Black Women Are the Next Targets of Right-Wing Legal Activist
Conservative legal strategist Edward Blum says it’s “unfair” that there’s a grant for Black women small-business founders, a group who received just 0.34 percent of all venture capital funds in 2021. So Blum is suing to destroy the grant, ensuring Black women receive even less than that teeny amount.
To that end, Blum has filed a lawsuit against Atlanta-based, Black women-owned venture capital investment firm Fearless Fund over its Strivers Grant Contest, which limits eligibility for its $20,000 start-up grants to companies with at least 51 percent Black woman ownership.
In court papers, Blum’s newest legal nonprofit—the American Alliance for Equal Rights—claims the Strivers grant is “a racially-discriminatory program” that violates Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. That law was passed one year after the Civil War to ensure formerly enslaved Black folks could “make and enforce contracts… as is enjoyed by white citizens.”