This presentation was given in memories of MLK's 92 birthday in January 2021

Impacts of the historical racial wealth gap by  the Rev. Steve Pinkston

• The Great Migration –the migration/exodus of almost 6 million black citizens (between 1915 – 1970), from the South to northern and western cities in search of a better life. Blacks made this often unrecognized treacherous cross-country trips by car & train.
• African Americans left sharecropping, Jim Crow, lynching, KKK, and other forms of prejudice.  The Equal Justice Initiative has documented nearly 6,500 racial terror lynchings between 1865 - 1950
• This is the story of my paternal grandparents who left Florida in 1920 for Pennsylvania.  My father’s grandmother (my great grandmother) was a prosperous seamstress who had her own business, owned her own large home & had her own horse and buggy.  The Ku Klux Klan was jealous of this prosperous black woman and burned her house to the ground.  She and her family fled the south.  All equity that she had was lost.
• This is the story of my maternal grandparent who left Georgia in 1926 for Philadelphia, PA.  Again, they were seeking “the warmth of other suns.”
• This is the story of my wife’s paternal grandparents who left Louisiana ~ 1930 for California.  They were fleeing prejudice, subjugation & southern hardship.
• This is the story of my wife’s maternal grandparents who left Texas ~ 1941 for California.  They landed in Magnet camps in the Palm Desert area.
• When Black people left the south, they had few resources.  Typically, they had no equity from their previous dwellings.  Typically they left in the secret of night to avoid raising the ire of White folks.  To a large degree, any wealth that Afr. Am. families left with was minimal.

G.I. Bill Mortgage Loans

• My father and two of his brothers served in WWII.  Though my father served valiantly for 3 years in Italy, neither he nor his brothers were able to secure GI Bill guaranteed mortgage loans.  While they witnessed returning White soldiers securing G.I. loans, securing homes, beginning to prosper and accumulating wealth in the postwar years, they simultaneously saw themselves and other Black veterans discriminated against and maligned. 

Red Lining

• My grandparents, (my wife’s grandparents) my parents and I have all experienced Red Lining.  This was the case in Philadelphia PA, Rhode Island, New Jersey and in various cities in California.
• I grew up in Asbury Park, N.J. living on the West side of the train tracks.  For the most part, the East side of town was White while the West side of town was Black.
• At the age of twelve, my parents scraped their monies together and were able to buy a home in Neptune N.J.—an adjoining city to Asbury Park.  Though primarily White, this neighborhood was starting to receive a few Black families.  I remember one of the Black families having a cross burned on their front lawn.  I remember mowing our lawn one Saturday morning and experiencing a White man yelling at me from his car window, “Nigger, go back to where you belong.”
• Two years later, my father was recruited to a clergy position in Oakland  CA with the American Baptist Churches of the West.  My dad wanted to live outside of Oakland.  I found it interested that the real estate agent went up Hwy 80, bypassing Piedmont, Emeryville, Berkeley, El Cerrito and El Sobrante.  He only showed us homes in Richmond.  I later found out that this was due to Red Lining.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream and the realities of the racial wealth gap by Dr. Scott Meyer

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 92 years today!  Much has changed in these United States since he was so violently taken from us in 1968, but much remains the same. And while all Americans should be proud of the gains made toward racial justice since the late 1960s, it is painfully clear to see by the Jan 6th events at our nation’s Capitol, that white supremacy still has a powerful hold on many Americans, and still threatens our democracy.
 
We celebrate Dr. King’s birthday each year since his life’s work provides the nation a way out of the chaos of white supremacy and toward the Beloved Community offered by a multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy. But for Dr. King, the Beloved Community was blocked by racism and economic exploitation, which he saw as interconnected. King stated, “A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them & poor people generally economically.”
 
For King, racism and economic exploitation were part of the structures of society that were enacted out through various institutions (i.e., political, economic, education, family, criminal justice, etc.) and they created a pattern, or "curious formula". King saw this “curious formula” dating back to the writing of the Constitution in 1787, where a Black person was defined as 60% of a human being when determining taxation and representation. According to King, this initial principle led to a “curious formula” where Blacks received ½ of the good things in life, and 2 times the bad when compared to Whites.
 
This curious formula was the reality in 1968, when King was murdered, and sadly, it is the reality today in these United States, and more specifically for us in Silicon Valley. And while there are probably not many in Silicon Valley who would support the violent actions taken this past week by white extremist organizations in D.C institutionalized racism still dominates most of our institutions in Santa Clara County.
 
So as I mentioned, I am the co-author of the Silicon Valley Pain Index, and a few days ago, we released an Infographic highlighting the “curious formula’s” consistent pattern where our institutions provide Blacks (and other people of color) 1/2 of the good things in life, and 2 times the bad. Because of time constraints, it’s not possible to show the 9-slide infographic, but you can view it @SVpainindex or @SJSpotlight, which did an article on it.
 
But here are just a few statistics from that demonstrate King’s “curious formula” right here in Santa Clara County:
 

• Average per capita income for Blacks: $41,000
• Average per capita income for Whites: $83,000

 

• Whites living in Poverty: 5.6%
• Blacks living in Poverty: 12.7%

 

• White kids who don’t complete HS: 4.5%
• Black kids who don’t complete HS: 14.9%

 
 
Our hope is that this MLK Infographic will lead Silicon Valley residents, businesses, non-profits, governments, and policymakers to examine our institutions to eliminate the “curious formula.” As King said, “an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring” and “the whole structure must be changed.” Dr. King often said that the choice is between chaos or community. The choice is still ours.
 
So how do we implement the choice of community? I believe we have to develop a large-scale educational program that focuses on democratic values and critical thinking, so our fellow citizens become less vulnerable to cults (Q-Anon) and anti-democratic lies. White supremacy ideology will take time to root out as it is part of the DNA of this nation. At the same time, for those that continue to engage in white supremacist actions that are violent, we need to put them in prison. The choice is theirs.
 
In addition, we need to eliminate the institutionalized racism that operates in Silicon Valley that creates the curious formula right here in our community. The solution Dr. King promoted was to abolish poverty through a guaranteed income at middle class levels, a massive public works program, and the building of 5 million low-income housing units.
And while I support all of these things, and have worked on them personally, I feel that the best way to restructure society in Silicon Valley is through a Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Fund.
 
To make this a reality, a group of community members are proposing a bold vision which has 3 demands:
 
Our 1st demand is to develop a $1 billion-plus SV Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Fund to provide money to overcome the historic and current white supremacist practices in homeownership and to support the creation & expansion of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) businesses. 
 
Currently, we are exploring ways to compel SV corporations, banks, and venture capital firms to provide the $1 billion-plus of money We are also asking SV philanthropies to set aside no less than 1% of their assets for this Reconstruction Fund, as philanthropies have historically been operated by Whites and they have funded primarily the white community.
 
The 2nd demand is for SV corporations, banks, and venture capital firms to commit to no less than 40% of their executive leadership and management to be Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. 
Currently, Santa Clara County is 68% BIPOC, but the corporate leadership is overwhelmingly white. For example, Oracle just released its diversity numbers, and it shows that out of its 144 executives and senior managers, almost 80% are white and 89% are male. For the racial wealth gap and white supremacy to be reduced, the SV corporate leadership must be fundamentally changed.
 
The 3rd demand is for SV venture capital firms and banks to make available no less than 10% of their available capital for investment in BIPOC start-up and scale-worthy businesses. 
 
The SV Pain Index shows that 1% of SV venture capital dollars (out of $19 billion) went to African American start-up tech firms, while a recent Stanford report shows that only 1% of all Latinx businesses in the U.S. received venture capital funds. For the racial wealth gap and white supremacy to be reduced, the amount of capital made to BIPOC businesses in SV must be greatly increased.