The Color of Money: An Evening with Mehrsa Baradaran

About

Philanthropy Northwest is continuing our Racial Equity Speaker Series with Mehrsa Baradaran, author of The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap and associate dean at the University of Georgia School of Law.

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. Studying these institutions over time, Mehrsa Baradaran challenges the myth that black communities could ever accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. Instead, housing segregation, racism and Jim Crow credit policies created an inescapable, but hard to detect, economic trap for black communities and their banks.

Join us to hear from her as she examines the fruits of past policies and the operation of banking in a segregated economy.

In 2018, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap was awarded the PROSE Award Honorable Mention in the Business, Finance & Management category. Mehrsa Baradaran currently serves as associate dean for strategic initiatives and as the holder of the Robert Cotten Alston Associate Chair in Corporate Law at the University of Georgia School of Law.

There will be a book sell and signing following the event.

This event takes place on Juneteenth. Juneteenth (June 19th) is a day of celebration commemorating the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

If you have questions about the event please Contact Mares Asfaha.