Companies Capping With Their Racial Equity Pledges, HBCUs Are Really Out Here, Disney Showcasing More Content from Creators of Color

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What's up, fam?

If you're reading this, it's definitely not on a Monday. I hope that ya'll enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend and took some time to remember and send big ups to those who've served our country in the military. I spent my weekend throwing down on the grill and rocking my best "uncle on the grill" fit.

Did y'all know Black folks started Memorial Day in America? Nah, forreal. On May 1, 1865, a crowd of mostly formerly enslaved Black people and white missionaries staged a parade around a former race track in Charleston, SC that was used by Confederate soldiers to hold Union soldiers captive. Black schoolchildren carried bouquets and sang songs, Black union regiments performed marches and Black preachers recited versus from the Bible. Just thought I'd hit you with a little history today.

Let's jump into this week's letter!

-Eric

Black Money on The Move

Your weekly roundup of Black excellence making moves in the world.

• Byron Allen to Mickey D's: Pay Up. Comedian, media mogul, owner of the Weather Channel and a brother that is not playing out here, Byron Allen, is suing fast food joint, McDonald's, for $10 billion for racial discrimination. The lawsuit, which was filed recently in LA Superior Court by two companies owned by Allen, alleges that Mickey D's violated state and federal laws by engaging in racial discrimination in its ad spending. McDonald's, which spends $1.6 billion annually on advertising, spends less than $5 million of their budget with Black-owned media companies.
• Disney Launches New Brand for Creators of Color. Disney announced that it is launching a new brand dedicated to the work of creators of color called the Onxy Collective. The brand which will primarily exist on Hulu will showcase titles from creators of color. The first title under the new brand will be from the man with the coldest afro in the game, Questlove, and his documentary?Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised). Onyx will be headed by former Netflix exec and president of Freeform, Tara Duncan.
• Black woman-owned company raises $3.75 million in seed round. Naj Austin, Founder and CEO of social media company Somewhere Good, announced that it recently raised $3.75 million in seed funding led by VCs and well known investors including True Ventures, Ellen Pao and the embodiment of the phrase "Black don't crack" actress Gabrielle Union. Somewhere Good is a social media app that connects users based on interests and allows interactions solely in group settings. If I got some Martin fans out there, let's congregate on the app and answer a question that's been keeping me up since I was a kid: did Tommy really have a job?

That's Cap: Companies Pledge Billions of Dollars to Black Causes But Only a Fraction of That Has Been Spent

During last summer's protests against anti-Black racism and police killings of Black people in the United States, it felt like everybody and their mama woke up and said "this ain't right" including corporations. From then companies have been out here making all kinds of pledges from public statements declaring Juneteenth as a national holiday at their companies to companies like Amazon making pledges to increase the number of Black executives in their ranks. One area that all companies universally agreed on is that they needed to make a financial commitment.

That's Cap. While we saw companies like Apple actually start to invest the money that they committed to Black causes last year, this can't be said for a lot of the other players out there. According to a tally of public promises compiled by consulting firm, Creative Investment Research (CIR), American companies have pledged to spend $50 billion on racial equity since the death of George Floyd in May 2020. The money pledged was to be spent on everything from investments in communities of color, investments in overhauls of internal recruiting and training programs and donations to civil rights organizations. However, according to CIR, only $250 million of that pledge has been spent.

The Way To Do It

Instead of companies making public pledges and promises that they can't keep based on reflexes and social media sentiment, they need to actually do the work. Meaningful work on the issue of racial equity. How? Well I'm glad you asked. Let me put you on game.

Hire Black Folks. Before making pledges to the Black community publicly, companies should look within and ask themselves how many Black folks are in their own ranks. The answer is likely not many as I wrote about a few weeks ago. Black folks make up 12% of entry level workers and 7% of management workers. Companies need to start stepping up their recruiting of Black folks but more importantly also make sure that once these folks are hired, they have access to mentors who can help them navigate the company and talk through workplace issues. Make sure they have sponsors who will vouch for their work and go to bat for them for promotions. More representation in management, particularly at the VP level and C suite level, would go a long way toward showing Black workers that they too can aspire for these positions. It would also highlight that the Black folks in these senior roles can play a greater role in ensuring more equitable outcomes at their companies.

Keep It Real. To create accountability to these pledges that they're making, companies need to start being transparent about the diversity of their workforce and how much they pay them. According to a tracker released by Just Capital that monitors companies' commitments to racial equity, only 31% of the largest 100 companies analyzed how they were paying their workforce across different races and ethnicities. If Black folks think they're getting paid less than their counterparts and you're a company that doesn't want to release this data while making pledges to fight for racial equity, you will earn a well-deserved side eye from the people.

Pull Up. When it comes to changing policy in Washington D.C, no group has proven to have more "pull" than corporations with deep pockets. We saw this in action recently when companies applied the pressure to elected officials in Georgia who passed a voting law making it harder to vote in the state, particularly for Black people. CEOs of major companies mobilized by the likes of Black executives including Merck Chairman and CEO Kenneth Frazier and former American Express CEO Kenneth Chennault, eventually started speaking out. This led to the MLB All Star Game, which was slated to take place in Atlanta, being moved to Colorado instead. If companies and their executive ranks applied this same pressure to racial equity issues that Washington could address through legislation, we'd see different outcomes on the policy level as well.

Black people have always been rightfully skeptical about people and institutions claiming to have our best interest in mind. If companies want to win the trust of Black folks, a pledge won't do it. Being about that action will.

HBCUs is Where It's At

If you want to see examples of Black excellence you don't have to look any further than Black colleges in these United States. Formally known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), these institutions have produced our ancestors' wildest dreams.

The first Black, Asian and female Vice President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, is a graduate of the illustrious Howard University. Should-be Georgia Governor and future President of the United States of America, Stacey Abrams, is a Spelman graduate. Actor Samuel L. Jackson, CEO of Walgreen's Boots Alliance Roz Brewer, Hollywood heavy weight Kenya Burris - they all went to HBCUs.

How It Started

HBCUs in the United States came about all the way back in the 19th century when Richard Humphreys established the African institute (Cheyney University) in 1837 in Pennsylvania making it the oldest HBCU in the country. Three more HBCUs were founded shortly after in the 1850s including the Miner School in Washington D.C, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and Wilberforce in Ohio. After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, many more HBCUs would come into existence including Howard, Morehouse and Alabama State University. In fact, most of the houses of Black academic excellence came about between 1865-1900 and 89% of them are based in the south.

HBCUs have been getting a lot of love in recent years and rightfully so. McKenzie Bezos, billionaire and ex-wife of Amazon honcho, Jeff Bezos, donated millions to Black colleges last year. Including $40 million to Howard University, $30 million to Hampton University, $20 million to Tuskegee University and undisclosed amounts to Spelman and Morehouse College. Marquee high school athletes who traditionally get picked up by athletic programs at largely white Division 1 (D1) schools have been saying "nah" to these traditions recently and taking their talents to HBCUs. Makur Maker, five star high school basketball recruit, who was getting looks from UCLA and Kentucky, decided to go to Howard University.

Companies Gotta Tap In

As we've discussed in past issues of this newsletter and in the article up top, companies across industries got a whole lot of work to do to increase Black representation in their ranks at all levels. When you drill down by industry and company, the situation is bad, real bad too. Like Wall Street for instance. Out of 100,000 financial firm executives in the United States, only 2,600 of them were Black in 2018. At Goldman Sachs, less than 3% of their executives and managers are Black. At Citi only 3% of senior managers and executives are Black. Straight trifling numbers across the board.

If American companies want to make a dent in these numbers, they're going to have to get it all the way together and adjust their practices across the board. That starts with where they recruit their future talent from. If you look at the list of top 25-50 feeder schools for the tech and finance industry, you'll unsurprisingly see the same couple of names pop up over and over again. Stanford, Harvard, Penn, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkley, Yale. No offense, ya'll but YAWN.

As outlined by the good sis Barbara L. Adams, Dean and Professor of Accounting at HBCU, South Carolina State, there are a couple of ways companies can get it together and recruit talent from HBCUs:

1. Build Relationships with Faculty. Companies can't just show up on campus and be like "we're here". They have to build relationships and engage with faculty on campus and let them know the new skills they're hiring for at their company, provide feedback on the curriculum and listen to feedback from the faculty. Building genuine relationships with the company and demonstrating a commitment to growing students and a pipeline from the school.
2. Be Present With Students. Show up on campus and offer programming that can help set students up for success after graduation. Adams calls out two companies that do this well with her students at South Carolina State University, BMW and Boeing. Both companies carve out time each year to send representatives from the company to speak on campus about topics ranging from what knowledge hiring managers expect from recruits and "a day in the life". These efforts go a long way in offering meaningful career advice to students and signaling to them that they can be set up for success on day one.
3. Hire Students from HBCUs. Showing up on campus and building relationships with faculty are important but at the end of the day these students need access to jobs. This is where companies can provide the most value to the students and the future of their own workforce. Moving away from recruiting from the same 25-50 schools and going and finding talent at HBCUs is where companies can see the biggest return.

HBCUs have produced some of the most celebrated American executives, politicians and creatives. If companies are really serious about diversifying their ranks at all levels and tapping into this talent, they need put in the work and build relationships with HBCUs and their students. They might end up finding the next Roz Brewer or Kamala Harris.

Tweet Of The Week

Black Twitter is uplifting, educational, entertaining and always on point. Enjoy our favorite Tweet this week below and make sure to take care of yourselves today and everyday, fam.

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