The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America

by Emily Flitter

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982183257
Publisher:	Atria/One Signal Publishers
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,102,411
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1

1 Banking While Black 17

2 Mystery Shoppers 35

3 Ricardo and Jimmy 51

Part 2

4 The Truth About HR 79

5 Unsafe at Any Level 97

6 The Friendly Guy Next Door, Edward Jones 105

Part 3

7 How Insurance Works if You're Black (It Doesn't) 141

8 The Problem with the Machines 165

9 On the Diversity Circuit 193

Part 4

10 On Whitewashing 219

11 Reparations and the Big Banks 229

12 Making Pledges 253

13 What Wall Street Should Do 265

14 On Their Own 277

Acknowledgments 295

Notes 297

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

07/11/2022

Wall Street’s sexual harassment issues are well-known, but its racism has flown more under the radar, argues New York Times reporter Flitter in her searing debut. The racial wealth gap is only getting worse, she writes, and racism in banking and finance is “perhaps the devastating force that prevents Black Americans from gaining equal footing in the United States.” Flitter presents disturbing stories of the systemic discrimination faced by Black bank account holders, mortgage applicants, and bankers themselves as they navigate hostile workplaces. Among the situations Flitter documents, insurers refused to pay out to Black policyholders; a Wells Fargo branch called the police on a woman trying to cash a check, suspecting it was fraudulent; employees at Edward Jones worked from “the kitchen table or car” with no office; and one financial firm asserted that “an employee’s claim of discrimination could not be true because the firm had a policy of not tolerating discrimination.” It’s damning, and Flitter does a great job of explaining why things don’t change: “People involved in the financial industry seem to rely on the fact that most people outside of it regard it as beyond their understanding.” This evisceration of Wall Street’s “private, ugly reality” packs a punch. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Learner. (Oct.) x x xc sa

Publishers Weekly

Vivid....devastating.... this book examines the ways that our financial system has systematically neglected and exploited Black people.”
—Bloomberg

"Important and infuriating."
—The Guardian



“[A] damning exposé of the essential racism of the American financial system.... A rousing body of evidence in favor of activist reform of financial practices, from ordinary loans to reparations.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"[A] searing debut...This evisceration of Wall Street’s 'private, ugly reality' packs a punch."
—Publishers Weekly

“Through rigorous journalistic inquiry, Emily Flitter boldly exposes the architects of inequality in the United States—the people, the firms and the devices that comprise The White Wall. After reading Flitter’s shocking and powerful narrative about the financial services sector, you’ll be inspired to tear it down.”
—Andre Perry, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow and author of Know Your Price

“The White Wall is a must-read wake up call. Flitter methodically establishes that the wealth creation process, controlled and dictated by big banks, has intentionally created barriers to Black people and all people of color. Flitter’s book should be required reading for anyone interested narrowing the wealth gap; it will leave you mesmerized, shocked, and educated.”
—Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, president of KNOWN Holdings

“Emily Flitter’s The White Wall captures—through assiduous, careful reporting—what I know firsthand: banking while Black, brown, indigenous, female, or as an immigrant can be demoralizing and dehumanizing. The book lays bare the appalling actions of big banks who continue to uphold Jim Crow-era policies like redlining and stifle Black and brown entrepreneurship. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Read this book as a radical act to let the sunshine in.”
—Luz Urrutia, CEO of Action Opportunity Fund

From the Publisher

2022-08-30
Damning exposé of the essential racism of the American financial system.

There’s a racial wealth gap in America, with numerous hurdles placed in the way of minorities—especially Black men and women—who must contend with differential rates of pay, discriminatory lending, and the inability to accumulate intergenerational wealth. In her debut book, New York Times reporter Flitter examines that story in numerous insightful ways. One reason Black people have trouble getting loans is that there are so few Black financial advisers and bank officers to serve their needs. As the author notes, even Sheila Johnson, one of the wealthiest Black people in America, “with a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” was denied a loan when she tried to launch a luxury resort. Banks routinely issue memos headed “Please Use Caution” that target Black customers, who, it’s seemingly assumed, should not possess large checks. That’s one reason, Flitter points out, that check-cashing businesses flourish in Black neighborhoods, as well as the fact that those businesses are transparent about fees rather than layering on unadvertised charges, as banks do. The fact that there are Black neighborhoods to begin with connects to lending practices that discriminate against Black borrowers, “redlining” mortgages and charging higher rates than those for White customers, and to the fact that Black bank employees who want to track over to the wealthier “private client” side of the house are shunted off to lower-income neighborhoods without high-ticket accounts. Unfortunately, as the author shows, discrimination is everywhere. “It is common knowledge that insurance companies routinely look for reasons to deny claims,” she writes, “and that poor customers’ cases are the easiest to dispose of because those customers are the least likely to fight a denial.” Everywhere the dollar extends, by her searing account, minority communities are excluded.

A rousing body of evidence in favor of activist reform of financial practices, from ordinary loans to reparations.

Kirkus Reviews