A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues

Learn how to address racial wealth disparity in the United States today From the life, professional experiences, and research of former Harvard Business School professor Steven Rogers, comes his boldly stated, A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues. This informative epistle investigates the causes of racial wealth disparity in the United States and provides solutions for addressing it. Through extensive data and historical research, anecdotes, teaching, and case studies, it presents practical ways White people can work with and help the Black community. It teaches readers that eliminating the $153,000 wealth gap between Black and White people is the solution to over 75% of our problems and offers solutions to help improve Black-White racial relations in the United States. In straightforward language, filled with facts, stories, advice, and sometimes even humor, A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues encourages every White person to share his/her wealth with the Black community—plain and simple. This book recommends that you spend a portion of your annual household budget with Black-owned companies. If more money is spent at Black-owned businesses, those companies can grow and create more jobs for Black people. Rogers also proposes White people make large savings deposits into Black-owned banks. These are the financial institutions that are the backbone of the Black community that provide loans to the Black community for businesses, education, automobiles, and home mortgages. And finally, he resolutely encourages White people to support government reparations to Black Americans who are descendants of Black men and women, who were enslaved from 1619 to 1865. Those who read the book will: Understand the root causes of racial disparities in America Discover how you can personally contribute to reducing the inequality between Black and White people in the United States today Get concrete recommendations on how to redirect your spending to Black-owned institutions to help decrease the racial wealth gap This groundbreaking book provides financial recommendations that you can put into practice today, using his helpful instructions in most of the chapters, to address the systemic inequality between White and Black Americans. Read A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues and be part of the path forward.

Preface: Social Unrest, Protests, and the Podcasts vii Introduction xiii Chapter One: Why Should You Trust My Advice? Who Am I? 1 Chapter Two: How the Wealth Gap Was Created 49 Chapter Three: Donate to HBCUs 77 Chapter Four: Deposit Money into Black-Owned Banks 109  Chapter Five: Support Black-Owned Businesses 139 Chapter Six: Write a Letter Supporting Reparations 169 Epilogue 193 Discussion Questions 197 Acknowledgments 199 About the Author 201 Index 203