As last recorded by the US Federal Government, the median wealth for a white family in the United States was 171,000 dollars and the median wealth for a Black family was just 17,000 dollars,
Segundo o último rexistro do Goberno dos EUA a riqueza media dunha familia branca nos EUA foi de 171 000 dólares e a riqueza media dunha familia negra
a 10x different over 150 years after the end of slavery.
tan só de 17 000 dólares 10 veces menos, 150 anos despois da fin da escravitude.
I think first we have to ask ourselves, what is wealth really? Well, wealth is all of your assets, all of the things that you own, minus all of your liabilities. Assets are things like your car, your house, your savings account, your checking account, your investments, if you own other properties, your business. Well, that gap, that 10x gap, is partially because for many years, decades in fact, Black Americans were left off of that ladder and didn't really have access to it.
Penso que o primeiro é preguntarse: que é a riqueza? Ben, riqueza son todos os activos, todo o que un ten menos todos os seus pasivos. Activos son cousas como o coche, a casa, a conta de aforros a conta corrente, os investimentos. outras propiedades que se teñan, o seu negocio. Ben, esa fenda de 10 veces débese en parte a que durante moitos anos décadas, de feito, os afroamericanos foron expulsados desa escaleira e non tiñan acceso a ela.
Well, why are we talking about this now? Well, in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic and a looming recession, inequities are really laid bare across nearly every system in the United States: health care, education, criminal justice and finance, and people were moved to take action online, in streets, in meetings at work, in corporate boardrooms. And I, as a consultant, started having conversations with clients that I thought I would never have. I guess the question that I'd been asking myself is, how do we make sure that in this moment, this results in action and progress that starts to close that wealth gap for Black versus white Americans?
Ben, por que estamos a falar disto agora? En 2020, no medio dunha pandemia e unha recesión inminente as desigualdades quedan ao descuberto en practicamente todos os sistemas dos Estados Unidos: atención sanitaria, educación, xustiza penal e finanzas e a xente pasou á acción na rede, nas rúas nas reunións no traballo, nas salas de xuntas empresariais. E eu, como consultora, comecei a ter conversas con clientes que nunca pensei que ía ter. Supoño que a pregunta que me fago é: como asegurarnos de que neste intre, isto se traduce en accións e avances que comece a pechar esa fenda da riqueza que enfronta afroamericanos e brancos?
So who am I? My name is Kedra Newsom Reeves. I am a consultant for banking institutions, hedge funds, asset managers. But before any of that, I am a Black American who is the descendant of slaves. And when we talk about the wealth gap, it's really important to understand the history, so I thought I'd tell a little story about a family, my family, and how policy intersects with wealth.
Quen son eu? Chámome Kedra Newson Reeves. Son consultora para institucións bancarias fondos de cobertura, xestores de activos. Mais, por enriba de todo iso son unha afroamericana descendente de escravos. E cando falamos da fenda da riqueza é moi importante entender a historia así que pensei contar unha pequena historia dunha familia a miña familia e como a política interactúa coa riqueza.
So we'll start with my great-great-grandfather. He was a man named Silas Newsom, and Silas was born a slave outside Nashville, Tennessee, on Newsom Station, where he and his family worked on a quarry. He didn't own anything. He didn't own his home. He didn't own property. He didn't really even own his own body, his own labor, his children. Any of those things, all of those things, were here to create wealth for someone else. So we believe that he was a servant during the Civil War for a Confederate general who was actually fighting to keep him enslaved, so he really had no wealth, he had no control over his life.
Así, comezaremos polo meu tataratataraavó. Foi un home que se chamaba Silas Newsom que naceu escravo nas aforas de Nashville, Tennessee, en Newsom Station onde a súa familia mais el traballaban nunha canteira. El non era dono de nada. Non era dono do seu fogar. Non era dono de propiedade ningunha. Non era dono nin do seu propio corpo do seu propio traballo, dos seus fillos. Calquera destas cousas, todas estas cousas estaban aquí para construír riqueza para outra persoa. Pensamos que foi un servente durante a Guerra Civil para un xeneral confederado que de feito loitaba para poder mantelo escravizado, así pois, el non tiña riqueza, non tiña control sobre a súa vida.
Well, at the end of slavery, there was a policy opportunity. There was a question: what do we do for the hundreds of years of slavery now that we are ending slavery and the country is coming together? And there was a choice. We could make a settlement with the slaves, or we could make a settlement with the slave owners. Well, the slaves had no power to advocate for themselves in that moment, and the country had to be united, so the federal government decided to give that settlement to slave owners, essentially giving them money for the property that they had lost at the end of the war. And not their physical property, not their homes, but people, the slaves that had provided free labor for years and decades. So Silas, at the end of the Civil War, had no wealth. He was free but had no wealth. He became a sharecropper.
Ben, á fin da escravitude xurdiu unha oportunidade política. Había unha pregunta: como reparamos os centos de anos de escravitude agora que estamos rematando con ela e o país estase a unir? E houbo unha elección. Podiamos chegar a un acordo cos escravos ou podiamos chegar a un acordo cos propietarios dos escravos. Os escravos non tiñan poder para defenderse naquel momento e o país tiña que pórse de acordo para que o goberno federal decidira darlles aos propietarios dos escravos ese acordo, esencialmente dándolles diñeiro pola propiedade que perderan á fin da guerra. E non se trataba de propiedades físicas, das súas casas, senón de xente os escravos que forneceran man de obra gratuíta durante anos e décadas. Así pois, á fin da Guerra Civil Silas non tiña riqueza. Era libre, pero non tiña riqueza. Converteuse nun parceiro.
My great-grandfather Silas was born a number of years after the end of slavery, and he was drafted to serve in World War I along with 350,000 other Black American soldiers in segregated units. He served in the war. When he came back to the United States, at the end of the war, there was very anti-Black sentiment. The economy was compressing, there were a lot of stressors, and Black people could not get land, they could not get loans for homes, they really could not acquire any credit to build wealth over time, so he also became a farmer. And he had a son, also named Silas -- there are a lot of Silases in my family -- my grandfather.
O meu bisavó Silas naceu uns anos despois da fin da escravitude e foi recrutado para servir na Primeira Guerra Mundial xunto con outros 350 000 soldados afroamericanos en unidades segregadas. Serviu na guerra. Cando regresou aos Estados Unidos á fin da guerra existía unha animadversión moi forte contra os afroamericanos. A economía afogaba, había moitos factores estresantes e a poboación negra non podía ter terras, non podía pedir préstamos para os fogares en definitiva, non tiñan acceso a créditos para construír riqueza co paso do tempo, polo que se fixo granxeiro. E tivo un fillo, que tamén se chamou Silas --hai moitos Silas na miña familia. O meu avó Silas foi tamén soldado e loitou na Segunda Guerra Mundial.
My grandfather Silas was also a soldier and fought in World War II. After World War II, the US Federal Government passed the GI Bill, which provided support for veterans. And the bill provided for building of hospitals, student loans and, most importantly for wealth-building, low-interest home mortgages for veterans. In the years following the war, the GI Bill accounted for four billion dollars of funding to nine million veterans. But Black veterans largely did not benefit. So Silas, my grandfather, came back to Nashville, Tennessee, and he married my grandmother, whose name is Cinderella. Yes, my grandmother's name was Cinderella. And they had eight children. But they never bought a home. And the highlight of their housing journey was moving into a new public housing project with their children and paying rent for that housing project, which in terms of the quality of housing was fantastic for them and a step up, but did not allow them to build wealth.
Trala Segunda Guerra Mundial o Goberno Federal dos EUA, aprobou a Lei do soldado que provía aos veteranos de ingresos. A lei prevía a construción de hospitais, préstamos estudantís e máis importante para crear riqueza, hipotecas a baixo interese para veteranos. Nos anos posteriores á guerra a Lei do soldado desembolsou 4 millóns de dólares de financiamento para 9 millóns de veteranos. Mais os veteranos afroamericanos na súa maioría non se beneficiaron dela. Así pois, o meu avó, regresou a Nashville e casou coa miña avoa, Cinderella. Sí, miña avoa chamábase Cinderella. E tiveron 8 fillos. Mais nunca mercaron unha casa. E o momento culminante nesa busca dunha vivenda foi mudarse a un novo proxecto de vivenda pública cos seus fillos e pagar renda por aquel proxecto de vivenda, que, en termos de calidade de vivenda, era fantástico para eles e supoñía un paso adiante mais non lles permitía construír riqueza.
My father, another soldier, a 20-year veteran of the United States Marines, bought his first home in his early 50s, but it took four generations for our family to move into homeownership and begin to build ownership and equity in a home.
Meu pai, outro soldado veterano logo de 20 anos na Marina dos Estados Unidos, mercou a súa primeira casa aos 50 anos mais fixeron falla 4 xeracións para que a nosa familia fose propietaria dunha vivenda e comezase a construír propiedade e equidade nunha casa.
That's one family's story, and I skipped a lot of things that happened between the end of slavery and today: redlining, housing discrimination before the Fair Housing Act in the 1970s, the really important role that Black-owned banks played in building Black communities, the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s, which crushed a lot of Black banks, and the subprime crisis in 2008, which stripped a lot of Black and brown homeowners of their homes. There's a lot of history there, but that story tells you a bit about how we get to this 10x gap where we are today.
Esa é a historia dunha familia, e saltei moitas cousas que tiveron lugar entre a fin da escravitude e hoxe: exclusión financeira, discriminación no acceso á vivenda antes da Lei de vivenda xusta dos anos 70, o importantísimo papel dos bancos rexentados por afroamericanos na construcción de comunidades negras, a crise de aforros e préstamos dos 80 que destruíu moitos bancos rexentados por negros e a crise das hipotecas lixo de 2008 que despoxou a moitos propietarios negros e latinos das súas casas. Pasaron moitas cousas mais esa historia ilustra como chegamos a esa fenda de 10 veces na que nos atopamos hoxe.
Now, certainly, as we think about the size of that gap, it is critical for the Federal Government to take a number of actions. That said, financial institutions play a really important role in providing access to credit, access to capital, to build communities and allow Black communities to thrive.
Agora ben, pensando no tamaño desa fenda é fundamental que o Goberno Federal emprenda unha serie de accións. Non obstante, as institucións financeiras xogan un papel moi importante ao facilitar o acceso aos créditos, o acceso ao capital para construír comunidades e permitirlles prosperar ás comunidades negras.
We have to be clear; managing 17,000 dollars better does not get us there. Better education does not get us there. Access to credit and capital are critical. So I want to talk about four solutions today that financial institutions can contribute to start to close the wealth gap.
Temos que ser claros: non o lograremos xestionando mellor os 17 000 dólares. Non o lograremos con mellor educación. Precisamos acceso a créditos e capital. Así pois, hoxe quero falar de catro solucións ás que poderían contribuír as institucións financeiras
para comezar a pechar a fenda de riqueza.
Number one is getting more people on the ladder, getting more people banked. We know today that about half of Black Americans are un- or underbanked. Unbanked means that you don't have a banking account. Underbanked means that you have a bank account but you use alternative services for check-cashing or payday lending or paying bills. And that's not just expensive from a transaction perspective in terms of the fees that you pay, it's also expensive in terms of the time that you commit to paying a bill. Think about how you pay your utility bill today. It probably comes out of your checking account. You don't even think about it. You set it up in advance, and it's automatic. Well, if you're unbanked, you are probably going to get a money order somewhere, physically, a piece of paper. You then travel to City Hall or your DMV to pay that bill.
A primeira é conseguir que máis xente suba á escaleira, conseguir que máis xente use os bancos Sabemos que aproximadamente a metade dos afroamericanos non deposita o seu diñeiro nos bancos. Ou porque non teñen contas bancarias ou porque, téndoas, usan servizos alternativos no cobro de cheques, préstamos de día de pago ou nas facturas. E iso é custoso, non só dende a perspectiva da transacción e das taxas que se pagan, senón que tamén é custoso polo tempo que dedicas a pagar a factura. Pense en como paga hoxe a factura de servizos. Probablemente sae da súa conta corrente. Non ten nin que pensalo. Prográmao con antelación e faise automaticamente. Ben, se non ten conta bancaria probablemente deba facer un xiro postal nalgunha parte, físicamente, un documento. Despois ten que acudir ao Concello ou á oficina pertinente para pagar esa factura.
About 40 percent of people who are unbanked say they are unbanked because they think they don't have the minimum amount to really maintain a checking account. Well, that's just not true. In the last several years, credit unions, community banks and major banking institutions have created low-cost, no-minimum checking and savings account products specifically made for this population. So we have an issue with awareness. Banks, community partners and others have to work together to increase the awareness of these products in communities that need them, so that we can start to reduce the number of people who are un- and underbanked and get them on the ladder that we talked about earlier.
Aproximadamente o 40 % das persoas que non teñen conta bancaria din que non a teñen porque pensan que non chegan á cantidade mínima para manter unha conta corrente. Pois ben, iso non é certo. Nos últimos anos as cooperativas de crédito, os bancos comunitarios e as grandes institucións bancarias crearon produtos a baixo custo e contas correntes e de aforros sen mínimos especificamente feitas para esta poboación. Así pois, temos un problema de concienciación. Bancos, asociados locais e outros teñen que traballar xuntos para sensibilizar sobre estes produtos nas comunidades que os precisan, de xeito que podamos comezar a reducir o número de persoas que non usan os bancos e incluílos na escaleira da que xa falamos.
The challenge is about 28 percent of Black and Latinx families are credit-invisible, which means that you have a thin credit file or no credit file. And the way that credit works and creditworthiness assessments work is to say, if you can prove that you have paid credit back consistently previously, then I can lend you more credit. It's kind of a chicken or an egg situation. The interesting thing is that banks and financial technology companies have really innovated in recent years to use alternative data -- cable bills, utility bills, rent payments, etc. -- to show that you're able to consistently make payments. The additional challenge on this one, unlike the last one, which was more about awareness, is that you need to have regulatory support to do these things. You need to prove to regulators that you are able to fairly use alternative data to lend credit to marginalized groups. What we need to see is, from the Federal Government and the banking industry, to come together to create innovation sandboxes to start to use alternative data to expand to marginalized groups.
O reto é o 28 % de familias negras e latinas que son invisibles para os bancos, o que significa que teñen un feble historial crediticio ou que non o teñen. E os créditos e as avaliacións de solvencia funcionan así: se pode demostrar que devolveu o crédito de maneira consistente con anterioridade entón podo prestarlle máis crédito. É como o peixe que morde o rabo. O interesante é que os bancos e as compañías de tecnoloxía financeira innovaron moito nos últimos anos para usar fontes alternativas de datos facturas da tele por cable facturas de servizos pagos do alugueiro etc. para que vostede demostre que pode realizar pagos de xeito consistente. O desafío adicional que isto supón, a diferenza do anterior que se trataba máis dun problema de concienciación é que é preciso contar con apoio lexislativo para facelo. Hai que demostrar aos lexisladores que é posible usar xustamente datos alternativos para prestar crédito a grupos marxinalizados. O que precisamos ver do Goberno Federal e da banca é unión para crear mecanismos innovadores e comezar a usar datos alternativos e expandilos aos grupos marxinalizados.
Well, what about communities? Without community wealth, individual wealth, in a way, is on an island. And if you go into most major cities in the United States to most communities of color, what you'll find is underinvested communities. For every economic crisis, these communities have suffered severely. For every economic boom, they have not benefited. And so what we're seeing in a number of cities across the country, and I'll use Chicago as an example, is the partnerships occurring between banking institutions, philanthropists, the city and community leaders to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build community resources and communities that have historically been disinvested.
Ben, é que hai das comunidades? Sen riqueza comunitaria a riqueza individual, dalgún xeito, está illada. E se vai aos Estados Unidos, na maioría de cidades na maioría de comunidades de cor o que atopará son comunidades cun baixo nivel de investimento. Estas comunidades sufriron gravemente os efectos de tódalas crises económicas. E non se beneficiaron de ningún auxe económico. Así pois, o que vemos en varias cidades do país e porei Chicago como exemplo estase a producir unha cooperación entre institucións bancarias filántropos sociedades e dirixentes para investir millóns de dólares na construción de recursos comunitarios e comunidades nas que historicamente non se investiu.
Lastly, we've got to talk about business, and not just small businesses. Now, when you have individual stability and a banking institution, and you have access to credit, and when you have community wealth, those are all fantastic things, but we need also job creation. Take all of the new tech companies, and I say "new" because now they're not so new, but take Facebook, Google, Amazon. At some point, all of those companies were sole proprietorships with one employee or a few employees that were building a technology that was not yet proven. What those companies received early on was venture capital money. And when you look at venture capital today, only one percent of venture capital funds go to Black founders. So if Black entrepreneurs are largely shut out of those networks they're not able to grow, and the only way for that to change is from within the industry itself. In this generation, we must not only be talking about thriving businesses in Black communities. We must also be talking about seeing more Black-owned and founded businesses going public.
E por último, hai que falar de empresas e non só de pequenas empresas. Ter estabilidade invidividual e unha institución bancaria ter acceso á crédito, ter riqueza comunitaria todas esas cousas están ben, mais é preciso xerar emprego. Tome como exemplo tódalas novas compañías tecnolóxicas e digo ''novas'' porque agora xa non son tan novas, mais pense en Facebook, Google, Amazon. Nun momento dado, todas esas compañías foron empresas unipersoais, cun empregado ou varios empregados que estaban a deseñar unha tecnoloxía que aínda non se probara. O que recibiron esas empresas ao comezo foi diñeiro de capital de risco. E se se observa o capital de risco de hoxe tan só o 1 % dese diñeiro se destina a fundadores afroamericanos. Así pois, se os emprendedores negros son excluídos destas redes non poden prosperar e o único xeito de que isto cambie é que cambie a industria en si mesma. A nosa xeración non só ten que falar de negocios máis prosperos nas comunidades negras. Tamén temos que falar de que cada vez son máis as empresas fundadas e propiedade de negros que saen á bolsa.
Those are just four solutions. There's many other things that can and should be done to close the wealth gap. This gap is not new. It was born and perpetuated by federal policy, social constructs and business practice over time, and all of those things need to change to start to close the gap. Financial institutions play a really critical role at the individual level, at the community level and at the business level. It's important to our families, it's important to our communities and it's important to our economy.
Estas non son máis que catro solucións. Hai moitas outras cousas que se poden e deberían facer para pechar a fenda de riqueza. Esta fenda non é nova. Naceu e foi perpetuada por políticas federais, construcións sociais e prácticas empresariais ao longo do tempo e é preciso que todas esas cousas cambien para comezar a pechar a fenda. As institucións financeiras xogan un papel clave a nivel individual, a nivel comunitario e a nivel empresarial. É importante para as nosas familias, para as nosas comunidades e para a nosa economía.
Instead of talking about how the gap continues to grow, let's begin to close the gap now.
En lugar de falar sobre como a fenda se agranda, comecemos a pechala agora.
Thank you.
Grazas.