The Racial Wealth Gap

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Thursday, February 29, 2024 12:00 pm

The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist.’ What’s the difference?
One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’

Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

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The Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights presents Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary, a podcast from the lecture series and associated course presenting preeminent scholars, thought leaders, and public intellectuals to guide our community through topics necessary to an understanding of systemic racism and racial justice. The series is self-consciously an entry point, designed to provide intellectual and moral building blocks to begin the transformative work of anti-racism in our students, on our campus, and in our broader communities.

Join the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights as Mehrsa Baradaran, professor of law at the University of California Irvine, explores the racial wealth gap. Professor Baradaran writes about banking law, financial inclusion, and inequality. Her scholarship includes The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, which was awarded the Best Book of the Year by the Urban Affairs Association.

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Meet the Speaker: Mehrsa Baradaran

Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at the University of California at Irvine Law.

Previously, she was the Robert Cotten Alston Chair in Corporate Law and Associate Dean for strategic initiatives with a focus on diversity and inclusion efforts and national and international faculty scholarship recognition at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Baradaran writes about banking law, financial inclusion, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. Her scholarship includes the books How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, both published by the Harvard University Press. The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap was awarded the Best Book of the Year by the Urban Affairs Association, the PROSE Award Honorable Mention in the Business, Finance & Management category. Baradaran was also selected as a finalist at the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Awards for the book in the category of history/biography.

Baradaran has also published articles including “Jim Crow Credit” in the Irvine Law Review, “Regulation by Hypothetical” in the Vanderbilt Law Review, “It’s Time for Postal Banking” in the Harvard Law Review Forum, “Banking and the Social Contract” in the Notre Dame Law Review, “How the Poor Got Cut Out of Banking” in the Emory Law Journal, “Reconsidering the Separation of Banking and Commerce” in the George Washington Law Review and “The ILC and the Reconstruction of U.S. Banking” in the SMU Law Review. Of note, her article “The New Deal with Black America” was selected for presentation at the 2017 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

Baradaran and her books have received significant national and international media coverage and have been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, American Banker, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times; on National Public Radio’s “Marketplace,” C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” and Public Broadcasting Service’s “NewsHour;” and as part of TEDxUGA. She has advised U.S. Senators and Congressmen on policy, testified before the U.S. Congress, and spoken at national and international forums like the U.S. Treasury and the World Bank.

She earned her bachelor’s degree cum laude from Brigham Young University and her law degree cum laude from NYU, where she served as a member of the New York University Law Review.

Recommended Resources

Mehrsa Baradaran recommends the following if you would like to learn more:

Book: The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

Book: The Soul of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois

Book: Beloved, Toni Morrison

For more resources from Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary, please visit their Hesburgh Library Guide.