Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Emily Flitter The White Wall 20221120

Emily flitter. How are you . Im great. Im really happy to be here. Well, its with the pleasure of reading the white wall. How big finance bankrupts black america. And i will tell you, i will never walk in a bank the same way again. I dont think anyone should. And i actually i really wanted first start off with the question that people usually end with. But who was this book for . Because i got mixed signals on that. Some of it was seemed to me for bank professionals, some of it for black consumers in general. Who is this book for . Well, i certainly didnt want it to be a warning for black consumers, because i dont think im surprising anyone whos black in this country. I think that and ive been hearing since the book came out that the book is describing experiences that are very common. And thats why i wrote it. So for people who have gone through this, i hope its validating. For people who havent gone through this and who either work in the Banking Industry or in the financial industry, or just are american and want to make this country a better place. This book is a wake up call. Now you challenged me in a lot of ways. One of which is something i always say attack ideas, not people. You know, its better to go after policy, see . And thats why researchers like me tend to use data. And we look for statistical sickness again. So we look for trend lines. We we talk about Interest Rates and plot them in certain ways. But this is a pretty journalistic. Pointing fingers at specific people. You name names, you name banks. Tell us why. Looking at individual behavior is important in dismantling structural inequality. Well, there we can talk all day about numbers. And numbers dont lie. But one thing that i found as i started to look into this subject was there was this sort of dehumanizing ation that goes on all the time in the Banking Industry, where you can talk about broad categories and you can talk about people that dont fit molds of, you know, the good Credit Customer and whatnot. And if you just do that, youre losing the human experience. So i tried to put a lot of personal stories of people who went through really bad experiences in the financial industry in order to get readers to live inside the bodies and the minds of people who deal with this. So i also im a journalist and not a social scientist. And so i didnt really have the skills to do my own studies. But there are so many studies out there i didnt need to. Yeah, but i. Im saying that Many Research should take a cue from journalists because often times sort of a quantitative approach dismisses some of the behaviors that we saw in your book. And now a lot of us have heard of driving while black, shopping while black. But theres banking while black. And theres a chapter in your book and you use the phrase, please use caution to sort to explain how people are stereotyped and profiled in banks. Can you talk a little bit about please use caution. Please use caution. Is the title the subject line of a continuous email that goes around or did very recently go around a particular region of Jpmorgan Chase branches in the us northeast. Its like new york, new jersey, connecticut and its this sort of constant email thread where tellers from different branches describe people who came in and did weird stuff that wasnt okay. And the purpose of this chain is to warn tellers at other branches. If this person walks in, you should know that they already tried this thing here. And you know, this is what happened. So as a concept, its it makes total sense. I mean, banks are places with a lot of money. People want to figure out how to get the money. Theyll, you know, steal somebodys bank card and try to impersonate them or whatever. Thats not weird. Whats weird is i received a cache of emails. You know, obviously this please use caution thing. Its not public. Its only for internal jpmorgan employees. But somebody who was reading this, these emails felt super uncomfortable with some of the emails and those were the ones that described black customers walking into a chase branch and after they described what the the person looked like, the emails didnt really explain what they did wrong. And it was in sharp contrast with, you know, this person came in and presented a an id and a card that had already been reported stolen. And, you know, we already talked to the real customer on the phone. No, it was like black African American man tried to cash a check from a business from texas. Hmm. I dont know what is wrong with that. And its not explained in the email. Theres another email that describes a very young African American male with blond dreads who comes in with a check. He wants to cash the check. The teller doesnt believe that it was issued to him. He gets upset and he leaves and the teller calls. The person who wrote the check and the person says, yes, i wrote this check to this guy, so its okay. Also, why is that . Please use caution, except maybe please dont treat that guy like that. But you know, so i was reading these emails and i, i realized that they explained what i had already learned was happening at another bank, wells fargo and i want to make this point here, because im not in my book. I point fingers, i name names, but im not saying any one bank is worse than other banks. Everybody has this problem and they all need to fix it. And its not about, you know, a specific evil person or someone whos trying to throw a wrench in a system that works. Its its its everybody whos participating in a system thats not working. So well. I mean, there is a culture of in banking, in general that you see pretty often it consistently. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. And so i had already heard stories of wells fargo customers or potential customers who came in to Wells Fargo Branches and wanted to withdraw money or cash checks and couldnt because the tellers didnt believe them or, you know, thought they were. So they were up to no good. And i had i had heard those stories first. And then when i saw these emails, i was like, oh, its literally like being inside the heads of the people who made the decision to call the cops, you know, who made the decision to wonder why somebody had 70,000 in his bank account and say, you cant take that out even though its your bank account. But this was this is actually somewhat okay in banking. Theres a weird loophole in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was very pretty specific about naming the institution that shall not discriminate. But banks arent included in that list. Can you talk about that loophole and and and how the Banking Industry essentially fought for the right to discriminate . Yes, i, i dont know the specific history of who lobbied for industries well enough to describe it in detail. But what i do know is that in when the the Civil Rights Act was being hammered out. The to get enough members of congress to sign on to it, the its its creators realized that there were there were going to have to be a lot of narrowing factors in it. And so they listed specific businesses that you couldnt discriminate. They couldnt discriminate against anybody. And they were movie theaters and restaurants and hotels was the the industry or the the industries and the businesses that arent listed there have argue possibly been excluded and are okay discriminating. And so thats its not totally settled. There was a really important case within the last ten years where a latino man and florida went into a target, a white woman cashier didnt want to deal with him and sent him to the next cashier and so he sued for discrimination and the lower court and an Appeals Court said its not discrimination because the next cashier who you then were sent to, you know, allowed you to complete the transaction. So thats the weird loophole. Its like some of these businesses can they dont have to apparently treat you the same as long as you get the Business Done and banks are, you know, in that category and what it means is they look at somebody and say, im just not sure i want to do business with you and im going to like test you extra hard and and the thing that the thing that happens, though, is if a customer gets mistreated like this and they find a lawyer, the banks are, you know, very embarrassed. And then they end up settling these cases. So a lot of times it doesnt work out for the banks. And its not like they should be doing this. Its not. Yeah, its really not. Okay. Well, lets talk about one case. Jabari has an interesting story. Share the story of jabari. So jabari was living in atlanta and he had a house and he sold the house and got the cash from selling it and put it into a bank account. It was 71,000, i think, and then he moved up to delaware to be with his mom and he wanted to buy a car and he went into a Wells Fargo Branch to get cash to pay for a car that he had found at a dealership just down the road. And the wells fargo tellers were like not buying it. That he it was his bank account that he was who he said he was and he was so shocked he actually left the they they said, forget it. Were not doing a transaction. He left the branch and came back in and he was like, im sorry. I just i want my money. And thats when they picked up the phone and started dialing 911. And ill never forget when i was talking to him about it on the phone and i said like, you know, youve just told me what happened and what you did and what they said. How did you feel . And he was like, they made me feel like i was nothing. And it was really heartbreaking. And it turned out it was i mean, it was absolutely his money. He got a lawyer. They settled confidentially. But its just all too common that that happens. Im going to read a quote that sort of typify what you just said. Bankers make all kinds of private race based judgments of bank customers, and they extend far beyond a tendency to believe customers claims about their identities. And the sources of their wealth. You know, when i read your book, it it you know, we tend to think of banks as coltranes National Institutions with rigid rules. And if you follow the rules, youll be treated fairly. But theyre very much cultural institutions and you sometimes have felt that you didnt necessarily name that culture, that its protect writing. Can you name a culture that banks are protecting . Is it is it White Supremacy . Hey, i would i would say some things, but hey, what do you think . I mean, i like i havent thought about a name like that, but i do totally agree with you that its absolutely a culture. And i can describe the culture. The culture is a one in which bankers feel like they can decide who should have money, who it is logical, has money. And that is the kind of decision that led to jabari not being able to withdraw his own money to buy a car because somebody looked at him and said, it doesnt make sense for this guy to have money and i think that there are examples of that all the way up the ranks in the financial industry. Those kinds of judgments like should you be here . Its not just a bank teller making this kind of judgment. I listen to the sun duckett talk about her time in the financial industry. Shes now the ceo of tiaacref. Shes incredibly powerful, incredibly accomplished. But she talked about and i put this in the book, the encounter and people in her career who clearly felt like she didnt belong there and that is the that is the culture that needs to change. Yeah, i want to keep the focus a little bit more on the customers themselves and ways to fight that one is mystery shopping. You cite. And then the Nonprofit National Community Reinvestment coalition in crc, who does a lot of work of of compelling banks to invest in black or brown communities. Can you just talk about the importance of secret shopping in and Holding Banks accountable . Mystery shoppers are a great concept, and i wish i could remember where i saw this, but i actually saw like a trade, a little trade publication in the industry that had a little article saying, watch out, because the doj is doing this for but theyre great. So you basically equip two sets of pretend customers with profiles, Credit Scores and jobs and and you send them into the same bank and see how theyre treated. If one is white and one is black, you can observe how that treatment is affected by their race. If you solve for Everything Else and the design of these studies cleverly actually give the black customer a better financial profile, better credit score, you know, a better job, and then they watch what happens and the results of the studies have are varied enough that i dont want to sum them up in one single statement, but in general, all the black customers havent been treated as well as the white customers. Yeah, and were seeing this all over the country now in regarding appraisals, something, you know, i write about quite a bit in that people are doing their own experiments, theyre whitewashing their homes. I mean, theyre pulling the books that are written by black authors and removing the the clothes and the artwork and and hair products, things like cocoa butter, even. And then when an appraiser comes, they will get a white stand in. And then the appraisal will come in the second or appraisal often comes in hundreds of thousands of dollars higher. So this you know, this type of gambit, if you will, that that folks are doing the really fundamental tool in getting justice for consumers. Now, i want to pivot a little bit to inside the bank. Now you spend a great bit of time talking about consumers, but theres a, you know, just a great set of stories around individual bankers and people working on the inside. And and one of the bridges between the consumer and the professionals is this story of between ricardo and and jimmy. Can you just lay out some the basics of the story and let me ask some questions regarding it. Sure. Absolutely. Its an amazing story. And i would like to start out by saying that what made it so complete was ricardo, carlos and jimmys force right to record everything so youre starting out with just an amazing record of things that usually arent ever recorded and cant be proven. And ricardo made sure that he could prove what he was claiming and what he was claiming was that he, as a black wealth manager in Jpmorgan Chase in arizona, ana, wasnt being treated right in his own job. He wanted to become a wealth manager for richer clients. Though the bank has kind of two tiers. And so if youre in the lower tier of Wealth Management, you can only deal with customers below whos whose net worth is below a certain point, and then if they get higher, then a different person takes over and they get, you know, a special status. The customer and the the wealth manager, something i never i did not know about, maybe because i was a certain income. Go ahead. Right. So, so ricardo, like he was just kind of a superstar and rocketed up through all of these different positions until he got to that one. And because he didnt feel like it was right that he couldnt get past this this last barrier or he started recording his boss and he ended up having his recording going while his boss was talking to him about a client that he had just gotten, you know, signed up at the bank who actually was in this hire category. She was a black woman. And the reason that she had the money to be in this this higher status was is very sad. And by the way, i should say the higher status is called chase private client. She had enough money to qualify as a chase private client because her son had died. And the circumstances of his death, whatever they were, were such that the municipality where he died had given her a settlement that was worth almost 400,000. So she had 400,000 in the bank, and he he was saying, look, this woman qualifies to be a private client. Let me manage her money and ill be a private client adviser and his boss said, youre not invest a dime for this lady. This isnt money she earned. She doesnt respect this money. And this is like a really heartbreaking moment. Ricardos like, well, dont we isnt our job to show her how to manage her money. I mean isnt that how we help people . And its in their interest. Theres a business interest for. Exactly, exactly. And the boss said no. And then he said, shes from section eight. And that is that was the standard for the boss saying shes black, shes shes worthless. And so that and that was like one moment a defining moment, but just one moment in ricardos entire experience. And he knew like he kind of was living how bad it was and and as the days went on and he he filed a discrimination complaint and the bank pretended like he hadnt filed it until later, and then accused him of doing something wrong in the meantime, he had also met a black man who had a lot of money because he was a retired nfl player, Jimmy Kennedy and jimmy loved ricardo and was so happy to finally have a wealth manager who he felt like he could work with. And then ricardo about fired. So jimi continued to goose chase for his Wealth Management services, even though he was massively unsatisfied and he started recording his new financial advisor. And thats when the second explosive moment happens where jimis like, why cant i get the services that ive been promised that ricardo promised me and his new wealth manager said, because youre a big black man and theyre afraid of what you would do if they explained, you know, the sort of hiccups that have gone on here and this this is stunning. I mean, you youve reported on this, but it is something to here. I mean, you can hear the conversation in your head when youre youre reading this. I mean, its such an example, loss of claim for a banker to make. And again, its in their interest to make money from the products that they provide their clients. And i guess a pun intended to a certain extent, but i mean, it had to have made them feel just demoralized. How were how were they talking about the experience in terms of their feeling . Jimmy felt terrible. And and he was frustrated. And Ricardo Ricardo wasnt really incredible person when i think of what would happen to me if i went through what ricardo went through, i think i would just i would have just crumbled. Ricardo was like, no, im right. Like, this is happening to me and its not right. And i know that. And ricardo was just so focused on getting his story out, and thats, you know, why he came to me and i was able to do this story. But the the story that i did in the New York Times, which actually you can still read, you can go back to the New York Times and click and actually hear these recordings. But it was the the really important thing that i didnt sort of have space for in the times was just how a bank gaslit ricardo, as he was trying to get justice for these initial little incidents and the bank basically fired him on this really weird pretense which they later, you know, theres sort of a confidential settlement and i dont know the details, but what i do know is the bank had to report to a regulatory body that they had fired ricardo for some kind of wrongdoing. But if you look at the Public Disclosure now for ricardo in this this regulatory report, which which is public for everybody, theres none of the other. It got withdrawn. And that speaks volumes. Now, this was going on while a larger lawsuit was happening within the same bank right . Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that lawsuit and and in general, how litigious this these issues have become . Yes. So and the amazing part of this is that ricardo was like very, very, very barely aware of the lawsuit right at the end when when a settlement was reached. But he wasnt like part of he wasnt like part of a movement of agitators. He wasnt organized with other people. He was going through all this stuff alone. But the lawsuit was described being the same kinds of experiences that ricardo was having. It was a class action case that was the the core of which was the same description that i, i gave earlier about getting to that barrier where you youre a wealth manager and you want to manage money for richer clients. And the bank says, we just dont think its going to work out for you. And it was, you know, hundreds of black Financial Advisors all experiencing the same thing across the country. They were being kept in branches where there wasnt a lot of wealth and they were being told that this was the best they were going to do. Now. And a lot of the stories you show that many of the individuals went to h. R. And theres a chapter in there about titled name the truth about h. R. Tell us about the role of h. R. What is the role of h. R. In a bank . So let me start out by saying i dont think that banks have h. R. Systems that are different from other companies. I think this is a a feature of of Corporate America. You have a department of people who are trying to manage working life at these giant companies. And the other thing that theyre trying to manage is the legal liability of the company and when you put those two missions together, you get a big conflict because all kinds of things can happen inside these big companies. And when an employee really needs help sorting it out, theyre going to the same. The department for the same department that that is hell bent on making sure that the company doesnt have to pay a lot and legal settlements doesnt have bad publicity. Its all coming from the same people. The one thing that i found was that the company is all think its really important to have policies and procedures in place to prevent discrimination and and to address it when it comes up. But having those policies seems like its the most important thing. You have a machine, the machine gets put in motion and then it just grinds up. The people who are in it. Again, i theres probably somebody who works in h. R. Watching this saying like, oh, my god, i, you know, im not like evil. How could you say this about me . I just thats not what im trying to say. Im not trying to say everybody who works as an h. R. Person is evil. But time after time, the employees who go to our for help find that theyre getting categorized as the problem and the outcome is how can we have the commerce and most quiet and most uneventful outcome for the institution, not for the person. Thats what the people i spoke to across these institutions told me, whether it was a wealth manager, whether it was an employee on wall street, it was all the same, especially ali, because there and this and courts sort of have this problem to when a discrimination complaint is made its often not a cartoonish set of circumstances. Theres you know, if youre in i was actually talking to Kimberly Jones about this and she made this point last night at politics and oh, im sorry she made this point. The other day at politics and prose when we were there. She she said, look, if you go into an office and call somebody the nword, youre out. Like, thats easy, right . You dont need a whole h. R. Department full of lawyers to deal with that, like, duh. But thats not how discriminate works. And for the more subtle forms of discriminate ation, these big machines get set in motion and it often doesnt really work out for the employee while and im going to ask you to talk about this next story, because there is this a structural conflict between that i see that the Banking System is somewhat built upon square washing. These kinds of of of conflicts at the expense of of of black employees and and because black employees are not as valued in, in the grand scheme of things, i want you to talk about edward jones and you have a chapter called the friendly guy next door. And i really was not familiar with the the structure of the company of mainly comprised of Financial Advisors was every once in a while someone will ask me, do i need Financial Services . And i generally say no, but i had no idea that their employees were going door knocking on door to door, asking people for services. Can you explain the structure of edward jones before we get into one of the stories . So edward jones is a sort of like direct to consumer kind of wealth manager. Youre not relying on a bunch of Bank Depositors who then need other services to get new Wealth Management customers. If youre at edward jones, youre trying to to find among the general population people who have some savings and need help managing their savings. And edward jones says that its secret sauce is actually having people go out into communities and neighborhoods and knock on doors like a traveling salesman of old times and and meeting people that way. And when you do door knocking you, you know, hopefully you get the name and the Contact Information of the person you have met at the front door and that goes into a central database. So edward jones says in there regular Financial Reports that they rely on recruiting new people to do this job all the time. And if they dont recruit enough new people every year, they are at risk of financial misfortune and so you kind of get the sense that youre not, you know, once you get hired by edward jones, like destined for an illustrious 30 year career because otherwise, how could they possibly like the whole size of the institution is an exponentially expanding every year. Right. Where are all these new recruits going. Mm. So wayne bland is someone that entered the ranks of edward jones, came to talk a little bit about how he got there because hes working in the sector, but decided to work for edward jones and tell his story. So wayne wynn is, amazing. Hes you know, he was he was working in a related part of the financial industry. He had some of the licenses that were required of a financial advisor. And he was doing fine on his own. But edward jones reached out to him, a representative, and said, look, youd be it would be easier here. Would we have people to handle, like your administrative stuff and he said, okay, that sounds great. And hes hes hes the kind of guy i mean, ive ive never met him in person because of the pandemic, but when you talk to him on the phone, you realize like, hes just great with people so outgoing, so warm, so so he starts at edward jones and he starts going to these training sessions for recruits. Hes realizing that his knowledge and experience is already greater than what in his opinion, it was greater than what he was being taught at these training sessions. They were really basic like Sales Training sessions, including script, one of which i saw, which was like, have you heard of a stock called prop. And gamble . Thats the kind of thing that you should say to somebody if youre knocking on their door and you want to like get them into a conversation about money management. So, wayne went through these sessions. He had an idea of where he wanted to work in neighborhood in charlotte, north carolina. He knew charlotte well enough to know that he thought that going to this neighborhood would be a good yield of clients. And the edward jones regional leader said, you know what, we already someone working that neighborhood. Could you try this other neighborhood. So so okay right off the bat, the other neighborhoods not as great. So hes like knocking on doors and hes not getting anywhere. And he is starting to figure out that its not even safe to be going around knocking on doors in charlotte, north carolina. Hes a black man. Like the cops start driving by and hes telling his superiors like, look, i. I can do this another way. And hes getting no traction with that. And hes also starting to experience some really bad treatment inside edward jones discriminatory statements, really hostile treatment by the executives and leaders in the region at a regional retreat and he just has experience got worse and worse. He did raise these complaints not only to his direct managers, but also he filed an eeoc complaint thats when you complain to the federal government about discrimination and try to get justice there. So the edward jones cant say they didnt know things were going wrong with him. Eventually he had a hard time getting clean as he was watching white advisers around him at edward jones being handed clients that he ran out of money to talk about that. So you these advisors are using their own money to subsidize their job, so to speak. Can you talk about that . Yes. The way that it worked when wayne was there was that you got recruited and you got a yearly salary that actually tapered off. And it was supposed to be replaced by the money that you made with your Wealth Management clients that you recruited. But its so hard to recruit clients door knocking that the only people who actually succeed in this model are people who are given clients by retiring other advisors. And if you arent given clients, then what happens to you is that you first stop earning money and then youre paying into communal expenses like office overhead. And so you just start to have your own bank account drained and youre supporting other advisors are also in the office who are, you know, using the clients that been given to make their own money and then talk a little bit about the social structure. So you have generally make money, you have to be given the clients and thats where you definitely see Race Relations being played out well, right . Definitely, yeah. I mean, for wayne and like i know that there are people who are going to watch this and say, this happened to me. Wayne got finally put in an office and there was a Senior Advisor there who not only like was not very nice to wayne on a daily basis, but also had this Side Business where he was an antique dealer and he was using waynes office to store his giant antiques that he was trying to sell. Like wayne would have to meet clients with, like this big t cart that was like an imitation popcorn machine. Like theyd be, like, crammed in there and theyd be at this giant table that was also part of these the store inventory. And the Senior Advisor was on his way out. He was moving to another company and he was going to have to leave his clients behind. So wayne was like, all right, im enduring this ridiculous setup, but at least when this guy leaves, ill get his book of business and i can take over and then ill be great. So instead of that happening, a white advisor came in and the the parting advisor and the managers said to wayne, we hope youll show this guy the ropes and train him and show him around and make him comfortable. And then that guy got the clients. Wow. Now, one of the chapters i really love and this goes to my quantitative leanings was on how in ins works if youre black, it doesnt. And what important to me about that chapter is the significance of data accessibility. One can you talk about the the structure of insurance and how its always weighted towards white people getting more out of their fees than for blacks . But but talk about the importance of data for policy change. Sure. So insurance the the basic concept is that, you know, you buy a huge thing like a house or a car. You get an insurance policy if something bad happens to that giant asset, the Insurance Company is supposed to make you whole. So its a way of preserving wealth. You have to pay for the policy repeatedly. The Insurance Company gets to decide how much your policy costs and how much the asset is worth. So right there you have uneven treatment in different parts of the country, in different neighborhoods, and we were talking about before with property appraisals, the owners being black are devalued, the property is devalued. If the owners are black, quite often this seems to happen a lot in insurance. But what i also found was that on the other end theres a different treatment where when you are, you are black and youre living in a black neighborhood and you have a an insurance policy and something goes wrong. You file a claim an adjuster says are you committing fraud . Because theres a lot of fraud in your area. And insurers. So like in lawyers for insurance customers see this happening but they cant really prove the big picture because insurers dont have to disclose any data about what theyre charging people and what theyre paying out. In the end, we cant synthesize all of that. They say that the information on the payouts is a trade secret, that yet they really does that data to create products for themselves. But thats yeah. I mean, not only not only does that make no sense because theres all kinds of data floating around in the financial industry thats similar to that, that isnt a trade secret, but the wall street journal actually found that the data is accessible to all insurers through a trade group. So somehow, although like a federal, state officials have not managed to call them out on that part of the problem is that insurers arent regulated at the federal level. They are regulated by states. You know, youve got 50 different states, 50 different people overseeing insurance. Nobody has the money. The organization isnt there. Its not like you have these you know, we have really powerful banking regulators, but insurers just really get to do a lot more with so much less scrutiny. So about data, theres a great way that this could be fixed. We have a law called the Home Mortgage disclosure act. It requires lenders to file all kinds of information. It requires banks to report the terms of the loan, the home loans that they give to people, including who those people are, including their race. This was put in place to help stop redlining. It hasnt worked perfectly at all, but its a way better. Its way better to have the data than not have it. You can compare what banks are doing in different neighborhoods and what banks are doing by the race of their customers. There is no such disclosure requirement for and theres a movement to to get insurers to make those disclosures. But so far, theres really not a lot of traction. Yeah, we got free that data and we call it having the data, but we got to get a similar database for insurance. I want to pivot a little bit to a a section of the book that was both amusing and depressing, and it was on the diversity search it. Now you get a chance to sit in on some dea confirm is in meetings and in particular you attended the association of africanamerican Financial Advisors, which goes by the nickname of quad a i want to lift up a quote from the chapter on diversity circuit the anodyne talk of diversity can be used as shield agast discussions of specific and unflattering problems. This also helps keep the topics of racism and representation in the margins of corporate life. Tell us what you saw in these meetings. So the the quad a meeting was just outstanding. I mean, i think quad is a great and necessary organization. Its a place for black Financial Advisors to come and meet each other and try to figure out how to get ahead. Though the sad part, though, is nobody can like its not a place for the anger about how black Financial Advisors are being treated because what the conference is is a place where and you know, im quoted does a lot and i went to one conference so i would also not like to be characterizing the entire organization, but the conference that i went to had visitors who were representatives of the banks and they were speaking and talking about, you know, how to get ahead and how to get hired and everything and some of these speakers from banks would talk about, you know, yes, our diversity numbers are terrible inside our and were trying to recruit more from hbcus. But no one talked about the fact that every bank represented there had been sued in a class action case for discriminating against black financial, which is, you know, which makes this quote from one of the participants, even more alarming. Jane elliott in the book is quoted there is only one race on the face the earth. She shouted at the audience as we stood facing her after rising from our seats in groups, according to our self affirmed color. You need, i mean, this is jane elliott again. You need to get into that. Get into your head and g it. Now. She began referring to white people as colorless people and said that colorless people really change the environment to fit our needs. Later on, you quote her a shopping give up the idea of whiteness. It isnt real. You know, from my perspective, you know, i go to lots of conferences and meetings that are designed in an industry for africanamericans or for people of color bipoc communities and theyre largely supportive. Yes, weve already bought into those industries, but theyre its a what we call a safe space. You hear this all time, a safe space for us to vent. I rarely hear Something Like that. I mean, i you know, but you found people in there that really you state drank the koolaid that they were in it. So, you know, for me, what did you take away . I mean, you already said you really found these these meetings to be productive in add value. But when you hear Something Like it and you did, you talk to somebody else after that person made those quotes, what did those other people think and what did you think . Well, i think what youre getting at actually is and and i should we should say that jane elliott is shes shes like a sort of corporate motivational speaker now. Shes really old and she became famous after she designed an experiment for her Elementary School kids. She was a schoolteacher right after dr. Luther king was assassinated. She separated her kids and assigned them like different statuses according to their eye color, and then watched as they mistreated each other. You know, and that the point of it was to show how arbitrary, arbitrary. And i like it. But yeah, right. And so the like it actually this is sort of the first time like your reaction is kind of giving me a new dimension of understanding because what she was saying was actually a little contradictory and it she was saying like, you know, race is a construct, but she was saying it in a place where the race is not just a construct. Then and so in a way, the the the like the force with which she was talking and, you know, it was like kind of it was kind of like galvanizing people, like kind of trying to lift them up. But i still dont get the youre a in a place where people are being sued every single day. Yeah. While i appreciate her work on race. No question about that she really i you know i read that and it didnt make sense to me but no, i think that youre youre making a really good point it like it was particularly weird and it almost sort of helped the like actually it was it was like sort of a channel for what could have been like a total appropriate distress. The by the members of quartet like directed toward the financial industry in fact, i, i was just talking to somebody the other night about the big Financial Advisory firms like jp morgan and Merrill Lynch and wells fargo. And, and this person was a black wealth manager. And she said, i just want them to stop gaslighting us. Okay. But nothing like that was really talked about publicly, quite like there were these small references to like once youve had a bad experience at a big firm and you want to go out your own, and thats something that the conference was like very much about how do we break away from the industry and and have success in spite all of the barriers . I think that conference was helpful to people who attended the other conference that i write about in the book that was like the polar opposite. It was a an Industry Trade group for like the big financial institutions. Usually when this Industry Trade group meets, its called stiff my the meetings are just like these enormous. Its very like like fancy gatherings with like 2000 people, you know, its mostly white men in suits and their diversity conference was like 130 people in a room in new york. And no one who was there or very, very few people who attended that conference were white men. And so it was like all the people who need help in the financial industry because things are so uneven and none of the people who are able to actually have the power to change the system. Well, i you know, when i read that part, it was very i think the conversation around race and and and banking. We need to be very clear about whats going on. Race is fundamentally built in the the business model. And so thats what i thought. You know, your book made clear to and folks who work on race often somewhat discuss out how entrenched racism is in this enterprise is i mean its its fundamental from who you employ to the fees you charge all of these things i thought you got in your in your in your book now i want to were were almost run out of time but i really want to get on this chapter on reparations. Because you uplift two arguments somewhat. One is that banks should pay out reparations as and and the other is banks shouldnt but they should be involved in Reparations Movement can you talk some about those two positions . And it seems like you fall in this case of sandy darity is the person representing that they should not pay out. It seemed like you leaned to that side. Can you talk about why you did and and and then ill have some questions. Sure. So the reason i first thought that we should that i as you know, as a reporter doing this book, needed to figure out if should pay reparations. Because i really think that we i think about the holocaust and i think about the restitution liens that were made after the holocaust, including by big companies. And i think about how German Society is still held to certain standards because of the holocaust in laws. And it seems to me that the problem that we have in this country with racism is so huge that we need Something Like that. We need like we need truth and reconciliation and we need very, very statements about what happened, who did what and what were not going to do anymore and how people were hurt. And there has to be a financial component. So i started i started out sort of like just im like a lay person, you know, im not an economist. Im im not a historian. And so i was like, well, im just going think about this in my in the context of like my own reality and what i know and, and thats when i started to learn about deidre, who kind of got had gotten to this point that i was that. But like 20 years ago and she she decided to actually quit her job she was working for the city and she she had this epiphany which is a great story. And ill leave it to the readers of the book to read about what happened to her, because it was amazing. But she down on wall street and she was like, i, i need to devote my life to going after the companies that are the, the, the, the descendants of the, the companies that brought people captured in africa over to this country and then earned so much money and, you know, generated the growth of this country. So she did that. She quit her job, went to law school and sued big companies, including big banks, for reparations. And she mostly lost, except for one count, that she had framed in whi the companieshat she had found had direct links to slavery had not been forthcoming about it in the public eye. And so there could be financial damages because they were basically committing fraud on consumers by saying how great they were without acknowledging this horrible past. But she lost and there and i the more i learn about the history of the effort to get companies to pay reparations, the more i learned that it would be a really tough thing to revive as an effort because its been tried. What sandy darity says is, look, these companies have a ton of money, but they dont have the amount of money its going to take to reparations, he says. He says, though, that they have a distinct role that they ought to play, which is they should be supporting and using their considerable power to lobby for reparations. But my argument against that, i think you laid out a pretty clear pattern of discrimination on the part of the banks. And so classes of people whove been discriminated against should lay claim to discrimination and reparations, regardless of how much it total. Thats what i loved about your book. You really showed in real time. It might be more in contemporary times, but people are owed for lost interest, lost opportunity. And so thats that part is to sort of say reparations are sort of i mean, im banks paying reparations to sort of distract them from a congressional act didnt make sense to me. Well, i. I totally hear what youre saying. I think that the the the way i like i guess theres the sort of the point that ive made. Absolutely. About the just huge cost of being black in the 20th and 21st centuries that its not like slavery ended and then jim crow ended and then everything was fine. Its just sapping of wealth from the black community. I agree with that entirely. The not just agree with it. I mean, i described it but i agree with the fact that there needs to be restitution. However, if youre looking at mechanisms, youre looking at a Corporate America where you have like these legal recourses, you have lawsuits, you even have giant settlements like the National Mortgage settlement, which the banks had to pay into to supposedly fix what they had done. So in the lead up to the financial crisis and making all these bad mortgages, its peanuts and the the way to even get to that was like a ton of legal action. And what im saying is we need to use like, like deep understanding of the horror to bypass the legal system and get Corporate America on board to change everything like we cant just keep suing people, right . Like its not enough. Its not powerful enough. But thats why everyone should go and get the white wall, cause i really do believe that the people will continue to call you with their stories and but i also think people will mobilize around that these issues. So thank you very much for your contribution. Thank you so much for writing this book. Thanks for discussing it with me. Its been a pleasure