Equitech Tuesday #66: #BlackGirlMagic

As part of our work at UpSurge Baltimore, we host a weekly gathering of startup founders, investors, tech talent, and ecosystem partners called Equitech Tuesday. The goal is to create a space where the people and parts of our startup community can come together to create diverse connections, deepen relationships, and discover meaningful ways to collaborate. We are establishing a culture where founders are supported in the ways that matter most to them, so we can transform our city into a place where everyone belongs in tech and innovation belongs to everybody. #thisisequitech

Each week, the invitation has a theme that recognizes the contributions of individuals or groups in our community, provokes thought around certain activities, or provides useful information or opportunities. This weeks' theme #BlackGirlMagic is inspired by my niece, Niya, the smartest 5 year old I've ever known and these words by Baltimore's son, D. Watkins.?I don’t have a daughter, but I imagine this is how I would feel if I did.

An excerpt from ‘Black Boy Smile’ by D. Watkins

“If we were having a boy, I would already have had a blueprint for teaching him how to survive the system as a black man, understanding the stereotypes, respecting women, and aggressively fighting for what you deserve regardless of who disagrees, but now I’d have to teach Cross how to navigate a society that specializes in both racism and sexism.

It troubles me that Cross will be starting her life in a country where black women are paid $0.61 for every $1 paid to white men. Where no matter how talented, resilient and strong black women are, like she will be and the women in her family are, they're still underrepresented in leadership positions across the country. Black women also represent almost half of the low wage work force and are 2x more likely to go to prison than white women who commit the same crimes. Cross will be coming into a world where black women are 3-4x more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than white women. Study after study shows that life for black girls in America is not fair.

I wrapped my arms around Caron. "You okay?", she asked. "Yeah", I said but I was afraid for Cross. She'll be confronted with the stuff that doesn't necessarily make it into the studies, like the widespread demonization of black women's hair, which starts as?early as elementary school, with discriminatory dress codes, and continues up into the workplace, smearing many black women's hairstyles, from extensions to braids, from locs to afros, first as distracting and later as unprofessional. I don't want her to experience a world where her hair isn't good enough and needs to look more like a white girl's hair because white girl's have 'normal hair'. A place where normal white girl hair is everywhere too. All over television, in magazines and even in children's books, which too often lack black heroines. Raising Cross is going to require the explanation of a lot of things that we shouldn't have to explain. I once Googled beauty and got pages and pages of images of blonde, white women. I'll have to explain why to Cross one day. "I'll have to explain to Cross how algorithms are racist or sexist", I said suddenly to Caron. "How can one group of people own beauty?" But I'm lucky that I don't have to do it alone. Caron is more intelligent than me, except when we play Scrabble. She will undoubtedly be our daughter's biggest super-hero."

#BlackGirlMagic, a hashtag that inspired a movement in the mid-2010s, is?an articulation of the resolve of Black women and girls to triumph in the face of structural oppressions?and insists on the visibility of Black women and girls as aspirational figures.

From Maryland's own Harriet Tubman, to Madam C.J. Walker, to the GOAT, Serena Williams, black women have had an undeniable impact on American history and culture. The good news is, the future is bright, as black women make up the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs and, if invested in, could contribute to a $5 trillion boost to the global economy. The bad news? Along with the societal challenges they face, black women receive less than 0.35% of all VC funding.

How do we fix that? Serena's $111M fund might have something to say about it, but this Crunchbase article shares some sound advice as well. Just as Venus, Serena and Althea Gibson before them, it challenges us to change our perception of what success looks like, not just on the tennis court, but in the startup world. And as Serena shared during her fireside chat with Candace Brackeen at Black Tech Week, if VCs share what they know and who they know with a talented, resilient, strong black woman founder and fund them, their ideas will yield a strong return.

Please join us at Equitech Tuesday to meet the Baltimore startup community and celebrate our phenomenal black female founders. Come learn their stories, hear about their ventures, help them build and if you're an investor... fund them.

#UpSurgeBMORE #thisisequitech #equitechcity #BlackGirlMagic