Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric and this is next question.
Speaker 1: You know, my company, Katie Kuric Media, wouldn't get to
Speaker 1: do all the cool things we do like bring you
Speaker 1: this podcast if it weren't for the really innovative, smart
Speaker 1: and forward thinking companies. We're lucky enough to partner with
Speaker 1: one of those, is Ally. On the last episode in
Speaker 1: this series, I sat down with Alli Senior Director of
Speaker 1: Financial Health and Wellness, Jack Howard. We spoke about how
Speaker 1: money stories influence our financial decision making. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're digging even deeper. We'll be talking about the racial
Speaker 1: wealth gap and the systemic and historical factors that have
Speaker 1: contributed to pervasive and seemingly intractable financial inequality. With the
Speaker 1: help of two amazing guests, we're taking a look at
Speaker 1: the causes of economic injustice, as well as how to
Speaker 1: navigate a new path forward. I'll be speaking with Chloe McKenzie,
Speaker 1: founder of blackfam, an organization dedicated to reimagining wealth opportunities
Speaker 1: for black women. But first from The Washington Post financial
Speaker 1: columnist Michelle Singletary. Michelle's award winning ten part series Sincerely,
Speaker 1: Michelle addressed common misconceptions involving race and inequality, and it
Speaker 1: really helped so many people understand the roots of the
Speaker 1: racial wealth gap. I'm really excited to have Michelle here today. Michelle,
Speaker 1: great to see you.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate having this opportunity.
Speaker 1: I know, Michelle, you were prompted to really begin this
Speaker 1: work focusing on race and money following the murder of
Speaker 1: George Floyd. Can you tell me how that inspired you
Speaker 1: to try to tackle this really important but often ignored issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, for most of my career, like many black Americans,
Speaker 2: have dealt with race issues on my job in the community,
Speaker 2: and I'll be honest, I didn't talk about it a
Speaker 2: lot because when you do, people say things like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're playing the race card or you're too sensitive, and
Speaker 2: so for most of my career, even though I've written
Speaker 2: about discrimination, particularly as it relates to personal finance, personally,
Speaker 2: I didn't talk a lot about it. And then after
Speaker 2: the death of George Floyd, that whole summer of reckoning
Speaker 2: I'm going to tear up now. I just said, I
Speaker 2: can't be silent anymore. I can't be afraid of the
Speaker 2: blowback of talking about what it's like to be black
Speaker 2: in America. Like now it's twenty twenty three, we are
Speaker 2: still dealing with issues that people were dealing with doing
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, you know, posts the end of slavery,
Speaker 2: And so I talked to my editor about doing the
Speaker 2: columns of you know, folding in my personal story with
Speaker 2: historical data, real stats, and folding in those two using
Speaker 2: data to talk about race. And my intention wasn't to
Speaker 2: make anybody feel guilty, because we're often accused of that
Speaker 2: when we talk about race. You know, there's this whole
Speaker 2: controversy about blacks trying to make white people feel bad
Speaker 2: about slavery. That wasn't the intention. The intention, which is
Speaker 2: why it was signed and sealing, Michelle. It was a letter,
Speaker 2: It was a discussion. It was like, let me tell
Speaker 2: you what it's like to walk in my shoes from
Speaker 2: the time I got the job at the Post, the
Speaker 2: Washington Post, to what it was like even before the
Speaker 2: Post is a young black intern and a scholarship program
Speaker 2: that was designed to hire more black reporters. And let
Speaker 2: me tell you what it's like to be, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get credit and home loans. And I I
Speaker 2: live in a beautiful home in Prince George's County, Maryland,
Speaker 2: on almost an acre of land. I'm right now looking
Speaker 2: at a bank of trees and deer skipping through my yard,
Speaker 2: and yet my home value is considerably less simply because
Speaker 2: I'm black and I live in a black community. You
Speaker 2: picked my house up and moved it, you know, thirty miles,
Speaker 2: not even thirty miles from where I live in a
Speaker 2: white neighborhood, and my equity would be twenty thirty forty
Speaker 2: percent more. And so my equity has not increased the
Speaker 2: same it would be if the color of my skin
Speaker 2: was different.
Speaker 1: Did you feel that people were more receptive to this
Speaker 1: message following George Floyd's death, because I feel like there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people eager to learn. You might
Speaker 1: have gotten some blowback, but I also feel there were
Speaker 1: many people myself in that category who became even more
Speaker 1: interested in some of these issues. Did you find that
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 2: I hope I actually did, and it shocked me. I
Speaker 2: have to say I expected and did get the racist
Speaker 2: emails that go back to Africa. Somebody actually said that,
Speaker 2: but the overwhelming majority were from white Americans who said
Speaker 2: I didn't know, I didn't realize the depth of this
Speaker 2: and that was It was the highlight of that series
Speaker 2: that people understood and they understood me, They understood what
Speaker 2: I was trying to say. They had a lot of
Speaker 2: self reflection. How did I contribute? How how do I
Speaker 2: contribute to this?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's awesome that you know, again, that speaks
Speaker 1: to people who are really receptive, who want to be
Speaker 1: about things that may be ingrained in them and the
Speaker 1: result of sort of cultural conditioning. In the first column, Michelle,
Speaker 1: you wrote about your own experience confronting your boss about
Speaker 1: whether you were originally hired by the Washington Post in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two because you were black. Tell us about
Speaker 1: that conversation and also what gave you the courage to
Speaker 1: have it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if it was courage. I was
Speaker 2: just pissed off, to be honest, I would you know.
Speaker 2: I got to the Post at a very pretty young age.
Speaker 2: I was like, what was I just twenty nine I think,
Speaker 2: you know, and in the business section, so one of
Speaker 2: the youngest reporters in the business section. And I kept
Speaker 2: hearing people say things like, well, how did you get
Speaker 2: to the Post and what's your background? But it wasn't inquisitive, like, oh,
Speaker 2: what paper did you come from? It's like, how did
Speaker 2: you get here? And then some of my friends on
Speaker 2: the staff say, yeah, people keep asking me about how
Speaker 2: you got here, how you got this job, And after
Speaker 2: one time too many, somebody asking how did I get
Speaker 2: to the Washington Post, because the implication was I got
Speaker 2: there because I was black, that they had some sort
Speaker 2: of quota, and that I just fit the quota it
Speaker 2: regardless of my credentials. At that point, I had been
Speaker 2: in the business for eight years, had done well at
Speaker 2: the Baltimore Evening Sun, you know, one awards at college.
Speaker 2: You know I you know I was I was a
Speaker 2: good reporter. And so I just got so discouraged, because
Speaker 2: nobody wants a job that they're not qualified for. If
Speaker 2: you're any person of honor, you don't want a job
Speaker 2: just because you're black, or you're a woman, or you're Asian.
Speaker 2: You want it because you're qualified for it, of course.
Speaker 2: And so I walked up to him and I said
Speaker 2: to him, just point blank, there was no preceding conversation.
Speaker 2: I said, did you hire me because I was black?
Speaker 2: And he paused and he said I did. And the
Speaker 2: tears started to well up, and he said, come into
Speaker 2: my office and he sat me down in the couch.
Speaker 2: I remember this like it was yesterday. And he set
Speaker 2: me down in the couch, and in my head, I
Speaker 2: was sick. So they're right, They're all right. I'm not qualified.
Speaker 2: They just got me here because I was a black girl.
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking all of this in my head and
Speaker 2: he could see tears rolling down my face and he says, well,
Speaker 2: let me tell you something. I hired you because you
Speaker 2: were black and you have an experience as a Black
Speaker 2: American that we needed in this section. I hired you
Speaker 2: because you're a woman. We need women in the business section.
Speaker 2: I'd hired you because you're a good reporter. I hired
Speaker 2: you because at that time I had developed an expertise
Speaker 2: and bankruptcy. And he said, and I hired you because
Speaker 2: you're young and you grew up in an inner city.
Speaker 2: In my head, I said, well, dude, why did you
Speaker 2: start there?
Speaker 3: I was going to say why.
Speaker 1: Did he lead with me yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he followed up, without knowing that's what I
Speaker 2: was saying in my head. He followed up, he said,
Speaker 2: I told you that first, that I hired you because
Speaker 2: you're black. Because I don't want you to run away
Speaker 2: from who you are. Your blackness is an asset to
Speaker 2: the Washington Post, and you should not be ashamed of
Speaker 2: the fact that that was one of the qualities that
Speaker 2: I put on that paper when I hired you, And
Speaker 2: it was a conversation thirty years later that I still remember,
Speaker 2: and that conversation I had never told anybody about that
Speaker 2: until I wrote the series.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about financial inequities that currently exist, because I
Speaker 1: think people don't realize that structural racism is really responsible
Speaker 1: for the inequities that persist today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, the thing about racism in our country
Speaker 2: is lots of people feel that it was an individual thing.
Speaker 2: It was the clan over there doing something. It was
Speaker 2: that racist white person that wasn't me or my family.
Speaker 2: And while there were a lot of individual attacks on folks,
Speaker 2: there were systemic, system wide discrimination. So just take redlining
Speaker 2: for an example. So we sort of think it was
Speaker 2: like a bank here and there, but also the federal
Speaker 2: government participated in discrimination. I mean, they had the mortgage program,
Speaker 2: you know, the loans they were saying, carving out whole neighborhoods, saying,
Speaker 2: these people over here, because they're black, don't lend to them.
Speaker 2: It was on the federal level, it was on the
Speaker 2: state level, the local level, in addition to individuals and banks,
Speaker 2: and so it was a whole system in place. And
Speaker 2: they would create spaces for blacks that then they wouldn't
Speaker 2: put grocery stores, they wouldn't put banks, they wouldn't put
Speaker 2: a place for them to work, and then they would
Speaker 2: make it difficult for them to take transportation to the jobs,
Speaker 2: or they would create highways and barriers. Then they created
Speaker 2: within those areas that we call them ghettos, right, they
Speaker 2: would say things like, you couldn't have but so many
Speaker 2: people in the house, and and there's no there's no
Speaker 2: recreational centers, there's no place for them to swim during
Speaker 2: the summer, and the pools that you open up, you
Speaker 2: don't allow them to come and swim. And it's so
Speaker 2: it's those things, all of that put together, in addition
Speaker 2: to the actual fear for their lives. You know, after
Speaker 2: slavery ended. The reason why there's so many African American
Speaker 2: men in jail is because there were laws, vacancy laws
Speaker 2: that said you couldn't walk on the street and not
Speaker 2: have a job. But if you're not giving people a job,
Speaker 2: what else are they gonna do? And so you penalize
Speaker 2: them by not allowing him to job, and they put
Speaker 2: them in jail, and then you create another slavery system
Speaker 2: by selling out their services as inmates. You see how
Speaker 2: that system works. It's still in place to this day.
Speaker 2: And now, I'm a big believe in personal responsibility. So
Speaker 2: I grew up in a household where my mother and
Speaker 2: father weren't they and my father was a felon, my
Speaker 2: mother ran off, and so I'm from that kind of background,
Speaker 2: and so I studied hard and went to college. But
Speaker 2: I'm just a small blip of the people because I
Speaker 2: had people who helped me do that. But if you
Speaker 2: don't have mentors, you don't have somebody telling you there's
Speaker 2: another side to this life, then of course you don't
Speaker 2: go to school. Of course you drop out. Of course
Speaker 2: you turn the selling drugs to help pay for stuff
Speaker 2: in your household. It's not an excuse. But you got
Speaker 2: to understand the history to understand why this is still an.
Speaker 1: Issue and the ripple effect. That's correct, there's a misconception.
Speaker 1: I know that the income and equality in America between
Speaker 1: black and white people is largely due to the spending
Speaker 1: habits of Black Americans. Why is that sort of conventional
Speaker 1: wisdom and why is that so wrong?
Speaker 2: It's so wrong you think you hear people say things like, well,
Speaker 2: they bought a cell phone. It's ridiculous because buying a
Speaker 2: cell phone or a sneaker is not the same as
Speaker 2: having the ability to buy a home and create wealth.
Speaker 2: And so Black Americans, like the rest of Americans, are
Speaker 2: spend threats. Right. We are a consumer nation, So we're
Speaker 2: not doing anything more or less than the rest of America.
Speaker 2: The difference is that lots of wealth in America is
Speaker 2: tied to home ownership, right, So it goes right back
Speaker 2: to redlining. And so when for example, the gis came back,
Speaker 2: you know, with the GI bill, they were allowed to
Speaker 2: buy homes, they were allowed to use a GI build,
Speaker 2: go to school about homes. The Black soldiers were not.
Speaker 2: And so home ownership has been the key to building
Speaker 2: wealth in America, particularly for middle Americans. So when you
Speaker 2: denied a whole population the ability to build that wealth,
Speaker 2: that's where the disparity comes. And so when you put
Speaker 2: all these ofcas on on away, and then you say,
Speaker 2: why can't you run that race when you had put
Speaker 2: roadblocks every part of that race.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Michelle shares her great grandmother's harrowing
Speaker 1: story that led to fear and mistrust for the generations
Speaker 1: that followed. We're back with Michelle Singletary, financial columnists for
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. I know you've said your parents were
Speaker 1: pretty much absentee and your grandmother, who you call Big Mama,
Speaker 1: raised you starting at age four. But like a lot
Speaker 1: of blackm Americans, she was very distrustful of financial institutions.
Speaker 1: And given everything you've already said, you can understand why.
Speaker 1: So tell us how she felt and how that manifested
Speaker 1: itself into your upbringing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially even again to the stock market. So I
Speaker 2: liked to joke that my grandmother didn't believe in the
Speaker 2: stock market. She only had a simple savings account. She
Speaker 2: didn't even have bonds because she the only bond she
Speaker 2: had was the Bondamheson for her dentures. She just didn't
Speaker 2: trust them. And many communities across not just the South,
Speaker 2: by the way, but the North as well had these
Speaker 2: When they created pockets of wealth for themselves, it was
Speaker 2: destroyed because of racism. And so because of that, my
Speaker 2: grandmother didn't trust banks. You know, we knew that banks
Speaker 2: they own slaves, they had investments in slavery. So many
Speaker 2: people in our community had that same mistrust, but in
Speaker 2: terms of the stock market. But what we don't realize,
Speaker 2: and not just Black Americans, but white Americans too, Americans
Speaker 2: in general, that you have to invest your money so
Speaker 2: that it can grow. And so I had to learn
Speaker 2: to be an investor, despite the fact that I grew
Speaker 2: up in a household where my grandmother was like, don't
Speaker 2: you mess with that market. Don't you you know those
Speaker 2: you put that money there. But I understand her fear.
Speaker 2: Now I did not at the time, because people have
Speaker 2: to understand where the mistrust comes from and the fear.
Speaker 2: So it's only in my lifetime that black Americans had
Speaker 2: the right to vote. It's only in my lifetime that
Speaker 2: I had the right to live where I live. It's
Speaker 2: only in my lifetime that I was able to get
Speaker 2: a job at the Washington Post. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: my grandmother would tell me this one story that I
Speaker 2: wrote about in my column. So my grandmother's grandmother was
Speaker 2: enslaved in the South, in North Carolina, and she was
Speaker 2: what they call a wet nurse, and so she had
Speaker 2: a child at the same time her owner had a child,
Speaker 2: and so she was charged with nursing that owner's babe.
Speaker 2: And so the owner determined that the milk on the
Speaker 2: left side was better because it was closer to the heart.
Speaker 2: So she told my grandmother's grandmother that she better not
Speaker 2: nurse her own child on the left side. So one evening,
Speaker 2: she was tired, she had put the other, the white baby,
Speaker 2: to sleep. She's sitting in the kitchen in front of
Speaker 2: the fry place. She starts to nurse her own child
Speaker 2: in her sleepiness on the left side. The white owner came.
Speaker 4: In and saw that, and she whipped my grandmother's grandmother
Speaker 4: to probably an inch of her life for nursing her
Speaker 4: own baby on her own black breast.
Speaker 2: And that story carried through my family. So you can
Speaker 2: imagine how that story carries. You can't trust these people.
Speaker 2: They will take stuff away from you, They will take
Speaker 2: away the naturalness of feeding your own child.
Speaker 5: And so when people say slavery was a long time ago,
Speaker 5: it wasn't for me, because I touched a woman who
Speaker 5: touched a woman who was enslaved, who couldn't nurse her
Speaker 5: own child on her own breasts. When we traveled to
Speaker 5: North Carolina, we had to make sure that we weren't
Speaker 5: on the road at nighttime.
Speaker 1: In my lifetime, of course, there's also a new school
Speaker 1: of thought. It's relatively new about generational trauma, right. It
Speaker 1: is very much alive today and I can hear it
Speaker 1: in your voice when you recount that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you think about it. If you were
Speaker 2: sold away from your family, denied the ability to get
Speaker 2: a job, jailed, you weren't allowed to buy a home
Speaker 2: in a decent neighborhood, you were packaged and pushed into
Speaker 2: neighborhoods that didn't have resources to support the people in
Speaker 2: those then what do you do? You do all the
Speaker 2: things that create a legacy of victims and people being victimized,
Speaker 2: and it is hard to overcome that. That's what I
Speaker 2: try to write in my column, and you know a
Speaker 2: lot of the things that we're doing at the Washington
Speaker 2: Post to expose these things is to sort of say, look, y'all,
Speaker 2: all of us can be better off if the parts
Speaker 2: of our community, be it African Americans, Hispanic immigrants, if
Speaker 2: we help them, we all benefit. We all benefit.
Speaker 1: Do you see things changing the income gap between black
Speaker 1: and white families is staggering. Black Americans networth is seventy
Speaker 1: percent below that of non black households. So we've been
Speaker 1: having conversations that we didn't have ten years ago about
Speaker 1: systemic racism. Do you feel like that has prompted any
Speaker 1: kind of positive change?
Speaker 2: I actually do. I do the fact that we are
Speaker 2: going to college at record numbers, and even though home
Speaker 2: ownership rates is still fairly low when you compare to
Speaker 2: white Americans, it's about forty five percent for African Americans,
Speaker 2: it's about seventy five percent for white households. And actually
Speaker 2: that number is the same as it was on the
Speaker 2: Civil Rights when housing laws were enacted. So we've got
Speaker 2: to get that number up. But I feel like we're
Speaker 2: making progress. Even with we talked about credit scores, right,
Speaker 2: there's you know, like Fico and other companies are trying
Speaker 2: to figure out ways to include information that would be
Speaker 2: more inclusive to African Americans. So some of the newer
Speaker 2: credit scoring models taken to account rent payments, right, so
Speaker 2: if you've been paying your rent on time, they include
Speaker 2: that like they would alone. And so I do see
Speaker 2: some progress. Is it slow? Yes? But I am optimist
Speaker 2: because to not be optimistic is to just give up.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to give up having this conversation.
Speaker 2: The series was so well received, and I think if
Speaker 2: we are bold enough to write about it and people
Speaker 2: can open their minds and not just rely on stereotypes
Speaker 2: and trope sayings. But I do think that the more
Speaker 2: people are aware of this, the more we write about it,
Speaker 2: the more we expose it, that change is coming.
Speaker 1: Well, that editor was right, although he buried the league
Speaker 1: as they say, Michelle, about why you were hired for
Speaker 1: the totality of who you are, but because you're a
Speaker 1: damn good reporter, writer and highly intelligent person. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to mention that Michelle, you're a baller, that we
Speaker 1: need to come up with a with a more gender
Speaker 1: appropriate word, like what is the synonym for baller if
Speaker 1: you're a woman.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, that's a good question. I don't know. Queen. Well,
Speaker 2: thank you for having me and I appreciate you and
Speaker 2: thank you for addressing this topic.
Speaker 1: Great. Thank you, Michelle. When we come back, our conversation
Speaker 1: about the racial wealth gap continues. I'll be joined by
Speaker 1: Chloe McKenzie, founder of Blackfan, who will share her personal
Speaker 1: struggle with financial trauma and how it gave her a
Speaker 1: unique ability to help others find financial freedom. If you
Speaker 1: want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of
Speaker 1: the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and
Speaker 1: pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter Wake Up
Speaker 1: Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. We're back. I'm
Speaker 1: delighted to introduce my next guest, Chloe McKenzie. Choe is
Speaker 1: a researcher and a wealth justice activist. She's been working
Speaker 1: on behalf of Black women addressing the root causes of
Speaker 1: financial trauma through her organization Blackfem. Chloe Welcome.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: So if someone said, Chloe, what exactly does Blackfem do Black.
Speaker 3: Them partners with?
Speaker 6: I would say the nation's most forward thinking governmental bodies,
Speaker 6: private institutions, and public institutions to undo generations of systemic
Speaker 6: financial trauma.
Speaker 3: And the way that we do this is.
Speaker 6: We start to look at the different points of where
Speaker 6: financial trauma is perpetrated in education systems and our policymaking systems,
Speaker 6: and our familial systems and our culture systems to not
Speaker 6: only teach people how to navigate an economically violent system,
Speaker 6: but to ultimately change policy and the systems themselves so
Speaker 6: that they're no longer perpetrating the financial trauma onto the populations.
Speaker 1: When you say wealth and trauma, I'm just curious because
Speaker 1: that I think, Well, wealth doesn't insulate you from trauma.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting. Well, we'll further explore the relationship between
Speaker 1: wealth and trauma in a moment, but first, I want
Speaker 1: to go back to your personal story, Chloe.
Speaker 6: Yes, so a lot of my own contentious relationship with
Speaker 6: money comes from the fact that I grew up incredibly privileged,
Speaker 6: but I rejected a lot of that privilege to be safe,
Speaker 6: and so I have this very kind of interesting dynamic
Speaker 6: with money and wealth, which is how I got to
Speaker 6: the where I am today.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. All these different, almost conflicting messages you were
Speaker 1: getting as a child. Tell us a little more about,
Speaker 1: if you could, about your childhood and how as you said,
Speaker 1: you were privileged, at the same time you were under
Speaker 1: a lot of stress and experienced trauma.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So again, you're right. It's so funny.
Speaker 6: I always think of Brene Brown's quote about she says
Speaker 6: the truth lies in the paradox and there are so
Speaker 6: many conflicting paradoxical experiences that I had growing up. So
Speaker 6: I was the golden child's you know, I skipped two grades,
Speaker 6: I was reading at three, all of these kind of
Speaker 6: wonderful things. But you know, I experienced physical and sexual
Speaker 6: abuse my entire childhood until I was able to really
Speaker 6: escape because I skipped two grades growing up. I was
Speaker 6: twelve as a freshman in high school, and so my
Speaker 6: primary purpose was to just get to college as quickly
Speaker 6: as possible, because waiting until eighteen six years it would
Speaker 6: just be.
Speaker 3: Be too much.
Speaker 1: You were a superstar in high school, you were captain
Speaker 1: of the soccer team, student body president, made obviously great grades,
Speaker 1: and you go on to Amherst and then you go
Speaker 1: on to be a Wall Street trader.
Speaker 3: Yeah yep.
Speaker 1: Now this was just a few years after of the
Speaker 1: financial crisis, and I'm imagining there weren't a lot of
Speaker 1: traders who look like you, Chloe, Am I right now?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 6: The way that I describe it to people is if
Speaker 6: they've ever seen the movie Hidden Figures, I was the
Speaker 6: Taraji p Henson on the trading floor, as she was
Speaker 6: the only calculator mathematician on a floor full of you know, astrophysicists.
Speaker 1: And what was that experience, like.
Speaker 6: Old Chloe would tell you, I mean it was exhilarating,
Speaker 6: so old and new Chloe would say that, I again,
Speaker 6: and this is part of my understanding of how I've
Speaker 6: been resilient through my trauma. But you know, I love
Speaker 6: being discounted. I love being the underdog. I love being subversive.
Speaker 6: That's just my competitive nature. And if I can subvert
Speaker 6: gender norms or racial norms or whatever, I'm in it
Speaker 6: like all the time.
Speaker 3: So it was it was exciting in that way.
Speaker 6: It was the most intellectually compelling play to be at
Speaker 6: the time because, as you mentioned, this was right after
Speaker 6: the two thousand and eight financial crisis of several years
Speaker 6: after Dodd Frank has just been implemented, so we were
Speaker 6: recovering in some ways.
Speaker 3: But what was most fascinating to me.
Speaker 6: Was that a lot of the things that were being
Speaker 6: done in two thousand and eight were in some ways
Speaker 6: still being done, just in a different name and maybe
Speaker 6: like slightly more compliant with Dodd Frank. I studied law, jurisprudence,
Speaker 6: and social thought at AMMERS because I thought I was
Speaker 6: going to be a lawyer, and so I'm coming in
Speaker 6: with no finance background or economics or anything. I just
Speaker 6: happened to be really good with numbers, so I found
Speaker 6: it intellectually fascinating. It also was incredibly morally bankrupting, just
Speaker 6: because of the frat boy behavior that you just had
Speaker 6: to be around at all times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun, although
Speaker 1: I guess it was very adrenaline producing, right, and that
Speaker 1: the pay so beine on a trading floor must just
Speaker 1: be constant, you know, motion, energy, noise.
Speaker 6: I think what made it very fascinating and frankly intense
Speaker 6: was that it was what I was trading. So I
Speaker 6: was trading mortgages, student loans, credit card receivables, and auto loans,
Speaker 6: so all of the debt that the average American touches,
Speaker 6: I was trading. And that made it more intense for
Speaker 6: me because I'm thinking to myself, Okay, I didn't even
Speaker 6: know what securitization was, and why am I trading the
Speaker 6: cash flow of somebody who's playing their bill but they're
Speaker 6: struggling and on the brink of foreclosure. But we're going
Speaker 6: to make how many millions off of this trading pool?
Speaker 6: And we were also financing, you know, for other hedge
Speaker 6: funds to buy these distressed properties, and I was in
Speaker 6: charge of making sure things were compliant because I was
Speaker 6: the legal girl, and so I also dealt with all
Speaker 6: of the appraisers who were going to confirm that these
Speaker 6: properties were not crap like they were in two thousand
Speaker 6: and eight or something like that.
Speaker 3: So I just I saw.
Speaker 6: The more human element than what usually most traders.
Speaker 1: See to compensate for the morally bankrupt environment. You started
Speaker 1: working at a homeless shelter as a financial counselor This
Speaker 1: was while you're working on Wall Street, right, Chloe, Yes,
Speaker 1: So why did you want to do that and what
Speaker 1: impact did that have on your career?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: So, so much of what I told myself and I
Speaker 6: still do today, But so much what I've told myself
Speaker 6: when I was younger was that serving others was a
Speaker 6: way to heal myself. It provided perspective that I went
Speaker 6: through hell growing up, So there was that, and then, yes,
Speaker 6: the profundity of that experience was that I really again
Speaker 6: connected this idea of how is it that I am
Speaker 6: trading the cash flows of the bills people need to
Speaker 6: pay and they are struggling to pay, and helping people
Speaker 6: make so much money off of.
Speaker 3: That activity and then coming.
Speaker 6: Here and working with women, predominantly Black women. A lot
Speaker 6: of them were young women, a lot of them were mothers,
Speaker 6: and some of them had just aged out of foster care.
Speaker 2: And be in.
Speaker 3: The worst financial situation you can think of.
Speaker 6: And so in many ways it started to kind of
Speaker 6: piece together this narrative of like again, this inherent contradiction
Speaker 6: of what it means to be in quote financial services,
Speaker 6: like who are we really serving? Why are we doing
Speaker 6: it this way? And especially I think when I connected
Speaker 6: again the racial and gender lens of my experience and
Speaker 6: working with these women, I said, we're.
Speaker 3: Not doing enough.
Speaker 1: So you started Black Them in twenty fifteen, talk about
Speaker 1: the driving idea behind the work. And I love the
Speaker 1: reason you named your company any Black Them.
Speaker 6: Yes, you have absolutely no doubt in your mind who
Speaker 6: it's for and why and who founded it.
Speaker 3: So when I was working in the homeless shelter.
Speaker 6: I started to realize that a lot of the research
Speaker 6: and even the solutions, programmatic, policy based solutions.
Speaker 3: Around the wealth gap never we're intersectional.
Speaker 6: So I always say the racial and gender wealth gap,
Speaker 6: because if we're taking them together, then we need to
Speaker 6: actually name the oppressive forces that are interlocking and so
Speaker 6: I said, you know, with the time that I've left
Speaker 6: on this earth, I'm going to dedicate it to closing
Speaker 6: the racial and gender wealth gap. And I'm going to
Speaker 6: do so by prioritizing the very population that suffers the
Speaker 6: most from this structural positioning of always having to do
Speaker 6: the most to achieve or you know, achieve any type
Speaker 6: of wealth building, type of stability or capability.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about working with black women and black
Speaker 1: girls specifically and why you think that is key in
Speaker 1: solving some of these broader social issues.
Speaker 6: Yeah, being a mom, it's so hard to say this,
Speaker 6: but the first thing that I kind of grounded myself
Speaker 6: in when I created black then, which is black women
Speaker 6: birthed all of the wealth in America.
Speaker 3: And so the apparatus.
Speaker 6: Through which the slave holders used in order to make
Speaker 6: sure that they were getting enough laborers to pick said
Speaker 6: cotton was through birthing children that ultimately they you know, disowned.
Speaker 6: And so I think about the fact that that truth
Speaker 6: that trauma, that's where this link of wealth and trauma
Speaker 6: kind of exists, has been passed down through everything that
Speaker 6: we do.
Speaker 1: And so how do you reverse that? Though you know,
Speaker 1: those are years that have been ingrained in the consciousness
Speaker 1: of this population. How are you applying what I'm understanding
Speaker 1: to be generational financial trauma to the women you're serving today.
Speaker 6: That's a great question, But the short answer is I'm
Speaker 6: figuring that out.
Speaker 3: That is literally the day to day work.
Speaker 6: And so part of what I do when I work
Speaker 6: with black women and girls is I look at the
Speaker 6: way in which I can describe to them how to
Speaker 6: navigate a.
Speaker 3: System that was designed to be harmful.
Speaker 6: And so I'm teaching people here are the ways that
Speaker 6: the system is already actively harming you, and giving them
Speaker 6: the vocabulary to navigate that, and then the skills on
Speaker 6: how to navigate that.
Speaker 3: And so it's a harm reduction strategy as.
Speaker 6: I'm trying to figure out what the harm elimination strategy is.
Speaker 1: So what you're trying to do is eradicate some of
Speaker 1: the obstacles, long long term obstacles that have discouraged particularly
Speaker 1: women of color.
Speaker 6: Yes, I actually really appreciate how you frame that, because
Speaker 6: that is true, and to your point, it's a both
Speaker 6: and that on the one hand, I'm hoping to help
Speaker 6: people who are in charge of building and perpetuating our
Speaker 6: economic system to understand how to participate and make it
Speaker 6: less scary, but then also working with the community black women,
Speaker 6: how is it that I can help reduce some of
Speaker 6: that fear to help you then more fully participate.
Speaker 1: Well, this is fascinating, Chloe McKenzie. You are something. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for everything that you're doing and good
Speaker 1: luck with all your efforts.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Katie.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. By the way, if you have
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