The Color of Money

Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

By: Mehrsa Baradaran

Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts

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.

©2017 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Baradaran's brilliant and devastating analysis leads to an irrefutable conclusion: the racial wealth gap is the product of state law and public policy, and will only be reversed when the same governmental tools that created segregation and discrimination are deployed to end it." (Beryl Satter, author of Family Properties)

America's Dark Economic History

This book portrays racial tribalism, economic deprivation, and systemic historical data that illustrates the exclusion and hatred of minority citizens. The provides an account of Black owned banks that have suffered from the lack of financial assistance from the Federal and state government to keep the banks sustainable for African American communities. They were several harsh truths as to why having black owned banks, buying black, etc. doesn't work under a racial capitalistic nation without economic policy changes. The research was well written to the point that it is worth reading more than once.

Amazing read!

I highly recommend this book for others. Definitely one of my top 5 books read on audible.

The best book on racism and it’s potential solutions

I will be ordering the physical hardback copy of this book and displaying it on my bookshelf. The literature review of black-owned banks in the US -presented in this book- offers necessary and digestible background for readers to assess the only question that seems to matter any more: “where does the money go?” Excited to see who references this book in the future!

Best audiobook in my entire library

Amazing narrator. Incredibly thoughtful and deep historical analysis. Helped provide me with direction correction.

Eye opening history.

This gives the hard truth about this nation and its turn by turn destruction of black in America.