00:00I want to thank Rich Lou and Essence Ventures and the Essence Communications team for inviting
00:05me to this discussion and for their 50-year-plus work of building an enterprise that Black America
00:13and the nation can be proud of. I'm certainly an honor to be with the First Lady of the Great
00:18City of New York in this discussion. This is what it, I think, what equity really means. Black
00:27people have been the caboose on the proverbial American economic train from the very beginning.
00:37And so if you're the caboose, sometimes if the economic train moves a little faster,
00:44you may move a little faster, but you're still the caboose. When the economic train slows down,
00:50you slow down, and you're still the caboose. Equity means that we no longer ride in the caboose,
00:59that we ride in the engine, or we ride to the front of the train or have the opportunity to do so
01:06and not be stuck in the back of the train as we are now. What's striking is that the racial wealth gap
01:14in this country has widened in the last 20 years. The level of Black homeownership has lessened in the
01:24last 20 years. Indeed, we are back to where we were some 40 to 50 years ago. So this movement that's
01:32taking place in the streets of our country, this movement against racial injustice, has to include
01:42a conversation and a discussion about economic equity as a human right. And why is it a human
01:49right? Because economic equity is all about people's ability to improve their quality of life,
01:59the quality of life for their family, and the quality of life for the overall African American
02:04community in this country, to live in a better home that one has an opportunity to own, to be able to
02:14accumulate savings and investments and assets, to make life easier for the next generation,
02:21to build businesses, not to just build businesses, but to build businesses if you want of scale and size
02:28that employ thousands of people and have an impact on literally millions of lives. So we have to have
02:36this vision. Rich is right. We have to be intentional about where we spend, but we have to impact the
02:42policies and the approaches and the attitudes of major American institutions, government agencies,
02:50private corporations who have the power to determine and make so many important economic decisions, who
03:02gets hired, who gets promoted, who gets a contract to do things and to carry out things. We have to
03:12have a blueprint around economic equity. And I think that's why Rich's voice, in essence, his voice,
03:18that's why the work I think the First Lady is doing, are really trying to chart a path and chart a
03:23course. You know, at the National Urban League, this has been our work for generations and generations
03:29about economic equity, economic justice, complete economic inclusion. And at this moment, more people
03:37are hearing it, but we can't let this moment remain a moment. This moment has to morph and become a movement.
Comments