Systemic racism and discrimination are lurking in people’s minds you didn’t imagine.
Did you know that Black girls are a relatively small percentage of the national student population, yet account for more than 40% of girls with multiple out-of-school suspensions according to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights?
Federal civil rights data records Black girls are 5 to 6 times more likely to be suspended from school than white girls.
In every state in the USA, Black girls are suspended or referred to the juvenile justice system greater than White girls. And in some areas like Washington D.C., the number of Black girls being pushed into the juvenile justice system is increasing.
What is Jane Crow Mass Incarceration?
The mass incarceration of Black women is criminal institutional race and class disparities.
Did you know that 1 in 111 White women are likely to be convicted of felonies and sent to prison in the USA? However, alarmingly Black women 1 in 18 are likely to be sentenced to greater than five years of incarceration?
Yet, on purpose, this goes ignored by the White media, and very little mainstream reporting is about the unequal sentencing of Black women versus White women in the criminal justice system.
Are You Finally Ready To Face America's Ugly Truth?
Did you know that Black women are financially burdened with 20% more college student debt than White women? Researchers estimate that a mere one year after graduation on average, White women owe $33,851 in undergraduate loans, while Black women owe $41,466.
Economists concluded that when unemployment disrupts college pipelines to sustainable careers, it permanently alters the trajectory of Black women’s lifetime earnings.
For the past 50 years, the overall unemployment rate for Black women has remained twice as high as White women. The employment disparity gaps consistently grow larger, especially during times of economic distress like COVID-19 which has continued to widen the divide two years after March 2020 without any definitive relief forecasted.
According to Nancy DiTomaso, a professor at Rutgers University who studies inequality and organizational diversity, she states that private-sectors’ labor reports to the federal government show little change in the share of management and executive-level jobs held by racial and ethnic minorities since the 1980s. And in industries that offer workers the best sustainable wages, the shares are rapidly increasing for White men.
Investments into Black women small enterprises are good business for all Americans!
Black women represent 42% of net new women-owned businesses, according to the American Express 2019 State of Women-Owned Businesses.
When there are committed investments into Black women their small companies thrive, and they put their earnings back into the underrepresented communities they hire within.
Black women in small businesses are handicapped in attracting access to working capital; and large-scale business opportunities with Fortune 100 and 500 corporations and the federal government.
A partnership with them is an intentional pledge to create new jobs, new taxpayers, new homeowners; and new career paths for young people not exposed to financially rewarding careers and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Did you know that Black female startup founders have received just a measly 0.34% of the total venture capital invested in the USA?
What is required for more Black women to get venture capital funding, is for investors to commit to the levitation of underrepresented founders. The check is just not good enough.
Respected investors must morally and financially commit to championing Black women founders by telling their stories to other investors and mainstream media outlets.
