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, a 10x different over 150 years after the end of slavery.
Berdasarkan data terbaru pemerintah federal AS, median kekayaan keluarga kulit putih di AS adalah 171.000 dolar, dan keluarga kulit hitam hanya 17.000 dolar, berbeda 10 kali lipat setelah 150 tahun berakhirnya perbudakan.
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.
Pertama, kita harus bertanya, apa itu kekayaan? Kekayaan adalah semua aset atau kepemilikan Anda, dikurangi liabilitas Anda. Contoh aset adalah mobil, rumah, rekening tabungan, rekening giro, investasi, properti lain, dan bisnis. Celah 10 kali lipat itu terjadi karena, selama puluhan tahun, Orang kulit hitam Amerika terlambat dan tak bisa bergerak maju.
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?
Mengapa kita membicarakannya sekarang? Di 2020, di tengah pandemi global dan resesi yang mendekat, ketidakadilan menjadi jelas hampir dalam semua sistem di AS: kesehatan, pendidikan, peradilan, dan keuangan, orang-orang tergerak untuk beraksi di internet, jalan, dan rapat di kantor perusahaan. Sebagai konsultan, saya mulai berbicara dengan klien saya tentang hal tak terkira. Pertanyaan yang saya pikirkan adalah bagaimana agar momen ini bisa menutup celah kekayaan tersebut?
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.
Jadi, siapakah saya? Saya Kedra Newsom Reeves. Saya konsultan bagi institusi perbankan, pengelola investasi, dan pengelola aset. Tapi, sebelumnya, saya adalah seorang kulit hitam Amerika keturunan dari budak. Ketika membahas celah kekayaan, kita harus memahami sejarahnya. Jadi, saya ingin bercerita tentang keluarga saya, dan keterkaitan kebijakan dengan kekayaan.
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.
Kita mulai dengan kakek moyang saya. Namanya Silas Newsom, ia terlahir sebagai budak dekat Nashville, Tennessee, di Stasiun Newsom, di mana dia dan keluarganya bekerja di tambang. Ia tak punya apa-apa. Ia tidak punya rumah ataupun properti. Ia pun tak menguasai tubuhnya, usahanya, anak-anaknya. Semua hal itu hanya digunakan untuk memperkaya orang lain. Jadi, kami percaya bahwa ia adalah seorang pelayan saat Perang Saudara untuk seorang jenderal sekutu yang berjuang untuk terus memperbudaknya, jadi ia tak punya kekayaan, dan tak menguasai hidupnya.
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.
Di akhir perbudakan, ada sebuah peluang kebijakan. Ada sebuah pertanyaan: apa yang akan kita lakukan setelah perbudakan berakhir? Ada sebuah pilihan. Kita bisa membayar para budak, atau para pemilik budak. Para budak tak punya kekuatan untuk membela dirinya saat itu, dan negaranya harus disatukan, jadi, pemerintah federal memutuskan untuk membayar para pemilik budak; memberinya uang untuk properti yang hilang saat perang. Namun, maksudnya bukan properti fisik seperti rumah, melainkan para budak yang telah memberi jasa gratis selama puluhan tahun. Jadi, Silas, di akhir Perang Saudara, tidak punya kekayaan. Ia sudah bebas, namun tanpa kekayaan. Ia menjadi petani.
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.
Kakek buyut saya, Silas, lahir setelah perbudakan selesai, ia berperang di Perang Dunia I bersama 350.000 tentara kulit hitam Amerika lainnya di unit yang terpisah-pisah. Ia berperang. Ketika ia kembali ke AS di akhir perang, ada banyak sentimen anti kulit hitam. Saat itu, ekonomi tertekan, banyak sekali hambatan, dan orang kulit hitam tak bisa mendapatkan tanah dan pinjaman rumah, mereka tidak bisa mendapat kredit untuk membangun kekayaan, maka, dia menjadi petani. Ia memiliki anak, namanya juga Silas -- ada banyak Silas di keluarga saya -- yang menjadi kakek saya.
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.
Kakek saya, Silas, juga menjadi tentara untuk Perang Dunia II. Setelah Perang Dunia II, Pemerintah Federal AS meloloskan GI Bill, yang membantu veteran. Bill itu menyediakan bantuan rumah sakit, pinjaman pelajar, dan pentingnya, untuk membangun kekayaan, hipotek berbunga rendah. Beberapa tahun setelah perang, GI Bill mengucurkan empat miliar dolar untuk sembilan juta veteran. Tapi, banyak veteran kulit hitam tidak untung. Jadi, kakek saya, Silas, pulang ke Nashville, Tennessee, dan menikah dengan nenek saya, yang bernama Cinderella. Ya, nama nenek saya Cinderella. Mereka punya delapan anak. Mereka tak membeli rumah. Yang luar biasa adalah mereka pindah ke proyek perumahan publik dan membayar sewa untuk proyek itu, yang berkualitas baik bagi mereka, dan sebuah kemajuan, tapi mereka tak bisa membangun kekayaan.
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.
Ayah saya, juga tentara, seorang veteran 20 tahun marinir AS, membeli rumah pertamanya di usia 50-an, namun perlu empat generasi bagi keluarga kami untuk membangun kekayaan dengan kepemilikan rumah.
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.
Itu adalah cerita keluarga saya, dan saya melewati banyak hal dari akhir perbudakan dan sekarang: diskriminasi tempat tinggal dan perumahan sebelum Fair Housing Act 1970, peran penting bank kulit hitam dalam membangun komunitasnya, Krisis Tabungan dan Pinjaman 1980, yang menutup banyak bank kulit hitam, dan Krisis Subprime 2008, yang mengusir banyak orang kulit hitam dan coklat dari rumahnya. Ada banyak sejarah di sana, namun cerita itu menjelaskan sedikit tentang asal usul celah saat ini.
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.
Tentunya, ketika kita melihat ukuran celah tersebut, sangat penting bagi Pemerintah Federal untuk mengambil beberapa sikap. Institusi keuangan sangatlah penting dalam memberi kredit, modal untuk membangun dan mengembangkan komunitas kulit hitam.
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.
Kita harus tahu; mengelola 17.000 dolar dengan lebih baik tidaklah cukup. Pendidikan yang lebih baik juga tak cukup. Akses ke kredit dan modal amatlah penting. Saya mau membahas empat solusi yang bisa dilakukan institusi keuangan untuk menutup celah kekayaannya.
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.
Pertama, yaitu, memberi akses bank ke banyak orang. Setengah dari orang kulit hitam Amerika tidak memakai bank. Maksudnya adalah tak punya akun bank, atau punya, namun memakai layanan lain untuk mencairkan uang, meminjam gaji, atau membayar tagihan. Biaya transaksinya mahal, dan waktu untuk membayar juga lama. Bayangkan bagaimana Anda membayar tagihan. Mungkin Anda bayar dengan rekening giro. Anda atur di awal, dan menjadi otomatis. Jika tak memakai bank, Anda harus pesan uang kertas dahulu, dan membayarnya di balai kota atau kantor pemerintah. 40% orang yang tak memakai bank mengira uangnya terlalu sedikit
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.
untuk membuka rekening giro. Itu tidak benar. Beberapa tahun terakhir, koperasi kredit, bank komunitas, dan institusi perbankan telah membuat rekening giro dan tabungan tanpa saldo minimum berbiaya rendah khusus untuk populasi ini. Jadi, masalahnya adalah kesadaran. Bank, mitra komunitas, dan lainnya harus bekerja sama untuk memberitahu produk ini ke mereka yang membutuhkan dan mengurangi jumlah orang yang tak memakai bank, dan membantu mereka bergerak maju.
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.
28% keluarga kulit hitam dan Latinx tidak punya atau punya sedikit kredit. Cara kerja kredit dan penilaiannya adalah jika Anda punya bukti kemampuan membayar pinjaman, maka Anda bisa pinjam lagi. Ini seperti situasi ayam atau telur. Yang menarik adalah bank dan perusahaan teknologi keuangan telah berinovasi untuk menggunakan data alternatif -- tagihan kabel, tagihan utilitas, pembayaran sewa, dan lainnya -- untuk menunjukkan kemampuan Anda dalam membayar. Tantangan kali ini bukan tentang kesadaran. Anda perlu peraturan untuk melakukan hal ini. Anda perlu membuktikan kemampuan menggunakan datanya untuk meminjamkan kredit ke kelompok terpinggirkan. Yang diperlukan adalah agar Pemerintah Federal dan industri perbankan untuk bekerja sama menggunakan data alternatif bagi kelompok tersebut.
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.
Bagaimana dengan komunitas? Tanpa kekayaan komunitas, kekayaan individu tak berguna. Jika Anda lihat kota besar di AS dan komunitas kulit hitam, Anda akan menemukan komunitas yang kurang berkembang. Saat krisis ekonomi, komunitas ini tersiksa dengan buruk. Saat ledakan ekonomi, mereka tidak diuntungkan. Jadi, yang terlihat di banyak kota di AS, contohnya Chicago adalah kerja sama antara institusi perbankan, dermawan, pemimpin kota dan komunitas, untuk menanamkan ratusan juta dolar untuk membangun sumber daya di komunitas yang telah lama dirugikan.
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.
Akhirnya, kita bisa bicara tentang bisnis, tak hanya bisnis kecil. Ketika Anda punya kestabilan, institusi perbankan, akses ke kredit, dan kekayaan komunitas, itu luar biasa, namun kami juga perlu pembuatan pekerjaan. Misal, perusahaan teknologi "baru", yang tak terlalu baru, seperti Facebook, Google, Amazon. Dulunya, perusahaan itu hanya dimiliki oleh satu atau beberapa pegawai yang sedang membangun teknologi yang belum terbukti. Perusahaan tersebut awalnya menerima uang modal usaha. Saat ini, hanya 1% modal usaha masuk ke pendiri kulit hitam. Jika pengusaha kulit hitam dicegah masuk ke jaringan itu, mereka tak bisa tumbuh, dan hanya industri yang dapat merubahnya. Di generasi ini, kita tak boleh hanya bicara tentang mengembangkan bisnis di komunitas kulit hitam. Kita juga harus bicara tentang melihat lebih banyak bisnis orang kulit hitam menjadi publik.
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.
Itu hanya empat solusi. Ada banyak hal lain yang bisa dan harusnya dilakukan untuk menutup celahnya. Celah ini tidak baru. Ini dilahirkan dan dilanjutkan oleh kebijakan federal, teori sosial, dan praktik bisnis. Dan semua hal itu perlu berubah untuk mulai menutup celahnya. Institusi keuangan berperan sangat penting di level individu, komunitas, dan bisnis. Ini penting bagi keluarga, komunitas, dan ekonomi kami.
Instead of talking about how the gap continues to grow, let's begin to close the gap now.
Daripada membicarakan pelebaran celahnya, marilah kita mulai menutupnya.
Thank you.
Terima kasih.