Woman sues Amazon over $10K startup stipend that excludes Whites, Asians

09/08/2022 / By Ramon Tomey

A woman sued e-commerce giant Amazon over its $10,000 stipend for startup delivery businesses that Whites and Asian Americans are ineligible to apply for.

Texas resident Crystal Bolduc filed the lawsuit against the Jeff Bezos-helmed company on July 20. Her complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas accused Amazon and its Diversity Grant program of “patently unlawful racial discrimination.” According to Bolduc, Amazon discriminated against Whites and Asians in favor of Black, Hispanic and Native American entrepreneurs.

“This means that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos, or Native Americans receive a $10,000 stipend from Amazon to become delivery partners. [Meanwhile], Whites and Asian Americans who wish to become delivery service partners receive no such stipend and must foot the entire bill for their startup costs,” the lawsuit stated.

It argued that the $10,000 stipends violate the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting. Bolduc, through the lawsuit, asked the federal court to make Amazon stop the program and award damages to everyone “who has suffered unlawful racial discrimination on account of it.”

According to Law Enforcement Today, Amazon started contracting with local “delivery service partners” (DSPs) a couple of years ago. These DSPs deliver Amazon packages from the company’s warehouses to customers’ homes. In a bid to “help reduce the barriers to entry for Black, Latinx and Native American entrepreneurs,” Amazon created the Diversity Grant – a $1 million commitment toward funding startup costs that offered $10,000 for each qualified candidate to build their own businesses in the United States.

The Diversity Grant is not the only Amazon program that openly discriminates against certain races. Its Black Business Accelerator (BBA) program for sellers provides $500 credit to “assist with start-up and operational costs, alongside up to $3,000 in advertising credits. The BBA, however, defined a “Black-owned business” as one that is “at least 51 percent Black-owned, managed and controlled.”

Makeup giant Sephora also sued for racism under the guise of “diversity and inclusion”

Earlier, California resident Courtney Flynn sued makeup company Sephora for discrimination on March 18. The complaint came after her application for the company’s bootcamp for small businesses was rejected on the grounds that she was White. She had joined the bootcamp’s 2019 edition, but was rejected the following year, even though Sephora itself urged her to join.

“I saw a post on [Sephora’s] social media that essentially announced [that] the class participating in this [2020] training program [would be] 100 percent exclusively people of color. “They were no longer accepting White people,” Flynn told Ohio attorney Tom Renz on his Brighteon.TV program “Lawfare with Tom Renz.”

“They are very clear that they only chose people of color, and they try to go on and justify it. My favorite is that they call it ‘inclusive and diverse,’ which is [actually] the opposite.” (Related: Lawfare with Tom Renz: Courtney Flynn says woke makeup giant Sephora pushing RACISM under the guise of “diversity and inclusion” – Brighteon.TV.)

Flynn lamented how Sephora never evaluated her application solely due to the basis of her race. She only received a generic “declined” email and that Sephora did not reach out to her since then. This prompted her to proceed with her lawsuit, which she filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

According to the aggrieved plaintiff, Sephora was justifying its exclusion of Whites from its programs as “trying to right a wrong.”

“When I first discovered the reason why I wasn’t accepted into the program, I really thought that there was no way I could do anything,” she said. “I kind of let that sit for a couple of months. [But] I just thought – I can’t let this happen.”

Watch the conversation between Ohio attorney Tom Renz and Courtney Flynn on “Lawfare with Tom Renz” below.

This video is from the BrighteonTV channel on Brighteon.com.