We already knew that when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action college and university admissions, white anti-AA advocates would not stop at colleges and would soon set their sights on corporate America. And that’s exactly what’s been happening. White people are big mad because there are still organizations out there continuing to prioritize opportunities for people of color, as opposed to more opportunities for white people in a country built on opportunities exclusively for white people.
Source: Prince Williams / Getty
According to The Washington Post, a federal judge in Atlanta ruled Tuesday that the Fearless Fund venture capital firm can continue offering a grant program exclusively to entrepreneurial Black women after the firm was sued by a salty white man and his anti-affirmative action organization. The judge argued the lawsuit wasn’t likely to succeed.
So, y’all remember Edward Blum, right? No? Well, don’t feel bad.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
He’s just as much an unremarkable Caucasian as the client who put his name on the map, Abigail Fisher.
Y’all remember Abigail Fisher, right? No? Well, don’t feel bad. She’s basically the Toyota Camry of human beings. She’s that common. She’s your average white person’s favorite average white person. She is what McDonald’s is to the fast food industry minus the success—she’s the most common but also the most mediocre. Abigail Fisher is the living embodiment of “plain Jane.”
In 2016, Fisher was Blum’s great white hope after she claimed she was denied entry to the University of Texas because she’s white, only to have it revealed that only 47 students who were admitted to UT the year she applied had lower grades than her and, out of those applicants, 42 were just as white as she is. It also turned out that 168 Black and Latino students with “combined AI/PAI scores identical to or higher than (Fisher’s)” were rejected as well. This should give you a little insight as to whether Blum is really a fighter of racial injustice or an ambassador for fake white grievances.
Now in the present day, Blum is back to his old tricks. The Washington Post reports that Blum, who considers himself a conservative activist, sued Fearless Fund which awards $20,000 to Black women who run businesses, alleging it engaged in “explicit racial exclusion” by operating a grant program “open only to Black females.”
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Unfortunately for him but fortunately for Fearless Fund founders, Arian Simone and Ayana Parsons, U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash rejected arguments from his group, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, during the hearing Tuesday.
The judge said that the Fearless Fund grant program which has doled out more than $26 million in investments and $3 million in grants, qualifies as charitable giving, which is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment.
Thrash, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, is expected to file an opinion in the case later this week.
All of this begs the question; are Black women not allowed to do for Black women? Have white people not been telling Black people for generations that we need to stop looking for handouts, stop blaming the white man for everything, and build up our own communities? Is the Fearless Fund not a shining example of Black people doing exactly that? White people told Black people to “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps,” and now Black people are helping Black people do that, and white people are like, “No, wait—wait, not like that.”
Of course, Blum, the dumb and glum advocate for mediocre white bums (bars!), doesn’t see it that way.
“Our nation’s civil rights laws do not permit racial distinctions because some groups are overrepresented in various endeavors, while others are under-represented,” he said in a statement.
However, attorneys involved with the Fearless Fund disagreed and praised the organization’s reputation for aiding Black businesses.
“What the plaintiffs are attempting to do here is to turn a civil rights statute on its head,” said Alphonso David, a civil rights attorney and the chief executive of the Global Black Economic Forum on the Fearless Fund legal team, per the Washington Post. In the past four years, Fearless Fund has invested in more than 40 businesses, including popular brands like the Slutty Vegan restaurant chain and the Lip Bar makeup company.
Yeah—salute to the Fearless Fund. Just keep doing your thing and let your white tearsy haters stay mad about it.
