Challenging the “Legacy Systems” of Racism
At Stronghold, we believe unequivocally that Black Lives Matter.
Stronghold is a women-owned business, focused on serving underserved industries and small businesses, including cannabis.
We are also part of the fintech, payments, and financial services industries. We are in the business of creating infrastructure. We hold ourselves and our industry peers responsible for examining the risks we share of codifying systemic racial oppression through technology and financial power.
Racism in the U.S. can be overtly wrong and it can stem from unchecked bias. It can also hide behind terms and labels, most notably:
“The War on Drugs”
White politicians used these words to criminalize Black people. The slogan enabled mass incarceration that devastated families, destroyed communities, and stripped human beings of their dignity. For a full understanding of how white politicians have adapted systems of racial oppression in the U.S. from slavery through the present day, watch the Oscar-nominated documentary 13TH.
I’d suggest another, seemingly race-neutral term, that’s ripe for abuse by the gatekeepers of power:
“Reputational Risk”
Since the Civil Rights Movement — from Nixon’s Southern strategy, to Reagan’s drug war, to Clinton’s mandatory sentencing — politicians have weaponized marijuana to label Black people as “criminals,” effectively feeding them into a modernized system of enslavement.
At the state-level we’ve widely decriminalized marijuana (and started calling it cannabis), but it is still part of this legacy. And even though this sector is now highly regulated, legitimate cannabis merchants still struggle to access commonplace financial products and services. As we at Stronghold have witnessed, industry participants run up against an oblique, passive denial for claimed fear of “reputational risk.”
This is just one example of how status-quo holders of power can choose to perpetuate racial oppression. Fintechs pay a lot of lip service to overcoming “legacy financial systems.” We must also overcome the legacy systems of racial oppression, and become ever more vigilant about how our platforms and solutions could either support or undermine social justice.
