Last year, Like a lot of black Americans, I started thinking more about our collective history in America in my own place in 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 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 in 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 onto it, or like my family failed to hold onto 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 of the population, they hold just three of all the wealth. I'm Jackie Simmons and I'm Rebecca Greenfield. Starting on March eleven, we'll be diving into how the 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 gonna get any any money, and you won't be farming very long. I told him I didn't. I didn't know what Jesus Christ nor God look like. I said, But he can't look like you and what might start to close up. 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 podcast. We'll see you on March eleven. H