Black Atlanta venture capital firm sued for racial discrimination | Hacker News Reader

Black Atlanta venture capital firm sued for racial discrimination

ajc.com

44 pointscdme45 comments

This boils down to equality vs equity [0]

It starts with the belief that minorities have been systemically discriminated against for all of our history, and are at a systemic disadvantage today, even if some (or even all) of those systems are removed.

Equality means treating everyone the same, equity means treating people differently based on their needs and history.

If you think everyone should be treated the same, then you agree with the plaintiffs. If you think everyone should be treated differently so that they can all experience the same outcome, then you side with the defendants.

And if you think systemic discrimination isn't a thing, maybe this will change your mind:

Imagine a building owner who hates people in wheelchairs, so they build their building with no ramps, only second floor entrances with stairs. After a while they sell the building and the new owners come in. They have nothing against wheelchairs, but their building is still inaccessible to wheelchairs. So the discrimination is gone, but the system that was in place in the past still affects the people in wheelchairs. The only way to fix this problem is it dedicate resources to building ramps, which means treating people in wheelchairs differently by spending extra resources to accommodate them.

Do you think the folks in wheelchairs should be accommodated?

[0] https://www.rwjf.org/en/insights/our-research/infographics/v...

Do you think the folks in wheelchairs should be accommodated? Yes.

But I don't think you should be able to build an apartment building and then explicitly ban non wheelchair users. It's a two way street.

The irony is lost on you.

Apparently. Can you elaborate?

People have always built buildings and then banned wheelchairs. Given the opportunity, they'll do it again. That's why we have a push for equity.

Yes and we fixed the problem by passing the ADA and ensuring that people get reasonable accommodations. We didn't build wheelchair only apartment buildings.

Gee I wish someone was there to provide reasonable accommodations for the slaves.

This seems like a non-sequitur. Can you please just speak plainly instead of having me try to interpret your vagueposting?

> Equality means treating everyone the same, equity means treating people differently based on their needs and history.

> If you think everyone should be treated the same, then you agree with the plaintiffs. If you think everyone should be treated differently so that they can all experience the same outcome, then you side with the defendants.

This is a moral argument. However, legally, the Civil Rights Act doesn't have any exceptions allowing racial discrimination as long as it's for a "good" purpose.

> The only way to fix this problem is it dedicate resources to building ramps, which means treating people in wheelchairs differently by spending extra resources to accommodate them.

Those ramps are available to everyone, whether they need them or not. I wouldn't call this discrimination, any more than a store that sells cheese discriminates against the ~65% of the world population with lactose intolerance.

i get the intention of the example, but I think you would probably need to describe the ramps inaccessible and unavailable to the non-wheelchair users to better describe an equity example. Just an equal opportunity via to reach the stairs that others (not in wheelchairs) could also use is more an example of equality of opportunity.

This is just your perspective. You don't treat them differently, you treat them the same. You could also say you provide access for everyone and that would include that entrances that accommodates tall, big and disabled people.

This also differentiates equality and equity. Equity could also mean that everyone has to use a wheelchair.

The practice is clearly a violation if the people were employees. The lawsuit itself is just as clearly motivated from a nasty ideology. What is not clear is if the employement protected classes apply to venture capital funding choices. As I understand it such regulation does not exist in the USA except as proposed in some state bills which have not been made into law. Given that the lawsuit will almost certainly be dismissed.

If it is decided that it is okay to discriminate like this, then the precedent will be set and it will become okay to create a "whites-only", "Indian-only", "Chinese-only" investment fund as well. Seems like a bad precedent to set.

Native americans have sovereign land within the United States. I think it is ok to make special cases to correct specific historical disparities for particular minorities, but our law system is not equipped for it, and there is too much disagreement and polarization to make minor concessions possible. And lawyers love to play with corner cases to the detriment of the rest of us.

I'm on a reservation right now buying weed. White Earth in Minnesota. Great place

https://archive.is/KMM4Q

Thanks for the link, but getting chaptas even from the archive, so I guess I will skip this one :)

It happens if you use Cloudflare DNS. Not Cloudflare’s fault. Wish the owner of the site could be bothered to make it work with such a major service.

This is headed to a Rule 56 SJ on standing grounds. If affected individuals want to sue over reverse discrimination claims, they can put their name to the lawsuit and take their PR lumps for doing so, rather than hiding behind a political pressure group with no cognizable direct interests. This is just grandstanding by lawyers who know better and should be exposed to rule 11 sanctions for wasting the defendant’s and court’s time with an abusive filing.

From what I understand, if the SCOTUS takes on lawsuits from people without standing, why can't other courts? I do agree this is ridiculous.

Let's never forget SCOTUS allowed a women to claim she couldn't start a website business unless she was allowed to discriminate against LGBT... and won.

A group can sue on behalf of its members.

Hunt v. Wash. State Apple Adver. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333 (1977)

Not my world (and I think GA has tighter org and assoc standings rules that would come into play here, too), but I’d argue that there’s a need to show individualized proof of harm here that runs afoul of the third Hunt prong. (This is pretty transparently an effort to avoid disclosing the plaintiffs’ names, so I’m not inclined to give this group the benefit of the doubt here.)

Also, upvoting you b/c Hunt is definitely applicable here!

> I think GA has tighter org and assoc standings rules

This was filed in federal court, so only federal rules regarding standing would apply. Also, this organization is led by the SFFA guy, who seems to have dotted his i's and crossed his t's with regard to standing in that lawsuit. There were never any serious discussions about standing in that case, and this one seems to be similarly structured.

As a (former) lawyer, my educated guess is that standing will not be a major issue in this case. What stood out most to me is that it refers to the Civil Rights act of 1866!

Ah, now I see that the CRA of 1886 is mentioned because this is a "section 1981 claim" — one of the few types of lawsuits that rewards a successful plaintiff with attorney's fees. These are brought under the 1886 CRA, section 1981.

This could turn into quite a cottage industry, since attorney's fees are a strong incentive when the odds of winning are good — or when it doesn't take much effort to file the complaint.

Is it really that straightforward? Is this suit brought by a formal organization bringing suit on behalf of its members? Would the members have standing to sue on their own? Are the interests in question germane to that organization’s purpose? Are the individuals required for the litigation? These are all (arguably) factual questions making summary judgment inappropriate.

However I’m guessing you know something I don’t. What am I missing?

Yeah, I wasn't clear as to my reasoning: if you read the filing, they go out of their way to refuse the disclose the underlying plaintiffs' identities and specifics of alleged harm, so filing under associational standing is a gambit to evade FRCP 10(a) and hide plaintiffs' identities for (IMO) improper reasons -- embarrassment and economic harm are not sufficient reasons to allow pseudonymous filings, but they'd have trouble finding sympathetic plaintiffs who are willing to publicly associate themselves with this case.

I love this site. Thank you.

If we target class instead of race we will likely end up helping the same people without violating any laws.

> Between 2009 and 2017, only 0.0006% of VC funding went to businesses started by Black women, according to nonprofit advocacy group Digitalundivided. Fearless Fund aims to help bridge the gap.

The case is clear, why go after the little funding available? Is anyone really convinced that white men as a whole are disadvantaged because they can’t get funding from these three black women?

>In total, three white and Asian women business owners are part of the lawsuit

I stand corrected. So three white women felt that out of all the VC funds in the nation, they felt threatened by these three black women?

It’s even worse that it’s women going after other women.

Of all the startups I’ve

worked for I’ve never been able to say that my CEO was a black, white or Asian woman. That’s not some mistake.

EDIT: understandably this has been locked for replies (by the powers that be not me). So before asking any question note that I will not be able to reply once the edit button expires. AAAAAND I can reply again.

But disappointed tbh, but I understand

Why did you drop “Asian”?

Because they don’t seem particularly favoured by any metric (not an advantaged majority in the space), so it's strange she would be behind this.

Uniformity or a pattern isn’t a requirement for an argument, consistency is. And I’m consistent about the idea that people who are doing great in one area shouldn’t be pushing down other people trying to get to the same place.

> Because they don’t seem particularly favoured by any metric (not an advantaged majority in the space), so it's strange she would be behind this.

Ahh yes, it must be the evil white women who put the Asian woman up to this.

> Uniformity or a pattern isn’t a requirement for an argument, consistency is. And I’m consistent about the idea that people who are doing great in one area shouldn’t be pushing down other people trying to get to the same place.

I'm sure you are quite consistent in your racism.

> not an advantaged majority

Why would they have to be both advantaged and a majority? Surely just being advantaged would suffice, and white women are also not a majority in VC funding, nor are they advantaged.

Women-funded startups received only 9% of investments - even if all of that 9% went to only white women, they would still be disadvantaged. Furthermore, 77.1% of founders were white, and 17.7% were Asian. Since whites are 57.8% of US, but Asians are 5.9%, that makes whites 1.33x over-represented, and Asians 3x over-represented.

In other words, Asians are 2.26x more likely to receive VC funding than whites, yet, without citing any data, you claimed they are less favored than whites.

Source: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/untapped-opportunity-min...

>So three white women felt that out of all the VC funds in the nation, they felt threatened by these three black women?

You'll notice this with any kind of woke endeavor - white women are almost always at the helm and they won't tolerate being put in the backseat.

Not sure I understand, but also not sure I want to spark racial generalisations of character.

I’m not that kind of liberal or conservative.

This isn't a woke endeavour. It's a racist endeavour. It's the exacr opposite of woke.

This group can't stand black people working for other black people and they have to attack them and shut it down.

Don't be confused by your anti woke bias. This isn't it.

Both you and the person you are defending use the British "our" spelling of words. Considering you just made your account, I bet you are the same person or know each other.

Is racial discrimination acceptable if you can show your discrimination didn't disadvantage a group?

I think that’s a good yardstick. If you don’t mean that I should be able to sue all restaurants with a women’s bathroom because I was disadvantaged when the only stall was occupied.

So I like your idea but add the word systemic. What I mean is I can wait 5 minutes to go for the bathroom.

So there was a system in the restaurant that kept me from going to the bathroom no matter how long I wait (i.e they only let women go to the bathrooms) I can’t claim I was discriminated.

I love how you are defining these racism rules on the fly. It really shows how you are just trying to rationalize your hatred.

Wow I think your hatred is very clear here.

You haven't even addressed what the commenter actually sayed. Or you chose not to adress it or probably didn't understand.

Read it again you mite get it this time.

If the existence of this firm does break existing discrimination law, then the point of the suit may be to indirectly demonstrate that the law is unjust, rather than that the existence of Fearless Fund is undesirable.

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