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Pull Up For Change’s ‘Make It BLACK’ Campaign Is Redefining What It Means To Be Black And Funding Black Founders Along The Way

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When America’s racial awakening first took shape last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, brands of all sizes, ages, and backgrounds pledged their support for the Black community and in many cases, announced new initiatives and donations to turn their words into action. But as nice as it was to see the corporate world finally taking a stand, Sharon Chuter, the founder and CEO of UOMA Beauty, thought that change needed to happen from the inside out. It was with this in mind that she launched Pull Up For Change and #PullUpOrShutUp, a social media campaign that challenged companies to release the total number of Black employees at their companies and to identify the levels at which those employees sit. The movement gained traction immediately, and over the last eight months, it’s led thousands of brands to acknowledge and address their internal shortcomings; however, it’s also shone a light on another issue.

“After doing Pull Up, there was one thing that really jumped out at me,” Chuter recalls. “When I started preparing data to report for the second time, I noticed this phenomenon where the Black employees at these brands didn’t want to be identified as Black.” Instead, they wanted to be identified as African-American, Afro-Caribbean, or African. “It was just dancing around the subject of Black, and I was shook,” the founder says. “This is something that, if I’m honest, has been bothering me for years in terms of language, and for a while now, I’ve been obsessed with racial linguistics, as it’s called, and the impact of language on race because that’s really what shapes our minds.” Chuter knew there wasn’t enough awareness around language’s relationship to race, and after thinking about it for so many years, she decided it was finally time to take action.

“A lot of the issues that Black people face at work are not a result of conscious bias but are a result of unconscious bias, and unconscious bias is driven by systemic racism,” she explains. “And the only way to offset unconscious bias is to do the opposite and to make a conscious effort to counter it.” For Chuter, that meant completely redefining what it means to be Black, and in order to do that, she dreamt up Pull Up For Change’s next big campaign, Make It BLACK.

“For much of history, we were told it was bad to be Black, so we ran away from it,” the founder says. “There have been some huge improvements, like the capitalization of ‘Black,’ but it is taking some time, and that’s why we have to have this conversation so broadly and openly. This is a goal that goes beyond Black people and really speaks to all of society about how we use the word Black.”

Make It BLACK aims to shift perceptions around what it means to be Black by rejecting the notion that Black is wrong or toxic and instead celebrating the beauty of Blackness. To do this, Chuter has launched a petition calling on Merriam Webster and Oxford English Dictionary to update their definitions of “black” from associations with negativity. But notably, the campaign has also partnered with nine beauty brands, including Maybelline, NYX Professional Makeup, and Ulta Beauty, to create limited editions of some of the industry’s most iconic products that honor Blackness. “I could have done this without products. I could have just don’t a conceptual campaign, like I did with Pull Up or Shut Up, and just focus on educating consumers,” Chuter notes. “But I decided to tie this to products to bring a direct economic benefit, so they showcase the beauty of Black, but they also give us the opportunity to have a tangible, direct financial impact on Black founders.”

These limited-edition black products will be available for purchase throughout the month of February, and 100 percent of their profits will go towards the new, not-for-profit Pull Up For Change Impact Fund, which will deploy grants to emerging Black founders. “When we looked at the data from #PullUpOrShutUp, it was very clear that it was predominantly Black businesses who were employing Black people, but it was a double whammy because Black businesses don’t get a lot of funding,” Chuter says. “So, the people who were employing Black people most weren’t funded, and the pipeline was really dry because nothing was flowing through.”

Even with the many initiatives that launched last year, the UOMA Beauty founder feels that there’s still too large of a gap. “What we have now is a lot of incubators and a lot of mentorship programs because the Black community is way over-mentored and completely under-invested,” she explains. “Everybody wants to mentor Black kids, but no one wants to invest in them.” And when there are grants for Black founders, they’re typically in the range of $5,000 to $10,000. “I’m a founder, and I don’t know what you’re going to do with $10,000, but it’s not going to get you very far,” Chuter says. “So, we need to stop giving Black people crumbs that are falling from the table. That’s really where I’m coming from and trying to take a stand here to say that we need to stop over-mentoring and start investing in these people instead.”

The Impact Fund will award grants of $25,000 to $50,000 to its recipients, and its process of choosing beneficiaries will be as democratic as possible. “We have to stop allowing the elders to be the ones deciding who makes it or not,” Chuter argues. “The public are going to be the ones buying it eventually, and those are the best people to tell you what’s a good idea and what isn’t and where you can improve.” People will be able to nominate fledgling brands that they think are deserving of the grants, and after a brief screening period to ensure Pull Up For Change is doing its due diligence, members of the public will vote for finalists.

“We want to complement the other efforts that are out there,” Chuter adds. “We have Aurora [James], who did the amazing 15 Percent Pledge, so retailers are now out there looking for Black businesses to put on their shelves, and we know that there is a shortage. There are a lot of businesses, sure, but they’re just not ready for retail, and they don’t have the funds to manufacture at that level.” The Pull Up For Change founder hopes that the new fund will help such businesses, so that overall inclusivity and representation can flourish. “For me, it’s all about cause and effect,” she explains. “Economic equality is an effect, but until we start to address the root causes of it, everything we do is just putting a band-aid on it.”

Make It BLACK officially launched last Friday, at the start of Black History Month, but the initiative will be ongoing throughout this year and for years to come. “I think this was an important moment, especially during Black History Month when we have everyone’s attention and the infrastructure behind it, to do this,” Chuter says. The goal for February is to raise $5 million—both from the sale of limited-edition product collaborations and from direct donations to the Impact Fund—which will fund grants for at least 100 founders. But the founder believes that as new brand partnerships and product releases come in March and thereafter, there’s even more promise for real change. “I imagine when the partnership gets bigger and we team up with huge companies, just one partnership could raise enough money to fund a thousand recipients,” she notes. “And the more we facilitate this conversation and get the world thinking positively about Black, the more it’s going to impact us in every single way.”

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