Major Corporations and VC investors Are Giving Big In The Backlash Against Racism

Following weeks of massive protests across the country sparked by the murder of George Floyd some major heavyweights opened their vaults and pulled out major bucks for Black causes.

SoftBank quickly put together a $100m Opportunity Fund that will invest only in companies helmed by people of color.

The VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is giving 2.2m to founders from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds.

Bank of America is committing $1B over the next 4 years to addressing racial and economic inequalities.

Target is investing $10 million to support long‑standing partners like the National Urban League and the African American Leadership Forum, plus new partners in their hometown and across the country.

Goldman Sachs’ has a fund to back companies fighting for social justice is starting at $10m.

Niantic, Uber, DoorDash, and dozens of other tech companies are all pledging money toward fighting racism.

Wendys pledged $500k to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and other social justice orgs.

Financial assistance is good and always appreciated. It sends the message that big corporations and large VC firms acknowledge there is a big racial problem in this country.

However, financial contributions are a bandage on a still heavily hemorrhaging social wound.

The big impact on racism by big business will come when the color of their upper management and boardrooms become equally diverse. The one-sided tilt in front line and line worker diversity has to be leveled. Compensation has to be equal for everyone regardless of race or gender.

For decades, people of color have been thrown crumbs and leftovers from every American right and opportunity. It’s high time they got a full slice of this American pie Whites have enjoyed all along.

Blacks as a people need more than a one time financial shower.

Blacks are deserving of an equality shower. A shower that’s going to cleanse from their lives, education and employment inequalities, lack of access to proper healthcare, rampant abuse and killings at the hands of law enforcement, and access to affordable housing.

I applaud those corporations for their financial support of small businesses and Black causes.

Now give us a seat at the table and join us in the fight to make some long time wrongs right.

After some of the largest and most effective protests since 1968 we cannot go back to the business of living as usual.

“It’s important that we don’t miss this moment and go back to business as usual” Keisha Lance-Bottoms – Mayor Atlanta Georgia

We deserve a whole piece of pie in every context.

Don’t Let Anybody Take Your Manhood

Dr. Martin Luther King. Give him two minutes he’ll give you a lifetime of self-improvement and the answers to a lot of racial issues.

The Sad Case of Black Self-Stereotyping — The GeoGee Experience Magazine — Medium

I don’t know why we (yes I’m including myself) Black people are insistent upon embracing negativism. And what makes it even harder for me to grasp is it’s negative connotations, references, and stereotypes of ourselves that we walk right into and get comfortable with. 

Then we proceed to wear this stuff as some sort of badge of honor.Take that word Nigger.

Yes, I said it. Nigger — no need tap dancing around it with that “N-word” politically correct bullshit.

It’s a word steeped in the storied history of Blacks that just won’t go away.It won’t go away because we are the very ones that keep breathing life into that word.

It gets deep @: The Sad Case of Black Self-Stereotyping — The GeoGee Experience Magazine — Medium

Baltimore Moves To Gentrify Affluent Neighborhoods By Moving In The Less Affluent.

Baltimore-area neighborhoods are locked in a heated battle over a new push to bring residents from poor parts of the city into the more affluent suburbs.

The controversy surrounds government-subsidized Section 8 housing.

With crime in the inner city soaring and many of Baltimore’s neighborhoods plagued by gang violence, there was a push to integrate those communities into neighborhoods in the surrounding county.

The NAACP and others sued Baltimore County over alleged housing segregation – and the county has now settled, agreeing to spend $30 million over the next 10 years to build 1,000 homes in affluent neighborhoods.

Source: Low-income housing ordered to be integrated in Baltimore neighborhoods | Fox News

On #CasualRacism | The Civil Word

We all know it, we’ve all been there. One moment you’re hanging out with a group of friends or co-workers and the next someone is asking if they can touch your hair or wondering about what country you’re really from. It’s nothing too egregious to set off the full alarms, but it’s not so harmless that it doesn’t sit with you for the rest of the evening (or week, or month). It sticks in you like a needle – -and before you know it, you’ve sat through so many of these casual moments of racism you realize you’ve turned into a human pin-cushion.

Source: On #CasualRacism | The Civil Word