← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
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The best kind of help is the kind you don't even have to ask for. Like your friend pulling up on moving day with a truck, a speaker and snacks ready to go. Well, that's the energy you get with AT&T's new guarantee. If there's ever a network interruption, they make it right by giving you credit for a full day of service, proactively credit for fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more or wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers. Restrictions and exclusions apply. See@&t.com guaranty for full details. AT and T. Connecting changes everything. Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Hey, hey. This is John O' Brien and this is Money and Wealth. I'm so honored to be with you again for another hard hitting episode. And this is also part history lesson, part business plan, part healing. I really think we have to heal so that we can effectively deal a lot of what has been done to now. I'm always talking about everybody, success for everybody. But this particular episode is committed and dedicated to African Americans because they're the only group enslaved on American soil. And they lie. We lie at the bottom of the economic equation. Everything negative, unfortunately, are the lowest categories of economic growth. We sit there, including credit scores, homeownership, and a range of other indexes. There's a lot of positives in this story, but we have got to understand how we got here and that we're not this narrative that we've been told, that we're somehow unintelligent or idiots or we're lazy, all of which is untrue. So we have to heal so we can deal. But a lot of our story has been bound up in emotions and civil rights, which is essential, by the way. Essential. I wouldn't be here without civil rights. My second great grandfather, in response to the Emancipation Proclamation called by Lincoln, his name is George Young, he joined as a slave. He joined the Emancipation Proclamation, called for the Emancipation Proclamation to defend the city of Memphis, the same city where Dr. King was assassinated some 100 years later. So this is personal to me and I respect civil rights and social justice deeply. I'm not. That said, I'm not a civil rights leader. I'm a civil rights leader. I'm in the suites made possible by those who are in the streets. I think capitalism is a gladiator sport. Business is not personal. I've been very Successful, been very sorry, fortunate to be successful or have a shot at success through the free enterprise system. I've used financial literacy as my weapon. It is, I believe, the civil rights issue of this generation. It has worked for me, and so I've endeavored to have it work for you. And when I say you, generally speaking, I mean you, everybody. I think that, as Dr. King said, he said, I'm here to redeem the soul of America. He didn't say, I'm here to save black people. He said, I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the triple evils of war, racism and poverty. He thought by helping poor whites, he was helping America. By helping black Americans, he was helping America. By helping Asians and Latinos and Native American Indians and women and others, he was helping America. And I agree with him. And I also thought. I think that he thought, I'm being a little presumptuous here, but I get a chance to talk to Ambassador Andrew Young and Bernice King and others about this. He thought that also by helping African Americans, it helped America. And by not helping African Americans, you really are defaulting on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the dream of America, by defaulting on the promise made to African Americans, the only people enslaved on American soil. So in many ways, this question, this lingering question about African Americans is the stain that just won't go away in this country because we've never really dealt with it. But that's another podcast for another day. That's another book for another day. At some point, I'll write, attempt to write a book to advance this conversation. The time for that is not now. The time for now is action positive. Action through healing. So I want you to heal so you can deal, so you can move forward from a surviving mindset to a thriving mindset to a winning and a building mindset. And a lot of what's got you off balance is emotions and anger and frustration and, like, it's like hugging jello, right? You just can't get your hands around it. It's like, where's the problem? It's everywhere. It's nowhere. You can't get your hands around it. And I think also we've been fighting the wrong battle in the wrong way. It's one of the reasons I like math, to quote my friend Melody Hobson. It's her quote. I want to give her credit for it. This quote. I like math because it doesn't have an opinion. It's not emotional. It is what it is. So I'm going to Dedicate this episode to America's GDP and her untapped potential, but also to you. If you're African American listening to this or you know somebody who's African American, tell them to listen to this podcast. We're going to solve 400 years in less than 40 minutes. I'm going to try to do this really quickly. Hopefully I won't go over 40 minutes to an hour for this, because I want you to be able to listen to this while you're driving to work or home or walking your dog or taking it or exercising. I want you to be able to listen to this and do something else and then pass it on. The episode is called the Economic Arch. The economic arc. Sorry, the economic arc of black America. The economic arc of Black America from 1619 to now. End the road forward. I'm going to explain to you in 40 minutes, 400 years, but I'm explaining it in a way I believe that no one's ever explained it to you. We're sitting, by the way, coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. And Andrew Young quote, we're sitting here. I'm sitting here recording this podcast in New Orleans. New Orleans, some would say. And this is a city that played a very important American history because the French owned New Orleans and they were going to sell it to America. This is a side story, but it's interesting because I'm here. And because Haiti was such an economic engine for France, it allowed them to go fight wars all around the world, where Haiti decided to push back. Napoleon's brother oversaw Haiti. The leaders of Haiti pushed back on Napoleon's brother. Defeated him. Napoleon came. They defeated him. No one had beat Napoleon ever, except the Haitians. And because of the pain and the struggle and the drama and the trauma. Well, not the trauma. The Haitians were traumatized with slavery and oppression, but the economic pain caused to France from the rebellion of one of their most valuable outposts, which at that point was Haiti, caused them to have to respond by not just selling New Orleans to America. They had to sell the equivalent of 13 states. It was called the Louisiana Purchase. That was directly related to what happened with Haiti. So much for Africans being dumb, stupid, and not valuable. They were valuable enough to create the economic engine for what was then a world leader and cause them to go to war and to proclaim war on Haiti for 500 years with a group of European allies who are committed that this would never happen again. And if you look at Haiti today, unfortunately, that promise has been kept. You know that Haiti actually had to pay reparations to France. That's another topic for another day. Let's fast forward now to helping you to unpack the American story. So we're going to trace 400 years of economic history. This is the economic arc of Black America. In 40 minutes or so, we're going to talk about the struggles, the setbacks, and the comeback plan that we can control. This is not a history lesson. This is a power lesson. And we end with the business plan for Black America, our blueprint forward. I wrote this business plan for black America, presented it on the 57th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Please go to Dream Forward, comma Operation Hope. You can search that or Dream Forward, John Hope Bryant, Dream Forward, the business plan for black America. You search that, it'll come up. Please print that and listen and read that or read that post. This podcast. Here's part one, the foundation of it all. I've done a whole podcast unpacking slavery and the fact that we were not stupid, we're not dumb. We were agricultural geniuses of the land. We were the only folks who could take dead land and bring it back to life again. I'm not going to spend time on this because I dedicated an entire podcast to explaining a couple podcasts. Now explain the economics of slavery, if you please go back and listen to those prior podcasts. There's one coming up soon also that I think is very interesting, and it talks about the differences between African Americans, African Caribbeans and African Africans. We're the same, but culturally different. And I explain why, in my opinion, and what's in the power of us coming back together. But I'm going to now make a statement that is unique. I think slavery wasn't about race first. It was about economics first. It was bad capitalism. So bad capitalism is where I benefit and you pay a price for it. Good capitalism is where I benefit and you benefit more. So watching this podcast, listening to this podcast might be good capitalism on your phone that you paid for listening to music, buying a hairbrush is good capitalism and good entrepreneurship because an entrepreneur made the hairbrush, the phone, et cetera. So these are the differentiation between good capitalism and bad capitalism. Enslaved black people were America's first great economic engineers again. So I'm going to glaze over some numbers, come back later on if I have time before the podcast is over and go deeper the value of black slaves. Again, people were saying we're incidental to history. We're stupid, we're this, we're that. Okay, hold on, let's look at this from an economic perspective. The value of black slaves in context of labor alone without Pay between the 1600s and mid-1800s is about $24 trillion in today's money valuation. If you add in these are reports, this is now studies from very credible sources. Add in lost opportunity, reasonable conservative estimates of lost opportunity on top of unpaid labor, which is a very reasonable thing to presume, and I'll talk about what some of that lost opportunity was specifically. That's as much as $41 trillion. Before you start talking about we should go get our reparations. That's a bridge too far. Certainly in this current political environment, in any political environment, I think it'd be a tough sell. In the current political environment, I think it's dead on arrival. That's just my opinion. I'm a practical person. I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong or should be. I'm telling you I want you to advance your life in your lifetime, my lifetime, our children's lifetime, or grandchildren's lifetime. I want you to do something that can be done right. So I'm not going to give you a history lesson. I'm going to give you a strategy lesson. Right? The point of history is so that you understand and can understand, can contextualize, can heal and can now have clarity of view and see where you can have an impact. And what I'm going to propose to you doesn't require a vote from Congress. Does it require a majority vote from the U.S. senate and the House of Representatives? The President of the United States does not have to sign your legislation or give you dignity. This is something, when I get finished, you can do for yourself. Doesn't that feel good? Hello. A friend of mine once told me that it's entirely possible that the only true freedom is financial freedom. Because if you get it, unless you mess it up, no one can take it from you. Someone can take your as you're seeing, as you're beginning to see. They can take your political freedom, they can take your social justice freedom, they can take your religious freedom, they can take your physical freedom in some cases. But they can't take your economic freedom unless you mess with that up and hand it to them. So let's go back to the framework. The foundation, as I discussed, was rooted in economics and it was rooted in free labor from black slaves. And we were worth more than railroads, banks and most industry combined. In the mid-1800s, America industrialized on cotton and labor. Black bodies built the base for that. Let's now get into details. The broken promises of freedom, the end of slavery, 1865, we got emancipation with no land, no tools, no money, which equaled economic limbo. There was Field Action 15, which was Savannah, Georgia. Secretary of War and General Stanton had advanced a discussion with 20 black ministers, asking, what do you want after slavery? Did they say they want a welfare program, a handout program? No, they said they want land they want to do for themselves. And so they were given about. Allocated about 400,000 acres. Field action 15. January. I believe it was January 1865. And that land crested or followed the coast. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, along the coast, which was not great land, but they worked that land so hard, they were so industrious, they came back and said, my God, a month later, they're so industrious, a thousand folks took control of the land, started working it. They're so industrious, give them a mule. 40 acres and a mule. The bank came after that, which was March 3, 1865, the Freedmen's bank, chartered to teach free slaves about money. Just making sure that you're tracking me here as we build the wall of promise for you and knock down the wall of ignorance. Promises made. Land set aside for freedmen were destroyed when Abraham Lincoln, In April of 1865, January, February, March, April, same year, four months when Lincoln was assassinated for promising, amongst other things, blacks the right to vote. And Booth said, that's a bridge too far. You won't give another speech. This wasn't five years, it was four or five months. Here comes Andrew Johnson, the vice president who was part of the Confederacy, who took over for Lincoln. I believe this was a second coup, by the way. But that's another history discussion, another day. I can't prove it, but Andrew Johnson reversed the field action 15 and gave the land back to the Confederate families that owned it in the first place. This is not. This is unfortunately, literally true. Now, why is that important? Because in 1862, which were three years before this, the Homestead act was put in place nationwide to allocate what became 10% of all land in America, 270 million acres, to anybody willing to go west. And that was not 40 acres. It was, in many cases, 160 acres, in some cases more. And 99% of the allocation of that 270 million acres went to white settlers.
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Now get this, by the way. The purpose of the Freedmen's bank was to teach freed slaves about money, financial literacy. And oddly enough, blacks could not get loans from the banks. But the white overseers took loans from the banks and the bank cratered because of the mismanagement and the corruption from those in Washington who controlled that entity. Not because blacks mismanaged it and defaulted on the loans. They actually put their deposits into the bank and it took decades to get even half that money back again. So when folks say that the country's great or whatever, I'm not debating. I'm just saying when has it been great? As you'll hear from. I mean, when has it been great for African Americans? At what point has it been great for African Americans? We're trying to make our experience great. So let's just deal with the facts. The Homestead act went to mostly white families. And get this, the government hired engineers and help mates and tutors and encouragers. Call it affirmative action. 1862, 1865, 1870, to help White settlers to seed the land, till the land to help them to become farmers. They didn't know what they were doing, so the government helped them and gave them support in addition to giving them the land. So you had these sort of outposts all across the country going east to west, south and east to west that set up a system of development of these first families that end up controlling 270 million acres of land. 99% of that were to white settlers. Blacks were completely left out of this or not Completely. It was, I think 6,000 plots if my memory serves me correctly. But they were left out of systemic wealth building and denied that opportunity twice. They didn't get a chance to access the Homestead act. And the 40 acres and a mule field action 15 was literally reversed, even though that was, you could call that a pilot project. In fact, my second great grandfather would have been denied the field action 15, 40 acres in the mule, as he said. He was a Union army veteran, one of few black officers. Now let's deal with systemic exclusion in the 20th century. You had in 1934, FHA, the federal government redlining. This wasn't banks doing the redlining. This was the federal government. The federal government policy marked black neighborhoods in red, meaning no investment. The FHA Federal Housing Authority had the authority to guarantee loans for which banks would feel comfortable if there was an insurance on the mortgage, which means the banks would not be at risk if the loans defaulted. If the government had authorized that loan with a guarantee, then of course the banks would be happy to make those loans. But the neighborhoods that were redlined were not okay for FHA guarantees. Guess where those neighborhoods were. Black neighborhoods. So where did the banks go? Make loans where there was yellow and green, no green, no pun intended, but where it wasn't redlined, and those were white neighborhoods, that's where the mortgage insurance went and that's where the mortgages went. That doesn't mean that the banks were racist. By the way, banks in the 20th century, many of them were racist, but this particular act because they were family controlled. Whereas today it's very hard to say a bank is racist. Because I own Wells Fargo stock, Bank of America stock versus Horizon stock. I own the truest stock. We all in our 401ks or whatever we own, they're publicly traded. It's a whole different situation. They just want to make good loans that pay them back. We got to remove the bias in their brain that suggests that we're not good credit risk. Which is what? In many ways, what I'm doing with Operation Hope is getting the bank out of the no business and back into the yes business at scale. By the way, what's my mission? My mission is to my life mission at John o' Brien Enterprises, John o' Brien Holdings, Brian Group Ventures. Operation Hope, Bryant Group Real Estate, Brian Group Digital. Brian, all the stuff I'm doing, what's my mission at the holding company? To unleash untapped human potential at scale. I'm a private equity investor in you. And the first investment of private equity in human capital was me. And I'm using me to affect you. So unleash untapped human potential at scale for the purpose of. Well, through creating an economic. Creating economic plumbing for underserved America. That's primarily Operation Hope. That serves all of God's children and it's the biggest in the country. For the purpose of what? Popping gdp? Growing GDP by taking the bottom third of the country and turning them into capitalists and creating a ladder. Rebuilding the ladder from the bottom all the way up, putting that ladder, digging it in the ground and letting you step on that ladder through your self determination and go up that ladder to become owners of society. In the case of black folks, it's not just black lives matter. Black capitalists matter. Okay? And so this is very systemic for me because I think that financial literacy is a civil rights issue with this generation. And I think that we've got to go from the streets to the suites. We need green rooms to match the red ones. Red ones are identifying institutions and people and organizations and acts that hurt good people with bad things. I think we need green rooms that green light. Good things for good people like internships, apprenticeships, access to capital, access to opportunity, positive tax policy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So redlining FHA. In the 1930s, the federal government was of course, antithetical to what I'm talking about. It restricted black wealth creation. That's why you have today white neighborhoods that are multiple times more valuable 15 minutes away from a black neighborhood that has a depressed value. Because this legacy lives on. That started in 1934 with the FHA and redlining. You had the GI Bill in 1944. Yes, the GI Bill. There's nothing wrong with the GI Bill itself. Actually think it's a great thing. But it helped again, overwhelmingly. Just like the Homestead Act. 99, 98%, some crazy number. In the 90s, overwhelmingly white veterans built the white middle class. Even though there were tons of black people fighting for their country. That wasn't protecting them. By the way, in the 1940s, in World War II, 98, 99% of black veterans denied benefits for home loans and college access. Not a handout. It was their right. It was their privilege. It was their benefit. And once again denied. Again, don't trust me on all this with all the technology in your hand. Today you have a phone. Make it a smartphone, not a dumb phone. Research this yourself. Confirm what I'm telling you. But when you start to see these bricks add up, you'll see the wall of Resistance against your progress. You're not dumb. You're not stupid. It's what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you. But you think you know. Now, I don't want you to get mad. I want you to get even. Because I'm going to tell you a strategy that's going to allow you to go forward and let this be your season. Dr. King once said that hate and evil, something I'm paraphrasing, has within it the seeds of its own destruction. So I don't want you filled with hate. I don't want you purveying negative energy. I don't want you attacking anybody or going ham on somebody because of this thing. I'm telling you, that's not a productive use of your energy. Your time and disease is often dis ease. That stuff will jump on you and cause you to rot from the inside. You need to leave that alone. Leave that to God. I want you to follow the light and do what's right over mess, not in it. You know you're having church today. Listening to the podcast. Did you Urban renewal, black removal. This is 1850s to 1970s. So highways, slum clearance, displacing, thriving black, in many cases, thriving black neighborhoods. There were those in South Central LA that were thriving. There was a black Wall street in South Central la. They were all across the country, but in many cases they were cleared because they were considered slums and and highways were put in their place with no recompense to them, to those who lived in these communities because they had no political power. The story never got corrected. The narrative never got corrected and history became his story. So again, you had black wall streets in Tulsa, Durham, Detroit, Los Angeles, et cetera. Okay, here's the comeback code, today's opportunity. So I just walked you through and then. Okay, then you let me finish this narrative. So now you have World War II. You've got that 50s and the 70s and including with that is Dr. King and my mentor, Andrew Young. The civil rights movement with Dorothy Height, Coretta Scott King and all the sheroes and heroes who were really framers of a new constitution of justice and freedom, really architects for continuing America. They were as important as the original framers of America. These civil rights leaders, these Heroes and Sheroes, CT, Vivian, and all these amazing heroes who we cannot let history forget. They didn't save black folks, they saved America and provide and ensure that it would continue to be a light on the hill for all people around. Freedom and opportunity and President Kennedy and President Johnson advanced policies that were friendly to people of color. African Americans understanding the slight, the indignity that were visited uniquely upon black people. Black people are only folks enslaved on American soil. This is not my opinion. It's a fact. And affirmative action, which was created for blacks after Dr. King's assassination, some thought that it went too far. After every reconstruction, by the way, there's a pushback period. So first reconstruction, pushback, I've already described that. Second reconstruction, I'm describing that now with what happened with Dr. Kennedy, Johnson, Dr. King, Dr. King's assassination, Kennedy's assassination, by the way, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, Malcolm X's assassination, a range of other civil rights leaders and other people who just thought this stuff was going too far. It was too much change for society in too many different directions. It messed with power structures and folks had to go, this had to stop. Some people thought, isn't it interesting, by the way, that Bobby Kennedy, President Kennedy and Dr. King were all sole assassin theories to this day, three of the most powerful people in the world, but supposedly they were taken out by a lone gunman who was crazy. It's unique, it's nice, neat narrative that most people can get their heads around and I guess accept, possibly improbable, but people accept it. Fast forward. Dr. King's assassinated 68, April 4th, I believe, 1968. Lincoln was the same month, by the way, about 100 years earlier. Again, too much truth and benefits of affirmative action went to white women, which by the way, I applaud. And by the way, white women are, I'm sorry, women of all races are a third of the US gdp, give or take today. If we had not done that right, the economy, American economy would be a fraction of its size today and we would not be the economic superpower in the world. And if you're not the economic superpower, you cannot be the political superpower. Hello, if you're not the biggest economy. There's never been a superpower that wasn't the economic power at the same time is my point. So there was again pushback then the second reconstruction. And I believe that the third reconstruction started in 2020, the pandemic and George Floyd's murder. And I think it's in the last 10 years. But it was interrupted, hello. Two or three years into all of this so called progress, when many people said that's just gone way too far. And by the way, some of it did go too far. And I think in many cases African Americans got freedom high, as they would say in the 60s and start beating their chests. And some of this stuff was just ridiculous that was said by African American leaders. I won't get into that because I'm going to stay very focused. But we got, again, they got emotional. They got, I think, arrogant. They got full of. Not full of themselves, but full of their sense of that this was their moment and could not be stopped. That also, I think, stopped the progress that happened to Haiti. Too much that they just stopped with the win and didn't go further with rioting and all kind of things that they were done to the French in Haiti and then go over to the Dominican Republic. I think the French. I think the Haitian story would be different. But there was a reaction to that. There's a reaction to what happened in the year 2000. I think defund the police was a very silly policy. You don't want to defund the police. You want to fire bad police. If you go bugging my mother, I'm calling the police. I want you to come get this bad guy or bad woman. So I think they just went too far. And folks were looking for a reason to end the season. And so I don't think it's over, but I think it's been interrupted, the third reconstruction, and it's on schedule. This is what happens. But I'm going to give you a reason to push right through it. And this uniquely benefits actually America. So this time, this push through might actually work. My rich friends need my poor friends to do better, if only to stay rich. The color is not black or white or red or blue anymore. The color is green. As in economics, coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. God really does have a sense of humor. This time, God actually might be literally visible in the business plan, in the blueprint. For the first time, this country cannot succeed unless all of God's children do too. Because demographics are destiny. And the demographics today are radically different than they were even from 1952. In 1952, America was 90% Caucasian, which meant that if you had 80%, 8% of blacks, that what Dr. King and Andrew Young and Coretta Scott King and all these leaders did in that period, Rosa Parks, et cetera, was nothing short of ingenious. It was a moral calling. But Today, America is 40% black and brown, and within 10 years there'll be a majority of minorities, et cetera, et cetera. You cannot succeed increasingly, unless you make the bottom half the bottom third capitalist and let them to empower them to be ladder climbers and wealth builders. As the Baby boomers leave the field of economic prosperity and go play golf all at the same time. Most of them are white, wealthy and trying to retire, all as a group. So they need a replacement group. They need a farm club. And it's us. The comeback code. Despite these setbacks, black America still has $1.7 trillion in annual buying power, despite everything I just told you. So you've had all these sort of negative headwinds and I think you have negative headwinds now, at least in the political environment. They're not, certainly not positive headwinds for African Americans. Things like DE and I. I could care less about DE and I. We're fifth on the list. Why are we making why? Why? Why are we the poster child for DE and I programs? I've said it before. I'm saying it here. Like that's a distraction, that somebody wants you to be the poster child for deed. Somebody wants you to get emotional. They may have wanted you to go riot. Who knows? I'm glad we didn't do any of that. But it's a distraction because this country doesn't work without diversity. The economy doesn't work without diversity. That's all of God's children. The most profitable companies are diverse. The most profitable cities in America are diverse. The companies, the cities that are dying are stuck in 1950 and refuse to embrace the future. And the economies reflect that. So you don't need to argue over this. Argue with a fool proves there are two. Not one ounce of my self esteem depends on your acceptance of me. Again, I love math because it doesn't have an opinion. So a generation of black professionals, creators and entrepreneurs are on the rise. Atlanta is the 10th largest economy in the entire United States. It's not a black city, it's an American city. And Andrew Young, who was the only mayor ever mentored by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The last living lieutenant for Dr. King is Andrew J. Young. And he built Atlanta as the only international city in the south on the back of what Maynard Jackson did, creating black wealth. And all the other mayors and leaders who did great things and should all be noted, our current mayor Andre Dickens included, who is doing HOPE Child savings accounts with Operation Hope as we base silver rights S I L V E R in Atlanta for all of our operations and use it as a spring ford for it and an ecosystem to show that you can do well and do good too. Atlanta's economy is almost as big as Singapore's. It's about the same size, busiest airport in the world. That's the land, the international city that Andrew Young built brought the Olympics there, turned it into an international city and showed that capitalism can be a force for good. But it also is an unbanked city. It's got people left behind. Which again makes the case, by the way, that the issue is not today, primarily race. You have black wealth in Atlanta, you have black poverty in Atlanta. If race was everything, wouldn't everybody. If black folks were just targeting black folks, wouldn't Atlanta just make sure every black person was successful? But people have got to take advantage of the opportunities they have to have reasonably good parents, reasonably good access, reasonably good education. And so Atlanta is trying to upgrade its own software in real time while it's still succeeding. If race was the only issue, you wouldn't have the largest population of poverty in this country being poor whites, hello, all whites would be wealthy. You would not have a differentiation, as I've done in another podcast, between different black groups, Black Africans, black Caribbeans, Black Americans. It would just be. Everybody would be the same net worth or same situation. But culture is different. Do you know by the way, that the racial word white is a made up word? I want to get to the podcast and my promised time period, so I can't spend a lot of time on this. Maybe I'll double back if I've got a couple of minutes on the back end. But this is something I really need you to understand. We fight race, race, race. This is a game. Before the 1600s in America, before this war was introduced in Virginia and in Maryland by the planters and those who own plantations and the traders, this was introduced by them, this racial word, white. Before that, the distinctions were, you were English, you were Irish, you were part of the royal class, you were a landowner, you were Christian, you were Catholic. It was a descriptor of class or religion or geographic identity. The racial word white happened because black and white indentured servants were getting along. And it all percolated with, I think it was called, I'm going to say this wrong. Baker's Rebellion is. It's. You can look it up. It was a rebellion in the 1600s. They ran away, blacks and whites together. They were caught and the overseers were like, boss, we got a problem. These blacks and whites are getting along. We cannot have a class riot. We're the class, so let's create racial distinction. So they told the whites, the poor whites, you're poor like you're. Sorry, you're white like us. And poor whites didn't say, yeah, but I'm poor. They didn't say that because they didn't have the education or experience or exposure. They accepted this rationale and they were given access to a little bit of land, the ability to own slaves, their former friends. And they were put. And their indentured servitude was limited to a couple years. Blacks were given indentured servitude for life. That was the beginning of slavery. And you had none of those rights. So there's your class distinction, right? So these friends became nemesis. To this day, this persists. Poor whites and poor blacks at each other's throat, looking, don't trust me on this. Do your own research. Literally, this has always been about money, power and position in the world. And somebody made this other stuff up and had us arguing over it and fighting over it. And now we're completely distracted by. Happened again in the 1960s, the white citizens Council, a big group of not so nice business people, quote, inspired the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and volante groups to go after blacks and creating again this poor white against poor black narrative. And the business people sort of faded back off in the background and handled their business, which was what they were all about in the first place. I'm just trying to promote good capitalism. And there was a lot of good capitalists out there who would love to join me, of all races, and some of them are already joining me. We're trying to expand that, deepen that and have that be the next movement, a movement for capitalism for good. So we are not starting from scratch. We're starting from history. This is where DEI stalled. But we don't have to forget dei. Throw it away. We stop fighting about it, stop arguing about it. Right? Diversity is your birthright and your strength and your hustle is your advantage. You've been doing so much with so little for so long, you can almost do anything with nothing. So here's the business plan for black America. Here's the pivot point. Okay? Now, again, you can argue over reparations if you want to. I don't. A camel's a horse designed by committee. You're going to have to get all these folks that you don't control to agree with you and vote and all that kind of stuff. And God bless those who want to pursue that. I don't think it's a viable approach right now. And even if you got reparations, it wouldn't be anything close to what's owed, which is literally somewhere between 24 trillion and 41 trillion. I think you'd get. Black America would get 300 billion, maybe 600 billion on a good day, over 20 years. I'm going to show you how. That's a small number in comparison to doing it for yourself. So wealth is not income. Here's the premise, right? Wealth is ownership. Income is like literally making a living. Okay, so the last reconstruction, access to jobs, education, whatever. The secondary reconstruction, the 60s civil rights movement, gave you access that gave you ability to cash a check. I want you to now talk about owning the check casher. I don't mean that literally, but I want you to start talking about writing the check, not just cashing it. I want you to talk about not rocking the mic, but owning the mic and the theater and the stage. Wealth is not income. Wealth is ownership. You build wealth in your sleep. Make money during the day. You build wealth in your sleep. Thank you, Tony Rester, for telling me that, giving me that lesson early. My friend Tony Rester, who is a great businessman. The goal is to move black America from consumers to capitalists. It's not like we tried this and it failed. We've just never tried it. At scale for 2025-2030, I want to raise black credit scores by 100 points, giving you access to prime credit. Now, if we just do this, just raise credit scores, I know it doesn't sound sexy, but most great things are actually pretty boring, okay? Only in the dictionary does the word success come before the word work because it's alphabetical. So if you raise credit scores 100 points because the average credit score for African Americans is below 620, which means half of us are locked out of the free enterprise system when we get up in the morning. So we obsess about police brutality and all these other things which are really important, but no one's talking about the fact that half of black America can't get a decent loan on a car. You can't get a mortgage loan below 700 credit score. And. And I just told you, the average for us is 620. And you can't forget a small business loan. It's risky credit. I don't care how big good your idea is. There's no bearing on your idea. Your credit score is 580, 600. It's toe up from the flow, up 626 10. No one's going to give you prime credit. So you're going to get those who have the least pay the most. So you're going to get this terrible access to credit at rates that you cannot pay back. You're going to default. What do you see in our neighborhoods, by the way, check cashers, payday loan lenders, rental owned stores, title lenders, liquor stores, pawn shops, fast food restaurants and a church down the street so you don't go cray cray once a week. By the way, fast food restaurants. It's not a direct correlation, but I'm convinced that the drive throughs of the fast food restaurants are indirectly inspired by blacks being denied access to the front of the house. You had to go to the side, to the back to a window to get your food back in the 1960s and 1950s. The drive through, hello. I can't prove that. But who can deny that the correlation is too close for it to be just purely accidental. But here's something that is truthful. The whole 911 system, the whole paramedic system is black. Black folks couldn't go to hospitals and all that kind of stuff. So we created our own system. By the way, we can argue that Uber and Lyft were inspired by the black taxi system in the 60s because we couldn't get on the buses. So we created our own busing system with private cars driving around, transportation system they call the black car system so that we didn't have to ride on buses. That were racist. And that was the basis for Dr. King's first march. That's how he shut down the bus company, shut down their revenue bank, almost bankrupted them. That's when they said okay, okay, okay to Andrew Young. We went to go meet with 100 business leaders after a few weeks of marching. Marching should have a purpose, by the way. You don't just march, you don't just protest or boycott. It should have a purpose. And the purpose should be that everybody wins. So it's win win and you achieve something. Otherwise just an emotional outburst or whatever. So Dr. King would march for the purpose of shutting down the economy, for the purpose of showing economic strength, for the purpose of then cutting a deal to get black people access and benefits. And then. And he wanted to make sure that whites were not. That business people were not de dignified. So he would have Andrew Young go meet behind closed doors in a business suit with no media and cut a deal to take down the whites only signs. Did you know that? It was all economics. Okay, so. And he didn't want to even. My philosophy is talk without being offensive, listen without being defensive, and always leave even your adversary with their dignity because if you don't, they'll spend the rest of their life working to make you miserable. It becomes personal. Back to so paramedics and all that stuff was created by black people, by the way. Go do their research. It's pretty fascinating. The entire paramedics industry was inspired by and created by Black people. And 911 came from that, the emergency response system. So we are brilliant, right? We're doing so much with so little for so long. We can almost do anything with nothing. And when the rules are published and the playing field is level, we kill it. The arts, professional sports, faith, politics, we kill it. So I believe we can succeed here also. You just need the plan. So if you raise your credit scores by 100 points, if black people do that, right, from 620 to 720 over 20 years, we pop our wealth. $750 billion. 750 billion. What did I say is going to be the booby prize for reparations if you get it at some point, 300 billion to a maximum of 600 billion over 20 years. So that's begging the government to do a fraction of what they should do and which they probably will never do if history is an indication. But you just raise your credit score, which you have complete control over yourself. You beg anybody. Does it require a vote for Congress? It requires a vote from you. And you can work with Operation Hope and others who do this. This is what Operation Hope does. Raises credit scores, lowers debt, increases savings. So you can get the bank out of the no business back to the S business at scale. Why banking? Because you cannot revitalize a community without access to banking, to capital. And the people's capitalists, the people's venture capitalists, the people's private equity, the people's capital source is in general, banks are in general banks. But you got to get the banks to want to say yes to you. That's what we're teaching. That's what we're doing. That's why we have $4.5 billion in capital has flowed to underserved communities with the strategies I'm talking about. I'm not giving you wolf tickets. I'm telling you what we have done. It has worked. Everybody wins. So you get the credit score up. That's 750 billion of wealth creation, by the way. We do nothing. Black wealth will be 0 by 2053. That has nothing to do with the current political system. That was a statistic five years ago. If you then use prime credit to now access homeownership, which stands at 44% home ownership rate compared to 75% of our mainstream counterparts. And the number one way you build wealth in America is homeownership. Okay. The whole tax policy is designed around becoming a homeowner. I will do a podcast just on the process, start to finish of becoming a homeowner. Step by step. By the way, other things you want me to talk about on the podcast, leave me comments on social media when you see my posts. I read those comments often respond to them. So now you become a homeowner and if you just move from 44% to 62%, that's worth about $800 billion in wealth creation. So 750 billion credit score increase, 800 billion home ownership, that's about 1.5 trillion. I didn't mention the government yet. Right? Then there's another trillion available by buying business. Don't do startups. Very tough. I'm not saying not to do it. I'm saying there's an easier route with more of a return on investment. Go buy a business that does not have a plan to. There's no plan for that 65 year old person to give that business to their kids. The kids don't want them. The kids want the cash, the bonds, the stocks, the houses. They want to go party with daddy's money. They don't want to go start, they don't want to run daddy's business. It's too much work. So you can buy that business. It's successful, it's profitable, it has cash flows, it has real estate. It is the most popular plumbing business in that town. It is a franchise of dentists. I mean it is the most prominent dental office in that town or whatever that business is, architect, law firm, et cetera. Go buy it. It is an existing business and that's worth a trillion dollars. Artificial intelligence is another trillion dollars. I just described 2 1/2 to almost $4 trillion of wealth creation that is under your control. And you don't have to go talk to the government or anybody else or get a vote in Congress to do it. Somebody should talk to Congress. By the way, this is something Congress should be doing. But I'm just saying it's not what I'm doing. That's not my job. My job is to teach you how to do for yourself so you become a political force and you can go fund. By the way, politicians too, poor people don't have lobbyists. That's one of the problems that underserved communities don't have anybody vouching for them, promoting their interests. And you can solve that by doing what I'm talking now, which is to build wealth for yourself. So own Businesses via acquisition homes and investment portfolios. Leverage the 88 trillion, $100 trillion of wealth transfer that's coming because baby boomers are retiring all at the same time. I did a whole podcast just on that. Here are your key pillars. Financial literacy at scale. Go to. Operation Hope will provide scholarships of $1,000 over 12 months. So to teach you how to become a proper capitalist, no one taught you there's nothing wrong with you. It's what you don't know that you don't know, but you think you know. No one's ever tried to take black America and turn us into capitalists at scale. There's been a Tulsa experience. There's been this experience and that experience, but it's never been our experience in total. It's not like we tried it and it failed. We just never tried it. And I am trying to convince everybody to try it. It's like saying, why should I try God? Because God cannot possibly mismanage your life worse than you have. Give him a shot. Capitalism and democracy are horrible systems, except for every other system. And by the way, it's worked for everybody else. I joke sometimes and call it the black we need a black Jewish business plan. I'm joking, but I'm sort of serious. Because Jews were discriminated against for 6,000 years, didn't have a home, and they were scattered all around the world, and they couldn't own land. It was illegal. So they said, well, how can I control my economic destiny? Let me be financially literate and learn finance. And that allowed them to go buy land, businesses, and other things. And a very small group of people now have enormous power because they took control of their economic destinies. This is something that we should learn from. We shouldn't be jealous. We should be applauding them, we should be copying them. But capitalism generally has worked for everybody in this country to come up. Every ethnic group, and there are almost 200 of them in this country. The three groups that were left behind, poor whites, African Americans, Native American, Indians, and we, oddly enough, lack the same levers to empowerment again. Another podcast where I break that down. Homeownership and real estate. Stop renting. Start building equity. Banking relationships don't just do apps. I want you to create actual connections with relationship capital at these banks. Because banking is a trust business. And the word credit comes from the Latin word credito, which is credibility. It's a trust business. And capital comes from the Latin word capitas, which means the head. So it's knowledge in the head. So it has Nothing to do with money. They have to trust you. You have to have credibility and they've got to feel like you know what you're doing. Hello, financial literacy. And I've accessed a couple hundred. Just One loan was $200 million of non recourse capital for one of the businesses that I sold and recapitalized and doubled down with. I've now exited. I'm in the process of exiting that particular business after I sold it for over $100 million. But I was able to access non recourse capital with the power of what I built the assets underneath it in my name without having a person put a personal guarantee up. Now that's gangster in the most positive term of phrase is one of the largest access of capitals by a black entrepreneur in a decade. And we can do it. And it was a boring industry of real estate. It wasn't bet going public or something. Oh, that's a great thing by the way. That's very unique. Maybe only Bob Johnson and his wife could do that. What I'm telling you everybody can do. Use policy smartly but don't wait on it. So I do believe we need groundwater change. Groundwater effects. These policy changes are really, really, really important. I've made examples of how policy has been used against African Americans to come up in. Very hurtful, deceitful. Not even. They're not even hiding the ball. It's horrible. I'm just saying don't wait on it. This is a people powered plan. This is something you can do for yourself. I want you to have a new black manifest destiny. We can't rewrite history, but we can reroute our future. We can become history, become the future that you want to see in the world. And the change the economic arc bent against us now, it bends back to us and with us. And success for the country requires us is a beautiful saying. You can take no pleasure from the fact that there's a hole in my end of our boat. This country needs. It doesn't realize it yet, but this country, unless we want to speak Mandarin in 20 years, meaning that we want to give in to. Everybody wants to be an American. But Americans. There's these four countries that want to take us out. Iran, North Korea, Russia and China. The only real threat is China. And they can't win in a fair fight. They can only win if we shoot ourselves in the foot. We trip each other up. We end these little food fights against each other, American against American. I'm trying to get you out of that food fight. We Got to figure out whether we're better together. Like any good relationship is multiplication, not addition. Two plus two should equal six, eight, or ten. I think the answer to that is yes, and I think that we will come to that conclusion. Even the races win when black people succeed because the gdp, the economy, goes up. We're not. If you're not at the table, you're on the menu, right? So this is a call to action. I don't want to speak Mandarin in 20 years. I don't think my. I don't think even racists want to speak Mandarin in 20 years. I think they will hold their nose and say, I think I like black people, if they have to, in order to make sure that America is the light on the hill. So the call to action. And then they may realize they actually like black people. After hanging around and eating our food and listening to our jokes and feeling our warmth, they're like, you know, I hate to admit it, but I really like you guys. I'm sorry for being so hateful for so long. And we'll forgive them because we're loving, forgiving people. Lead judgment to God. Here's a call to action. Pick up this business plan. Share it. Live it. Be it. This is John o'. Brien. This is Money and Wealth. This podcast was the economic arc of Black America from 1619 to now and the road forward 400 years in 40 minutes. It was a little over 40 minutes, but I think you got the point. You can do it in a walk. Share this with your people you love, pass this around, print out that business plan, live it, and tell me how you're doing. This is John o'. Brien. Go get my book, Financial Literacy for all. Get your scholarship for coaching counseling from operation hope for $1,000. Get your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up, so the bank can say yes to prime credit to you, and you have the dignity of ownership. And by the way, get your artificial intelligence knowledge. That's another way that will level the playing field of everybody. Because 99% of white folks don't know anything about AI, and 99% of black folks don't know anything about AI either, other than it's coming. So everything's changing at the same time. Be the change you want to see in the world. Get the book. Tell your friends about the podcast. Go to Operation Hope, and let's be the change we want to see in the world. This is our time, and we need each other. John o', Brien, I'm out. See you at the finish line. Money and wealth with John o' Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
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