#5SmartReads - May 11, 2022

Hitha on the racial wealth gap, the women of F1, and how Putin's invasion has affected the rest of the world

May 11, 2022

134,600 businesses in the United States are owned by Black people. 346,800 of businesses are in the United States are owned by Latiné people.

If business ownership was proportionate to population, these numbers would look vastly different - 7 times more businesses owned by Black Americans, and nearly 3 times more businesses would be Hispanic-owned.

The causes of this? You’ve heard them again and again - access to capital and resources and infrastructure, though things are beginning to change (albeit very slowly).

The best thing you can do to help shift this is to support Black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses as a start (I’m a huge fan of BOM and this list of Latina-owned businesses), and to shop from them regularly.

I’m deep in season 2 of Formula 1: Drive to Survive and so you’ll have to put up with my newfound F1 obsession for some time longer. Not sorry, just managing expectations.

This show would never pass the Bechdel test, and this industry wouldn’t fare much better as a whole. But there are more women working their way up in F1 (both in the drivers’ seat and behind the scenes).

But things are changing. For one, there’s the W Series (and I’ll definitely be tuning into the Barcelona race in the W Series (and binge watching W Series Off Track on YouTube). And while F1’s limited grid (just 20!) makes it extremely competitive and exclusive, I can’t wait to see women fill these seats in my lifetime.

Tina Peters is running to be the Republican nominee for Colorado’s Secretary of State (the office that runs state elections).

She’s also been charged with election tampering in the 2020 election in her role as Mesa County Clerk.

And this election is far from being the exception.

“Wednesday’s report by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the group Election Reformers Network examines how most of America’s election officials are chosen through partisan elections or picked by members of political parties — a system that has traditionally relied on people to run elections ethically and without favoring party affiliation. That setup is now ripe for future problems if more people who believe the country’s elections aren’t free and fair win local and state election positions or are appointed to related roles.”

While I have nothing but respect for Meredith Grey (Jack Bauer could never hack one of Meredith’s worst days), she isn’t my favorite character on Grey’s Anatomy.

Christina Yang is a close second, but even she’s not my top pick.

BokHee - a scrub nurse both on and off-screen - holds my heart, and I love seeing her soar on Instagram and in this interview.

Nothing but respect for Queen BokHee. Long may she reign.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forever changed that region - and has impacted the world at large.

The invasion has contributed to rising gas prices, but has also diverted humanitarian aid from other refugee crises, caused shortages of wheat, barley, and cooking oil for parts of the world, and much more.

This piece in NPR does a really solid job of visually showing how the invasion has impacted the world, and where. It’s worth your time to read in full.

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