Skip to main content

A Conversation with Mehrsa Baradaran, the author of "The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap"

Back to All Events
Mehrsa Baradaran headshot and book, titled "The Color of Money Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap" over background of money pile

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States’ total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. Mehrsa Baradaran challenges the myth that black communities could ever accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. Instead, housing segregation, racism, and Jim Crow credit policies created an inescapable, but hard to detect, economic trap for black communities and their banks. Examining the fruits of past policies and the operation of banking in a segregated economy, she makes clear that only bolder, more realistic views of banking’s relation to black communities will end the cycle of poverty and promote black wealth. The long-standing notion that black banking and community self-help is the solution to the racial wealth gap are initiatives that have functioned as a potent political decoys to avoid more fundamental reforms and racial redress.

Stylized text that reads Black Friday

About the Black Friday Webinar Series
Black Friday is a webinar series discussing the discounts Black people have been forced to take due to flawed public policy. The series will explore the disparate treatment and impact of public policy in the United States – both historically and to date – on racial outcomes in areas such as housing, education, healthcare, gender identity, criminal justice and wealth. Centuries of federal, state and local policies have cemented systemic racism into our institutions, our culture, and individual's explicit and implicit bias.  Through a series of lectures, articles, videos and other educational material, we will demonstrate how the intersection of policy and practice can be used to address chronic issues that exist in Black communities as a result of flawed (or simply absent) policies and practices.  As a policy school, we hope that these webinars will educate and inspire conversations in an effort to promote accountability and seek remedy for deficiencies in policies that have disproportionately affected Black people in this country. This event is co-hosted by Executive Development, the Elected Executive Leadership (EXCEL) Program and the Baker Strategy Group.

Baker Strategy Group logo, text is BSG over green rectangle

About Mehrsa Baradaran

Mehrsa Baradaran headshot

Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at UCI Law.

Previously, she was the Robert Cotten Alston Chair in Corporate Law and Associate Dean for strategic initiatives with a focus on diversity and inclusion efforts and national and international faculty scholarship recognition at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Baradaran writes about banking law, financial inclusion, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. Her scholarship includes the books How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, both published by the Harvard University Press. The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap was awarded the Best Book of the Year by the Urban Affairs Association, the PROSE Award Honorable Mention in the Business, Finance & Management category. Baradaran was also selected as a finalist at the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Awards for the book in the category of history/biography.

Baradaran has also published articles including "Jim Crow Credit" in the Irvine Law Review, "Regulation by Hypothetical" in the Vanderbilt Law Review, "It's Time for Postal Banking" in the Harvard Law Review Forum, "Banking and the Social Contract" in the Notre Dame Law Review, "How the Poor Got Cut Out of Banking" in the Emory Law Journal, "Reconsidering the Separation of Banking and Commerce" in the George Washington Law Review and "The ILC and the Reconstruction of U.S. Banking" in the SMU Law Review. Of note, her article "The New Deal with Black America" was selected for presentation at the 2017 Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

Baradaran and her books have received significant national and international media coverage and have been featured in the New York Times, the AtlanticSlateAmerican Banker, the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times; on National Public Radio’s “Marketplace,” C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” and Public Broadcasting Service’s “NewsHour;” and as part of TEDxUGA. She has advised U.S. Senators and Congressmen on policy, testified before the U.S. Congress, and spoken at national and international forums like the U.S. Treasury and the World Bank.

She earned her bachelor's degree cum laude from Brigham Young University and her law degree cum laude from NYU, where she served as a member of the New York University Law Review.


For Media Inquiries:
Megan Campbell
Senior Director of Strategic Communications
For More from the School of Public Policy:
Sign up for SPP News