The latest enemy of DEI and The Fearless Fund
24th June 2024 · 0 Comments
Wendell Pierce put out a “Clarion Call” this month about the status of Black people in America.
When the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal blocked The Fearless Fund, a private venture capital fund created and operated by Black women, from awarding grants to Black women entrepreneurs, saying that was discriminatory, the award-winning actor realized Black people’s current position.
“We are being attacked. And the Court is memorializing law that is discriminatory against Black folks’ own self-determination. And I thought I’d use my platform to make a clarion call.”
The actor viewed the Court’s ruling as bigotry and discrimination. The three-judge panel used an 1866 Reconstruction-era law, Section 1981, which protected formerly enslaved freed people’s equal rights to enter into contracts the same as whites.
Pierce can relate to discrimination. To help a young relative who graduated from Howard University and landed his first job in New York, Pierce wanted to rent an apartment in Harlem. He even offered to pay the complete rent a year in advance.
Despite showing bank records, property ownership and employment history, the award-winning actor was turned down, he told CNN Host Abby Phillips and the Reverend Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s Politics Nation.
Pierce thinks the application was designed to be discriminatory. They used the “technicality” that he did not have “continuous employment” to refuse to rent to him.
Pierce told the anecdote to help people understand his angst over the U.S. Court of Appeal for the 11th Circuit Court opinion. He wanted to show the damaging effects when bigotry is memorialized in law. The Court is memorializing law that is discriminatory against Black folks’ own self-determination, Pierce says.
The Fearless Fund was sued by the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), a conservative nonprofit led by Edward J. Blum, who is described as a litigant. His primary goal, rather than litigating for equal rights, seems to be attacking and taking down DEI programs to keep Blacks and other POC from making economic progress.
Fearless Fund co-founders Arian Simone and Ayana Parsons describe the Fearless Fund as a “venture capital fund that invests in women of color-led businesses.” Its stated mission is to “Bridge the gap in venture capital funding for women of color founders building scalable, growth-aggressive companies.”
Fearless supplies grants to businesses under its “Foundation” arm to pursue that mission. Fearless makes those grants based on a competitive application process. The “Fearless Strivers Grant Contest” offers four winners $20,000 each and digital tools to assist with business growth and mentorship.
The Fearless Fund exists because of a long-standing disparity in access to capital for Black women entrepreneurs. Venture capital in 2023 totaled $300 billion, and Black women received one percent. The fact that the fund caters to Black women is no different than other venture capital funds that primarily choose to support white entrepreneurs.
The Fearless Fund is not using public money and is not a DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) program, but Black women helping Black women.
Those facts mean nothing to Blum and his conservative backers, who are traveling the U.S. trying to eliminate DEI-focused programs.
Kevin Newsom and Robert Luck, Trump appointees on the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, wrote that the Fearless Fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest is “substantially likely to violate” the provisions of Title 42 of the U.S. Code, which ensures equal rights under the law and prohibits the use of race when awarding and enforcing contracts.
Luck and Newsom ruled that the Fearless Strivers Grant Contest should be temporarily blocked while the case is litigated in a lower court.
Judge Robin Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee, dissented. Rosenbaum blasted her fellow jurists and likened the plaintiffs to “floppers” (like athletes who pretend to be hurt to get referees to call fouls in their favor) who have not been injured by the Fearless Fund Strivers Grant Contest.
Rosenbaum asserted that real injuries must have occurred before the grant program could be deemed discriminatory. The problem here is that American Alliance has failed to establish an injury, she wrote.
Arian Simone, CEO and founding partner of Fearless Fund and founder of the Fearless Foundation, told CNN that the Court’s ruling was “devastating.”
“I am shattered for every girl of color who has a dream but will grow up in a nation determined not to give her a shot to live it,” Simone said. She adds that the ruling says diversity in corporate America and education should not exist.
While Blum, the president of AAER, is the only contact listed for the nonprofit, The Harvard Crimson reported that his work is funded by conservative trusts and foundations, including Donors Trust, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and The 85 Fund. Blum has worked for decades to undo affirmative action and diversity programs.
Since the 1990s, Blum has been heavily involved in bringing eight cases to the United States Supreme Court. He was a significant litigant in Bush v. Vera, which concerned racial gerrymandering in Texas, and the infamous Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College lawsuits. In 2023, Blum also filed a lawsuit against two law firms for diversity fellowships.
What’s worse is that conservative court judges are backing up his flimsy arguments and ruling in his favor. Never mind that Blum’s AAER is insidious and bigoted in its lawsuits against institutions that benefit non-whites. And forget about the past and current wealth disparities Blacks are subjected to by firms that won’t provide venture capital, much less lucrative contracts.
Emboldened by the successful court decisions against DEI and Blacks’ civil rights, Blum continues his assault on institutions attempting to level the playing field for those long denied equity and inclusion.
In February, AAER filed a lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of the American Latino for hiring Latino and Latina interns. In the lawsuit, Blum claimed that the museum had yet to hire a non-Latin in its two years of existence.
The museum’s leadership is working to effect change in a field where only five percent of crucial positions are being filled by individuals who identify as Latina, Latino, or Latinx.
We agree with Wendell Pierce. The ruling in the Fearless Fund case is an insidious, racist decision that is a pandora’s box that memorializes discriminatory laws.
This suggests that just because a law is on the books that doesn’t mean it’s fair or equitable. When racist judges use laws created to deliver equity and inclusion to Blacks and people of color against them, that is a full-on bastardization of the rule of law.
We are witnessing the destruction and corruption of the rule of law. Soon, the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Laws, and the need for reparations will mean nothing if white nationalists pretending to be supporters of equality have their way, and there will be no levers for leveling the playing field.
Pierce’s Clarion Call must not be ignored. What can we do? Fight in the courts, call the wrongdoers out publicly, vote out the enemies of justice and fairness, and elect people willing to embrace DEI.
This article originally published in the June 24, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
