- 2 days ago
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00:00Hey, what's up? This is Jeff Johnson. I am incredibly excited because I get to introduce you to a friend, to a business leader, and to somebody that's getting ready to do something pretty incredible. It's Wes Moore. He is a New York Times bestselling author, the CEO of Robin Hood Foundation, an all-in-all servant, a father, a husband, and now candidate for governor for the state of Maryland. My man.
00:27What's up, brother? I'm good, man. Good to see you, brother. Man, it's good to see you, too. Good to see you. What does the wealth gap mean?
00:32Yeah, the wealth gap means everything because it's impossible to look at any structure that we have within our society without understanding what's underlining it is the fact that we have this massive wealth gap.
00:48And it's basically just the question of what do you have in terms of assets versus your liabilities in one community versus another community?
00:58And how were those assets developed? How were those assets used? How were those assets catapulted? And how were those assets taken?
01:08And so when we're looking at the history of this country and the history of the capitalistic system, the history of economic growth, the fact that, you know, the reality is when people talk about things like, well, you know, slavery or that's everything that was so long ago.
01:25But here's the thing. For anybody who's had a business, you know that the largest cost that you have oftentimes is labor.
01:32That's generally what you're putting the majority of your capital towards when you were building up an enterprise.
01:38What if I could have a business and completely eliminate my labor?
01:43What would that do for the growth prospects of my company?
01:46And that's why we know that the transatlantic slave trade was the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world.
01:51But 100 percent. And so we still are dealing with consequences of a flawed and inhumane business model.
01:59Flawed or intentionally?
02:01Like, let's be clear.
02:03Well, flawed doesn't coincide with intentionality.
02:07You can have something that's flawed and very intentionally flawed.
02:09But flawed for who?
02:10Well, and that's right. And skewed, right?
02:13What's this 10-1 number? Because I keep hearing 10-1 as it relates to the wealth gap.
02:18So that's the fact that we have a 90 percent wealth gap currently, right now, inside of this country between white families and black families.
02:26The basic idea that when we're looking at the assets.
02:30Break that down in numbers, though. What that means by way of numbers.
02:33Basically, on average, is that the average white family will look at their assets at being around $118,000.
02:40And when we're talking about assets, again, that's not income, right?
02:44That's home. That's your home.
02:47That's, you know, investment.
02:48Investments. Anything that you have to your name that you have some deed of ownership to.
02:53And when you look at the average white family.
02:56The average.
02:56Is that $118,000?
02:57That's exactly right.
02:58And the average black family comes in at around $18,000, right?
03:03Why that matters is this.
03:05Is that, again, we're not even talking about income.
03:07We're not talking about what a person, what's your purchase power.
03:09We're talking about the basic idea of what you have the ability and the capacity to leverage.
03:15And so when you're talking about everything from how am I helping my child to go to school?
03:19How am I taking out money when thinking about my retirement?
03:22How what happens if there's a catastrophic injury or a health implicate?
03:27Something happens in our family that we have the ability to take care of that.
03:31That that buffer for, you know, for black families is relatively non-existent.
03:38You know, it's like, you know, one analogy that I heard that I thought was so powerful.
03:42You know, wealth, the, you know, what wealth is?
03:45Wealth is like the meniscus inside of the knee, right?
03:49Where you have bone on bone, the thing that keeps bone on bone from happening is the fact that you have this tissue.
03:54You have meniscus inside your knee that keeps that shock.
03:56That's able to make sure that, you know, I can run and I can do all that kind of stuff without having this constant bone on bone.
04:02When you have no wealth, it's like having no meniscus.
04:06It's bone on bone, which means constant pain.
04:09Why are we hearing data that says no matter what your parents make and thus as a as a as a potential have the ability to leverage, it is unlikely that generate next generations will reduce that gap.
04:23Jeff, this this data that Raj Shetty and the Opportunity Insights group did out of Harvard was staggering, heartbreaking and so unbelievably telling.
04:34Frightening, depressing.
04:36Absolutely.
04:36And I had to take off work.
04:39I mean, no, seriously, because I'm looking at all this I'm doing for my kids.
04:44It won't matter statistically.
04:45It won't matter statistically.
04:47You know, and it also strikes at the heart of this idea when people say, well, it's not race, it's class.
04:54And the data said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
04:56You can't separate those two things.
04:57That's right.
04:57Because what the data is basically saying was this, is that a child who was born in the upper quintile, black child, has the same probability of dying in the lower quintile as they do staying in the upper quintile.
05:12It's basically saying that, you know, that while your children might have been born in a different situation than you were born into and that my children were born in a different situation than the one that I was born into.
05:23The chances of them ending up in the situation that we were born into is just as high as them staying at that elevated position that we have then afforded and offered for our children.
05:37You cannot separate the role that race plays.
05:41And when you look at that, when they break the data down for white children, it's not even equal.
05:48It's an eighth of a chance.
05:51But that is the systemic reality that all of these fools are debating.
05:57That's right.
05:57Talking about racism isn't systemic.
05:59These things aren't systemic, which is a lie.
06:01What is 90 to Zero?
06:0390 to Zero was an initiative that we started and we really started in the summer of 2000 when all these conversations were happening about, you know, about what happened to the, with the murder of Mr. George Floyd.
06:19And there were, there was a feeling and a frustration that I started feeling.
06:25One was frankly a fear of the fact that would there, would there actually be justice for Mr. George Floyd?
06:32It's legally justice because the reality is when people say, well, like, we saw it on camera.
06:36We saw the Kwame Donald on camera too.
06:39You know, we saw, we saw Walter Scott on camera.
06:41We saw Eric Gardner on camera.
06:42We saw Tamir Rice on camera.
06:43We saw Tamir Rice on camera.
06:44So, so there was a fear in my heart of saying like, and after all this, I wonder if there's even going to be justice for this man and his family.
06:51And the second thing that, that sat on me was this, was if we just use this moment to talk about how we have to come up with more equitable policing, then we miss a point.
07:04Because what we're seeing around the country, policing is one way that systemic racism shows itself.
07:11And it goes back to this point of where I think, you know, kind of this minimization of it, where people, they act like racism is an act.
07:19It's like, well, you know, if a person attends a white supremacist rally, that's racist.
07:23Yeah, it's racist.
07:24Person used the N word, that's racist.
07:25Yes.
07:26But racism is not an act.
07:27It's a system.
07:28And the way that system also shows itself in the fact that we have this racial wealth gap within our society that touches every element of our society.
07:36So to address the fact that we have a 90% wealth gap, and also to highlight the fact that this was not something that the public sector or the private sector or the government alone was going to deal with.
07:45Every one of us are complicit.
07:47Every one of us.
07:48So therefore, every one of us must be part of a solution.
07:51So with that, we then built this platform called 90 to Zero, which is where we want to have a cross-sectoral movement that is data-driven about what are the best practices that all these organizations can take on in their own organizations
08:05to decrease the racial wealth gap, and then how do we take a collective stance to be able to push policies that allow this to exist?
08:13So this is everyone from Goldman Sachs, to Starbucks, to the ACLU, to the Children's Defense Fund, to the University of Pennsylvania, to Robin Hood.
08:23What are each and every one of us going to do?
08:25I have, over the last year, heard all kinds of proclamations about what companies are going to do as it relates to social justice.
08:32And I actually have clients that I've worked with that have written proclamations, but they're empty.
08:39And so one of the biggest problems I've seen is that why is the things that we need as black folks always delivered through the lens of please help, moral imperative, charity, philanthropy?
08:58Yes.
08:58Instead of, we are valuable, we help make money, partner, equity.
09:08Why?
09:09Talk to me about why corporations in this moment believe that they can go to shareholders, that they can go to capital allocators,
09:18and say this is not a moral imperative alone.
09:23Yes.
09:23But there is economic, capital-driven value in this.
09:28How is that?
09:29Because to me, that's the light that seems to have gone off.
09:32That's right.
09:33In the last five years that wasn't on before.
09:35How did it go off?
09:36And I think it went off for two specific reasons, and you're absolutely right.
09:40And this is the moment, right?
09:41This is the moment where corporations are being asked to do something other than just do what corporation's tradition do and protect the shareholder.
09:48That the argument that's now being made is, if you don't find ways of truly protecting the shareholders and the shareholders' communities, then shareholders will move.
09:57Shareholders will find something else.
09:58You realize with certain things for so many of these products, you're not alone in what you do.
10:03You're not the only shoemaker.
10:06You're not the only suit maker.
10:08You're not the only soda company.
10:10People are moving on their values.
10:14And if they feel that you are not aligned with them and their values, they will shift.
10:18We have watched corporations gain market share because they have moved.
10:22And that's across the board, right?
10:24That's not just shareholders.
10:25That's right.
10:25That's staff.
10:26Talent.
10:26That's exactly right.
10:28Consumers.
10:28Exactly.
10:29People want to go.
10:30They want to work for places, and they want to consume something that they feel they can be proud of when they wear it as a brand, when they wear it as a connection.
10:37And we have seen corporations that are now no longer corporations because people have moved.
10:43The second piece, though, I think what corporations are starting to understand, it's what it means to the economy as a whole.
10:48So when we look at the fact that racial inequity has cost the U.S. economy $16 trillion, when you're looking at the fact that if we address the racial wealth gap, in fact, Harvard just released a study showing that if we address the racial wealth gap, it'll mean that we can add a trillion and a half dollars to the U.S. economy in just 10 years.
11:10And that's just in one area, because Kellogg's done amazing research in that space as well.
11:15And just the income wealth gap alone, if you solve for that, is another $2.5 trillion of GDP.
11:23That's exactly right.
11:24So what does this mean for me as an average business owner or a father or a member of the community or a pastor?
11:37Because what you're talking about seems real high.
11:40These are CEOs of major corporations.
11:43These are leaders of nonprofit organizations.
11:45Where does the rubber meet the road in this?
11:47And what do communities need to do to position themselves?
11:50I think everything that we do from a perspective of 90 to zero is about how does it actually impact the individual family, the individual worker, the person who's on the street who's like, I don't understand everything that y'all are talking about here.
12:04But what I know is I can't get a loan.
12:06Yep.
12:07What I know is my house is not worth the same as that house over there.
12:12And so I don't have the same measures of liquidity or the same value inside of my assets or inside of my property.
12:17What I know is this, is that if something were to happen to me or when I naturally pass, I'm not passing over the same thing to my children.
12:26What we're talking about with 90 to zero in this larger frame is looking at it from the individual employee perspective.
12:34So it's about things like how are we focusing on recruiting and retaining black talent?
12:39How are we focusing on diversification of not just entry level and even mid-level?
12:46But what does your C-suite look like?
12:49And your governance.
12:49And your governance.
12:50What does your board look like?
12:51We still have a situation right now that 38% of the top companies do not have a single black director inside of any one of your frames.
13:03We still have the Fortune 500 companies.
13:06Five CEOs are black.
13:07What are we doing to actually address the fact that from the bottom all the way to the top organizations that we need representation, that we need to make sure that our voices are heard.
13:19You know, you take a look at something like, you know, something like, you know, whether it's growing burgeoning industries like cannabis.
13:25Yeah.
13:26Right?
13:26We're talking multi-billion dollar industries that are now working their way through the United States.
13:32And two board members that are black, no CEOs that are black, C-suites that are empty.
13:40There is no way that we can allow this discrepancy to continue to persist.
13:46But let me push on this, right?
13:47Because I don't disagree with anything that you've said.
13:50But if you ask me, Jeff, tomorrow, I'm going to give you a magic wand, but it can only do one of two things.
13:58It can ensure that there's a 5% increase in senior level management and governance by black folks or 15% increase in spend of those companies with black businesses.
14:17I'm taking the second one every day of the week.
14:20And so at what point does this come down to money?
14:25And so I'm not saying, Wes, I agree with you, everything about representation.
14:29But if I were to choose what's going to impact Baltimore, the city that we live in, in the next 12 months, it's less a CEO than it is who the CEO is versus a CEO that's committed to spending money with black businesses at multiple times.
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