By Emily Flitter, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, Marketplace, October 25, 2022
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Wall Street’s biggest banks pledged billions of dollars to address the racial wealth gap. But what often went unrecognized was the role these financial institutions have played in perpetuating wealth disparities.
That’s the subject of New York Times reporter Emily Flitter’s new book, “The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America.” In it, she draws on her own reporting to explain how Black Americans have been kept out of the financial system.
“From the way Black bank customers are treated when they walk into a bank, to the way they are looked at by algorithms that are assessing their creditworthiness, to the way Black employees are treated on Wall Street,” Flitter said, “it’s a lot of different inputs that all add up to the continuing inability for Black Americans to build and preserve wealth.”
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