Majority of Restaurants Denied Grants

• Author: Chris Remington
• Posted: 2024-10-30

During the height of the pandemic, the United States Congress signed multiple spending bills into law to provide relief for Americans, both individuals and businesses. Over $75 billion in funding was initially given to the Small Business Administration (SBA), which was handling the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, in an effort to save restaurants from closing. All told, over 370,000 restaurants applied for grants, which were around $272,000 each, but only 105,000 restaurants received these funds. 265,000 restaurants did not, and most of them are now closed or severely struggling.

What was the reason that roughly only a third of America's restaurants applying for grants got them? According to the SBA, the funds were not available. However, the math doesn't add up. If all applicants received their grants, it would have cost just a bit less than $100 billion. Although the initial fund the SBA handled was only $75 billion, two more spending bills were passed, each one giving the SBA more money. So, in total, the SBA had more than enough money to hand out.

There are billions of dollars unaccounted for here. Understand that this money was specifically meant for grants, yet nearly two-thirds of restaurants that applied did not receive them, and nobody is speaking up about where the rest of the money went. For cynical people in America who do not trust government systems, this is maddening and just another example of how government workers leave office as multi-millionaires while the taxpayer lives a life in extreme debt. On top of that potential for misappropriation, rumors are starting to circulate from outlets like Blaze and Daily Wire that the restaurants denied grants were denied so due to social justice.

Social justice is the idea that white people in America are privileged and need no help, as they are the ones holding back oppressed minorities, called "people of color," or POC. Information is starting to come out that many of these grants were given only to minority-owned restaurants, especially in heavily Democrat areas like California and New York, and white-owned businesses were ignored and their applications immediately dismissed.

Joe Biden's policies so far as President are really adding to these rumors. The Biden Administration just last month gave African American farmers grant relief and ignored every other race of person in their favor. They outright stated that this was their goal, that white farmers needed no help and black farmers did. They still stand behind that today, doubling down with other programs of a similar nature.

This is a polarizing topic, as we're still in the midst of a pandemic, and the facts seem to suggest that people are either getting help or not based on how they were born.

Progress in Reverse in America

Many people agree entirely with the goal of governments today to give money only to minority-based communities, with an emphasis on new immigrant POC and African Americans, with the claim that they have been historically oppressed. All the news networks and papers, all the universities, all the politicians; basically all the people in positions of power agree that minority communities deserve the grant money more.

As many critics of these policies have claimed, however, that's fine as a policy to implement as just a standalone policy. "Minority Communities First Act," said one social media critic. "Sign it into law. I support it. Just not when there's a [global pandemic] afoot and everyone needs help equally!"

This is an easy sentiment to understand, on both sides of the debate. Historically oppressed communities need a leg up, though others are also suffering all the same and have lost and are still losing businesses because they're the wrong racial demographic to receive funding from government.

The fact is that, in America, it was signed into law in 1968 that this sort of practice was illegal. It was called the Civil Rights Act, and most people are aware of its existence. No matter government's reasoning here, it is supposed to be outright illegal to do this. Yet they do it all the same. No matter which side of the debate one lands on, it's okay to ensure these things are done legally and fairly, or else we have just regressed back to the 1960s, just with different victims of discrimination.

A lout of people would read that and laugh, claiming that it's not the same. Perhaps not entirely the same, though there are hundreds of thousands of businesses that were forced to close down for no other reason than they were white-owned. That's wrong in any context.