Odd Lots - Coming Soon: The Pay Check Season 3

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

More than 150 years after the end of slavery in the U.S., the net worth of a typical white family is nearly six times greater than that of the average Black family. Season 3 of The Pay Check digs into into how we got to where we are today and what can be done to narrow the yawning racial wealth gap in the U.S.Jackie Simmons and Rebecca Greenfield co-host the season, which kicks off with a personal story about land Jackie's family acquired some time after slavery that they're on the verge of losing. From there the series explores all the ways the wealth gaps manifests and the radical solutions, like affirmative action, quotas, and reparations, that can potentially lead to greater equality.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanks for listening to Odd Lots. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes or just ask, Alexa, play the Odd Lots podcast on Amazon Music. Last year, like a lot of black Americans, I started thinking more about our collective history in America and my own place than it. My family had a plot of land in East Texas near a town called Mount Pleasant. I grew up in Arizona, and as far as I was concerned, Texas was another planet. Big hats, rodeos, that showed Dallas. We drove through Mount Pleasant once, but I don't remember much. As I got older, my dad would call and talk about the Texas property. He'd daydream about all the ways that might one day give him a financial cushion.

How would buy a better life for him and my brother, who has a disability, how there might be oil on the land or some kind of rare timber. And if I'm being honest, he planted some of those thoughts in my head too. Then came the pandemic and George Floyd, and I started thinking more about inequality in America, and because I'm a business journalist, the racial wealth gap. I started digging into my past and Texas. I learned that the land would never be our ticket to prosperity. It was gone.

When I found out why, I realized my family's story isn't much different from other black Americans. I started wondering, how did other black people build wealth in America? and how did they hold on to it? Or, like my family, failed to hold on to it. That's what we'll be exploring on this season of the paycheck, the racial wealth gap. The U.S. is the richest nation in the world and has been for a long time. But while black people make up around 13% of the population,

they hold just 3% of all the wealth. I'm Jackie Simmons. And I'm Rebecca Greenfield. Starting on March 11th, we'll be diving into how the race racial wealth gap came to be. He was deeply, deeply racist. He couldn't have cared less about the fate of the former slaves. And he restored white supremacy as quickly as he could.

What it looks like now. He was the next thing to God in this county. He controlled all the bank boards. And he said, nobody lends more money in this county than I do. And if you don't learn how to speak to me, you're not going to get any money. And you won't be farming very long. I told him, I didn't know. would Jesus Christ nor God look like.

I said, but it can't look like you. And what might start to close it? It is a way to repair egregious injury and crimes against humanity against the black community. Yes, it is reparations. Let's not call it anything else to make you feel better. Subscribe to the paycheck on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you on March 11th. The news doesn't stop on the weekends.

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