Thoughts, reflections, and first-hand encounters in finance, operations, human behavior, and the economics of sports.
Category: Human+
Welcome to Human+:
Strengthening Through Challenges with Practical Humanity
At Human+, we champion a practical approach to thriving through challenges, fostering growth with every adversity. Human+ represents not just surviving, but thriving through adversity.
Join us to discover how to:
1. Forge Resilient Support Networks: Build robust connections that foster adaptation and resilience.
2. Navigate Risk with Precision: Strike a balance between calculated risk-taking and cautious growth strategies for personal and collective advancement.
3. Confront Limitations: Identify and conquer weaknesses to unlock untapped potential and achieve peak performance.
Embark on a journey towards heightened resilience, adaptability, and holistic growth across all facets of life.
Let us empower you to:
– Cultivate Authentic Self-Esteem: Develop a strong inner compass and genuine self-assurance.
– Embrace Realistic Optimism: Harness the power of positive thinking grounded in practicality and realism.
– Serve as Your Guiding Force: Navigate life’s complexities with clarity and purpose, empowering you to reach your fullest potential.
Together, let’s embrace challenges as stepping stones to personal evolution and lead lives marked by resilience, authenticity, and profound fulfillment.
"Contemporary Americans are asking their marriage to help them fulfill different sets of goals than in the past. In the past, they asked their marriage to help them fulfill their psychological and safety needs. Now, they ask their marriages to fulfill their esteem and self-actualization needs, and they do so without sufficient investment of time, psychological resources, or "oxygen." --- Eli J. Finkel (2017)
On average, we as a society are investing less time in our marriages than in the past. As a result, mean levels of marital well-being is declining over time. Spouses are struggling with what they are asking from their marriage and what they are investing in it.
In his 2017 book, The All-or-Nothing Marriage, Eli J. Finkel investigates how the dynamics and expectations on marriage in America have changed since roughly the colonial times. These changes mirror Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as American marriages transitioned from the fulfillment of lower needs, to higher needs like self-actualization.
Success at these higher altitudes require a significant level of investment in time and energy … One that not every participant in modern marriages has willingly made or adapted to.
In short, modern marriages are tougher than they have historically been given that economic progress and industrialization have made it easier to live alone, especially when compared to colonial times of the 1700s. And in short, this fact has made us require/request more from our marriages leading to a very large expectations gap that Finkel calls the All-or-Nothing Marriage.
Downloadable Content – Raw Notes
Interested in diving deeper into Eli J. Finkel’s work on The All-or-Nothing Marriage? Download my unfiltered notes below ?
What we eventually accomplish in life may depend more on our passion and perseverance than on our innate talent - Angela Duckworth, Grit (2016)
In Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth unpacks the attributes/traits of those individuals who possess grit which is defined as holding the same top-level goal for a very long time and having the passion and perseverance to see your ultimate goal through.
She challenges the unconscious biases we all have towards talent, especially in the way that we all rush to anoint people as extraordinarily talented whenever they accomplish a feat worth writing about. As much as talent counts, effort counts twice as you can see in the following picture of skill and achievement:
What we all achieve depends on talent (how fast we improve skill) and our effort. But as you can see in the above picture, effort factors in the calculations of achievement twice. This is because effort builds skill and at the very same time, effort makes skill productive!
Similar to the findings of Daniel F. Chambliss by the end of the book it is clear the most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary. High level of performance is, in fact, an accretion of mundane acts.
Steve Young: An Example of a Paragon of GRIT
“You cannot quit. You have the ability, so you need to go back and work this out.” - Steve Young’s Dad, (circa 1980s)
Steve Young is the epitome of a GRIT Paragon. When he was a freshman at BYU, he was the 8th string quarterback and was barely even getting any practice time. Like most freshmen when things don’t go according to plan, Steve called his father (whose nickname was actually Grit).
Steve’s dad basically said the following: “You can quit but you can’t come home because I’m not going to live with a quitter. You’ve known that since you were a kid. You’re not coming back here.”
With the words of his father ringing in his ears, Steve Young stepped up his game and put the work in. By all accounts, he threw over 10,000 spiral passes at a practice net the summer between his freshman and sophomore year. By his sophomore year, he had risen to QB2 and by his junior year he was BYU’s starting QB. In his final year with the Cougars, Steve Young won the Davey O’Brien award for the most outstanding college quarterback in the country.
Then … It happened all again when he got to the San Francisco 49ers. He spent 4 years on the bench as the backup to four-time Superbowl champion, Joe Montana. And because of his experience at BYU, Steve stayed, learned, and flourished under Montana’s apprenticeship. He eventually got his chance and the rest is history.
Steve Young: A Gridiron Paragon of Grit. From every touchdown to each hard-fought comeback, his relentless determination on the field defines the true essence of grit. A quarterback icon who faced challenges head-on, Young embodies the spirit of unwavering passion and perseverance.
When Steve Young retired, he was the highest-rated quarterback in NFL history.
Final Thoughts
Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole.
People with grit are paragons of perseverance and effort. As much as talent counts, effort counts twice as much with them. They develop their skills by hours and hours and hours of deliberate practice beating on their craft. They master the capacity to do something repeatedly, to struggle, and to have patience over the long-term. But most importantly, they develop the stamina to go over something again and again and again no matter how difficult it is.
In closing, greatness is actually doable because greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable. When it comes to how we fare in the marathon of life, effort counts tremendously, and consistency of effort over the long run is everything. Great things are accomplished by those people whose thinking is active in one direction, who employ everything as material, who always zealously observe their own inner life and that of others, who perceive everywhere models and incentives, who never tire of combining together the means available to them.
Little Habits and Characteristics That Can Make You More Gritty
Seek to continuously improve
Focus on the daily discipline of trying to do things better than you did yesterday
Remember that the 10-Year Rule Applies to developing skills: thousands and thousands and thousands of hours spent in deliberate practice over years and years and years
Love what you do
Remember that sustained effort over the long-run counts more than talent
Interpret setbacks and failure as a cue to try harder rather than as confirmation that you lack the ability to succeed
In a world dominated by large institutions that often fail to truly serve our needs, the concept of leadership needs a fresh perspective. In Robert K. Greenleaf’s thought-provoking work, “Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness,” he introduces the idea that a great leader is, first and foremost, a servant. This notion challenges the traditional understanding of leadership and suggests that true leadership is rooted in serving others.
Greenleaf emphasizes the importance of listening, empathy, and acceptance as essential qualities of a servant-leader. He delves into the idea that effective leadership requires the ability to bridge the gap between available information and the unknown future, relying on intuition and foresight. Stressing the interconnectedness of past, present, and future, Greenleaf suggests that a qualified leader maintains a wide span of awareness. Furthermore, he advocates for leadership through persuasion rather than coercion, and he highlights the significance of both active leaders within institutions and external trustees who oversee them.
Ultimately, Greenleaf’s vision calls for nurturing strong natural servants who have the potential to lead, enriching the world through their presence, and striving to build better institutions in an imperfect world. In this journey, servant-leaders emerge as beacons of positive change, inspiring and guiding others toward a more harmonious and effective future.
Delve into the nuances that unpack Greenleaf’s ideas, gaining a richer understanding of servant leadership’s potential to reshape our institutions and empower individuals. Embrace the journey of discovery and join me in exploring how these principles can catalyze positive change in our world. Your path to enlightened leadership starts with a simple click – download now and embark on a transformative exploration!”
In 1992, Dr. John Gottman started his groundbreaking research on divorce that led to the discovery of what he termed the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” which ruins most marriages. Through a series of landmark studies focused on four simple behaviors, Dr. Gottman could predict with 94% accuracy, whether or not the couples he studied would get divorced within six years.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are behaviors that, when unchecked, are predictors of divorce. Each of these behaviors represents unpleasant strategies that partners often employ with one another within conflict. Understanding their impact and limiting their existence within your relationships will do you wonders.
The Four Horsemen Are …
Dr. Gottman defined the top four behaviors that predicted divorce as the following:
Criticism: attacking your partner’s personality or character, usually with the intent of making someone right and someone wrong.
Contempt: attacking your partner’s sense of self with the intention to insult or psychologically abuse him/her
Defensiveness:seeing self as the victim, warding off a perceived attack
Stonewalling: withdrawing from the relationship as a way to avoid conflict. Partners may think they are trying to be “neutral” but stonewalling conveys disapproval, icy distance, separation, disconnection, and/or smugness
A Drawing of John Gottman’s Four Horsemen by Brian Nwokedi inspired by the 1887 Viktor Vasnetsov painting
The Four Horsemen and How To Stop Them With Their Antidotes
Criticism targets a person’s characteror personality and its antidote is a gentle start-up
Contempt targets a person’s sense of self and its antidote is to build a culture of appreciation and respect
Defensiveness targets you as a victim and its antidote is to take responsibility
Stonewalling targets your relationship and its antidote is physiological self-soothing
Final Thoughts
I once heard that in order for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotions in a given encounter must be at least 5:1. This is because negative interactions often outweigh positive ones.
Successful relationships must have a balance between positive and negative feelings/actions between partners. Conflict in relationships is unavoidable, but successful relationships are those that are able to manage conflict in healthy ways.
The Four Horseman framework translates not just to personal relationships but work relationships as well. It can sometimes be easy to forget how much relationship advice actually translates into the business world because ultimately we are just a collection of people working together ?.
Going forward for me when I see criticism and defensiveness galloping in (the two horsemen that show up the most in my relationships), I will remember this framework and use the appropriate antidote.
“Tranquility is worth pursuing as it is a psychological state in which we experience few negative emotions, such as anxiety, grief, and fear, but an abundance of positive emotions, especially joy”
--- William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (2008)
Introduction
We 21st-century humans are a bunch of spoiled brats that don’t realize how good we actually have it. We have climate-controlled buses, that take us to climate-controlled airports, where we board climate-controlled airplanes, that take us anywhere we want in the world. And somewhere in our modern existence, we have lost our ability to remain resilient.
The overarching goal of Stoicism is not to banish emotion or remind calm while suffering a setback. Rather, the goal of Stoicism is to minimize the number of negative emotions one experiences in their life and to suffer setbacks without thereby actually suffering.
Stoics are not unfeeling human beings. Rather they are humans that have mastered their responses to life’s trials, tribulations, and setbacks. In fact, Stoics often see setbacks as an opportunity to thrive. When faced with a setback, Stoics treat it as a test of their resilience and resourcefulness. They turn the setback into a sort of game (Stoic test) devised and administered by the “Stoic gods. Similar to the concept of framing, the Stoic test relies on the fact that how we mentally characterize a situation has a profound impact on how we respond to it emotionally.
I now understand that a Stoic’s primary goal is to attain and maintain tranquility. That ultimately means striving to avoid experiencing negative emotions while continuing to enjoy positive emotions, especially in the face of setbacks.
What Will I Do Differently As a Result of This Book?
Change my perspective and mindset in such a way as to not experience negative emotions in the first place
Remember the quote by Charles R. Swindoll “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
Remember that the highest cost by far is the emotional distress a setback triggers i.e. how you react to what happens to you
Review my raw notes on this subject matter continuously and often
Reminder from the Stoic Gods…
God (think Jupiter) sets us back not to punish us but to give us an opportunity to do something courageous and thereby increase our chances of attaining “the highest possible excellence
God, says Senecca, knows that “a man needs to be put to the test if he is to gain self-knowledge” and that “only by trying does he learn what his capacities are.”
This fatherly God wants his children to “know the pain of toil, of suffering, of loss, so that they may acquire true strength.”
Whatever type of God you assume, understand that he is testing you to make you stronger, to develop your character, and to make you more appreciative of the life you are living
Downloadable Content
The goal, under life’s circumstances, should be to make sure that no matter when your editor publishes your novel (your death), it will stand as a complete work – or as complete as is humanly possible. William B. Irvine has written two very good books on Stoicism, and the following book notes have been created to help you with your understanding of William B. Irvine’s work!
“There are two systems of thought: The Intuitive System 1, which does the fast thinking, and the effortful and slower System 2 which does the slow thinking, monitors System 1, and maintains control as best it can within its limited resources.”
--- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (2011)
Introduction
The fact remains whether we like to admit it or not, our minds are susceptible to systematic errors in thinking and judgment. And when we are under pressure or lacking total information, our minds are strongly biased toward causal explanations. To wrap our minds around all the ways we make mistakes in our thinking and judgment, Daniel Kahneman simplified the mind into two systems:
The Intuitive System 1 thinks VERY FAST
The effortful and controlled System 2 thinks VERY SLOWLY
The point Kahneman drives home in his book is by learning to recognize these patterns of thinking in yourself, you can minimize the mistakes when the stakes are highest.
System One … The Hare … All Gas No Brakes!
To put it quite simply: System 1 thinking is impulsive and intuitive and is designed to jump to conclusions from very little evidence. What’s worse, System 1 isn’t designed to know the size of the jumps it is making in its thinking. With System 1, WHAT YOU SEE IS ALL THERE IS (WYSIATI), and because of this, only the evidence at hand counts. In the absence of an explicit context, System 1 will generate its own context, and it really excels at constructing the best possible story … Are you scared yet? If not you should be!
System 1 is highly adept in one form of thinking … Automatic and Effortless. It identifies causal connections between events, sometimes even when the connection itself is spurious.
System Two … The Tortoise … All Brakes No Gas!
Like most things in life, there is a yin-and-yang or balance to things. Your brain’s method of thinking is no different. If System 1 is your default, fast, and reflexive method of thinking, System 2 is the opposite of this. To be specific, System 2 controls thoughts and behaviors, and it is the only system that can follow rules, compare objects on several attributes, and make deliberate choices between options.
Okay… Now What?
Here is the thing… Regardless of Systems 1 and 2, our brains are pattern-matching machines subject to a plethora of cognitive biases. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Anchoring Effect
Availability Heuristic
Halo Effect
Hindsight Bias
Representativeness Heuristic
We often ignore relevant statistical facts and we rely almost exclusively on rules of thumb. When you factor in that System 1 is our default fast way of thinking, and the deep, deliberate, and controlled System 2 way of thinking is lazy and hard to consistently deploy, it’s not surprising that we humans make a ton of decision-making errors. Often, we are inconsistent in our evaluations, and we often make errors in summary judgments. Kahneman found in his research that humans when asked to evaluate the same information twice frequently give different answers.
Reading through Daniel Kahneman’s work convinces me of a couple of solutions to human decision-making shortcomings that a lot of us humans are not going to like to hear… Humans need help to make good decisions, and there are informed and unobtrusive ways to provide this help:
Whenever we can replace human judgment with a formula, we should at least consider it.
Since machines are more likely than human judges to detect weakly valid cues, we should consider complementing or augmenting human-only judgments with human + machine judgments
Maximize predictive accuracy by using machine logic, especially in low-validity environments
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman set out to improve the ability in all of us to identify and understand errors of judgment, and choice in others, and ultimately in ourselves! He wanted to provide his readers with a richer and more precise language to discuss decision-making and thinking within the brain. Because our System 1 method of thinking is our default and intuitive way of thinking, it’s easy for us to ignore relevant statistical facts that don’t fit the patterns we want. By nature, our slower and more methodical way of thinking (System 2) takes more time than we want and is lazy by nature. Humans need help to make good decisions because there is overwhelming evidence that we Humans can’t think rationally 100% of the time.
What Will I Do Differently As a Result of This Book?
Learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid making significant decision-making mistakes when the stakes are high
Understand that even when I think that I am being rational there is a good chance my default System 1 way of thinking has quickly pattern-matched and downplayed disconfirming information.
Understand how deep the halo effect goes in clouding/painting my judgment of a person with a favorable first impression versus not.
The major source of error in forecasting is our prevalent tendency to underweight or ignore distributional information. We forecast based on information in front of us (WYSIATI).
Consequently, I will therefore make every effort to frame the forecasting problem so as to facilitate utilizing all the distributional information that is available
Here is the thing … We are pattern seekers, believers in a coherent world in which regularities appear not by accident but as a result of mechanical causality or of someone’s intention.
This fact means that we humans often misclassify random events as systematic and we are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.
This means for me, as I continue to plan I MUST EMBRACE THE RANDOMNESS OF LIFE!
Lastly, beware when I am in a good mood and I have had limited sleep … My System 2 will be weaker than usual and I should pay extra attention to my default System 1.
Downloadable Content
Thinking Fast, and Slow is a must-read for anyone interested in gaining insights into the Human mind and the manner in which decisions are made. The following book notes have been created to help you with your understanding of Daniel Kahneman’s concepts within Thinking Fast, and Slow.
"The Smart Machine Age will usher in an era where the smartest humans are not those that have the deepest knowledge"
--- Edward Hess & Katherine Ludwig, Humility is the New Smart (2017)
Summary
With the dawn of the Smart Machine Age, humans need a new playbook to thrive. That playbook is laid out in detail by Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig in Humility is the New Smart. In order to reach “New Smart” you need to:
(1) Quiet your ego
(2) Manage yourself (emotions & thinking)
(3) Reflectively listen
(4) Emotionally connect & relate to others (otherness).
"Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped."
--- Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (2012)
Summary
At the center of the Habit Loop sits the Craving Brain which looks for simple cues and clearly defined rewards. A typical habit emerges when the brain finds a way to save effort, and habits are powerful because they create neurological cravings. When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision-making. Although you never can really extinguish bad habits, you can change a habit by keeping the old cue and reward but changing the routine.
Three-Step Loop
A cue triggers the brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use
The routine is physical or mental or emotional
The reward helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future
How To Change a Habit
By focusing on the keystone habit, you can fix a myriad of other habits in the process. You must work to identify cues and choose new routines in order to change your habits. But for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible.
In closing, to modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits’ routines and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it.
The real power of habit is the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. It is important to note that no matter how strong our willpower is, we are guaranteed to fall back into our old ways once in a while
An integrated brain is the foundation of resilience and well-adjusted children. The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel J. Sigel and Tina Payne Bryson breaks down 12 simple and easy-to-master strategies that will help you respond more effectively to difficult situations with your child, and build a foundation for strong social, emotional and mental health.
You should read this book to better understand how to turn the everyday “survival” moments as parents into thrive moments, where the important and meaningful work and connecting of parenting can take place.
Never forget that we parents can provide the kinds of experiences for our children that will help them develop a resilient and well-integrated brain!
Stamped from the Beginning chronicles the development of racist ideas, and the ongoing failure of American society to root out these ideas. Throughout time, racist ideas about Black people have perpetuated racial discrimination against Black people, and have led the consumers of racist ideas to believe there is something inherently wrong with Black people.
Ibram X. Kendi focuses his efforts on emphasizing that the policies and the history of oppression and racial discrimination of Black people have made opportunities for Black people scarce. And it is truly this scarcity of Black opportunities that is inferior – not Black people.
It’s clear that racism and discrimination are still highly pervasive in today’s world. And while there are multiple angles to the current problem of race, I want to spend this post unpacking the long-term economic implications of the consistent scarcity of opportunities faced by Black people. The end of slavery for many Black Americans was just the beginning of a larger quest for economic and democratic equality.
But First … What’s A Good Definition of Racism and Racist Ideas?
Any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way is a good definition for racism as illustrated in this book. And historically, there have been two kinds of racist camps in the World:
The best way to separate the Segregationists from the Assimilationists is to think of their racist ideas as a spectrum. The Segregationists regard Black people as biologically distinct and inferior to White people while the Assimilationists encourage Black people to adopt White cultural traits and/or physical ideas.
Assimilationists read Darwin as saying Black people could one day evolve into White civilization; Segregationists read Darwin as saying Black people were bound for extinction. Both camps are racist because they each regard White people (on racial group) as superior to Black people (other racial group).
In stark contrast to the Segregationists and Assimilationists stand the Anti-Racists; people who think there is nothing wrong with Black people and think that Black people as a whole are an equal racial group to all. Anti-Racists are truly committed to racial equality and focused on interrogating and shedding our world’s racist ideas.
In American history specifically, there have been four major fathers of Segregationist and Assimilationist ideas and one major mother of Anti-Racist ideas. While far from exhaustive, the graphic below depicts each individual:
Why Do These Delineations Matter?
The delineations between Segregationist, Assimilationist, and Anti-Racists matter simply because the issue of the 21st century is “the problem of the color line” that is a result of the racist ideas that have been perpetuated by Segregationist and Assimilationists alike. As multiple series of separate but unequal laws were instituted, nearly ever aspect of southern life from water fountains, to businesses, to transportation were segregated. These separate and inferior Black facilities and opportunities fed White people and Black people alike the segregationist idea of Black people being fundamentally separate and inferior people. It is these racist ideas that have led to policies that have on average rendered Black Americans second-class status socially, economically, and politically.
So, although official segregation is dead, we as an American society still face a real “problem of the color line.” The laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is historical and institutionalized consequence of color. For some three centuries now, the communal experiences of the slaves and their descendants has been adversely shaped by social, economic, and political institutions of our ignoble past[1]. And the true American tragedy is our current reluctance to engage in conversations to fix the results of this ignoble past. As nearly two average American lifetimes (79 years) have passed since the end of slavery, America’s national sin is now the responsibility of the third and fourth generations to fix[2].
Slavery Fueled the Growth of the American Economy; Cotton Fueled America’s Growth as a Global Player
The first slaves arrived from West Africa in 1619 and by 1776 slavery was everywhere and legal in all 13 newly created states. But it wasn’t until the rise of cotton during the 19th century that the US went from a colonial and primarily agricultural economy to the second largest industrial power in the world. Cotton created an interconnected global market that linked the industrial textile mills of the Northern states and England with the cotton plantations of the American South. And slave labor fueled it all.
As the following chart shows, cotton-based slavery became America’s first big business:
As cotton production grew exponentially (roughly 400% over 60 years), so did the number of the enslaved (roughly to 4 million people by 1860). The bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset and became the force needed to maintain America’s most exported commodity[3]. More than just cotton, this new US economy accelerated worldwide commercial markets in the 19th century, creating demand for innovative contracts, novel financial products, and modern forms of insurance and credit[4].
Cotton profits propelled the United States into a position as one of the leading economies in the world, and made the South its most prosperous region. Unquestionably, cotton-based slavery transformed the American economy.
The Myth of the Antiracist North and the Racist South
When current day citizens look back at the atrocities of slavery, they often pin these atrocities on the South, and the South alone. Doing so, downplays the true capitalistic nature of cotton-based slavery. Because cotton was the number one export from the US during the 19th century, there was a very tight relationship between slavery in the South and the economic and industrial expansions that happened in the North and other parts of the Western worlds. Put very simply, the slavery economy of the US South was deeply tied financially to the North, to Britain, and the rest of the modern Western Worlds.
The benefits of cotton produced by enslaved workers extended to industries beyond the South. In the North and Great Britain, cotton mills hummed, while financial and shipping industries also saw gains. Banks in New York and London provided capital to new and expanding plantations for purchasing both land and enslaved workers[5]. Everyone in power benefited from the system of slavery except of course the millions of enslaved.
Today’s racial wealth gap is perhaps the most glaring legacy of American slavery and the violent economic discrimination and dispossessions that followed[6]. And failure to provide the formerly enslaved with the land grants of 40 acres originally promised through Sherman’s order only accelerated this wealth gap.
Today’s Racial Wealth Gap Began in the Past
Since the Civil War, Black people have faced social, economic, and political headwinds that provided limited opportunities for Black people to accumulate wealth. Even post-Reconstruction, Black people faced law and public policy that was disadvantageous to their cause. Through the first half of the 20th century, the federal government actively excluded Black people from government wealth-building programs like the New Deal.
Between 1944 and 1971, federal spending for former soldiers totaled over $95 billion. Combined with the New Deal and suburban housing construction, the GI Bill gave birth to the White middle class and winded the economic gap between the races. But as our nation tends to do with programs like these, Black veterans faced discrimination that reduced or denied their benefits under the New Deal welfare programs.
The continuous scarcity of Black wealth building opportunities is one of the biggest reasons why the wealth gap started in the past and continues on today. In many ways, the opportunity to accumulate wealth is contingent on the wealth positions of one’s parents and grandparents. As the stats below will show, the descendants of slaves suffer from a scarcity of opportunities that will have lasting adverse impacts on Black wealth as a whole.
The following are some stats on the disparities in wealth between Black and White households.
White Americans have 7x the wealth of Black Americans on average
Median family wealth for white people is $171,000. Median family wealth for black people is $17,600
White households earned a median income of $69,823 in 2019 versus $43,862 for Black households
Black people make up nearly 13% of the US population by hold less than 3% of the nation’s total wealth
Black households have on average $4,400 in home equity, compared with $67,800 for white households.
The gap in homeownership rates in 2019 between Black and white households—about 41% for Black Americans versus 73% for whites—was the widest in a quarter-century, according to census data.
Mutual Obligation to Fix the Devastating Legacy of Slavery and Discrimination
There is no silver bullet to correct the inequalities that are 400 years in the making and deeply ingrained in our systems, institutions, and laws, Richard Neal (D., Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote in a recent report on health and economic equity[7]. While we cannot change the past, we as Americans must not also be indifferent to the current suffering that is linked directly to that same past.
Our history has in fact dealt Black Americans a bad hand; one of inherited poverty and a devastating legacy of discrimination. Collectively, we as a people must work together to address this nation’s unfinished racial opportunity.
Not tackling the question of past discrimination is akin to asking Black people to enter the 100-yeard dash forty yards behind the starting line. And when Black people lose the dashes and the racial disparities of our country persist, racists blamed the supposed slowness of Black people, not the head start of accumulated White privilege.
What the survivors of slavery endured in the cotton fields has everything to do with the wealth of the US today and the disproportions of the wealth between While people in the US on average and the wealth of Black people in the US on average. Continuing to turn a blind eye to this fact is our nation’s continual sin.
[1] Loury, Glenn C. (1998, March 1). An American Tragedy: The legacy of slavery lingers in our cities’ ghettos. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-american-tragedy-the-legacy-of-slavery-lingers-in-our-cities-ghettos/
[2] Desmond, Matthew. (2019, August 14). In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html
[3] Lockhart, P.R. (2019, August 16). How slavery became America’s first big business. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/16/20806069/slavery-economy-capitalism-violence-cotton-edward-baptist
[4] Baradaran, Mehrsa. (2019, August 14). Cotton and the Global Market. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html
[5] Timmons, Greg (2018, March 6). How slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-economy
[6] Lee, Trymaine (2019, August 14) A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions, and exclusion, separates black and white America. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html
[7] Tergesen, Anne and Gillers, Heather. (2021, February 22). U.S. Retirement Crisis Hits Black Americans Hard. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-retirement-crisis-hits-black-americans-hard-11613989981?mod=djem10point
[8] Kendi, Ibram X. (2016). Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Bold Type Books.
