Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Emily Flitter The White W

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 t