The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

by Mehrsa Baradaran

Book Overview

"Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work."
--Ta-Nehisi Coates

"A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family."
--The Atlantic

"Extraordinary...Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that's often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674237471
• ISBN13: 9780674237476
• Release Date: March 2019
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The Color of Money Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap is uncompromising with it's lessons

An outstandingly researched and well written account of how the powerful white supremacist banking industry developed, while systematically under developing black banks. The author Mehrsa Baradaran spares no words in giving a full account of the development of the banking industry on the backs of people of color, particularly the black working class and what lead to what still exists today, underdeveloped black communities, gentrification, redlining, racism and white wealth gap which continues to expand. The Color of Money offers many insights to people of color on how to better understand their economic position in society, how it came to be and the challenges they come up against in trying to change the landscape, improve their quality of life and reduce the racial wealth gap, which continues to expand at an even more rapid pace today.