Building Black Wealth: Past, Present, Future

The Inclusive Capital Collective

Last year Opal Lee, the Grandmother of Juneteenth, stood beside President Biden as he signed legislatIon establishing a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. For decades, Ms. Lee tirelessly fought and advocated for the recognition of Juneteenth. In 2016 she embarked on a 1,400-mile walk from her home in Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. to bring awareness to the historic holiday and request that then President Obama would make Juneteenth a national holiday. Six years after her journey on foot, and decades after her initial mission, we are commemorating the second anniversary of the official federal holiday, Juneteenth aka Freedom Day.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1,1863 during the midst of the Civil War. However, it was not fully realized until June 19, 1865 when the last enslaved people in the South were freed by the Union army. This should have started a new era of Black wealth for 4 million Black Americans; but 157 years later, the racial wealth gap in this country still persists, and racist vestiges are still in most of our financial structures and policies in particular, robbing Black families and communities of opportunities to build wealth. These entrenched systems make it so we are still not given the opportunity to live to our fullest potential, and the operators of these systems would have us believe this will never change.

The Inclusive Collective Capital (ICC) is here to be that change. Our purpose is to overcome systemic racism through equitable access to capital. Here at the ICC we are committed to unlearning white supremacy and anti-Blackness “business as usual” practices through a trauma-informed cooperative-based lens. We create democratic, participatory financial and governance mechanisms with and for the communities we serve, because we know that this is where the knowledge and solutions already exist if we’re going to change hundreds of years of oppression.

“We need to be thinking about every decision we make today and what is the impact seven generations from now? What is the risk? Money is not the problem. There is plenty of money, it needs to be redirected.” Y. Elaine Rasmussen, Social Impact Strategies Group Consulting based in St. Paul, Minnesota

We create programs, products, and power structures driven by principles of design justice, first among them “nothing about us without us.” So we listen deeply to the needs of ICC members, the entrepreneurs they serve, and the communities in which they are embedded. We provide a safe space for people of different lived, labored, and learned experiences to be heard by participating in the advancement of a bottom-up, trauma-informed financial movement with the intent of shifting capital and power. We are unapologetically radical as we take on the past, present, and future of building wealth in Black communities.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. During these years, white Americans were building wealth, often on the backs of Black labor and on the land stolen from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Not only were they building generational wealth, they were building and reinforcing financial systems and institutions to keep this wealth and prevent “others” (non-whites) from accessing, often with violent tactics. In 1921, Greenwood, Oklahoma was a community of great prosperity built by Black people for Black people or as we say today, “For Us, By Us”. This thriving community of commerce was home to 10,000 residents. “Greenwood was so promising, so vibrant that it became home to what was known as America’s Black Wall Street. But what took years to build was erased in less than 24 hours by racial violence–sending the dead into mass graves and forever alternating family trees.” A 2001 State report on the Tulsa race massacre, reported that residents filed over $1.8 million dollars in damage claims, in today’s dollars, this would be over $27 million. All but one of these claims were denied. The total cost of houses, assets, personal and commercial property likely brings the total to $200 million. This just illustrates one of the devastating economic losses to the Black community as we examine how and why the wealth gap still is where it is today. The threat of prosperity of Black Americans made white Americans across the country pass laws, create policies, and often act with violence to take opportunity and wealth from our community.

This loss opportunity is also evident in the long, racist policies in home ownership, one of the most important sources of wealth for many individuals and families in this country. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro write in Black Wealth/White Wealth: Locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history, African Americans who desired and were able to afford home ownership found themselves consigned to central-city communities where their investments were affected by the “self-fulfilling prophecies” of the FHA appraisers: cut off from sources of new investment, their homes and communities deteriorated and lost value in comparison to those homes and communities that FHA appraisers deemed desirable. This is why the ICC is a collective, because we know we need to tackle all of these systems simultaneously to build generational Black wealth. One of our ICC members, The Guild, develops equitable real estate and programs for communities of color to thrive. Their mission is to build community wealth through community-owned real estate, entrepreneurship programs, and access to capital for Black and other communities of color.

“All you need to do is walk outside, look at the news, talk to somebody, there are more people on the street, more people feeling like they might be on the street, more people stressed and desperate. If we continue to push, things will improve and that when you put power in people’s hands, they will use it creatively and will find a way. A lot of times, people just don’t have what they need–there are a lot of intentional obstacles that need to be removed or they need to be shown an example so they can reimagine the possibilities of their future. –Avery Ebron, The Guild based in Atlanta, Georgia

Our opportunity and promise at the ICC is to mobilize $100+ million dollars in capital to BIPOC fund managers and entrepreneur support organizations is moving full speed ahead with the development of our new credit enhancement facility, advisory services, and regranting facility. The new ICC credit enhancement facility, expected to launch Fall 2022, will provide loan loss guarantees or first loss capital to our members, to help them get more risk averse investors to say yes. At the Inclusive Capital Collective we know that Black and Brown innovators are not inherently more risky, however, we take more risks in a capitalist ecosystem that thrives off of both anti-Blackness and Black brilliance. This cognitive dissonance within our finance and impact industries is why the Inclusive Capital Collective exists today.

In our first Black Paper, “Building Community Wealth: Shifting Power and Capital in Real Estate Finance, we detail what an equitable capital stack in the real estate sector would look like and the role that “friendly hard money” would play to bring along CDFIs and other mainstream investors into these projects that are building communal generational wealth. In June 2021, through our inaugural regranting facility, the ICC distributed $250,000 to seven member organizations (6 BIPOC led organizations and one ally-in-action organization) using a process and criteria that ICC members co-designed and governed themselves.

1. Black and Brown Founders
2. B Side Capital (previously: Colorado Lending Source)
3. Eagle Street Markets Development Company
4. The Main Street Phoenix Project
5. Native Women Lead
6. The Guild
7. Urban Manufacturing Alliance

The end result and accomplished goal was to provide 501(c)(3) member organizations a low-burden way to access essential unrestricted support funding to be distributed as they saw fit. ICC capital innovators are exploring alternative types of capital, developing more equitable ownership models, and structuring blended finance offerings that mobilize a range of philanthropic and private capital. Generational wealth through manufacturing as explored in Black Paper №2,“Inclusive Capital for Manufacturers: Advancing Racial Equity and Community Wealth Building through a Sector-Based Approach to Capital Access” illustrates how the sector has evolved with the integration of new technology, shifting demographics of business ownership, and consumer interests in promoting ethical and environmentally sustainable businesses that build communal wealth.

Here at Inclusive Capital Collective we recognize and celebrate “Freedom Day” every day by disrupting oppressive systems of power and cultivating intersectional healing structures so our communities and families have equitable access to all prosperous opportunities available in the United States. We hope you’ll join us.

Najaah Yasmine Daniels

Community Manager, Inclusive Capital Collective