Businessweek Convenes: Black Leaders Face the DEI Backlash (Bloomberg) – Top Black business leaders feel powerless to stop backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion. Also on YouTube.
Ursula Burns Ex-CEO of Xerox, Nicole Reboe, Rich Talent Group and Jacob Walthour, Jr., Blueprint Capital
UN resolution urges reparations for slavery’s ‘historical wrongs’ – Ghana sponsored a UN resolution calling slavery as the worst crime in human history. The resolution calls for reparations. The president of Ghana, John Mahama, later criticized the US for ‘normalizing’ the erasure of Black history in the United States.
Business owners sue comptroller after their removal from state minority business program (Texas Tribune)
The Making of Harlem as a Black Metropolis
Who made Harlem a Black Metropolis? (Amsterdam News) – Showcases the Caribbean influence on Harlem.
Author interview with Karen Carillo on WPIX-11 News (WPIX 11)
Making Black America: Harlem, The Black Metropolis (PBS SoCal)
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Diversity, equity, and inclusion must always be spelled out because it means something. The meaning is different than DEI. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is the idea of delivering fairness and opportunity to those who have been traditionally excluded. DEI has been co-opted by conservatives as a “dog-whislte” term for anti-Blackness.
Princeton Prof: Trump Admin. Has Embraced the Politics of White Supremacy
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a Princeton Professor of African American Studies and a co-founder of the Black politics and culture magazine Hammer and Hope.
History
New Deal a Square Deal for the Negro? – Editorial from 1933 about FDR’s New Deal. Blacks were largely excluded from many New Deal economic policies, which did not cover Black service workers.
People to watch
Pinky Cole files for bankruptcy (Baltimore Banner)
Uncle Nearest — Judge Rules Uncle Nearest Receivership To Retain Its ‘Original Scope’ Pending Further Review (Afrotech)
Note: Compare and contrast the Pinky Cole bankruptcy filing with the Uncle Nearest filing. Nearest is at a whole different level.
New EEOC chief Andrea Lucas – Andrea R. Lucas Designated Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Lucas famously posted a video asking white men to file discrimination claims (NBC News)
Mersha Baradaran – Professor of Law (UC Irvine). Baradaran wrote one of the key books in Black economics covering how Black were excluded from the financial system. The work is important because our economy has shifted to financialization under neoliberal (conservative) policies.
Barak Obama – Hope and Change: Revisiting Barack Obama’s Historic Presidency (HeinOnline) – good summary of Obama’s accomplishments
Evidence of AI displacement in the labor market is ‘really micro’, says Morgan Stanley’s Gapen (CNBC)
Interesting websites
Black Wealth Crew and Black Wealth Crew
Black Census Project – Black Futures Lab, Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza
Black Nouveau – Positive Black stories
New York Times (NYT)
For good or bad, the New York Times is the single best news source in the United States. Call it the Jay-Z/Beyoncé effect. There is only room for one winner. The bad part: people are not interested in the news or financially supporting the news. Second, media consolidation and jobs cuts are rampant in the US news industry. If you are going to study Black Economics, you must read the New York Times. Sorry.
Here are our NYT stories
Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass
That Dinner Tab Has Soared. Here Are All the Reasons.
7-Year Fight to Reclaim a House Stolen in the Wave of a Pen
The Whiskey World Is Reeling, but This Company Has Bigger Troubles
Roland Fryer on the return on a college education
Books
Not Slave, Not Free. The African American experience since the Civil War. Jay R. Mandle. 1992. Just finished this. The book discusses the plantation economy of the South from Reconstruction to the 1950s and the limited economic opportunities in the North after the Great Migration. Short on the premise of linking history to today’s problems.
Coming to reparations, by Dorthey K brown. Just started. Tax lawyer Brown comes around to repartitions.
Should America Pay? Slavery and The Raging Debate on Reparations, Ray Winbush, 2003. One of the first books on reparations.
Faces At The Bottom Of The Well: The Permanence Of Racism. Derrick Bell
JR Versus Stinky Dumping Ground (Barnes and Noble) – Environmentalism for Black kids. One person can make a difference.