The Southern Poverty Law Center is calling on Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to investigate and take action against financial institutions that the group says appear to favor white-led businesses.
In an Aug. 5 letter to Carr, the nonprofit civil rights law group said its research of public information shows several prominent private financial institutions operating in Georgia “appear to have primarily supported majority or entirely white-led businesses.”
“To be consistent and avoid the appearance of arbitrariness, we would expect you to be concerned with and moved to respond to possible instances of white race favoritism that run afoul of the law and/or application of it for which your office advocates,” the letter states.
The SPLC, in its letter, identified three specific companies: Primus Capital, Garden City Equity and Linx Partners, which have offices in Atlanta. The firms invest in health care, software and technology companies, family and founder-owned businesses, and industrial manufacturing and service companies, respectively.
Representatives for Carr, Primus Capital, Garden City Equity and Linx Partners did not immediately comment on the letter. In recent legal fights over diversity programs at Harvard College and other schools, Carr joined other attorneys general in asking courts to block affirmative action that they described as racial discrimination.
Scott McCoy, the SPLC’s deputy legal director, said the SPLC isn’t accusing Primus Capital, Garden City Equity or Linx Partners of racial discrimination. But he said the fact that those institutions are run by white people and list portfolio companies that are also white-led should be looked into by Carr as a matter of fairness.
McCoy said Carr should “put his money where his mouth is” by ensuring that venture capital funds and other financial institutions operating in Georgia have “race-neutral and meritocratic” systems like those Carr advocated for in education.
“If you’re opposed to race-based favoritism for Black and brown people, then under your worldview and to be consistent, you should be opposed to race-based favoritism when that favoritism is to the benefit of white people,” McCoy said.
The SPLC sent similar letters to the Florida and Louisiana attorneys general, listing different financial institutions operating in those states. McCoy said the center has yet to receive a response.
The SPLC’s move comes amid an increase of legal threats against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in corporate America, brought by conservative activists emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to overturn affirmative action in college admissions.
Atlanta venture capital firm Fearless Fund and its foundation were sued in August last year by the American Alliance for Equal Rights over a $20,000 grant program for Black female entrepreneurs.
The Alliance was founded by Edward Blum, the activist behind the successful Supreme Court affirmative action case. His group has since sued Southwest Airlines and the Smithsonian Museum of the American Latino, among others. Similar conservative organizations have targeted major corporations like McDonald’s, Target and Progressive.
“We’re certainly not calling on [attorneys general] in states to investigate every single company,” McCoy said. “What we are saying is, ‘if you are going to spend time and resources trying to promote this worldview in your state, then you need to be consistent and you need to look into things that come up like this, where there may be favoritism of a kind that goes the other way to what you’re so focused on.’”
Black-owned businesses have historically attracted a paltry amount of startup funding in the U.S. McCoy said that less than 1% of venture capital funding goes to Black women-owned businesses.
In 2023, funding for Black-owned startups plummeted. VC funding for Black-owned businesses fell 71% nationally in 2023 compared to 2022. In the Atlanta area, such funding declined by 79%, according to figures from data firm Crunchbase. Overall, less than 0.5% of venture capital dollars in the United States last year went to Black-founded startups, Crunchbase found.
In the first half of 2024, Black-founded businesses received just 0.32% of the total funding to founders, according to Crunchbase.
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