The wave of calls for inclusion and change has begun to rise from the moat over the high castle walls of venture capital.

In the current state, one-percent, that’s 1%, of venture-backed companies have a black founder. 81% of VC funds don’t even have a single black investor. Not one. Last year, only 2.7% of all VC funding went to women of any color. Not twenty-seven percent, two and seven tenths of one percent.

And black women? 0.2% Yes. Let me repeat that: Two-tenths of one percent of all VC funding went to black women.

In 2018, I listened to an all-white VC panel deny the facts. I was playing MC for the event. A softball question came in from Twitter, something on how they enabled diversity in their deal flow. The only woman on the panel noted the vast inequity. The young-ish guy next to her acknowledged there was a problem and abstained from any solution. The rest answered with a unified racism. They each took the mic – stoic, straight-faced and tight-lipped – and declared some version of “We don’t see color.” It was like watching tobacco executives in the ’90s tell us it wasn’t addictive.