Believe-in-You Money

Preface

What would it look like if theeconomy loved Black people?

When I look at our economy today, one thing I see clearly is a lack of love for Black people. The reality of the racial wealth gap makes this truth undeniable: a Black person has the least amount of wealth in the United States—just one-eighth of the average White person’s wealth.¹ This relative lack of wealth comes from generations of financial exclusion and racial terror, and it affects everything from quality of education and health care to access to wealthy networks, political power, and, of course, business capital. Because of pervasive and ongoing systemic racism, Black founders are denied business loans twice as often as any other group and receive less than 1 percent in ...