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[narrator] Just over 150 years ago,
this was money
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for almost half of America.
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On multiple bills
were people picking cotton.
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Enslaved people.
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These slaves
didn't just represent wealth in America.
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They were wealth.
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By 1863, they were worth
over $3 billion.
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Since then, America has slowly, painfully,
transformed as a country,
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breaking down racial barrier...
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after racial barrier.
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[Martin Luther King Jr.]
I am very optimistic about the future.
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Frankly, I have seen certain changes
in the United States that surprise me.
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So on the basis of this,
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I think we may be able to get
a Negro president in less than 40 years.
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I would think in 25 years or less.
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[narrator] Wealth is different.
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Wealth is where past injustices
breed present suffering.
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I think the racial wealth gap
speaks to the fact
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that we still have a long way to go
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to achieve ideals of equality
in this country.
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The racial wealth gap is a measure
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of the white family
and the African-American family
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that's right smack-dab in the middle,
the median.
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[narrator]
The median white household's wealth:
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their savings, assets, minus their debts,
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is $171,000.
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The median black household's
is $17,600.
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And that gap is still growing...
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and growing.
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Why?
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[Martin Luther King Jr.]
We hold these truths to be self-evident...
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We have the right to go to any school
in America, but we can't pay the tuition.
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I wake up every morning in a house
that was built by slaves.
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The American dream
need not forever be deferred.
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[Martin Luther King Jr.]
...that all men are created equal.
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[Malcom X] If they can't have their
equal share in the house,
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they'll burn it down.
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I picked the cotton...
and I built the railroads
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under someone else's whip...
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for nothing.
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For nothing.
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[narrator] In January, 1865,
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the Civil War was ending.
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Union general William Sherman
and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
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gathered a group of 20 black leaders
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and asked them
what the black community needed
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to build lives in freedom.
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Reverend Garrison Frazier,
the leader of the group,
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answered simply.
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"The way we can best take care
of ourselves
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is to have land."
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Four days after the meeting,
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Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15.
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It set aside hundreds of thousands
of acres of land,
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saying, "Each family shall have a plot
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of not more than 40 acres
of tillable ground."
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The day before his second inauguration,
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Lincoln signed a bill
that made the plan official.
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America was almost
a very different country.
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[upbeat music playing]
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But it didn't turn out that way.
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Weeks later, Lincoln was dead.
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His successor, Andrew Johnson,
quickly reversed course.
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Immediately once we say,
"Okay, equal rights"
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then you have a white backlash
that says, "What about our rights?"
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[narrator] By the end of that year,
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thousands of freed slaves
who had received land were evicted.
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In just a year after slavery,
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President Johnson complained about
discrimination...
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against whites.
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Quote: "In favor of the negro."
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But slaves had been creating wealth
for their owners for 246 years.
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That wealth, whites got to keep.
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And there's an amazing thing about wealth
that people who have it know well:
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it grows,
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across generations.
Just ask Jay-Z.
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[Jay-Z]
♪ I bought some artwork for one million ♪
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♪ Two years later
that shit worth two million ♪
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♪ Few years later,
that shit worth eight million ♪
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"I can't wait to give this shit
to my children."
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One thing it says
is that wealth begets wealth.
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Turn one million into eight,
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raise your hand
if you wanna take that deal.
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[narrator]
It doesn't take a risky, Picasso-sized bet
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to see wealth grow dramatically.
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It just takes time.
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If you live in a stable country
and can invest long-term,
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values generally go up.
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That's why you need to know about
compounding interest.
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Imagine you took $100
and invested it in 1863.
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The average annual
inflation-adjusted return
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in the US stock market has been around 7%.
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The next year, it's worth a bit more...
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and a bit more, and a bit more.
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Today, that $100 would be worth
more than $3.5 million.
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To this day, African-Americans
make a lot less money than whites.
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They're far more likely to be unemployed,
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and studies show
employers still discriminate.
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But even if we managed to close those gaps
right now,
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centuries of inequality
have already compounded, most powerfully through land and housing.
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Usually, in this century, any wealth
that's captured is through property.
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[narrator] For the American middle class,
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home equity accounts
for around two-thirds of wealth.
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So if you're a white American,
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you're likely to have parents
or grandparents with a story like this.
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[woman]
My parents bought a house
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probably now 50 years ago,
paid $14,000 for it then,
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and it is worth now
probably about $600,000 to $700,000.
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[Cory Booker] Most people don't understand
the power of housing,
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of where you live,
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of what opportunities exist
in that community.
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[narrator] The government played
a huge role in making that happen.
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During the Great Depression,
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almost half of all city homeowners
were in default.
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[male announcer] The men are sitting
in the parks all day long,
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out of work, muttering to themselves.
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[narrator] Franklin Delano Roosevelt
took action with the New Deal.
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...by providing for the easing
of the burden of debt.
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So the New Deal unleashes mortgage credit
to the population.
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[narrator] The American dream
and owning a home became synonymous.
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But the new Federal Housing Administration
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wouldn't insure mortgages
in areas it decided were too risky.
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And the way that risk is calculated
is by race.
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A black family moving in was seen
as a threat to housing prices.
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[interviewer]
Do you think a Negro family moving here
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will affect the community as a whole?
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I think that the property values
will immediately go down
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if they're allowed to move in here
in any number.
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[narrator] So when the FHA drew maps
of where they wouldn't insure loans,
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the neighborhoods with more black families
were colored in red.
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[Cory Booker]
Redlining is not a figurative metaphor.
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You would literally see maps drawn
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where entire neighborhoods
were redlined off.
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[narrator] The effects of racism
became a justification for more racism.
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[man] If two-thirds
of America's middle-class wealth
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is in the form of home ownership,
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that opportunity to own a home
has now just been excluded.
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[narrator] Federally enforced segregation
affected every part of life:
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the jobs you could access,
where your children went to school,
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how safe they were,
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and whether your home increased in value.
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[all] ♪ Keep your eyes on the prize... ♪
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[narrator] It wasn't until 1968
that housing discrimination was outlawed.
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[Lyndon B. Johnson]
Fair housing for all human beings
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is now a part of the American way of life.
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[narrator] But that didn't mean
housing discrimination ended.
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Consider what it took
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for Cory Booker's family
to get their house in 1969.
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My parents began looking for homes,
but finding just odd things happening,
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where real estate agents,
if they saw them beforehand,
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they would only show them homes
in African-American communities.
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If it was a house
in a white neighborhood,
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my parents would be told,
"This house is already sold."
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[narrator]
Booker's parents set up a sting operation
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with a civil rights group.
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The next time they were turned away,
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a white couple arrived
and made an offer on their behalf.
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[Cory Booker] The bid was accepted,
and on the day of the closing,
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the white couple did not show up.
My father did, and the lawyer,
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and the real estate agent was so angry,
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stands up,
and punches my dad's lawyer.
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Literally they're fighting, scrambling,
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and there was a dog in the corner,
and he sicced the dog on my father.
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So my father's now trying to fight off
a big dog, a window was smashed,
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but eventually things settled,
and the real estate agent was desperate,
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and started begging my father:
"You don't wanna move here,
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your people are not here."
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He was so afraid
that one black family would move in,
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and somehow it would destroy his business
and drive down real estate rates.
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[narrator] Cory Booker and his parents
ended up getting that house
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and that house helped build his future.
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It built wealth incredibly.
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My father rolled into another house
in the same town,
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an even bigger house, going from poverty
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to being very comfortably
in the middle class
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in the United States of America,
and really thriving.
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[narrator] That wasn't the typical story.
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100 years of discrimination since slavery
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left a huge home ownership gap.
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By the '90s, banks and politicians
realized what that meant...
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an opportunity.
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Discrimination is patently immoral,
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but it is now increasingly being seen
as unprofitable.
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[narrator]
In the '90s, the government made a push
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to open up the mortgage market.
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...to help families who have historically
been excluded from home ownership.
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[narrator]
Black home ownership started ticking up.
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It looked like the wealth gap
might start closing at long last.
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So you've got people who are hungry
for these loans,
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but what they want is the regular loans
that everyone else got
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from 1934 until 1980.
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[narrator] Instead, African-Americans were
twice as likely as white Americans
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to get subprime loans,
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a loan that starts out cheap,
and gets much more expensive.
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for borrowers with lower credit.
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But one in five black borrowers
with good credit
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still ended up with a subprime loan.
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I was a loan officer at Wells Fargo
in their subprime division.
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[narrator]
So Beth heard the conference calls
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where Wells Fargo planned to target
black churches.
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[Jacobson] They were termed
"wealth building seminars"
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and that was about purchasing homes.
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The minister of these churches
thought this was a great idea,
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something to help the parishioners
in the community.
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[narrator]
The bank would give the church a donation
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for each parishioner
who ended up getting a mortgage.
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[Jacobson] So the people
in the congregation didn't realize
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the loan officer they were talking to
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was only going to sell them
a subprime loan,
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even if they had 800 credit scores.
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[man Four and a half, six.
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[female reporter] Stock market breakdown.
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The worst financial crisis
since World War II.
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...fueled by mortgage lending
that wasn't sound or responsible.
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[female reporter] ...led by borrowers
of high-risk subprime loans.
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Black communities lost 53%
of their wealth.
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It's hurtful to see a lot of those folks
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who were at the highest levels
of the world of finance
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who made
fabulously irresponsible decisions,
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that those people have been made whole,
those institutions have been made whole,
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but for communities like mine
that are still struggling,
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that there wasn't some kind
of vision or plan
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to try to help those folks
get back on their feet.
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[narrator] Many of the biggest
mortgage lenders in the country
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settled discrimination lawsuits.
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Although it denied targeting
black borrowers,
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Wells Fargo agreed to pay
$175 million.
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Unlike in FDR's New Deal,
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the government's $440 billion
program to address the housing crisis
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mostly didn't go to home owners.
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The assistance, and a single viral clip,
triggered a backlash.
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How many of you people
want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage
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that has an extra bathroom
and can't pay their bills,
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raise their hand.
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-[crowd boos]
-How about we all...
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-President Obama, are you listening?
-You wanna...
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We're thinking of having
a Chicago Tea Party in July.
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All you capitalists
that want to show up to Lake Michigan,
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00:12:33,587 --> 00:12:35,297
I'm gonna start organizing.
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[crowd chanting] USA! USA! USA!
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If we were to go to an equity scenario
where whites and blacks
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had the same amount
of educational achievement,
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it would lower the racial wealth gap
somewhat minimally.
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[narrator]
And maybe not even that much.
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[Thomas Shapiro]
The Fed Reserve Bank of St. Louis
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did a study that came up with a finding
that white college graduates,
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over a couple of decades,
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their wealth increased dramatically,
as one might expect.
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Black college graduates,
over the same period of time,
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their wealth actually decreased.
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[narrator]
The reason isn't that graduates made
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very different amounts of money.
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It was how they spent it.
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[Thomas Shaprio]
It's much more likely to be the case
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that an African-American college graduate
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is the most successful
in their family network...
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and therefore relatives ask them for help,
and they give it.
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That doesn't mean
that white college graduates
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are less charitable or less giving,
or anything like that.
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It just means that they're like others
in their network.
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[narrator] African-Americans were wealth
for 246 years.
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For a hundred more years,
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and discrimination continues today.
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The wealth gap has grown so large
over so many years,
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it would take something truly radical
to close it.
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How do you close this gap,
this huge gap in wealth,
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-between whites and blacks?
-You don't.
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Reparations.
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How much are we talking here?
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We don't actually know, but I will
take a check on behalf of myself.
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[Anderson Cooper]
Is anyone on this stage for reparations
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for slavery for African Americans?
Are you?
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I am. The Bible says, "We shall be
and must be repairers of the breech"
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and a breech has occurred
and we have to acknowledge that.
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[Cory Booker] This does have
a generational cost to it.
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We can't just hope
that we are going to thrive as a nation
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when there are still so many wounds
that have not been addressed.
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This is something
that started with slavery,
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but it's never diminished over time,
and that's because government policy
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keeps perpetuating the circumstances
for the wealth gap.
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It's the Billie Holiday song, right?
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"Them that's got shall have,
them that's not shall lose."
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It is truly self-perpetuating.
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[Cory Booker] "Whenever this issue
of compensatory or preferential treatment
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for the Negro is raised,
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some of our friends recoil in horror.
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The Negro should be granted equality,
they agree,
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but should ask for nothing more.
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On the surface, this appears reasonable
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but it is not realistic,
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For it is obvious that if a man
enters the starting line of a race
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300 years after another man,
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the first would have to perform
some incredible feat
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in order to catch up
to his fellow runner."
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♪ God bless the child ♪
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♪ Who's got its own ♪