What does it really mean to invest in the Black community?
There are real people who can empower America and the world to be better.
As we unpack a complicated relationship with banking while also showing
how we could successfully change the narrative on Black businesses.
Black homeownership and investing in the Black community.
This is Banking On Us.
On June 30th, 2020, Netflix decided it would take 100 million dollars
and invest it directly into Black owned financial institutions.
My name is Aaron Mitchell.
I am from New Haven, Connecticut, and I lead HR
for Netflix Animation Studios
April 16th I was hosting a networking dinner.
You know, Netflix is, I'd say, pretty famous at this point
for its culture because it's a company that invites entrepreneurial thinking
and then gives people the actual tools to do that.
We had put together these dinners to bring together
leaders from underrepresented groups with our executives.
And so somebody on that dinner was like,
hey, how do we get corporations to move their money into Black banks?
And that was sort of the light bulb moment for me where I was like,
I don't know, but I'm going to ask .
So a couple of weeks later, I asked our CFO. He's like,
look into it, do some research.
I did some research, put together a proposal.
That was May 22nd when I finished that proposal
and then May 25th George Floyd was murdered.
And it created this sort of internal sense of urgency
around doing something for these communities.
I had looked up a number of Black banks.
There were 19 in the country.
I'm like cool. Bill Bynum was the first person that we spoke to,
I'm Bill Bynum, the CEO of Hope Credit Union.
I got a call one day from Aaron Mitchell.
He talked to us about, you know, capital requirements.
He was familiar with the work that HOPE was doing.
HOPE is a community development financial institution.
So we were created to provide
opportunities for people that have not had that access.
We started having conversations.
We were able to agree that by investing in Black lead financial institutions,
we can start to heal people and we can start to see progress.
It's a huge disparity in one's ability to achieve
economic prosperity because of the color of the skin.
We need to talk about this because if people can't get out
of these neighborhoods, they can't get into corporate America.
They can't become leaders.
So this whole this whole work is pointless
if we can't solve the root cause of the problem.
Let's stop for a second and dive deeper into this-
Black wealth, Black dollar, Black spending, Black businesses, generational wealth,
racial wealth gap. Let's get to the point.
Are Black people the reason their communities
don't seem to reach their fullest potential?
Even though the racial wealth gap is widening,
Black people as a collective spend more than one trillion dollars a year.
So if we have the money and the desire to spend what seems
to be the hold up on us flourishing like the kings and queens, we are?
Policy, policy, systematic racism laws and more policy.
Mehrsa Baradaran breaks down in her book Color of Money, that the wealth gap
is spearheaded by policies America has put in place for centuries.
From the Jim Crow era to the present day, 60 percent of Black Americans
relative to 20 percent of white Americans are either unbanked or underbanked.
This means the Black people who have money and are trying to get money
are being significantly cut out of the picture.
And then there's redlining.
The devaluing of Black homes in Black
neighborhoods is a direct impact that steals wealth away from Black people.
The law has unfortunately made sure this has happened to our community,
where appraisers will automatically devalue Black homes
and states will just mark certain areas as poor and limit their resources completely.
Crazy, right? The proof is in the pudding.
So what exactly happened?
What's happening now?
And most importantly,
how do we move forward as a community to get ourselves in a place to win?
Now that we took a look at that, let's continue.
Operation Breadbasket was kicked off by Martin Luther King back in 1968.
He told the community to put their money into Black banks.
That's going to support your family,
and your community and create progress and prosperity for all.
Unfortunately, Dr. King was murdered.
That same year before Operation Breadbasket got off the ground.
This is one of many viable paths forward to start writing these wrongs
and maybe at some point for my kids or maybe even in my lifetime,
we can see a version of this that we're comfortable with.
We as a community need to embrace the work that Dr. King gave his life for.
We meant to show the rest of corporate America what's possible.
To be a homeowner and a person of color
is one of the greatest milestones that you can ever achieve.
It's almost indescribable.
It's a sense of accomplishment.
Having an institution that will lend funds in order for me to reach the goals I'm trying to get to.
And so the spark is, hey, if we did this and it's working,
if everybody did this, we could actually change this world.
The rest is history.