A $100,000 grant exclusively intended for a black-owned business in Kansas City appears to be illegal, says a national organization fighting racial preferences in society.
Kansas City Generating Income for Tomorrow, a 501c3 nonprofit that announced the grant Monday, says on its website that “Kansas City G.I.F.T. is a movement dedicated to cementing a better future for all.”
But one qualification for the $100,000 grant it’s offering through an application process is that the business be at least 51% black-owned.
The same requirement is made for the organization’s ongoing $10,000 grant program.
“Since its inception in 2020,” KCTV reports, “the organization has distributed more than $1.8 million in grants to 77 Black-owned businesses, resulting in the creation of more than 135 new jobs.”
The organization’s website lists “foundations/government grants” among its funders, but it’s unclear from the funders listed what government monies it receives.
American Alliance for Equal Rights tells The Heartlander the Kansas City G.I.F.T. grants appear to violate federal law.
“This program appears to violate our nation’s civil rights laws,” says alliance founder Edward Blum. “Regardless of the intent, treating individuals differently by race is unfair, polarizing and illegal.”
The Heartlander asked Kansas City G.I.F.T. CEO and Founder Brandon Calloway if he’s certain the race-based grants are legal under federal law.
“If we were only focusing on Black owned businesses solely for being Black, that would be one thing,” he responded. “But we are funding Black owned businesses, in LMI [low- and moderate-income] areas, specifically so they can create jobs and have a positive impact on economic development and contribute to a reduction in poverty related crime.
“We routinely turn away grant requests from Black business owners because the particular request has no ability or willingness to create a job, therefore it does not fit in our mission of economic development.”
Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights is a membership organization that is “dedicated to challenging distinctions and preferences made on the basis of race and ethnicity.”
Another organization founded by Blum, Students for Fair Admissions, overturned racist admissions policies in twin U.S. Supreme Court cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in 2023.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel last June ruled a Georgia hedge fund called Fearless Fund likely violated federal statute 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracts.
According to one summary, the appellate panel ruled in the case – brought by American Alliance for Equal Rights – that Fearless Fund Management LLC was wrong to award grants exclusively to black women. The court said the grants were contracts under the law because “applicants had to agree to indemnify Fearless Fund, arbitrate any disputes with it, and had to give it permission to use their ideas, names, images, and likenesses for promotional purposes.”
In addition, the case summary says Fearless Fund had “no valid affirmative action-based defense to its conduct.”
The parties in that case ultimately settled it out of court. And though the appellate panel’s ruling sets the state of the law only in the Eleventh Circuit’s region of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, there are similar cases said to be bubbling up in the Fifth, Sixth and Ninth circuits.
