Bad Capitalism: The Economics of American Slavery

In this episode, John explains slavery from a financial perspective. There's good capitalism and there's bad capitalism. This is a breakdown of bad capitalism by the numbers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaks to the Plannet.

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Speaker 1 (00:45):
Welcome The Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, this
is John O'Briant and this is the Money and Wealth
Podcast series, Season two. I'm John O'Brien, entrepreneur, and as

(01:07):
my t shirt says, built by Failure, I'm an entrepreneur
and a builder of businesses and hopefully a contributor in
a building and a Build review. This is a unique
episode in this series, and I need to ask your
assistance what do I mean by that. I'm going to
get into a deep topic, the economics of American slavery,

(01:32):
bad capitalism by the numbers. I tell everybody I'm a capitalist, right,
black capitalist matter. I'm the people's capitalists. Some people on
Wall Street and in corporate America con consider me or
they've called me a conscious on capitalism, which I consider
a great compliment. But there's good capitalism and there's bad capitalism.

(01:55):
And I try to teach you good capitalism in my
book Financial Literacy for All, which is now technically a
factually a bestseller for one year, number one bestseller in
business finance. I guess maybe the first time in Africa,
American has ever been a number one bestseller in business
finance for a full year in America. But that book

(02:16):
is now in the record books, and this podcast and
the work of Operation Hope, I'm trying to teach you
how this game works, and I'm trying to teach you
the basics that the tenants the framework for good capitalism,
and the good capitalism is where I benefit and you
benefit more. Bad capitalism is where I benefit and you

(02:36):
pay a price for it. Slavery is an example of
bad capitalism. Pimpin and prostitution is an example of bad capitalism.
Robin and murder and Mayhem are examples of bad capitalism.
We can go on and on and on about examples
of you know, folks, separating you from your wallet in
Wall Street during the mortgage crisis was an example of

(02:57):
bad capitalism, whether it's Main Street or your street. I
can give you many examples of bad capitalism. I want
you to do me a favor on this particular example,
and that is to not get emotional. I need you
to not get angry. I need you to not act

(03:19):
on what I'm saying. It's important that we heal as
a nation. One of my books I'm going to write
my next book, it's probably gonna be inclusive capitalism. Inclusive economics,
which i've sort of is a framework I've sort of
helped a pioneer in the country and the next book
will be The Bridging of an Unhealed America. One of

(03:42):
the ways I live is to talk without being offensive,
to listen without being defensive, and to leave all and
always to 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. And one
of the problems with this country is we've never healed
from our pain, from our trauma. Ever, those who perpetrated

(04:06):
against us never healed, and those who were the victims
certainly have never healed. That's why I think there's rampant
undiagnosed depression that affects self esteem. But in order for
me to unpack this and for you to understand how
the system works, and how to thus take the mystery

(04:28):
out of why you may or may not be successful
and as a group, why people have not been successful,
and as a country, why this country has been both
successful and unsuccessful, and what it takes for us to
then be successful in the future, which is really what
this is about, which is a new framework for how
we go forward. I've ridden business plans for America. I've
tied it to doctor King's fifty seventh anniversary memorial of

(04:52):
his assassination April fourth, at nineteen sixty eight. That date
is when he was assassinated at six pm Central time.
We have an event called Dream Forward with Doctor Bernie's
King and Ambassador Young, myself and Mayor Memphis Mayor Paul Young,
framing the future with Republicans and Democrats and blacks and

(05:12):
whites and rich and poor, insertive and liberal and rural
and urban people working together. So this is not a
blame game people who are a lot. As a friend
of mine told me, it's actually told Ambassador Young, I
was with him. It's not your fault that I that
I was born white and I may have a history
in my family of you know, of slave ownership. That's

(05:38):
not my fault. It's not your fault that you're born
black and born you know, poor, whatever or whatever your
situation is. In other words, but it's our responsibility now
to heal the bridge to each other to figure out
how we go forward together. Okay, enough of the speeches.
Let me get into why you're in this podcast. So
it's very important to me that you don't leave this

(05:58):
podcast and start your fists in the air. And all
this kind of stuff and being angry. What every decision
you make emotionally is going to be a bad decision, right,
So I want you to be I want you to
be to this to give you peace. I want to
I want this to give you solace. I want this
to give you understanding of how you got here. Okay,

(06:18):
there's nothing wrong with you. You're not dumb and you're
not stupid. It is what you don't know that you
don't know that's killing you. But you think you know
that's the worst situation. And you've been bambooso that Malcolm
X says, you've been bamboozled, you've been tricked, you've been fooled,
you've been hoodwinked. And so, whether you're black and brown,
or you're after American specifically, and you are listening to

(06:39):
this or watching this and you now know what happened
to you, or whether you're white listening or watching this
and now understand what happened through you or as a
result of your descendants. Uh, I don't want you feel
in a certain kind of way. I'm not trying a

(07:01):
guilt trip here, that's not the point. And I certainly
don't want people to go on a rant about stuff
they cannot control. One of the things that I cover
in the Business Plan for America, specifically the African American Plan,
that even if you got what you wanted, even if
you got what you want, you may not want what
you got. Again, I'm not going to get into that
right now, do that in a separate podcast. But Black

(07:23):
people have been reliant upon the government for way too long.
I mean, it was required, it was a necessary situation
after the Slavery. Clearly, it was necessary during the Civil
rights movement, reconstruction in the civil rights movement. Clearly we
needed the right to vote, you needed the right for access.
It was separate and unequal facilities. It was literally a

(07:44):
white water fountain and a black water founain. This is
you know, in our lifetime and our parents' lifetime, and
so you needed the government for that, and for some
time after that, you needed the government firmative action, which
ultimately benefited white women by the way, all good, but
it was designed for black So that was the set DCE. Okay,
but we've probably overstayed our welcome. As with the government

(08:05):
is the primary funder of our lives. And even as
you'll see in the graphic issue in the Business Plan
for America, even to the government does everything in its power,
even if it decided to be benevolent, and even if
it decided to give you, you know, support of all kinds,
including welfare, maybe established reparations, whatever. That's only equal to
is estimated between three hundred billion and six hundred billion dollars.

(08:28):
And if you unleashed the free enterprise system, which I
keep talking about, raising credit scores alone is worth seven
hundred and fifty billion dollars. Hello, one hundred and fifty
billion more than the government's assistance, and home ownership is
worth eight hundred billion. And buying some of these businesses
that are transferring from baby boomers that are profitable's worth
a trillion. And that has even got to the power

(08:50):
of artificial intelligence, which is worth another almost trillion. So
let's focus on how we repair the breach in our lifetime,
do what we can to move forward. But let's start
with the history and understand the numbers. So if you
are watching, listening, or watching this with family and friends,
you want somebody to go back and listen to that,

(09:10):
You want to go back and listen to it again.
You're a limited time, or you want other friends to
watch or listen to this either through the podcast, and
I encourage all your friends to subscribe to this podcast.
Is when as one of the top five percent podcasts.
By the way, in the country. I'm now told not
it just a diehard or black effect in the country,
which is fantastic. Thank you. You can go to minute nine.
Okay if you want them to, just cut to the chase. Okay,

(09:34):
So here's the numbers. Me start with the numbers. Then
I'm gonna give you I'm gonna unpack the history. So
number number one, there are eight numbers you should know.
Forty two trillion. This is the estimated value of stolen
labor from enslaved Africans in today's dollars. Enslaved Africans contributed

(09:57):
more than two hundred and twenty two million hours of
forced labor over centuries. Modern economists estimate the economic value
at forty two trillion dollars, showcasing the generational theft of wealth.
Now there's no emotions when I just said, I'm just

(10:19):
giving you the numbers. Right. I like math because it
doesn't have an opinion. Okay, number two four million. Here's
a second number. You should know the number of enslaved
people in the United States by eighteen sixty. This included
my grand my second great grandmother, and my second great grandfather,
who I might unpack their stories in the course of

(10:39):
this podcast. Mary Scott, my second great grandmother, Well to
start with the elders, and George Young born in the
eighteen thirties, who was enslaved. My second great grandfather on
my dad's side, Johnny will Smith, who ultimately became one
of the seven thousand officers in Abraham Lincoln's Black groups,

(11:00):
amongst his black troops that were fighting for a liberation
tied to the Emancipation Proclamation, which was behind enemy lines.
So that's where I got my freedom fighting bones from.
I guess my social justice bones from. And this is
on my dad's side. And so George Young was a
freedom fighter and then my grandfather RB Smith. I put

(11:22):
this in my book. I believe the memo or from nothing.
He was a sharecropper. My dad was a business owner,
and I'm an entrepreneur. On my mother's side, Mary Scott,
my second great grandmother on my mother's side, when Nita
Smith got rest their souls, my mama and my dad,
Mary Scott was born in the eighteen forties. She was
also enslaved. She was in Mississippi. I think yeah. George

(11:45):
was also in Mississippi also, but he served in the military
and Memphis and the sea protecting Memphis, same city where
doctor King was asassinated by the way, and with Mary Scott.
She was born into slavery and in her later elderly
years in them which before she passed on the glory,
she had owned a home actually scape, of course, escaped
slavery and ultimately own a home, had a border, a

(12:10):
renter who lived with her, and she had a home
with no mortgage on. It isn't that interesting? And to
fast forward that story, my grandmother had a shotgun shock
Vester Murray, Vester Murray and East Saint Louis. My mother
ended up buying and selling seven homes, and I ended

(12:30):
up owning seven hundred homes, becoming the largest owner of
single foller rental homes in America by a person who
happened to be a minority. Not that transition. So if
I can do it up from nothing, you can do it.

(12:57):
Four million is the number two number is the number
of enslaved people in the US by eighteen sixty, is
represented nearly thirteen percent of the total population in eighteen sixty,
worth more in total value than all the factories in
railroads in America at the time. Think about that number.

(13:17):
Three three billion. This is the total market value of
enslaved people in eighteen sixty dollars, equivalent to over one
hundred billion in today's money. Human beings were the single
largest financial asset in the US before the Civil War. Again,
I'm going to get into this here in a minute,
but these numbers are absolutely clarifying, of course as shocking,

(13:42):
but this is real like this, there's no flavor put
on this. This is just the facts. Human beings were
the single largest financial asset in the US before the
Civil War, specifically African human beings. I'm gonna tell you why.
It's not for the reasons that you may think it was.
Isn't cruelty or or somebody had had had had animus

(14:04):
against you, they hated black people, had nothing to do
with that. In fact, and I may do this in
a separate podcast, I run out of time. I think
on this one. The word white is a made up word.
The racial word white is a made up word. That's right,
that black and whites were both indigenous servants, poor blacks

(14:25):
and whites and got along together. So and this concept
of black people being dumb and stupid, I'm going to
unpack that in this podcast today. That's also incorrect. In fact,
it is the opposite is true. So enslave people, black

(14:48):
and slave people, because white and digous digit servants were
ultimately released from their bondage. We're the biggest asset in
American history before the Civil War. The fourth number you
should know is sixty percent U sixty percent of all
US exports. This is the percentage of US exports generated
by cotton. In eighteen sixty, cotton was called King cotton

(15:12):
for a reason. Slavery powered cotton production was the backbone
of the US economy. The global textile industry depended heavily
on American cotton grown by enslave labor. In fact, one
of the first millionaires in America was a financier in

(15:33):
the import export business in New York City. So way
a long ways from cotton from cotton picking fields right
in the South, but he was part of the chain
of economic activity that got this stuff converted and transported
in finance, then transported to foreign courts, and he became

(15:53):
a millionaire as a result of that activity. Wasn't the
first millionaire, but it was one of the first. And
he again is a result of King Cotton zero, the
result of slavery number five, two hundred and fifty years.
This is the length of time that slavery existed in
America from sixteen nineteen Jamestown, Virginia in eighteen sixty five.

(16:16):
The Freedman's Bank, which I love to reference as you
buy or may and may I know I'm responsible me
and operational responsible for the renaming inspiring the renaming of
the Freedman's Bank building at the Treasury Annets in Washington,
d c. Across from the White House, where I was
at the Noahs at the White House, at the tresident
the Treasury Department this week meeting with the Secretary of
the Treasury. It Scott Besset. I want to say Bessett

(16:38):
because it's French, but it's Gott Bessett, that's what he
says it. And actually Secretary the Treasury and I got
to work on financial literacy issues together, so we found
some common ground. And so that building is across the street.
He's a good man I've known him for a decade,
and so I think I can work with him on
this topic on a bipartisan basis. Across the street is
a Freeman's Bank building that was charted in eighteen sixty five.

(17:02):
Frederick Douglas tried to run it. It's another story for
the other time. So that's ten generations length of flavor,
eighteen sixty nineteen eighty sixty five. Right, that's ten generations
a people born, lived and died in bondage. Ten generations
without pay rights or economic opportunity. Now you're starting to

(17:23):
see why I gave it a preamble. Don't get upset
when you're listening to this podcast. I want you to
be educated. Step over mess and not in it. Don't
rearrange the deck chairs and the Titanic. Don't rearrange the
Titanic and the ship is sinking. Right, you're picking drapes, right.
I want you to. I want you to. I want
you to win the war and not just the battle.
Don't get angry, get even right, win succeed Number number

(17:46):
six zero. These are the wages paid to enslave people
while landowners accumulate inter generational wealth. Black families accumulated generational debt, exclusion,
and of course Trump and I keep saying that I
think that today African Americans are traumatized. I think that
we have generational low self esteem, generational depression. It just

(18:09):
like seeps into our situation. Is different from African Caribbeans
and African Africans, is a different vibe. Like African Americans
have high This is my I observe life. I'm very nosy.
I observe life, and I've learned that deserve that. African
Americans have very high confidence because they're incredibly competent. They
master the game of arts, master, the game of sports, mastered,

(18:30):
the game of public policy, master, the game of church,
which was the first real leaders in the Black community
in spite of all this slavery and all this other stuff.
They were incredibly confident because we're incredibly competent. If you're
black in America, you'll be twice as smart, twice as intelligent,
twice as well, address gipt twice as early, see twice
as late, be twice as good at whatever your job is,

(18:51):
or you won't have it. But we have low self
esteem because if I don't like me, I'm not gonna
like you, but I don't feel good about me. I'm
not going to feel good about you. Don't respect me,
don't expect me or respect you. If I don't love me,
I don't have a clue how to love you. And
if I don't have a purpose in my life, I'll
make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around comes around.
There's a difference between being broken being poor. Being broken
is economic. Being poor is a disabling frame of mind,

(19:14):
a depressed condition of our spirit, and we must vow
never ever ever to be poor again. But I think
that this experience beat the self esteem out of us
because they had to have us to sort of cooperate,
so they didn't want a bunch of folks, you know,
you know, rolling around with high confidence and talking back
and all that stuff that didn't work, so they had
to beat the self steam out of us. I'm going

(19:36):
to get into how that happened. At the moment I
might get into it. I need to get out of
these numbers and get into the story because I get
so wrapped up in this. The forty five minutes can
go like that, and I want to get you get
this lesson in your head so you can tell me
in comments when I as you're listening to this, whether
there's something you want me to go deeper in, and
I'll I'll do a part too, and i will go deeper.

(19:58):
But I'm trying to give you the high notes here.
And that is a very important distinction that Black Americans
have tend to have. There's exceptions every rule, but high
self esteem so or high confidence and lower levels of
self esteem. And Africans from Africa recent arrivals, arrivals in

(20:19):
this country, immigrants and African Caribbeans tend to have higher
levels of self esteem. They have intac families. They see
you know, lawyers, doctors, bankers, prime ministers, robbers, criminals, everybody
looks black for where they came from, and there was resents.
They have intact families. So they have higher self esteem
but lower levels of confidence because they didn't succeed in

(20:42):
the market. One of the biggest market economies in the world,
the United States of America. And to show you that
blacks can do anything. I mean, if we say something's cool,
as in we make culture cool, period, and we say
something's cool, it's cool in Tibet, it's cool in North Korea,
it's cool in China, it's cool anywhere in the world.
If we say it's cool, and we say something is

(21:03):
dull and dunce and backwards, it is dumb, dull and
duns and backwards anywhere in the world. Chae and I
were just in Singapore and Indonesia, and they're playing black
music all the way over there. Sometimes there was language
of barriers, but that was not with the music and
with the culture. So we can do anything right, but

(21:25):
we were held back. Number seven one in four. Number
six was zero, Okay, families in the US in the
US South who owned slaves by eighteen sixty one in
four families. This concentration of wealth and power the hands
of a wide elite laid the groundwork for the racial

(21:45):
wealth gap that persists today. One in four families in
the South owned slaves. Number eight forty eight res in
a mule a broken promise. General Sherman Special Field Action
fifteen briefly promised land reaches. This was signed in Savannah, Georgia,
not very far from where I'm at now in the

(22:06):
American South after the Civil War. It was signed in
the presence of twenty Black ministers or twenty black ministers
farmer slave people who are asked what do you want
after slavery. They didn't ask for welfare, they didn't ask
for a handout. They asked for land. They wanted to
do for themselves. And General Sherman, Secretary of State Sherman
or General Sherman on behalf of Lincoln authorized food actually

(22:30):
fifteen to provide forty acres to every to eighteen thousand
families who were fighting the good fight. This would have
technically this has been my second great grandfather who would
have qualified. Also, this was forty acres, four hundred thousand
acres give or take in total, for eighteen thousand black families.

(22:53):
And that sounds like a lot when you can but
you compare that to the Homestead Act which was passed
in eighteenth sixty two during the war, and that was
for two hundred and seventy million acres. This looks like
the math is forty acres time eighteen thousand families, about
seven and twenty thousand acres you give or take, okay,

(23:15):
And that was reverted. That was taken from blacks the
year or two after it was awarded when Lincoln was assassinated.
But in eighteen sixty two, which were years before this beca.
This was eighteen sixty five. We had the Homestead Act
that applied nationwide, not just in the in the South.
It was two hundred and seventy million acres ultimately to

(23:36):
one point, I think it was one point nine million
plots given to families. That accounts for ten percent of
all land today. And the government created like agricultural support
networks of called the Firmative Action of workers from the
federal government whose job it was to teach these new
farmers who happened to be ninety nine percent white, by

(23:57):
the way, ninety nine percent in chain because there's only
six thousand plots of land given to blacks out of
one point nine million plots helo, these were bigger plots
of land, by the way, I think it was one
hundred and sixty acres on average. So there are people
who were actually their job was to teach these new
white farmers how to become successful. There you go. Called

(24:18):
it a frot action, call it whatever you want. That's
just a fact. So it was a broken promise. It
was revoked by the President Andrew Johnson. Real chump, destroying
the opportunity for formerly enslaved people to build wealth. Okay,
So I'm going to come back maybe to how that

(24:40):
created a generational wealth gap, because I want to get
into the bad capitalism and economics of slavery and where
this came from. So let's now go into non emotionally,
the start Africans as assets so full first perception Africa

(25:04):
wasn't was somehow full of primitive people. They were unskilled,
they were stupid, and white people went there, I guess,
I don't know because they hated black people. This is
just silly, right, just to make any sense, the soil,
the crops of that day were you know, tobacco and cotton,
et cetera. These crops were in land that was hard

(25:30):
to farm, and poor white European and dentured servants brought
over from England mostly I think at that time did
not want to do this work, could not do the work.
They fell out and they had no talent for how
to turn this dead soil in the south into's something
that would produce a profitable crop. Well, where do you
have people who understand how to take dead soil and

(25:52):
bring into life? Hmm, let me think about this Africa.
Because Africa is well hot, often humid, so these agricultural geniuses.
That's what they were, agricultural geniuses. They weren't primitive people.
They were skilled agriculturists. They were metal workers, they were builders,

(26:13):
and they were traders. These people were stolen not just
for labor, but for their knowledge and expertise in land cultivation,
economic rationale, and slave Africans were considered prime labor assets
for building the American economy, particularly in the South. Slavery
wasn't random, it was a targeted accet extraction, and they

(26:37):
brought slaves here, many of them lost in the Middle
passage those that got here. And I don't want to
get too far in the story because this is part
of another podcast I'll do separate from this to break
down how race is in this example was made up
and was a farce and was really hiding the ball

(27:00):
and position in the world and got poor whites and
poor blacks to fight with each other from then to now.
And I was all distracted on this alternate topic which
racism is real, but it's really about power, money and
position in the world and it always has been. But
just to underscore this point, here, blacks and whites in

(27:28):
early sixteen hundreds in Jane Towns Virginia were friends and
they ran away together. And you know there's bakers are
rebellion if you want to go study that. Okay, So
that put that aside for a moment. Okay. So this
whole concept that blacks and whites were enemies, our only
blacks were enslaved. Enslaved came after indigenous servitude. By the way,

(27:50):
that's just wrong. But let me jump over that get
to the meat of this matter. So you had these big,
burly black men who came over here and with a
lot of self esteem. They were tribesmen, they were there,
they were they were leaders, or they were in manicates,
part of royal families. They were really highly skilled and
knowledgeable and high high self esteem, and they were protecting

(28:11):
their family. Well, how do you break that up? You
take the kids and you separate them, and you sell
them and move them in different directions. Now you're losing hope,
and you hold down the wife maybe and you abuse her.
I'm trying. I'm not to trigger you. I'm trying to
you understand. Until the man who's burly as you hold
him down, can't protect her and at some point he
gives up. That's what they wanted. They wanted to basically

(28:34):
a human Roboty. Now, let me so I got over
that cruelty part. I want to go any more to
that because it's disgusting, this horrible, But I'm trying to
get you understand how they got control over a group
of people. Really they were outnumbered, and how that broke
their spirits. Where not human beings having a spiritual spirits,
were spiritual beings having and human experience. And by the way,
it wasn't just white Europeans that were doing this. How

(28:57):
do you get blacks off of the coat? How do
you get blacks on the coast of Africa? Okay, I
really want if you had to talk, get emotional about this,
get emotional fairly. There were black African slave traders where
they were originally slave traders. They were tribesmen that were
taking other tribesmen as as tribes women as prizes of warfare,

(29:22):
and they would take them in and they would trade them.
And you had Indian traders as in from India, you
had Arab traders, slave traders. You had European slave traders.
Europeans just perfected this art, disgusting art, but everybody was
involved with it, including some black Africans. Now did they

(29:46):
know they were selling their brothers and sisters off into
American slavery? Of course, now they didn't even know what
was beyond the coast. But in order to get somebody
from the middle of Africa to the coast you had
white folks would have got decimated going in that situation,
you need a cooperation from folks who are indigenous. So
let's knock it off on everybody's this and somebody is that.

(30:09):
You know, there's just good capitalism and bad capitalism. There's
good people and there's bad people, and there's bumps everywhere.
So that was at minute thirty twenty nine in twenty
eight twenty nine. If you want to have somebody go
just to that topic of was it just white Europeans
and the answers no, okay, So now let's talk about

(30:36):
slavery as a business model. And slave people were bought, sold, traded, mortgaged, insured,
just like property. Yes, that's accurate. I'll say it again.
And slave people were bought, sold, traded, mortgaged, insured, just

(30:57):
like property. That's why I like owning property. Now property
used to own me. I used to be owned. My
descendants were owned property. Now I own property right and
we set the family sits on forty acres in a
sprinter van. We have forty acres here in Georgia, a
few minutes from the Busiess airport in the world. I

(31:17):
just absolutely love it. In this land we sit on,
I'm told was a slave plantation, either this particular land
or land all around here. I'm still researching it, but
in that cool full circle, and I'm not mad about it.
I don't have to get mad. I just hit you
my merri Express card and like and knock you out,
just over messing, not in it. So banks, insurance companies

(31:41):
that meant that. Banks that any bank that's over one
hundred and fifty years old, certainly one hundred and eighty
year old bank institution had slaves on their books. I'll
come back to that from in a minute. Banks, insurance
companies and even Wall Street firms built wealth from slave
back to ass In fact, here's the one for you.

(32:02):
Wall Street was actually started in Alabama. That's right, Wall
Street firms, And I wants trying to name it names.
I want you to go picking in people, But there
are Wall Street firms that are still to this day,
you know, around that were founded trading crops and other things.

(32:26):
They weren't directly involved in slave trade, but they were
benefiting from it, and they were It's where the money was.
What was the wealthiest city in eighteen forty not just Mississippi,
the rest of the world. The wealthiest city per capital
in the world in eighteen forty ish, was not just Mississippi.
You can't make this stuff up. Now. The poorest city
or one of them in the whole country and maybe

(32:47):
the world based on the developed country sort of matrix,
is not just Mississippi because they had a bad business
plan built on racism and bad capitalism, and whatever it
goes around comes around. So if a bank is very old,
they would find have financed the plantation. That plantation would
have had land and livestock and buildings and assets to

(33:13):
put up as collateral for alone, you know, receivables, and
they would have had slaves, and those slaves would have
been put on the books as collateral at the bank.
Don't get mad at the bank today. The people at
the bank today didn't do it as like you say, Okay,
that's like getting mad at your wife because you find

(33:34):
out or your husband. You can find out that their
relative or getting right at your cousin because you find
out their fifth grandfather or whatever was, you know, a
rapist or something. They have nothing to do with it.
The math average prices of an enslaved person in the
eighteen hundreds was five hundred dollars to fifteen hundred dollars.

(33:54):
This is equal to fifteen thousand. Again, I'm telling you
this was not These were not dumb people. These were
not people who are who lacked value. These were people
who were very valuable. This equated to fifteen thousand to
fifty thousand dollars today per slave. That's why when and
then we have time, we don't have time for this.
But Lincoln experimented for a time with in Washington, d c.

(34:19):
Of all places, of compensating slaveholders for stopping slavery, and
he actually gave them, we can give somebody too much
fodder here to go, you know, going on some rampage
for rapper reparations. They gave them reparations, they gave they
repaired the damage to their economics in Washington, d C.

(34:42):
I forget how much I think it was about I
think it was like six thousand slaves that were part
of this transaction. But if somebody wants to make a
case for reparations, it's already been done. It was done
to reimburse white slave holders. But I don't think that
for reasons I'm get to it in a minute, I
don't think that's a very valuable use of your time today.

(35:04):
If you're trying to move forward in your agenda, if
some if if you're an academic, or you're a policy
holder or not a policy if you're a policy maker there,
if you're a civil rights leader, if you're an activist,
this might be your lifelong thing. And if that's your thing,
I you know, I respect that we need people doing
all kinds of social justice work today that you know.

(35:25):
I prefer to equip you to repair the breach by
moving forward in one generation than other things. But that's
just my approach. But one thing is for sure. We
were not dummies, and we were not in We didn't
lack value. The estimated total value of enslaved people in
eighteen sixty three point five to four billion dollars, that's

(35:47):
over one hundred billion dollars today. At one point, the
slaved Africans were the single largest financial asset in America,
more than the value of railroads more than factories, more
than all land in the South. Part three. Okay, slavery

(36:08):
fueled the entire American economy, the industrial This is the
industries that profited the industrialization of America, a pre industrial revolution,
this agricultural revolution. Cotton fifty percent of the US exports
in eighteen sixty, made possible entirely by slave labor. Textiles

(36:30):
in the North and in England ran on southern cotton.
Imagine everything you wear today that you know has cotton
in it. Most things that you wear have cotton in it.
That the legacy of that is us all around the world.
And the cotton gin in Liix that was created and

(36:50):
positioned in places like Naxi's Mississippi because slavery was dying.
That technology fueled the growth. The regrowth of slavery re
energized slave holders and the slave trade, and slavery took
off because of technology, the cotton gen being in particular
piece of that technology. Shipping, banking, insurance, and railroads all

(37:13):
grew thanks to slavery's capital base. Wall Street's role. Many
early investment banks collateralized in slave people as part of
financial instruments. Ok The economy wasn't just built on slave labory.
It was built on the valuation of black lives as
financial capital. Okay, so it was not just the labor itself,

(37:34):
the free labor. It was the black's ass and asset themselves.
You were not a person, You were an asset intergenerational consequences.
While America got wealthy, black Americans were left with nothing,
no land, no wages, no equity. Yes, it's reason to
be upset, but just being upset is not a useful emotion.

(37:55):
That's why I want you to not be emotional about this.
I want you to solve it. See where emotions of Goddess,
See where being angry is. God is not very far after.
And you die because you're you know, you're cooking your
organs because you're you're angry, and you you know, if
you're gonna pray, why worry You're gonna worry? Why I pray?
Don't and don't don't don't worry yourself to death. Literally

(38:17):
worry yourself to death. People in low credit score communities
who are all stressed out die at sixty one years
of age, and people in high credit score communities who
are who are chilling and financially free lived to eighty
one years of age and a fifteen minutes apart. And
that's my whole financial literacy index that we've mapped every
called by credit score today. So it's still an issue today,
like if you stress yourself out, she's gonna die of
high pertensional high blood pressure and a few other things

(38:40):
stress and whatever, heart attacks, et cetera. So I want
you to go easy on yourself. You forgive others not
because they deserve it, because you do. Love works better
than hate. Doctor King One said that hate has within
it the seeds of its own destruction. I think it
was hate and evil. So while America has got wealthy,

(39:02):
and Black Americans were left with nothing, no land, no wages,
no equity after emancipation, no reparations, no business capital, no
seed capital. This is the the failure the Freeman's Bank,
which again I've talked about in the past in great detail.
That's the economic gap we're still trying to close today. Okay,

(39:24):
modern takeaways, This isn't about being angry, It's about being aware.
When you understand that black people were once literally assets,
you realize the mission today is about reclaiming ownership, equity, wealth,
and ourselves I mean, Quincy Jones want to tell me

(39:45):
not one outs to my self esteem is dependent upon
your acceptance of me. I would say, it's not what
you call me, is what I answer to That's important,
And never answer out of your name. And to argue
with the fool proofs, there are two. As I said earlier,
there's a difference between being broken being poor being broken economic.
But being poor is a disabling frame of mind, a

(40:06):
depressed condition of your spirit. And you must vow never
ever ever to be poor again. When you understand that
black people were once literally assets, you realize the mission
today is about reclaiming ownership of ourselves. Financial literacy is liberation.
It is a civil rights issue of this generation. Ownership
is the new freedom. Hello, can I get an amen?

(40:29):
So let me now before I close by the way,
have you enjoyed this? You know? You know? Give me,
give me, give me some give me some dap, give
me some love. Tell me what's up. Let me tell
you very quickly about that wealth gap that I mentioned.
And uh, I went through eight numbers, right, and I

(40:52):
went through, uh how uh those eight numbers broke down?
And then I said, I would promise to tell you
before I left you how that relates today. So here

(41:15):
we go the black versus white racial wealth gap. The
numbers from slavery aren't just history, their economic origin points
for the racial wealth gap. Here. Let me let me
connect the dots. So let me go back to number one.
The wages were zero for blacks then, so zero inherited
wealth now and slave people built trillions of dollars in

(41:39):
wealth but passed down none of it. Meanwhile, white families
began accumulating assets, land, businesses, bank accounts during and after slavery.
They weren't geniuses, they weren't smarter than you. They were
lucky because of the color of their skin. And I'm
going to break down in a separate podcast why even
the color of their skin was a farce. That that

(42:02):
was literally made up for economic reasons. The racial word
white was literally made up. The country. The world is
five billion years old, organism life four billion years old,
Neanderthal life a few hundred million years old, modern human life.
You know, you can pick it, find a time you
know that you want to focus on. But basically, one
hundred and sixty million, two hundred thousand, one hundred to

(42:25):
two thousand years ago, you know, Enlightenment. Let's just say,
you know, three thousand years before Jesus, you know, switch
before Christ, and then after Christ, and then of course
spirituality and so on and so forth, and you've had
the time since and all of this time, and you
had you know, because you had black royal members of
the royal classes, and you had blacks who created helped

(42:48):
to create finance. I'm gonna do this as a separate podcast.
Blacks and Jews in the Middle In folks in the
Middle East helped to create modern finance and mathematic not well,
mathematics is a separate thing, but modern finances as we
know it, modern economics was something that actually was originated
in the minds of Middle Eastern people, North Africans Jews.

(43:12):
By the way, you might find it shocking these three
groups are related. I mean, like literally DNA severed the
podcasts another time. It's so much unpacked. We just saw
we're like all arguing over stupid stuff, and some people
like they really want certain people to argue over stupid stuff.

(43:42):
Today it actually benefits people to stop arguing. Actually, that's
my argument for the business plan for America. God has
a sense of humor. Now, for the first time, we're
actually better together. You can only succeed now if everybody
is empowered to come up from nothing. A little financial
literacy and little ai literacy, a little love color. Folkus
on color, not black or white, or red or blue,

(44:02):
but green. Everybody getting some more of it. You've expanded
the table at a chair. Nobody loses anything. White folks
don't lose anything. Nobody loses anything. We expand opportunity for all.
Economy grows and death as it comes down, opportunity comes up. Hope,
it expands. Light comes in up, you know, in the morning,
and we have a sustainable world. But that's the future.

(44:27):
So finishing on this. So when slave people build trends
of dollars in wealth but passed down none of it. Meanwhile,
white families had accumulated assets and clear land businesses, bank
accounts during and after slavery number two, two hundred and
fifty years of exclusion followed by one hundred years of
legal segregation. And people are like, why don't you guys
get up and do something for yourself. Well, you try this,

(44:48):
you try to make it with this thing I'm describing.
I mean, we did pretty dangon good for having a
nine thousand pounds weight tied to your leg Slavery ended
in eighteen sixty five, but Jim Crow redlining, discrimination lending,
discriminatory lending, an exclusion from the New Deal. Yes, the

(45:09):
New Deal help which helped poor whites Europe, the GI Bill,
which helped poor whites like ninety nine percent of GI
recipients were Caucasian. That was a government giving you of education,
a skill for the future, and mortaged by a house,
which was the birth of the modern middle class in

(45:32):
mainstream banking support. In fact, the FAHA actually discriminated against
black It wasn'tment, it wasn't banks the red lined. It
was the FAHA, the Federal Housing Authority. It was a
government that red lined in the nineteen thirties. I believe
against blacks who were then in ghettos that they it's
a whole other thing. They migrated to these neighborhoods, and
then the government decided the number of neighborhoods were dangerous

(45:54):
because blacks were there, and decided to not guarantee loans
in those areas, which is guaranteed they'd be dangerous, and
not in un non investibles. So a bank with rational
common sense would go where the mortgages were guaranteed, which were,
by the way, in white suburbs that were built for
these families to move from the quote inner cities to
someplace else, not where blacks didn't exist. We're not blacks

(46:18):
were not migrating to And so the properties that had
loan guarantees or guarantee mortgage guarantees were white suburban neighborhoods.
Those mortgages were guaranteed. So that's where banks lint at.
So the banks weren't racist per se. They might have been,
but that was not there was not there weren't racist
by design. They were capitalists, but they went where it
was low risk, in high return. They got They knew

(46:40):
that the government federal guaranteed a mortgage in suburb. People
had jobs there, and it was seemed nice and peaceful.
That's where you should want to put your money. Heck,
I might have done it myself. And if you're in
a ghetto in a black neighborhood and there was no
loan guarantees and the government actually said it was red line,
don't go there, and it looked horrible and crime, I'm persistent, Well,

(47:01):
who wants to invest in that place? It just so
self manifest destiny, and so mainstream banking ensured that Black
Americans were locked out of wealth building for another century. Hello,
nineteen sixty five, eighty sixty five to nineteen sixty five.
Number three, the average black family's wealth today is about

(47:21):
ten percent of the average white families. I'm almost finished
with this podcast, so hold on. Almost there, We're almost
at the promised land. White meeting household wealth in twenty
twenty two was one hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars.
Give or take, Black meeting household wealth same year twenty
four thousand dollars. This gap didn't happen by accident. It

(47:46):
was engineered over generations Number four And by the way,
slight aside, just so you know that you can get
out of this and the races and everything. And by
the way, there's more poor whites for anybody else. So
the issue was all race. You'd have everybody would be
just be like rich white. You wouldn't have poor whites

(48:06):
and rich whites. And one thinks about this. Also in Boston,
they did a study a few years ago about poverty,
the Federal Reserve Bank there did and they found that
whites had a net worth of like I said, one
hundred eight thousand dollars, whatever it is. And then Caribbean
blacks had a net worth of about twelve hundred dollars
and African Americans same color as Caribbeans had a net

(48:30):
worth of seven bucks. That's right, seven bucks. In fact,
they did a front page story said blacks as black
Americans have a network in Boston of seven bucks, and
they had to say on the front page, this is
not a typo because they're so unbelievable. But if it
was just race alone and not attitude, perspective, experience, background situation,

(48:52):
then shouldn't the Caribbean black and the African American black
number be the same either seven bucks or twelve hundred.
But it shouldn't be both. The numbers not even close.
So attitude and perspective and mindset really does matter. I'm
gonna get you out of this podcast within an hour
we read forty nine minutes. Stand by, This gap didn't
happen by accident. It was engineered over generations. Number four

(49:14):
forty acres in a meal was the original stimulus plan
that never happened. If each of the four million formally
en slave people had received forty acres in eighteen sixty five,
and again it was an experiment that was only given
eighteen thousand offered to eighteen thousand Union soldiers initially, so
it wasn't even everybody was just. In fact, I think
the number was actually limited to four hundred thousand total acres,

(49:34):
but I could be wrong. Even if if that the
number was it was eighteen thousand times with forty acres
time eighteen thousand families, that still only seven hundred and
semi thousand acres. It's not a lot in comparison to
two hundred and seventy million acres given d White's tied
to homesad that. But anyway, let's get back to this.
If each of the four million formally and slave people

(49:55):
had received forty acres in eighty sixty five, and that
that land had appreciated modestly, it would have created trillions
of dollars in black Well. Opery shop was missing. Operation
was mission. The organization I founded is about closing this
wealth gap by increasing credit scores, encouraging homeownership, expanding access

(50:17):
of capital, and teaching financial literacy, which I think is
the civil rights issue of this generation. Opry Chope is
fighting the reverse centuries of damage and unempowered black people.
But not just black people. We're helping poor whites. We're
helping latinos Asians. I think twenty five percent of my
coaches are helping Spanish speaking, Hispanic and Latino families. We're

(50:45):
here for everybody. But certainly I'd be nuts if I
didn't focus and center the work in my own experience.
Coming from a history of slavery and founded after the
Rodny King riots in nineteen ninety two, I see, and
I grew up in these communities. Clearly its going to
be a priority. So we're trying to reverse centuries of

(51:05):
damage and empower a new black economic narrative. But it's
not about black people per se. It's about helping excellence,
which happens to be black. Can I give an amen?
This is the church of what's happening now? And what
have you done with me lately? We are on the move.
This is this is this is a powerful podcast, at
least I think. So you'll tell me whether it is

(51:27):
or isn't. So here is the close Slavery was bad
capitalism built on stolen lives and labor, and the receipts
are in the numbers encourage. I'm encouraging you to share
this episode and read and learn and keep building your life.
Not to get angry. If you want to do something,

(51:48):
get even by succeeding massively. When you know better, you
do better. And when you understand the money, you understand
the power. And when you don't understand the money, you
don't have any power. If you're not at the if
you're not at the table, you might be on the menu.
This is John O'Brien. This is Money and Wealth on

(52:10):
the Black Effect Network. I just unpacked the economics of
American slavery back capitalism by the numbers. If you want
me to do part two to this and to get
into the false narrative of race and how that was
used as a proxy for power and money, let me
know in the comments and I will do it. I

(52:33):
am listening to you literally actively. Thanks for making this
podcast series top five percent for all podcasts in America.
I am told by my production team please tell your
friends who subscribe to it. This is my weekly ministry
of hope. New episodes every Thursday. Go back and listen
to old episodes from this season and last season. As

(52:55):
I given you a library for changing your life. You
have a family that is just starting, people just getting married,
somebody going to college, somebody go into high school, somebody
resending their life, somebody trying to establish themselves at fifty,
somebody who's depressed and wants to be and wants to
get redressed, but the new attitude. Tell them to get
the library of that last season and work your way

(53:15):
back up, or find the episode that just relates to
you and just want to listen to that. If you're
just on the edge, and get my book, Financial Literacy
for All. If you can't afford it, call my office
and we'll give you a scholarship to get a copy
of the book. I just made that up. Don't have anybody,
don't be just calling if you just want a free book,
that's wrong. If you really want the book and you

(53:38):
don't have any money, we'll try to get a previously
owned copy and scholarship to You're going to have to
write an essayoy you think you should have a copy,
and we will make sure that you have a free
copy of the book. Maybe we'll just print out the
text of it and send it to you so won't
be all pretty and everything, but you'll have the information.
It just shows I just want you empowered and go

(53:59):
to my team operation Hope and getting powered to get
your credit score up, your debt down, your savings up.
So when you go to the computer at midnight, then
I asked you was your your races or your gender.
The bank if your credit score is seven hundred or better,
to the computer at midnight just says yes. Yes to homeownership,
Yes to small business, Yes to align of credit, Yes
to prime credit, prime access, so that you can go

(54:23):
live your dreams. As a friend of mine once told
me the CEO of Key Bank, Chris Gorman, I thought
I was there to teach him and an opening up
an open side about history or whatever he taught me,
he learned leanto on me. He said, you know, John,
it just might be that the only true freedom in
America is financial freedom, economic freedom, because every other freedom

(54:43):
can be taken away from you religious, political, and you
look at a lot of what's going on today and
that's not untrue. So a little wisdom from Chris Gorman
at Key Bank, a good banker, by the way, and
that and doing good capitalism like a lot of my partners,
all right, John O'Brien, I'm out Tell a friend. Let's

(55:04):
go change the world together, from civil rights in the
streets to silvi rights in the suites. Money and Wealth

(55:24):
with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect
Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. The pens, the poet, protect, the depends,

(57:04):
the t