen data trickle in that suggests that like, yeah, it's white people with connections.
00:23:19.860It's white legacy students who are continuing to get more slots in admissions.
00:23:25.780It's not, you know, it's certainly not helping the Asian-Americans who brought this challenge.
00:23:31.460it's actually just opening up more slots for more rich white people
00:23:35.960because that's how college works in the United States.0.99
00:23:38.920Right. And of course, this play is being used by other places
00:23:44.060such as Florida doing the Asian American history instead,
00:23:48.820but blacklisting African American history.
00:26:20.740that business everywhere, especially in Atlanta and in Georgia. So good on her. It owns a lot of
00:26:26.000property. That wouldn't be possible without the Fearless Fund. And so the lawsuit that Blum is
00:26:32.240bringing centers on the Fearless Fund's Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards Black women
00:26:37.320who own small businesses $20,000 in grants and digital tools to help them grow their businesses
00:26:42.420and mentorship opportunities. So interestingly enough, Blum did not seek out the Fearless Fund
00:26:49.320to sue, but rather he says that a non-Black woman who runs a business reached out to him0.59
00:26:54.320via email and flagged like, did you know that these Black women are running a grant program
00:27:00.000that I can't be part of? And so the Washington Post reports that the lawsuit cites three female1.00
00:27:05.740business owners, one from New York and two from Virginia, who argue that they could have benefited0.60
00:27:10.260from the Fearless Fund's grant program, but they were ineligible because they are not Black. So
00:27:16.300So, 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
00:27:28.760They were like, we should have a piece of that.0.88
00:27:31.720That's such an interesting take because I'm like, well, you also didn't get it from every other business grant ever.
00:28:40.420Everyone will find their people. Everyone will find what they need to make what they want happen.
00:28:44.700I believe that as like a like a meditation that keeps me in this work and keeps me being an entrepreneur.0.62
00:28:52.260But 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.
00:29:04.680That's not a dynamic that helps any anybody. Right. And so I think that we all have our place.
00:29:17.980It ultimately won't serve them as either.
00:29:19.820It just keeps us pit against each other as opposed to these larger systems that are actually holding us all down.
00:29:26.240It's such a mind play that they have to people have to go through to be like, OK, I can't get this one thing because they say I can't have it.
00:29:32.680So that means no one should have it because I'm going to be miserable.
00:29:37.380We're going to keep this mentality going.
00:29:38.820And 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.
00:29:51.180It's a little bit more accessible to tear someone down who other people will help you tear down with instead of this big, giant amount of cash that's just sitting here for the white man.
00:29:59.920Like, I said for the white man like I'm a native.
00:30:02.760But, like, you know, that's just, like, mind level of, like, how much you're willing to ignore to be like, okay, I'm at the bottom.
00:30:18.400This reminds me of when I was a little kid and my brother had this, like, free coupon for an ice cream from McDonald's that he got from school.
00:30:26.160So, we went to McDonald's together and he got one ice cream and I didn't have any money because we were little kids.
00:32:22.100When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:32:27.960I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:32:34.320I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:32:38.020I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:32:46.120Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:32:50.340I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:32:55.120I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:33:02.720They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:33:06.600But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:33:10.060They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:33:13.700Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,
00:33:18.460Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:33:25.120So Blum is using what he has called, quote, the shoe on the other foot test.
00:33:32.460The rhetorical strategy that he asks himself is if a grant program funded white male business owners, would it be considered fair?
00:33:40.640But that test, like you were saying, Sam, really assumes that we are all equal and all have equal access, which the data could not paint a clearer picture about the fact that that is not happening.
00:33:53.500Black women are the fastest rising group of entrepreneurs in the country.
00:33:56.960According to the Harvard Business Review in the U.S., an astounding 17 percent of black women are in the process of starting or running a new business.
00:34:03.680That's compared to just 10 percent of white women and 15 percent of white men.
00:34:07.240Yet, despite this lead, only 3 percent of women are running mature businesses.0.99
00:34:12.380Why? Well, one big reason is access to capital.1.00
00:34:15.760Harvard Business Review's research found that 61 percent of black women self-fund their total startup capital.
00:34:20.820This is in spite of the fact that in their finding, only 29 percent of black women entrepreneurs live in households with incomes over $75,000 compared to 52 percent of white men.
00:34:31.220This data is also combined with data suggesting that black women are less likely to own our own homes, pick on a higher level of debt to do things like go to college and are often like saddled with debt to go to college.
00:34:43.520And so ultimately, that leaves us saddled with more debt and having fewer personal resources
00:34:50.280and low collateral. Black entrepreneurs typically receive less than 2% of all venture capital
00:34:56.400dollars each year, while companies led by Black women receive less than 1% of all funding. This0.65
00:35:03.100is according to Crunchbase. So yeah, the funding landscape is not great for Black women. Less than1.00
00:35:10.0001% of funding goes to us. And so the fact that we already don't get that much, that there are
00:35:16.960grants and investment funds specifically aimed at shifting those numbers just a tiny bit like
00:35:25.000the Fearless Fund, and that people are saying, no, we need to go for that too. That less than 1%
00:35:29.920that goes to y'all, that needs to go to us now. In 2020, Pew found that just 3% of U.S. businesses
00:35:36.320were Black-owned, while 86% were White-owned. And so, yeah, as I said, like, as an entrepreneur,
00:35:44.340these kind of dismal numbers completely align with my own experiences trying to raise money
00:35:50.640for projects that I want to do. There's just not a lot out there, and you really have to
00:35:55.900stay focused and stay positive and not really let the sort of numbers around how dismal things can
00:36:03.700be kind of get in your head. But then on top of it, when you have people like Blum and these women
00:36:08.280that he's representing in this case to challenge these funds, to challenge what little is out there
00:36:13.380for Black entrepreneurs who are women, it's hard to internalize that as anything other than0.99
00:36:18.120they don't want us here. They don't want us to have anything, you know?1.00
00:36:21.500Yeah, absolutely. And it's so frustrating, too, because
00:36:26.420a lot of companies like to act like they are supporting marginalized people.
00:36:35.800They are supporting Black people, and they make these, like, outward promises
00:36:40.080and then just don't really follow through with them.1.00
00:36:45.820Yeah, y'all might remember or be thinking, like, I thought in 2020,
00:36:49.180like, after all the racial justice uprisings and the wake of the murder of George Floyd,
00:36:53.880I 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.
00:37:03.500Well, I remember all those promises, too.
00:37:05.880Businesses committed $340 billion between May 2020 and October 2022, according to McKinsey.
00:37:13.920And the Post also reports that investment swelled in the startup world.
00:37:17.800A record $5.1 billion in funding was allocated to Black-founded startups in 2021.
00:37:22.700That sounds like a lot. However, all of that interest and excitement and commitment pretty much eroded very quickly with funding for Black-founded startups plunging 50% in 2022.
00:37:36.660So remember, this is all happening against the pendulum kind of swinging back the other way, where all of these corporate diversity efforts became a political lightning rod and these employers just sort of backpedaled, right?
00:37:48.700And 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.
00:38:01.940And all of those promises just fizzled out. Right.
00:38:04.600And 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.
00:38:13.480I think, like, recently Chick-fil-A just, like, happened to have a diversity and inclusion person on their staff.
00:38:21.220And, like, there was a flurry of, like, online protests because of that.
00:38:25.600Like, just having somebody thinking about that on staff is now a lightning rod.
00:38:29.920And 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.
00:38:41.140But like, yeah, I just think that we're in a completely different landscape than we were in 2020.
00:38:44.720I mean, this is definitely that whole level of they want good publicity, but they're not going to follow through.0.84
00:38:54.580And at the very least, I'll be like, hey, let's tell the black people in the story.0.79
00:38:59.180Like 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.
00:39:09.680And 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.
00:39:17.000All of these things have to be in line for us to support you.0.99
00:39:20.540You better be super, super racist and super, super homophobic in order for the conservatives.1.00
00:39:26.280You better hate everyone except for white cis people.1.00
00:39:29.400If not, we're not going to support you, even if your chicken is okay.0.99
00:39:32.660So 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.
00:39:41.740A lot of these people, like, just they'll find anything to be aggrieved about.
00:39:46.560Like, you know, I saw like Cracker Barrel was adding plant-based sausage to their menu and people were like, plant-based sausage.
00:39:55.680I'm not going to shop at Cracker Barrel and I'm never going to go to Cracker Barrel again.
00:39:58.760And it's like, they're not taking regular sausage off the menu.
00:40:01.660You don't have to order it just because they're putting food on the menu that like someone else might like.
00:40:06.680That's not you. That's cause for for upset.
00:40:10.020And so another thing I wanted to say about your point, Sam, is that there's a makeup company, Tarte.
00:40:15.280They 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.
00:40:25.440They were asking black influencers like after the fact to come and like giving them substandard accommodations and all of that.
00:40:31.300And somebody found that in 2020, you know, when they posted their black square, this company was like, we pledged that we're going to be more inclusive and do more partnerships with black and brown models and blah, blah, blah.
00:40:45.220And then they quietly removed that from their website.
00:40:48.560But somebody found it on the Wayback Machine.
00:40:50.600It was like, oh, let's get an update on all of these, like, very specific commitments that you made.
00:40:56.640And it turns out that they basically just, like, didn't do any of that stuff.
00:40:59.520But the thing is, nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to make these commitments.
00:41:06.540You made these commitments and just to quietly be like, just kidding, like, that doesn't sit right with me.
00:41:29.520We talked about this with a lot of the, like, what happened with Bud Light, what happened with Target, you know, then they just backtrack and make everyone angry.
00:41:37.040But I feel like there's a fundamental misunderstanding of, in this case, what it's like to be a trans person.
00:41:45.100And then when they get, like, a little taste of that, the company is like, oh, my God, never mind.
00:41:51.140Like 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.
00:42:04.920And then they're like, nevermind, actually.
00:42:06.920They have that privilege, that right, that ability to step out and be like, okay, I don't want to deal with this anymore.
00:42:15.060which I think is just very telling of ignorance and just like a oh sure let's do this and then
00:42:23.660they get that hate and they're like oh oh never mind yeah backtracking the Dylan Mulvaney thing
00:42:29.720that you just mentioned the thing that I will never be over is that Dylan Mulvaney when she
00:42:36.980left social media at the height of all of this and came back and made that video said that nobody at
00:42:44.320Bud Light even called her to be like, hey, are you all right? Like, I'm seeing what's going on.
00:42:50.360I, that is something that will stick with me forever, that this brand, because she said,
00:42:56.920happened to say yes, when asked to do a brand collaboration with Bud Light, she was, had to go
00:43:03.340dark, had to probably go into hiding, like, was the target of very severe attacks. And that Bud
00:43:11.120light, the company who came to her to bring her into this couldn't even follow up with an email
00:43:16.540when they saw all of this happening, how quickly they abandoned her. And I feel like if you are a
00:43:22.540brand or an institution who is working with marginalized people, if you're not going to
00:43:27.500stand by them when this kind of stuff happens and when they get into situations that really
00:43:33.680you have put them in by offering them these partnerships, that's just not how you engage
00:43:39.820people like that like at a certain point it's like i understand that bud light is a corporation
00:43:44.840and i don't expect corporations to like care about any of us certainly not marginalized people but
00:43:50.260the people who run bud lights marketing or influencer partnerships should really be taking
00:43:58.000a good hard look in the mirror because that's just like a failure of like how to be a human
00:44:02.740to each other like i i like because that just sticks with me i could not believe that she said
00:44:07.560that nobody even ever reached out to her after.
00:48:33.820They have serious work to do to right the wrong and to bake a little more equity into the funding landscape.
00:48:40.760So they don't really have time to play around with these legal challenges.
00:48:45.880But yet here they are having to spend their money, money that could go to the funding landscape, staffing up a legal team, holding press conferences.
00:48:55.120All of this, it is such a distraction at a time when marginalized people have real work to be doing.
00:49:03.560They have a beefy legal team, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Gibson, Dunn, Crutcher, and Ben Crump, the attorney who represented families of George Floyd and Tyree Nichols in their civil suits over the men's killing at the hands of the police.0.92
00:49:17.400And I feel confident like these women are like bad women.0.52
00:49:21.540They are not going down without a fight.1.00
00:49:23.420But also they shouldn't have to write like they should be able to just do their work and focus on that work.0.85
00:49:30.740And they should not have to be spending their money on these bogus legal challenges just because they want to exist, just because they want to support other black women.0.90
00:49:39.940And I find that, again, we're in this situation that black women are the ones that have to be the ones to fight.1.00
00:49:45.920Like, they don't want to. They're tired. They've been doing this.1.00
00:49:48.620And now we're back again because we know there's a lot, and I know, there's a lot of funds specifically to women, like point blank women.0.80
00:49:55.740And they surely didn't have to go after them. And I bet they were denied some of those. And they're probably better at that. But yet, if they didn't, that seems silly and that seems very targeted. So that's very telling. But like, again, it has to be Black women that has to put up this fight in order to get anything done.
00:50:13.080I mean, tale as old as time, right? And I think I'm worried about this for a couple of reasons. One is that I think that if these grants and funds that specifically are meant to boost Black women entrepreneurs are deemed unconstitutional, I really don't know what the landscape is going to look like because, as I said, like already so little of that funding goes to us in the first place.1.00
00:50:34.440But further, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it on the show today is that I don't think it's getting near the same amount of traction and attention that Blum's affirmative action challenges did.
00:50:45.760And I really think that we need to see white male and white women and really everybody in the startup space. We need to see VCs and entrepreneurs speaking up about this because Blum is essentially arguing that the startup space should basically just be for white people.
00:51:05.200And I think it's up to everybody in the space to push back and say, like, that is not the kind of funding space that we want.
00:51:11.280That is not the kind of startup space that we want.
00:51:13.240And to really make that really clear, like, what kind of a space do we want to have for the next generation of entrepreneurs?
00:51:20.240We want to tell them that the tiny little bit that might go to them isn't even for them anymore.
00:51:25.520I don't think that's the space that we want.
00:51:27.240Right. And absolutely in the same space, again, this is going to hurt white women as well.1.00
00:51:34.100And like, if we're saying that all of this is too specific and it leaves out other people of race, it's going to hurt gender as well.
00:51:43.360So this is not even just for white people.
00:51:51.780And I mean, kind of like what you were alluding to before, time and time again in tech, particularly when black women challenge things or do things or start things, they uplift all women.
00:52:05.500And 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.
00:52:18.700Time and time again, we see that that's how it goes with black women.0.98
00:52:21.200And 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
00:52:28.040I really want to see more folks in the space speaking up about this, because what the Fearless Fund has done has been really great.
00:52:35.980And it's they're really like a good force in the space.
00:52:40.960And I think that they we need them. Frankly, we need them.
00:52:44.680We do. And it's a drop in the bucket. Let's just be real honest.
00:52:47.280It's like it's nothing in comparison to what other people get, essentially.
00:52:52.820And it's like, wow, you really are going after the little groups for nothing, just to make a point.
00:52:57.600And obviously to keep that little bit, as you were saying, in your pocket, instead of seeing what this is actually could do for the entire humanity.