Backlash against diversity and inclusion aims to keep women of color on the margins

I am alarmed by the continued assaults on inclusion and affirmative action. This month a federal appeals court 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 and violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Fearless Fund, the nation’s first venture capital firm run by women of color that invests exclusively in tech and consumer-goods companies owned by women of color, runs the grant program.

This is just the latest salvo in the escalating assault on diversity, equity and inclusion and affirmative action and the wide-ranging ramifications for disenfranchised people heavily impacted by long-standing discrimination and disinvestment. The lawsuit against the Fearless Fund is a direct result of the attack on affirmative action in higher education, and most of us knew that the assault would not stop there. In fact, the latest lawsuit was filed by the same person who brought the affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court in June 2023, when the court struck down race-based college admissions programs.

I am president and CEO of the nonprofit Women Employed. Affirmative action has been critical to our work to ensure fairness, equity and equal opportunity for women. In our early days, it was affirmative action that allowed us to make progress. It is in that same spirit that we continue to push for equity for women of color business owners through our Women’s Entrepreneurship Hub.

The lawsuit against the Fearless Fund’s grant program claims that it violates federal civil rights law. That's a cynical weaponization of the law, ignores the law's intent to ensure those once enslaved have equal access and protection under the law as white citizens, and shows a willful ignorance of the deep racial disparities that reverberate today.

Regressive efforts like this have already had a chilling effect. Law firms are ending hiring programs, DEI is being banned at public colleges and universities, and companies are quietly retreating from explicit commitments to inclusion. Yet the fact remains that inequality is still prevalent.

Women of color lag in getting venture capital

Nationwide, women entrepreneurs receive only about 2% of venture capital funding. And while Black women found businesses at a higher rate than anyone else, they receive less than 1% of funding, a miniscule investment that actually plummeted in 2022. In 2023, the Small Business Association issued nearly $34 billion in business loans, but less than a third went to women-owned businesses, and even fewer to entrepreneurs of color. And Black- and Latinx-owned enterprises that are deemed low-risk borrowers are still about half as likely as white-owned firms to have their non-emergency bank loan applications approved.

This is the reality that led to the Fearless Fund being established. And it is what energized us to develop the WE Hub, a revolutionary tool to empower more Illinois women ― particularly Black and Latinx women―to improve their financial security, build their wealth and achieve their own vision of success through entrepreneurship.

To be clear, this isn't just an attack on Black women. This is an attack on all marginalized populations. When we can't take the necessary steps to address discrimination, we will never achieve full equity.

These battles won’t stop here. Women Employed stands 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. We have 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. We will not yield in the face of efforts to roll back decades of hard-fought progress and opportunity.

Cherita Ellens is president and CEO of Women Employed.

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