The Color of Money, Mehrsa Baradaran
The Color of Money, Mehrsa Baradaran
4 Rating(s)
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The Color of Money
Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Author: Mehrsa Baradaran

Narrator: Lisa Reneé Pitts

Unabridged: 15 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/26/2017


Synopsis

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States’ total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks.

The catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. Not only could black banks not “control the black dollar” due to the dynamics of bank depositing and lending but they drained black capital into white banks, leaving the black economy with the scraps.

Mehrsa Baradaran challenges the long-standing notion that black banking and community self-help is the solution to the racial wealth gap. These initiatives have functioned as a potent political decoy to avoid more fundamental reforms and racial redress. Examining the fruits of past policies and the operation of banking in a segregated economy, she makes clear that only bolder, more realistic views of banking’s relation to black communities will end the cycle of poverty and promote black wealth.

About Mehrsa Baradaran

Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and a noted authority on banking law. The author of The Quiet Coup, The Color of Money, and How the Other Half Banks, she has advised US senators and congresspeople on policy and spoken at national and international forums including the World Bank. She lives in San Clemente, California.


Reviews

Personal reading strategy for 'heavy' books: Always read the Acknowledgments first. Three reasons. One, easiest to read. No strenuous effort required. Work-shy readers ftw! :) Two, puts paid to the notion of author as solitary warrior. In spite of the way books are packaged and sold, works of schola......more

Goodreads review by Lisa

It's all unfair, I know that, you know that, but this book lays out all the hidden and complicated ways that money flows to white folks and away from black folks. They can work harder and smarter and never have a chance because the system disadvantages them at every turn, this book spells out those......more

Goodreads review by Raymond

I learned a lot from Mehrsa Baradaran’s book about Black banks and the racial wealth gap. It covers Black economic/banking history from the end of slavery to our current moment. This was a history that I was mostly unfamiliar with especially when it dealt with the banks and the government policies t......more