Will Biden step in to help Fearless Fund, Black Wall Street survivors?
Black businesses and Tulsa Massacre survivors deserve federal assistance
Summer is here, and Black Music Month in June is always a good time for me. But this June is starting off on a mixed note for (an upcoming) Juneteenth, and I have grave concerns about August’s Black Business Month. Here’s what’s up.
The good news
I love Black Music Month. I usually kick it off by watching this Bill Withers documentary. (Years ago, when Associated Content was popular, he was one of the 30 people I wrote about in a Black Music Month series.) Then, there’s the legendary Chaka Khan, who redeemed herself from “Verzuz” with a stellar performance on NPR’s “Tiny Desk.” Yet another “lovely day.”
I’m always in a good mood in June. I immediately think of my father barking on me when I mentioned Donald Trump and my grandfather have the same birthday: Flag Day.
“DAD WAS HERE FIRST!” my father said while invisible smoke blew out of his nose.
You right. You right. My bad. I don’t want no problems.
And my grandfather also lived long enough (95 years) to clown the absolute daylights out of Trump. He’d start talking about why I needed to vote for Hillary Clinton before I could even get my coat off.
Then there’s Juneteenth, the same day that I adopted my dog. (Any time somebody asks me what her name is, which is Junee, they get a PBS-style history lesson about Galveston Bay, Texas.) This will make the third year that Juneteenth is an official federal holiday.
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And if you’re a pet owner, you already know June 2-8 was Pet Appreciation Week and June 21 is Take Your Dog to Work Day. We use any excuse to celebrate our four-legged friends, including bringing them to Juneteenth events. By the way, this is as good of a time as any to support black-owned pet businesses!
The bad news
We have two more months before Black Business Month. And at the rate it’s going this June, I don’t even know the future of DEI jobs, Black business owners and/or Black grants.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, on average, Black women were paid 64% of what non-Hispanic white men made in 2021. Additionally, according to Brookings, in 2019, there were a total of 5,771,292 employer firms (businesses with more than one employee) of which only 2.3% (134,567) were Black-owned.
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But even with the odds against us, a GoDaddy's Venture Forward research initiative confirmed that Black women remain the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, more than doubling since August 2019. In fact, Black women total 10% of all entrepreneurs surveyed for the latest report, representing a 70% increase in the number of Black women-owned businesses started prior to the pandemic.
Clearly, somebody was fed up with Black women actually escaping the odds of being eternally poor and starting their own businesses, especially considering the ongoing fight with HBCUs, the snubbing of Ivy League school graduates and DEI jobs, and being passed over for the same job. On June 3, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals backed an injunction to stop co-founder Arian Simone from financially funding Black women-led businesses with her Fearless Fund venture capital firm.
Why? The conservative group American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit accusing Simone’s firm of exercising discriminatory practices by excluding white and Asian women from its pool of applicants. No word on whether the American Alliance for Equal Rights keeps that same energy for white-owned venture capital firms or white-owned businesses.
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And to add insult to injury, a few days ago, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, who are still alive and once lived and/or worked in the the Greenwood Business District. In the early 1900s, the district was the home of 108 Black-owned professional, retail and entertainment businesses.
“Plaintiffs do not point to any physical injury to property in Greenwood rendering it uninhabitable that could be resolved by way of injunction or other civil remedy,” the court wrote in its decision, according to the Associated Press.
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The nine-member Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the prior judge’s decision last year, ruling that the plaintiff’s grievances about the destruction of the Greenwood district, although legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.
Imagine an entire community burned down by a group of racist anti-Black people, who also killed hundred of residents. But the court system doubled down on saying these crimes didn’t “fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.”
That massacre destroyed the livelihoods of all of the following Black-owned businesses on Black Wall Street:
41 grocery and meat markets
30 restaurants
11 boarding and rooming houses
Nine billiard halls
Five hotels
33 Black professionals
15 physicians and surgeons
Six real estate, loan and insurance agents
Four pharmacists
Three lawyers
Two dentists
Twenty-four skilled crafts persons
10 tailors
Five building contractors and painters
Four shoemakers
26 service workers
12 barbers
Six shoe shiners
Five clothes cleaning shops
I can only imagine what Black Wall Street would look like now. I can also only speculate about how many more black, women-owned businesses that Fearless Fund could have helped to avoid historic rounds of job discrimination. It’s not like we’re new to these kinds of obstacles, but the audacity of it all still blows my mind.
I’m still excited for what’s to come in June. We keep fighting even when the financial goal posts are constantly moved. Meanwhile, I’m also closely paying attention to how current President Joe Biden responds to Simone asking him to ignite an executive order related to DEI jobs.
This isn’t the way I wanted to kick off the days leading up to Juneteenth and beyond. But it is definitely on brand for those who have a real issue with black businesses thriving. Same old, same old.
Did you enjoy this post? You’re also welcome to check out my Substack columns “Black Girl In a Doggone World,” “BlackTechLogy,” “Homegrown Tales,” “I Do See Color,” “One Black Woman’s Vote” and “Window Shopping” too. Subscribe to this newsletter for the weekly posts every Wednesday.
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