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When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States’ total wealth. More thanÌý150 years later, that number has barely budged.

According to a new book by Mehrsa Baradaran,Ìý,Ìýthis absence of wealth isn’t just a failure to atone for oppression imposed by slavery and Jim Crow — it’s the product of contemporary acts to maintain their legacies.

Today, the racial wealth gap persists in building wealth for those who already have it and sowing debt among those who don’t. Many policies animated by this trend — fees and fines levied my municipal governments and the criminal justice system; residential segregation; the rise of predatory payday lenders — disappear mainstream banks from communities of color, pass off responsibility of investment in their wealth, and enforce conditions that disproportionately push them from profit to poverty.

´³´Ç¾±²ÔÌý¹ú²úÊÓƵ NYCÌýand the NYUÌýMcSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and ResearchÌýfor a conversation with legal, business, and racial equity leaders on the fight for economic justice and how to pioneer strategies that reform how government works — and who it serves.

OPENING REMARKS

Scott M. Stringer
Comptroller, City of New York

PARTICIPANTS

Mehrsa BaradaranÌý
J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law
Author,ÌýThe Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Blondel PinnockÌý
Senior Vice President and Chief Lending Officer, Carver Federal Savings Bank

Anne StuhldreherÌý
Director of Financial Justice, City and County of San Francisco
Fellow, ¹ú²úÊÓƵ CA

Clyde VanelÌý
Assembly Member (D-33), State of New York

Michael Lindsey
Director, McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, New York University

Copies of Mehrsa Baradaran’sÌýÌýwill be available for purchase. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Follow the conversation online usingÌýÌýand by followingÌýÌýand .

This event is presented in partnership with the NYUÌý.