Deeper Than Black and White

As the page turns on the 47th?annual celebration of Black History Month in America, the country finds itself at an inflection point.

The hope-inspiring images of people from all backgrounds protesting for justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 have been substituted for frightening images of irate people yelling at officials at city council and school board meetings about the harms of training and education on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B).

That anger, formerly concealed for significant swaths of the population, has been unearthed and weaponized by disingenuous politicians, attention-seeking conspiracy theorists, and opportunistic talk show hosts. For those of us believing in the crucial importance of DEI&B, a new approach is needed.

For one thing, let’s stop griping over how hard it is to talk about issues of race, inequality, and discrimination. Mature adults should be able to rationally discuss our shared history of inconvenient truths. Ignoring reality and the fate it imposed on millions of people is not a solution. The longer we postpone acceptance of the past and its impact on the present, the more expensive the solutions will become.

What can we do right now? Let’s work to develop a common language to talk about race. The broad terms Black and white don’t work. There’s too much diversity of perspective within each group to lump them together in a single category. For example, many white people, the equivalent of abolitionists and freedom riders in the past, are today’s protesters, philanthropists, and nonprofit leaders demanding change. Even white people who seek to deny opportunities to others because of their skin color fall into different camps.

In my book, “The Fragile Mind,” I refer to wealthy whites who achieved and maintained their wealth through exploitation as the?“Predatory Elite.” Their introduction of an economic system based on slavery gave them a lasting advantage over other people. In a way, they’re the founding members of the country’s most exclusive country club.

Offspring of the Predatory Elite are “Legacy Members,” provided full club membership at birth. Many of them lead family businesses or serve in senior leadership roles at established organizations. They are often staunch vocal advocates of merit, ignoring the reality that their success was fueled by what was given to them. Some descendants of the Predatory Elite are as rapacious as their forebears, with few if any scruples passed on to them through the generations.

Then, there are the associate members in the club, the?“Free Riders.” They, too, are white, but they lack the full range of benefits provided to full members. Prior to the Civil War, the Predatory Elite retained the Free Riders to oversee their slaves. Today, they are employed to maintain the system of haves and have nots. They enjoy a lasting advantage over Blacks, as they have long been free of racial discriminatory practices in education, housing, employment, and healthcare.

Statistically, their employment outcomes are better than those of talented Blacks. For example, a meta-analysis of 24 recent studies reveals that white job applicants received, on average, 36% more callbacks after an initial job interview than equally qualified Black applicants. In another study, removing any reference to being Black on a resume increased the number of callbacks by 2.5 times . At every education level, whites have a lower unemployment rate and higher income than their Black counterparts.

Free Riders are indifferent to how the full members’ wealth has accumulated and compounds because they hope to walk in their shoes someday. Consequently, they are threatened by the possibility of Blacks joining the club.

Lastly, there are the?“Exploited Foot Soldiers,” the staff at the club whose sycophantic toadying to the club members is driven by hopes of personal advantage. Like the associate club members, they depend on the crumbs tossed their way by the full members. They couldn’t care less about how the full members attained their pecking-order status, much less the extraordinary financial steam engine of compounding. They struggle to gain and maintain employment that pays them a living wage, yet they vote for policies that don’t serve their economic interests. They harbor animosity against Black people who take on jobs they believe are theirs to have.

The Widening Wealth Gap

The Predatory Elite, Legacy, and Free Riders have amassed extraordinary intergenerational wealth by means of compounding, investing money in assets that appreciate, such as homes and stocks. Along with slavery, another significant era that shaped the economic reality for people today was post World War II. The G.I. Bill changed the lives of countless white veterans, and while the bill’s language did not specifically exclude the 1.2 million Black veterans from its benefits, it was structured in a way that ultimately denied them equivalent opportunities to build the intergenerational wealth enjoyed today by white middle-class families.

In fact, of the $120 billion in mortgages the federal government backed from 1934 to 1962, a paltry 2% went to nonwhites . The government also sanctioned redlining practices, ensuring that Black people were confined to poverty-stricken areas marked by distressed housing with lower real estate values. Fighting a war was not enough for Blacks to earn membership in the club.

Small wonder the average white family’s wealth is eight times higher than the average Black family’s wealth, according to a 2019 study by the Federal Reserve. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the financial stature of Black people has scarcely progressed insofar as home ownership, employment, and financial means. Redlining is illegal today, yet three-quarters of neighborhoods redlined 80 years ago still struggle economically, a study by the National Center for Education Statistics discovered. This is not some meaningless relic of the past.

Rather than pulling back on education regarding DEI&B, we must double down. These are issues we must be able to address if we have any hope of creating a future where all our kids and grandkids can thrive. DEI&B is not about punishing talented, hard-working, fair-minded whites. Rather, it’s about acknowledging and correcting the upper hand that the Predatory Elite, Legacy Members, and Free Riders have long held in America, in the hopes of narrowing the mammoth wealth gap between the haves and have nots. Otherwise, thanks to the power of compounding, it will continue to widen.