In Solidarity with Fearless Fund
On Monday a federal court of appeals panel suspended a grant program for Black women business owners, ruling that a conservative group is likely to prevail in its lawsuit claiming that the program is discriminatory. The Fearless Fund, the nation’s first venture-capital (VC) firm run by Women of Color that invests exclusively in tech and consumer-goods companies owned by Women of Color, runs the grant program.
Women Employed is alarmed by this latest salvo in the escalating assault on DEI and affirmative action and the wide-ranging ramifications for disenfranchised communities. The lawsuit against the Fearless Fund was filed by same person who brought the affirmative-action cases decided by the Supreme Court in June 2023, in which the court struck down race-based college-admissions programs. He unironically alleges that the Fearless Fund’s grant program―which awards funding and business-development services to Black women entrepreneurs―violates the nation’s federal civil rights law, a cynical weaponization of the law and abandoning of its intent, as well as a willful ignorance of the deep racial disparities rooted in past inequity that reverberate into today. These regressive efforts have already led to law firms ending hiring programs, DEI being banned at public colleges and universities across the country, and companies quietly retreating from explicit commitments to inclusion―deepening inequity rather than creating equality. All of this despite the fact that the majority of working Americans support DEI efforts.
It is those very inequities that necessitate Women Employed’s focus on building women’s economic power by closing the wealth gap at the intersection of gender and race. Since 2010, the wealth gap between Black and white families has persistently expanded, with Black households holding only $15 for every $100 in wealth held by white households. Black women are severely underrepresented in senior leadership and overrepresented in the lowest paid, lowest quality jobs. Black women graduating with a 4-year degree have almost 60 percent more debt than their white male counterparts. Despite the fact Black women found businesses at a higher rate than anyone else, they still get miniscule VC investment. Black- and Latino/a/x-owned enterprises deemed low-risk borrowers are still about half as likely as white-owned firms to have their nonemergency bank-loan applications approved. This is the reality that led to the Fearless Fund being established, and it is the same analysis and spirit that energized us to develop the WE Hub, a revolutionary tool to empower more Illinois women―particularly Black and Latina/x women―to improve their financial security, build their wealth, and achieve their own vision of success through entrepreneurship.
As you would expect given the name of the firm, Fearless Fund’s co-founders Arian Simone and Ayana Parsons adamantly stand by the grant program, and say they will continue to fight. Women Employed is in solidarity with the Fearless Fund, and in support of the desperately needed equity efforts that attempt to stand in the gap between our country’s promise, and its reality. Women Employed has a decades-long history of advocating for and defending affirmative action — a policy that has been integral to advancing equal opportunity and opening doors to better futures for women and People of Color. And like Arian Simone and Ayana Parsons and so many others, we will not yield in the face of efforts to roll back decades of hard-fought progress and opportunity.
