The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Well written and filled with facts I didn't know - especially regarding FHA loans and veteran's benefits once denied to people based on race. I remember visiting an older sister whose husband was stationed in an Army base in Alabama 60 years ago in 1962. Coming from Michigan I had never seen separate drinking fountains or bathrooms - I was horrified as we passed a chain gang working on the highway. Yet I remember that even in the North the fact that black people might own a nice car and a shabby house was a common joke - now I better understand the housing discrimination they faced. I am glad to see many accomplished black artists and professionals these days - our daughter had the benefit of a wonderful black teacher she admired. Still, I know that there are many black people living in poverty. Our daughter taught in the Bronx for Teach for America and she witnessed parents who often had two jobs just to provide for their families and the hardship this imposed on the children. People need to earn a living wage. Perhaps too many businesses are overpaying the executives and underpaying essential employees. Reparations?? Perhaps a better solution would be to increase the minimum wage and provide affordable housing with low interest mortgages.

In order to address the issue, you have to recognize the problem and understand the history. "The Color of Money" does just that. Great read!

"to be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships."- W.E.B. DuBoisEvery few years there is a book that is so powerful it turns me into a book nerd, policy evangelical. I go out and buy several copies and press them into friends hands with the fervor of a recent convert and tell them they "NEED" to read it. I think the last nonfiction book to do this for me was 'Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right' or maybe 'The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.' Usually, the book has both a financial angle and a policy tint. It usually also explores unfairness. That makes sense. In my previous life I was a policy analyst and I now work in the finance industry as a financial planner. Most days, I'm a pretty mellow guy. I meditate, read, drink tea, Netflix and chill. But reading about inequality and unfairness, for me, catalyzes me for action.If the last few political cycles have taught us anything, it is America still struggles with its "original sin" of slavery and the ugly descendants of slavery: discrimination, segregation, inequality, despair. We have seen, just this week (actually for the last few years), protests about the way Black Americans are treated by police officers. That subject deserves its own space, so I wont dwell too much on that here, other than to say the interaction of Black Americans and police officers ISN'T simple. It isn't a subject that can easily be explained just by saying police are racists, or unarmed Black Americans should behave differently (different from whom?). There are structural, geographic, economic, historical, and political forces that all contribute to awful outcomes.Just like blue on black violence isn't easily explained in a tweet or a FB post, the interaction between Black Americans and banks has a long, ugly, and painful history. It is a history that is important to understand if one REALLY wants to explore topics like income inequality, segregation, credit, crony capitalism, corruption, exploitation, state power, wealth, etc... Mehrsa's book explores the policies, laws, programs, politics, economics, and history of black banks AND the history of Black Americans with banks. She points a fairly bleak picture of the fault/chasm that exists between the two financial markets that exist in America. One is the banking structure that exists for a majority of Americans and doesn't need to be explored. But for years that economic structure, that allows people to save (AND BORROW) didn't exist for a large segment of Americans. And when it eventually did, it was skewed heavily. Separate was never equal in banking. Blacks paid a heavy price to save, to borrow (if they could). Even laws that were designed to help pull Americans out of poverty, accumulate wealth and avoid taxes through home ownership, benefited one segment of America while ignoring or fleecing the other.It is a painful read. It is also necessary. Unlike Mehrsa Baradaran's* previous book, 'How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy', this one spends little/less time on prescriptions. She is laser focused on what is wrong, what went wrong, and why. It is a dense (without ANY of the negative connotations typically associated with that word) book. One that required me to open THREE different post-it flag packages. I was marking things that were new, quotes that amazed, items I didn't want to forget and I often found myself marking 3 or 4 times a page.A few caveats before I end. This isn't a perfect book. It isn't as exciting as a Michael Lewis book (this probably won't get made into a movie) and the prose isn't as pretty as Robert Caro's LBJ series. But it is important. It is a labor of both love and skill. Reading some chapters in it, I could tell Mehrsa spent months in presidential libraries. Well researched books give me a thrill. Especially when you recognize that a certain nugget of data or quote may never have seen the light of day if it wasn't for the doggedness of a skilled lawyer/historian. 'The Color of Money' deserves to be in the library of anyone who deals with or seriously thinks about income inequality, race, banking, inner cities, etc.As a white, upper-middle, male who has benefited from educated parents, stability, wealth, and every advantage American history and politicians have blessed me with, it is difficult and humbling to realize just how many of the economic realities I take for granted every day weren't available to the parents of my black friends. Hopefully, more of these same financial realities WILL be available to the children of ALL my friends. Hopefully we can begin to cover both the scars of the disadvantaged, and the economic and social chasms that separate (unfairly) us. This book is both a bridge and a battle cry.

Very readable, with extensive sources cited (pages 289-357 in the paperback version).Dr Baradaran explains the centuries-long and continuing devastation caused by black slavery in the USA. The author assembles the pieces that describe devastating oppression that does not go away.For example, I grew up in Pittsburgh in the 50’s and 60’s. When any discussion of home ownership post WW2 came up, and black families, specifically veterans, came up, the question was why did “they” stay in certain parts of the city; why didn’t “they” buy homes in the suburbs where schools were better? Everybody knew veterans had the GI bill, so why didn’t “they” use it? Why rent when “they” could own? Most, if not all, of us did not understand the reality. Our experience was nowhere near that of African American families and individuals.On page 106, paperback version: Dr Baradaran explains that starting in 1934 FHA and VA programs opened a spigot of mortgage lending. The lending flowed through the banking system. Quoting from pages 107 - 108: “The prosperity fueled by the abundant flow of mortgage credit stopped firmly at the red lines around the black ghettos....The discriminatory policies of the FHA....[were] now actually enforcing segregation “ The FHA’s policies “prevented ‘inharmonious racial groups’, which meant that the only groups that did not threaten property values were white families....Enforcing ...a “harmonious racial mix” became a vested interest for....banks.” Black families could NOT obtain mortgages to live where white families could.I am grateful for this book because it is clearing the cobwebs from my eyes. I’ve always known that life for black Americans in the USA is unfair. I just didn’t think about how that was, and in how many ways, and how segregation is baked into our system.It is a devastating history.

This book is absolutely brilliant, for anyone who seeks to know the historical account of the economic marginalization, faced by the African in America. In addition, it is overall inspiring, as it reinforces why, blacks should continue to build wealth.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and its detailed explanation of the racial wealth gap in America. It tackles a lot of misinformation and any age old excuses that try to dismiss that the racial wealth gap exists today. This book is backed up by intensive research and thoroughly explains how the racial wealth gap was created. I really enjoyed learning more about how banks operate and how the past wrongdoings of America actively affect the present. I challenge people to read this book the next time they try to deny that the racial wealth gap exists.

Livro essencial para entender como a democracia liberal capitalista constrói os apartheids sociais onde aprisiona o povo negro.

This book really shows you that this is not just in the states but the agenda is set Globally, and off course England must always be in the middle of corruption.

Loaded with valuable information. Amazing research.

Detailed notes of historic aspects of banking including political motivations and their real intentions taught me that American real power group prefers status quo to revolution toward equal free society.