This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

It is clear that black unemployment is consistently higher than the national average. Wealth inequality is even more pronounced across racial categories: the median white family owns 8x more wealth than the median black family. While different strategies can be used to tackle such issues, I believe it is imperative that these statistics are viewed in a historical and political context before we move to identifying solutions that can address the problem.  Through the webinar we got exposed to different schools of thought. One was the suggestion that the federal government settle the Black/white wealth gap difference through some form of reparations to the descendants of slaves. Logically, this could have the effect of narrowing the gap and can be justified by the fact that upon the abolition of slavery, black people were not compensated for their years of unpaid labor that helped generate wealth for those who owned them. Racial discrimination through Jim Crow and redlining also help...

In 2023, one hundred and twenty years after Maggie Walker became the first African American woman to charter a bank and serve as a bank president,  sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha,  the country’s oldest social organization dedicated to and operated by Black women, announced the formation of a Federal Credit Union. The new institution aims to build generational wealth for Black women, promote social justice and uplift communities. The number of Black owned and operated financial institutions has fallen dramatically over the past thirty years, declining from 55 banks in 1994 to 18 (out of a total of 4,236) today. There are 33 Black owned and managed credit unions currently out of a total of 4,813.  At 6 tenths of one percent of credit unions and 4 tenths of one percent of all banks, Black banks and credit unions are simply not a factor in the industry, and won’t be until their numbers increase significantly. We have long suggested that a more deliberate effort is required to inc...

        At the SCLC Annual Convention, Washington, DC, July 13, 2018. Left to right - Mr. Kebede, Virginia Tech, Mr. Owusu, Franklin and Marshall College, Dr. Steele, Executive Director, SCLC, Mr. Ye, Johns Hopkins University, and Mr. Brand, University of Maryland. On Friday, July 13, 2018, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) held a panel discussion on the state of black wealth in America. The panelists were Samantha Sanders, Director of Government Relations at the Economic Policy Institute, David D. Rixter, Principal  of HCR Consulting L.L.C. and William Michael Cunningham, Founder, Creative Investment Research. The panel was moderated by Kevin B. Kimble, Esq., DC Bureau Chief of SCLC. William Michael Cunningham speaking at the SCLC Convention The panelists discussed a myriad of reasons for the pervasive black-white economic gap to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission that identified racism as the reason for the black...

Our economic research reveals the following:  there is not a single city in the United States of America where the majority of Black people resident before gentrification have been better off post-gentrification. Not one. In every single case, Black income and wealth are lower, significantly so. I mention this because of a comment I made to DC Mayor Bowser at a Forum on Development in Anacostia, Washington, DC. Here is my original comment before the DC City Council:  https:// youtu.be/rlr_DomOais The Mayor appears to believe that this is simply not an issue. My comment and the Mayor's response can be heard at minute 42:00 here: http://thekojonnamdishow.org/audio/#/shows/2015-04-02/d-c-mayor-muriel-bowser-a-forum-in-anacostia/87938/@0:00

We attended a conference titled "Diversity in Financial Services: The Impact of Dodd-Frank" held from June 22-24, 2011 at the Westin Arlington Gateway, Arlington, VA. We opened the conference by speaking on a panel covering Dodd/Frank Section 342. Moderating the panel was Mikail Moore, Chief of Staff, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, US House of Representatives. Other panelists were Darlene R. Slaughter, Vice President, Chief Diversity Officer, Fannie Mae and Leslie R. Crawford, Deputy Director, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The speaker at General Session IV was Beryl Satter, author of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America . She discussed the current state of the mortgage markets and placed recent history in context. Her book is perhaps the best exploration of race and the urban real estate market. This is a rare and powerful book which combines socioeconomic trends, the history of the civil rights movement ...