Your world has just changed. In fact the
world has changed, but I'm gonna go one
step further. The world is changing and
history is being made right now, but
history changing never feels historic
when you're sitting in it. It just feels
like another day. I'll give you a context
for that when Dr. Martin King, Jr. was
involved in the civil rights movement that
was thirteen years of his work. He lived
in a city I live in now, Atlanta, Georgia.
He went to parent-teacher night. He went
to the grocery store.
He went to boring staff meetings. He
listened to uninspiring speakers as
you're listening to me now. Not every day
was I have a dream. In fact most days
were not. In fact, he gave that speech a
hundred times before the march on
Washington. That same speech, and it could
be argued, this would be another
presentation to another time but it's an
interesting mind twister, what would have
happened just on tenacity and
persistence sake of knowledge, what would
have happened if he had given up the
88th time or the 99th time? The world
would be fundamentally different, but is
that my core argument to you today?
Nope, it's not. My core argument today is
the world has changed, and your world has
changed, and it has changed radically and
fundamentally.
At the end of my presentation if I haven't
convinced you of that then it was a
waste of my time to be here and it was a waste
of your time to listen to me. I talked to
the administrator, who I think is a very
good man, last week and Alex Amparo
of FEMA earlier today, and I'm proud to
say, and Karen who is here I believe some
where, they get it, but I'm not sure most
people do and let me speak to this
personally about how I didn't get it and then
I'm going to speak to how things
have fundamentally changed for you. So I run
the largest financial inclusion
organization in the country. You heard
that. Operation Hope founded it after the
Rodney King riots in 1992 in Los Angeles.
Three and a half billion dollars, sorry,
three and a half, three million clients
and two and a half billion dollars
invested in underserved neighborhoods.
Not bad numbers, but it's all a shame and
it's underwhelming and I'll get to that
in a moment
but I'm not anywhere close to the need.
30,000 volunteers, etc. I thought I was
doing something until about five years
ago when Janae Rosco took me to a
museum for theater where there's a
museum inside of the theater where
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. And
with regard to black poverty, I've been
trying to figure this out for a long
time. All poverty is the same but when
white folks have a headaches black folks
have pneumonia. By the way it's okay
to laugh. You won't get
sued. Take life seriously, don't take
yourself too seriously, so there will
be some humor dispersed in
my comments. It's okay to laugh. I'll
tell you when to laugh if you missed
the mark.
And I've been trying to figure this out
and I did figure it out, but I
figured it out because of Janae Rosco
and this museum, and basically what I
discovered was that all of our problems
are tied to one thing. Just one thing.
1865 March 3rd President Abraham Lincoln
after the Civil War, after the
Emancipation Proclamation, arguably the
most progressive most amazing president
we've ever had in the history of this
country, two months after he sent the
Secretary of War Stanton and General
Sherman out to Savannah, Georgia, to meet
with 20 ministers, former slaves, and said
what do you want after slavery? I don't
have a lot of time so I'm going to give you the
short version of a lot of this ,so we can
cover a lot of ground. Is that okay? I
trust you guys are all smart, so you'll
keep up with me and what I miss you'll
do some research on, so I'm gonna give
you some the topical stuff and then I'm
gonna get into the weeds on things that
are I think are really important to you.
So this is really fast, Secretary of War
Stanton General Sherman January 1865
Savannah, Georgia, what do you want Do we
want a welfare program? No. Do you want an
apology? That'd be nice but no. This is
for slavery. What do you want? We want
land. We want to do for our [crowd answers self]
That wasn't a black answer, that wasn't
a latino answer, that wasn't an
Asian answer, wasn't an Indian answer,
it's an American answer. It's a human
answer. It's the answer of people who
long for aspiration all over the world.
He was ready for this question, so he had
set aside 400,000 acres, given our time
to go into this, but from North
Carolina all the way down the coast to
what you call Florida now. All along the
coast 30 miles in, which is today
beautiful land, it's called the beach. And
everybody would love to have beachfront
property today, but back in 1865 this was
pretty crappy land. Because how did you
make your money in 1865? It was as in the
agricultural pursuit. It was a farmer.
Well you put your crops in the sand and
tomorrow morning your crops in Jamaica.
So that was funny, okay,
I'm gonna help you out here. But did they
complain about it? No, no Snapchat, no
Facebook, no Twitter, no
cellphones, no nothing somehow they got
the memo and a month later a thousand
former slaves took to the land and
tilled the soil and impressed General
Sherman, so much he said, "My god they're
so industrious give them a mule."
Some of you know your history that's 40
acres and a mule that was January and
February. In March, March 3, 1865,
President Abraham Lincoln sat at his
desk and signed a piece of legislation
called the Freedmen's Bureau Act. The
Freedmen's Bureau Act created the
Freedman's Bank. Freedman's Banks mission
quote"Teach freed slaves about money." Let
that sit in for a moment. Arguably the
most progressive president we ever had
thought the most important thing he do
after the worst land war of Americans
against Americans, brother against
brother
on American soil was basically to teach
former slaves financial literacy. The
bank was created 52,000 former slaves
put, I'm sorry, 52 million dollars of
73,000 former slaves deposited in this
bank. That's a 100 billion dollars today, making it
one of the top 100 banks in America
today. Top 50 banks actually. Frederick
Douglass, who you know as an abolitionist,
I know the businessman he owned property
in Baltimore and property here in
Washington, D.C. which was why he had the freedom
to go to pursue his civil rights agenda.
He ran the bank after Lincoln was
assassinated, who was assassinated the
next month. Lincoln started the bank in
March was killed in April, and by the way,
he put on the U.S. currency the same
day "In God We Trust," the same day.
Lincoln gets killed
Frederick Douglas runs the bank, the bank is gamed
because Lincoln was not around to
protect it, and it was said the failure
of this bank did more to set free
slaves back in America than 10 more
years of slavery. Now am I going to go
through 150 years of slavery and
history, and all that stuff, and you
saying what does that to do with you? The
answer's no to all that. We don't even
have the time for it. Unfortunately I
don't. I can fast forward like that,
and bring you up to 1968, which is the
first time anybody ever talked to black
people about money again. And it wasn't a
banker or a capitalist, it was Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. and he said in 68 you
cannot legislate goodness, you cannot
pass a lot to force anyone to respect
you the only way to social justice in a
capitalist country is economics and
ownership. That's a quote you don't hear
about Dr. King. By the way he was
mobilizing all poor people around
poverty and there are more poor whites
in America than poor anybody else then
and now. Here's my premise as we go up to
this day, this day today, thirty-five
million black people never got a class
in capitalism. Let that sit in for a
moment.
Neither did my white friends in the
rural white America. Neither did most
middle class people today of any race, so
whether you're white, black, red, brown, or
yellow today, you want to see some more
green. Or are you just financially
independent, you're independently wealthy.
00:09:28,540 --> 00:09:32,589
I'm not talking to you obviously. How many of you folks here have
too much month at the end of their money.
Oh just me. See I'm from the black church
I'm used to seeking responses. I'm actually
talking to you. Let's have an honest
conversation now. I'm not saying you're
broke. I'm not giving you I'm not putting
some, some target on your back I'm
saying that 70% of all Americans are
living from paycheck to paycheck, today.
70%. 64% of all Americans don't have $500
saved. 64% don't have $500 for an
emergency. I'm going to say this, I'm going to
ask this once again, I don't care how much
you make you can spend it. You can
make $100,000 a year and still spend $100,0001a year. Can I get an amen? So how
much of you, aspirationally now, not
literally, have too much month at the end
of your money?
I mean I can wait here all day until
you're honest with yourself. So you're
telling, the folks not raising their hands,
you just have cash coming out of your
ears.
You just are cool. You got two
Rolls Royce's, three homes, and it's more
money you can imagine, okay. You have
that conversation with yourself and your
CPA later. As for me I never have enough
for all the things I want to do. My point
here is that it's not that poor and
struggling families got the memo on
money and screwed it up. They never got
the memo. And what I'm going to show you
very quickly now, i want to do
this real quickly is that, so this was
my AH-HA that poverty has nothing to do
with money, with the exception of
sustenance poverty which is a roof over
your head and food on your table, every
other poverty is mental. So let's go through this
very quickly. Half of poverty in the
world in the world, irrespective of race,
low self-esteem, and low confidence in
yourself, if you don't know who you are
by 9:00 in the morning by dinnertime
somebody's going to tell you who you are.
Try driving your car without confidence,
try raising your children without
confidence. They will run over you. Can I
get a parent to say amen. Are you guys
alive? Are you awake down here? Try going
and running your department, your
division without confidence. I'm not even
talking about self-esteem, which is how you
feel about yourself. I'm talking about the
ability to execute with confidence in
the external world. Try doing that without confidence. I'm going to get back to why that's
important in a second. Low self-esteem
and low confidence that's half of all
failure and poverty in the world. The
second part of poverty is role
models and environment, so if all you see
in your neighborhood is symbols of
success are rap stars, athletes, and drug
dealers,
why is anybody surprised the kids in
that neighborhood want to grow up to be
a rap star, an athlete or a drug dealer?
Actually it's good common sense your
modeling what you see. Environment we
don't have a lot of time, so if I'm going to do this
quick. Environment basically means if you
hang around nine broke people, you'll be
the tenth. I'm giving you guys my best
stuff, and it's just it's unbelievable.
then you have aspiration. aspiration is a
code word for hope. The most dangerous
person in the world, listen now, is a
person with no hope. That leads to
opportunity, but if you have low
self-esteem and low confidence, crappy
role models in a crappy environment, you
don't have a lot of aspiration,
no hope, you see the glass is half empty,
not half full, you never leave your porch.
Normally have somebody doing this thing
for me so hold on a minute.
So let me now talk to you about what
wealth is. wealth is exactly the
opposite; has nothing to do with money.
High self-esteem and high confidence. Sir,
have we met before? All right, you saw
somebody growing up who was a man who
wore a suit said I can be a professional
or a businessman just like him, yes or no?
Okay, sir, have we ever met, okay. He says why
pick on me,
because you're there. You growing up you
saw a man wearing a suit, who is a
professional businessman, something that
had to do with a shirt with a collar on
it, and you said I can do that? yes or no.
Young lady have we ever met before? We have.
I'm not talking to you then. [laughter]
Have we ever met before? Okay, growing
up you saw a lady she was had a
different vision for herself. She was
going to be a professional and maybe
raise a household, too. She wanted to do
it all she was going to do it all and
she decided she was going to make it way
out of no way she became a professional
you looked at her and said I can do that,
too. yes or no. Have we ever met before is
that story basically that your story as
well? Y ou see this is not a black story
or a brown story or Latino story or an
Asian story or an Indian story or an
American story. It's just a story.
It's just how people evolve. Its role
model. You model what you see. So this is
very important, and it relates to what
the gentleman said before me about how
that community in Japan revitalized more
than others did and basically about to
give you a quote, I love quotes. I'd say
this, you have idiots and fools running
countries and companies and brilliant
people who are homeless precisely
because it's not about how smart you are.
There's only one reason to go to Harvard
Harvard is a great school. I have a degree
from Harvard. Harvard is a great school;
I'm not digging on Harvard, but you don't
pay five times more to go to Harvard
than a state university because you're gonna
end up five times smarter. You do not. You
only pay five times more to go to
Harvard for one reason. The class of 2018
is gonna hook each other up for the next
40 years that's the only reason. This is
the memo people. It's what people
never talk to you about wealth, power
success, how it works in the world. And
here is your memo, you are the new
economic development czars
in every community you operate in. You
are you are putting a pop of unscheduled
economic activity after every disaster, because rainbows only follow storms.
That's not just nice theory, it's
actually scientific fact that you
literally cannot have a rainbow without
a storm first. But if all you are is an
unscheduled water hose of money,
and all you have is ready, fire, aim, you
can do nothing about changing this and
this is the whole ballgame because now
everything is economic. We don't have
time for this conversation, but let me
try to make it in summary. Let's say you push back on what I'm
saying, and you don't think the
economical red cross is central to what
you do. I'm gonna say to you that we're
central to everything you do. You cannot
go through your day; you cannot get
through your morning; you cannot go to
sleep at night without having a
financial transaction. Help me out here.
We'll do this quickly. This morning
you've brushed your teeth.
Was that a government-issued toothbrush?
Okay somebody paid for it, right.
Okay the alarm clock went off, today it would
be a cell phone, right, that's not a
government-issued cellphone, might be
in some cases here, but somebody
bought a a cell phone, okay all right,
help me out here. You slept in on a
pillow and a mattress that you bought
you're in a house that you paid for,
whether it's a mortgage or whether it's
rent. You got in your car and you drove to the
office in a [car] that probably has a car note
on it that you're paying for. You
stopped and got community socialism
gas. No? You didn't get communism gas, you got
you had to pay for the gas right.
I mean you love your children,
and unless you have a grandmother at
home, you have to pay somebody to take
care of those interestingly behaved