Addressing Social Justice Through Grants
- Author: William Asher
- Posted: 2024-06-04
2020 was a crazy year for a lot of different reasons. Though perhaps something that impacted America as much as COVID was the footage of a police officer killing George Floyd in broad daylight. This really brought the idea of social justice to the fore in a way that a bunch of NFL kneelers and edited media stories never could. It opened up America to a new type of organization. For the first time, Black Lives Matter and similar organizations were receiving donations from every major corporation on the planet. By drawing awareness to social justice, billions of dollars in grants were also given out to minorities throughout the nation, in many forms.
Grants were coming to minorities in America not only through private corporations to help with housing and groceries, but also from the federal government. The majority of business grants that were given out to help with COVID, for example, were only given to African American (black-owned) businesses and not to anyone else. The idea of social justice was the biggest story of 2020, and a lot of that still persists today.
Go into a search engine browser and type "grants" into the bar and hit the "news" section. About 70% of every article you see is going to be about a black-specific grant going to minorities in business, in shelters, in food banks, in schools, etc. Millions of Americans believe that social justice is what's needed in the nation, and they have decided that handing out grants is a great way to address a lot of these issues that the advocates bring up.
However, in the past few months, a lot of negative news flowing out of the social justice industry has caused some of the grants to slow down and dry up. Unfortunately, people in charge of some of these organizations are not inspiring confidence among those who would otherwise hand money out in grants. Nobody wants to waste money or fall for a scam.
The Downside of the Grievance Industry
Some people refer to it as pejorative, some slur levied at advocates, but the actual name for the social justice and BLM industry is the grievance industry. It's a fitting term, not a slur meant to demean. Advocates in these fields, for a variety of topics, have a grievance to air and issues which they want redressed, and they're primarily looking for financial reward for their efforts. However, there's a very dark side to this. For instance, when Black Lives Matter advocates get up and solicit donations, they end up making a fortune. America is so anti-racist that every single politician, news network and corporation in America sings its praises as necessary and heaps money onto the cause. Along with millions of other regular, everyday Americans donating money.
But what happened to the over $5 billion that Black Lives Matter has collected in recent years? Not a penny of it went to taxes, since it's a charity. Though, more alarming, not a penny of it went into black neighborhoods to train better police or buy meals for poor people or help people pay their rent. It would seem as if the founders of movements like BLM have multiple homes, multiple cars, fancier clothing and jewelry, and now even more reason to claim their causes are needed. The more money that's donated, the more the founders benefit. This is open information; this is not a smear, a hit piece, or a partisan job. It's openly known that the founders of these organizations become rich, while still claiming poverty for their organizations.
Many people and organizations create grants that are launched specifically for African American youth, for example, and it's because they believe in the social justice narrative. Though the ones on stage and in colleges and in news media claiming to champion these causes are also the ones who seem to keep all of the money.
News media try very hard to bury these stories, but it's getting around that this is the public perception of a lot of these social justice movements. They're known as organizations that solicit donations just to enrich the lives of their founders. It's this sort of practice that is keeping more grants from actually going out to those impacted by life in America. In other words, those truly in need of social justice grants are having a harder time getting them because greedy founders of these large organizations have cried wolf too many times.
