Audiobook9 hours
The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America
Written by Emily Flitter
Narrated by Emily Flitter
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
A deeply reported, “important, and infuriating” (The Guardian) look at the systemic racism inside the American financial services industry, from acclaimed New York Times finance reporter Emily Flitter.
In 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black employee without cause. Flitter had been searching for a way to investigate the deep-rooted racism in the American financial industry, and that one tip lit the sparkplug for a three-year journey through the shocking yet normalized corruption in our financial institutions.
Examining local insurance agencies and corporate titans like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo and reveals the practices that have kept the racial wealth gap practically as wide as it was during the Jim Crow era. Flitter exposes hiring and layoff policies designed to keep Black employees from advancing to high levels; racial profiling of customers in internal emails between bank tellers; major insurers refusing to pay Black policyholders’ claims; and the systematic denial of funding to Black entrepreneurs. She also gives a voice to victims, from single mothers to professional athletes to employees themselves: people who were scammed, lied to, and defrauded by the systems they trusted with their money, and silenced when they attempted to speak out and seek reform.
Flitter connects the dots between data, history, legal scholarship, and powerful personal stories to provide a “must-read wake-up call” (Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, president of KNOWN Holdings) about what it means to bank while Black. As America continues to confront systemic racism and pave a path forward, The White Wall is an essential examination of one of its most caustic contributors.
In 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black employee without cause. Flitter had been searching for a way to investigate the deep-rooted racism in the American financial industry, and that one tip lit the sparkplug for a three-year journey through the shocking yet normalized corruption in our financial institutions.
Examining local insurance agencies and corporate titans like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo and reveals the practices that have kept the racial wealth gap practically as wide as it was during the Jim Crow era. Flitter exposes hiring and layoff policies designed to keep Black employees from advancing to high levels; racial profiling of customers in internal emails between bank tellers; major insurers refusing to pay Black policyholders’ claims; and the systematic denial of funding to Black entrepreneurs. She also gives a voice to victims, from single mothers to professional athletes to employees themselves: people who were scammed, lied to, and defrauded by the systems they trusted with their money, and silenced when they attempted to speak out and seek reform.
Flitter connects the dots between data, history, legal scholarship, and powerful personal stories to provide a “must-read wake-up call” (Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, president of KNOWN Holdings) about what it means to bank while Black. As America continues to confront systemic racism and pave a path forward, The White Wall is an essential examination of one of its most caustic contributors.
Author
Emily Flitter
Emily Flitter covers banking and Wall Street for The New York Times. Before this, she spent eight years at Reuters, writing about politics, financial crimes, and the environment. Flitter holds an MA in Near Eastern studies and journalism from New York University and a BA from Wellesley College. She began her journalism career as a freelance reporter in Cairo. The White Wall is her first book.
Related to The White Wall
Related audiobooks
The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Capitalist's Lament: How Wall Street Is Fleecing You and Ruining America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/513 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Race and Reckoning: From Founding Fathers to Today’s Disruptors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Systemic Racism 101: A Visual History of the Impact of Racism in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saying It Loud: 1966—The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America's Black Cities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 9.9 Percent: The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Never Forget Our People Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Founder: The Hidden Power of Being an Outsider Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black on Black: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBy Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why Didn't We Riot?: A Black Man in Trumpland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Banks & Banking For You
The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5DeFi and the Future of Finance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Broken Money: Why Our Financial System Is Failing Us and How We Can Make It Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/521st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Investment Banking: Valuation, LBOs, M&A, and IPOs, 3rd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Become a Real Estate Credit Card Millionaire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Profit First for Restaurants: Transform Your Money-Eating Restaurant into a Cash-Making Machine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Investment Banking Crash Course Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Discussion Materials: Tales of a Rookie Wall Street Investment Banker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The White Wall
Rating: 3.875 out of 5 stars
4/5
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent reporting! Good to hear an explanation of the origins of this issue and those who profit at the expense of others and then act like they “earned “ it somehow. At the same time claiming that those they profit from are lazy and not worthy of the same chances.