CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, this week, the United States has been marking Juneteenth, the federal holiday that celebrates and marks the end of slavery. But nearly 160 years later, the financial inequality between African-Americans and their white peers remains stark, as our next guests lay out in their new book, “Fifteen Cents on a Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Co-authors Ebony Reed and Louise Story join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss possible solutions to closing that gap.
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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Louise Story, Ebony Reed, thank you both for joining us. Your book is called “Fifteen Cents on a Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Ebony, let me start with you. Well, explain that fifteen cents on the dollar phrase.
EBONY REED, CO-AUTHOR, “FIFTEEN CENTS ON A DOLLAR”: Sure. Thank you for having us. Fifteen cents is the typical amount of wealth a black family has in America for every $1 a typical white family has. And this is data from the Federal Reserve.
SREENIVASAN: Louise, why write this story in the first place?
LOUISE STORY, CO-AUTHOR, “FIFTEEN CENTS ON A DOLLAR”: Well, Ebony and I were working together at the Wall Street Journal in the summer of 2020. And as colleagues and as friends, we started having many of the same conversations I’m sure you had and many people you know had, which is, wow, you know, where do things stand on race today? And in particular, since we were at the Wall Street Journal, we were wondering, where do things stand on race and money? And so, we read some books together. We looked up some data. I’ll never forget when we crunched the data and came up with how many cents in the dollar it was. I called up Ebony and I said, did you realize this figure? And we thought it was fascinating. And we soon found out by looking around that there was not a book on black-white wealth gap through history. It didn’t exist coming to the present and we decided we were the perfect pair to write it.
SREENIVASAN: Louise, I can understand in the context of what was happening with the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd why it was resonant to think about that. But there, you know, you can also say that there’s a wealth gap between the very rich Americans and average Americans, right? What was fascinating to you about kind of the dimension of race in this?
STORY: Well, actually there is a more severe wealth gap among races than there are just among white Americans. So, you’re correct. There’s a distributional effect that affects all people and there is a wealth gap among white Americans. But when you look at white versus black Americans at every income level, there is a wealth gap. And so, white Americans, even those who have less money than the richest white Americans still have more wealth compared to black Americans with their same income. And frankly, that was fascinating to me because, you know, I grew up in the 1980s. I remember when Martin Luther King Day became a holiday in much the same sort of celebratory way as Juneteenth just became a holiday. And I really grew up hearing that the civil rights movement had worked and that things, you know, had been solved. And so, for me to understand in the numbers, and I have been a financial — I’ve been a financial editor and a financial reporter all my career. So, just understanding from the numbers that there’s still such a big gap, I thought it was noteworthy and that more people should understand it.
SREENIVASAN: Ebony, you choose to focus the book and the stories in the book around Atlanta. Why did you focus on this city? I mean, you go back really all the way to race riots in 1906 and further on how this wealth gap translates into how we see a modern American city.
REED: Right. Atlanta has been considered, you know, the black Mecca because of its large population of black Americans there. And a lot of people feel like, you know, that’s a place because of opportunity that black Americans can make it. Now, in our book. we have a chapter on the two Atlantis and we really shine a light, you know, the black, black wealth gap, because there is a difference between, you know, black Americans who are doing well economically and the experiences of those who are not. And so, because our book covers people, black Americans, from all economic stratus, people will be able to see the differences in addition to understanding about the black-white wealth gap.
SREENIVASAN: Louise, you follow Greenwood Bank. I mean, for people outside of Atlanta and who might not be aware of it, why was this bank significant? I mean, this was an attempt to try to right some wrongs.
STORY: Greenwood Bank, as it was first called, was set up in the summer of 2020 by, first of all, notable people, you know, the rapper Killer Mike, Michael Render. He goes by Killer Mike. He just won three Grammys. He set it up in partnership with Andrew Young, a former mayor of Atlanta and a civil rights leader. So, they’re famous and people admire them. And they said that the mission of this new company would be to help close racial wealth gaps. So, that really excited and interested people. We talked to people who had been out at many demonstrations in the summer of 2020. And yes, they were demonstrating about the murder of George Floyd, but they will — they were also demonstrating around systemic inequities, and money was on many people’s minds. And so, this offered a solution. People across the entire country signed up. This is a national company. It’s a FinTech actually, which is a technology company that is a banking platform. They were very excited and they were hoping that Greenwood would be able to make lending and investing much more inclusive of black and Hispanic people.
SREENIVASAN: Did it work?
STORY: So far, Greenwood has not had the traction and the effect that people were hoping for at the beginning. But I will say, you know, startups take a long time to come to fruition. The story is not fully told. We think the founders had really good intentions, but it’s a hard path to pursue to change things. And just remember, you know, the whole financial infrastructure really is set up and run by, you know, largely white owned entities. So, for something to come in and try to do something with black capital, it’s difficult to change things.
SREENIVASAN: Ebony, you have a character in the book Tandreia Dixon. She says, it’s more difficult for black entrepreneurs to get their business started. Black Americans have fewer contacts who can help form business partnerships and invest. And part of it is getting a business loan. Numerous studies have shown that black business owners have not been treated equally. Black Americans are not offered as many credit options as white borrowers. And even when black Americans become entrepreneurs, they sometimes struggle to get capital to support their operations. What were the experiences that she was sharing with you about this inequity?
REED: So, Tandreia, she was trying to raise up her family’s economic fortunes. Her family has farmland North Carolina, and she was trying to figure out what to do with that farmland and how to translate that into, you know, an economic mobility movement for her family. She talked with us about, you know, her struggles, you know, as an entrepreneur. But I’d like to also highlight some other struggles that she faced. She wanted to become a home owner because, you know, that’s one of the drivers, you know, for wealth in our country. And after three years of trying, she faced some issues with unemployment at the same time that she was also trying to start a business. She still hadn’t been able to purchase a home three years later.
SREENIVASAN: Louise, one of the characters we meet in the book is a man named Brook Bacon, who is black and he’s married to a white woman. And even in the dynamic of just this interracial relationship, you’re able to tease out the different types of financial trend lines going back in history through their families.
STORY: Yes, Brook and his wife, Sheila (ph) were a really interesting example. We were actually able to trace back their family lines back to the 1860s. And there’s data we run through the whole book on the size of the black-white wealth gap. And right after 1860, the average white family had 58 times the wealth of the average black family. And it turned out when we traced Sheila’s family back and when we traced Brook’s family back, so a white family back and a black family back, the ratio of their wealth was 58 to one.
SREENIVASAN: Wow.
STORY: So, here we had this couple living today and their prior generations were right at the average of what happened to our country. And so, we understood through their grandparents, their great-grandparents all the way the different things that had happened with them. And, you know, Sheila’s (ph) family is not a super-rich family, but there were things that she’d been able to do, her parents have been able to do that were different from Brook. And they really go through a racial reckoning in the narrative and the storyline of our book because there was a terrible tragedy in the summer of 2020, Brook’s father was shot by a police officer. And so, we followed the story of what they did to come to terms with that. We went on a justice walk with them. It was a 63-mile justice walk and heard the story. And, you know, in reflecting with them over the years, we had many interviews, at one point, Sheila (ph) said to us, you know, she hadn’t realized, but in her being a white person and her marrying a black person, the way she put it was, she had taken on systemic debt. And she was referring to the student loans that Brook had not been able — had not paid off at that point. But it was interesting hearing both of their perspectives of how their lives and their finances and the legacy of their races were intertwined in their marriage.
SREENIVASAN: Ebony, this tragedy that Louise just mentioned, that led to a financial windfall for Brook. What happened to that money?
REED: Well, Brook took that money that he was awarded from the State of Georgia, and he shared it with some of his relatives. You know, he had relatives that had helped bury his father, and he also wanted to help his mom. And then he also was able to save that money. And he talks with us about, you know, how it set him up for generational wealth for his children. So, he’s also saving a portion of that, you know, to help his family in the future. But of course, no amount of money can ever replace a loved one.
SREENIVASAN: Louise, one of the people in Brook’s father’s case was James Woodall, who is, at the at the time, was the president of the NAACP in Georgia, and he served eight years in the military. But you really point out all these structural disadvantages, even in their own lives.
STORY: James Woodall was a rising star in the NAACP. You probably saw him on television in 2020, because he was out there talking about some of the different police shootings and cases that year. And we examined his family’s whole trajectory and his life. And when he was a child, he was — his mom was moving him around all the time. They moved, you know, many, many times a year as they struggled and as she struggled to pay the rent in many places. Sometimes when she needed to get credit to keep on the electricity, she used his Social Security number or his sibling’s Social Security number. So, when he became an adult, he already had tarnished credit. She took out student loans in order to have some funding to help feed her children. And, you know, his mother, Stefana (ph), I think a lot of readers will really empathize with her. James Woodall’s story is very moving and it helps you understand. Sometimes you see someone at the forefront out there at the front of the line for the NAACP and you don’t know their story, and he’s lived a story of struggles. And one of the things that comes through when you follow his story is that he pushed inside the NAACP for change. He pushed for the NAACP to pay more of its state leaders, many of these positions are volunteer roles. But when he pushed for reform, he really ruffled some feathers. And so, his story is a good one to read.
SREENIVASAN: Ebony, if you could, for people who haven’t been kind of paying attention to the structural forces of what reinforced and what created these wealth gaps, I mean, going back in Woodall’s case to, you know, his grandfather and the GI Bill all the way to, you know, redlining, what are some of the big kind of structural causes or an increase in this black-white wealth gap?
REED: Well, I think we have to go all the way back to the beginning when black Americans were enslaved people because that is the beginning of working and not being paid when we think about the black-white wealth gap. And then, as we move through history, as Louise and I cover in this book, people will see points where programs were in place. Sometimes they were exclusionary, but sometimes there were programs that had — were not properly set up in a way for black Americans to participate or to thrive in them. So, you mentioned the GI Bill, and that’s a really good one to mention. When it was set up to benefit veterans of World War II, was for all veterans, regardless of race. But it was not administered at a federal level, so it was administered in local communities. And because of that, and because there was discrimination on the local level in some communities, many black Americans, the vast amount that were veterans and tried to use the bill were not able to. And so, there are some estimates that that like less than 3 percent of black Americans were able to use the GI Bill for housing. It was, of course, set up for housing, education, and also the ability to start, you know, businesses. In our book, we have many families, you know, more than half a dozen that we interviewed, that told us their family stories about how they were not able to use the GI Bill, which contributed to the setup of white middle class in our country. And so, when we think about that, you know, this was a point in history where black Americans, they were just not able to take advantage of this benefit that would have had an economic impact for many of them that were veterans and their family.
SREENIVASAN: Ebony, both of you have done a fantastic job of laying out what got us here, but you also go kind of a step further. You do have a list of different types of solutions that you think can help improve this problem. So, if you can, you know, summarize some of those for us.
REED: Sure. So, one of our personal recommendations for people is that at some point in their lives they consider working on a project or an initiative with a person who is different from them so that they can understand another person’s lived experience and some of the issues thatthey’re facing today, you know, in society. Louise and I are an example of this, because not only have we worked together, you know, on this — at this book and we may appear to people with — you know, with the visual eye that she is white and I’m black, but we also, you know, had to work through geographic differences to create this book. I live in Kansas City, Missouri. She’s based on the East Coast. We had to work through family structure differences. She’s married and has three children. I am single and was widowed in the pandemic. And so, that caused us to really have to think through what does it mean to be equitable and how would we, you know, pay for expenses related to the book. Spend our time. And we just think if more Americans were able to have this experience, that it would influence how they think about everything in our country from affordable housing and student loans and other policies if they could just understand the experience of other people.
SREENIVASAN: And, Louise, you are both choosing to return the profits from this book to different causes. Explain that.
STORY: Yes. Well, the book covers many things, but one of the things it does cover is how sometimes white businesses or white entities have taken advantage of black Americans. And I’m really grateful for the time and the stories that the people in our book shared with us. They shared their stories to make an impact. Of course, as journalists, we do not compensate people for their stories. That’s a standard journalism practice. And so, I just decided early on that I wanted to volunteer completely on this project. And so, this has been a three-year volunteer project for me. And what I mean by that is that I’ve donated all profits that I’m making from the book and I’ve pledged to do that permanently. Ebony has also donated a share. And we are doing this to make a difference. Our number one goal is we want to make “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar” a nationally recognized statistic. We think that if more Americans knew this figure they would think differently about so many important issues in our society.
REED: It was important for us for people to know that we weren’t just talking with them about their stories, but that we also wanted to give back. We wanted to contribute. And so, it was a very easy decision to make to say, we want to support causes that are tied to education, journalism, black Americans. So, on our site, 15cents.info, not only can people learn more about the book, but they can also learn about the events that we’re having around the country as community symposiums. We’ve been having them since February around the country. We have many more stops to make before July 1. But people can also read about the nonprofits that we’re also supporting through this book.
SREENIVASAN: The book is called “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Louise Story. Ebony Reed, thank you both for joining us.
STORY: Thank you.
REED: Thank you.
