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

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

by Mehrsa Baradaran

View on Goodreads
History & Foreign AffairsSociety & Culture

Black banks were promoted as a way to close the racial wealth gap. In Mehrsa Baradaran's account they never could, because housing segregation, Jim Crow-era credit practices and discrimination made them victims of the poverty they were meant to fight.

Core ideas
  • A gap that hasn't moved: Black Americans held less than one percent of US wealth at emancipation in 1863, and that share has barely changed since.
  • A broken multiplier: The banking multiplier couldn't work in a segregated economy, so deposits in Black banks drained out into white-owned institutions.
  • Self-help as a substitute: From Reconstruction through the subprime crisis, government programs built white wealth while excluding Black Americans, and self-help stood in for structural reform.
Published2017
Pages371
ISBN9780674970953
ReadJul 2022

Connected to 5 other books

See the connection map
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 by Eric Foner Reconstruction Eric Foner Read Jan 2021 In Eric Foner's history, Reconstruction starts in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation rather than at the war's end, and freed… The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein The Color of Law Richard Rothstein Read Apr 2023 Near Detroit, a developer built a wall between a white development and a Black neighborhood to win federal backing. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Evicted Matthew Desmond Read Apr 2023 Some tenants in Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods spent 70 to 80 percent of their income on rent for substandard housing. Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World by Dorothy Roberts Torn Apart Dorothy Roberts Read Aug 2022 The child welfare system is, in Dorothy Roberts's account, a family policing system that works alongside police and prisons to… The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy by Peter Temin The Vanishing Middle Class Peter Temin Read Mar 2021 Peter Temin's argument is that the United States now runs as two economies, using a model W.