Actually, Mark Cuban, Believing in Equity is a Belief
A belief grounded in established truths
During Shark Tank’s most recent episode, Daymond John disallows Mark Cuban to ignore the narrative of the common American. Daymond stresses the fact, it’s not OK to normalize burning through colossal sums of money and ignore the inequities that exist in this country.
Rather than Mark taking the time to read in between the lines of Daymond’s words and perspective, he quickly links the need to advocate for equity with the desire for communism.
Fact #1 Daymond reminds the rest of the sharks that he began his entrepreneurial journey as a poor black man in America.
Fact #2: In the USA, 22% of Black Americans are food insecure, compared to only 9% of White, non-Hispanic Americans. In other words, there are disproportional levels of poverty, homeownership, median income, disability, and unemployment in America.
Fact #3: Racial disparities reveal the impact of historical inequities in this country.
U.S. institutions have a history of creating policies that ensure black and immigrant communities have vastly lower rates of homeownership and investment, ergo less equity.
The most notorious policy being redlining during the New Deal. The Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) drew lines through U.S. cities and decided what neighborhoods in the U.S. were worthy of investment. Grading some neighborhoods as highly desirable or “A” grades and others as highly undesirable with “C” and “D” grades.
The result?
Black, immigrant, and low-income communities were overwhelmingly given “C” and “D” grades and to this day, these communities continue to suffer the consequences of the now-outlawed policy.
Refocusing on Episode 25, season 12 of Shark Tank
Ironically, Robert Herjavec claims Daymond acknowledging inequity is “unfair,” and “most companies in tech have to start with a lot of investment, and it takes a while to break even.”
Robert, advocating for equity is synonymous with advocating for fairer investments. Also, Robert, you are completely ignoring the realities of black people in tech. For instance,
In addition, 63% of black people in the tech industry have difficulty finding a mentor compared to only 28% of white people.
Capeesh Mark and Robert? Yes?
Okay, wonderful.
Now you can stop calling Daymond a communist, and start calling Daymond an advocate. Now you can stop gaslighting people of color and focus on proactively addressing systemic racism. And maybe just maybe you can consider investing your money in a more equitable manner.
Thank you in advance!
Zara Macias
