One of the greatest passers in basketball history has thrown his latest assist to Black and brown small business owners who have seemingly been excluded from the government’s apparently selective efforts to keep employees on companies’ payrolls during the coronavirus pandemic.

EquiTrust, the nation’s largest minority-owned insurance company that Johnson is the majority owner of, teamed up with MBE Capital Partners — the largest certified minority-owned asset-based lender — and the National Action Network to award the funds to companies whose applications for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were not accepted.

“The survey offers much-needed data, and it backs up what so many of us already know: the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program is a driver of racial inequality, rather than a means to provide desperately needed relief for the small businesses at the heart of Black and Brown communities,” Rashad Robinson, President of social justice group Color Of Change, said in a statement.

Color Of Change and UnidosUS, formerly known as NCLR (National Council of La Raza), conducted the survey with Global Strategy Group and polled 500 Black and Latinx small business owners, 609 Black workers, and 610 Latinx workers, from April 30 through May 11.

The survey found in part that “45% of Black and Latinx small-business owners who are still in business reported that they will have to shut their doors by the end of the year, if not sooner.

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