Latest news with #RachelLaryea
Fast Company
7 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
How Black Capitalists are unlocking access to economic power
Dr. Rachel Laryea is an asset wealth management researcher at JPMorganChase and the founder of Kelewele, a cultural lifestyle brand that creates bespoke African travel experiences and vegan plantain-based treats. She is an anthropologist and Black studies scholar specializing in race and money. What's the big idea? We are living in unprecedented sociopolitical times that, for so many, make the elusive American Dream feel even farther out of reach. Those most disproportionately affected by the economic downturn in a highly polarized political climate are wondering how to make ends meet, take care of loved ones, and enjoy life. We are all bearing witness to the harm of capitalism as it works to pit us against one another. Black Capitalists are showing how to make the most of our broken system to secure prosperity—but not at the expense of others. They demonstrate that we can participate within capitalism from a place of power, purpose, and community. Below, Rachel shares five key insights from her new book, Black Capitalists: A Blueprint for What Is Possible. Listen to the audio version—read by Rachel herself—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Race makes a difference in how we participate in capitalism To many, the term 'Black Capitalists' is oxymoronic. Black people were the labor force that built the infrastructure of American capitalism through the violent enforcement of legalized slavery, so they cannot, and should not, aspire to be the beneficiaries of it. But the persistence of Black economic striving and achievement, despite this enduring history which has produced the Racial Wealth Gap, poses a provocative question: What if there is a way to thrive within capitalism without diminishing someone else's life chances through exploitative practices? Black Capitalists are showing us how. From newly minted undergraduates who find themselves working 20-hour days to prove their worth on Wall Street to Nigerian startup founders working to build global credit scores, the stories and analysis of Black Capitalists (who are as ambitious as they are altruistic) demonstrate the resilience, creativity, and ingenuity of Black people who have long been excluded from the full benefits of the American economic system. Black Capitalists show us a more productive and inclusive way forward. 2. Black Capitalism provides a hopeful, pragmatic way forward The term capitalism comes with so much social and emotional baggage, but at its core, capitalism is a political economy in which private actors own the means of production to freely create and sell commodities with the intent to yield excess capital. Anyone can be that private actor. What's important is how the tools of capitalism are used in restorative ways to create opportunities for collective economic thriving, rather than reproducing the harms of capitalism, such as exploitation and extraction. I define a Black Capitalist as a Black person who is a strategic participant of capitalism with the intention to benefit from the political economy to create social good. Although the term 'Black Capitalism' has been around for several decades, I redefine it as a pragmatic theory that accounts for the ways any actors—individual and collective, race-agnostic—reposition themselves within capitalism to achieve social good. The practice of Black Capitalism means: Acknowledging the sacrifices that you make to create opportunities for yourself, but always leaving room to name the privileges inherent in your experience and the responsibility that comes with that. Using the tools of capitalism to create and own the means of production and capital, unlocking access to economic power, and using it to advance people's life chances. Being aware that your practice of capitalism connects to someone else's practice. Using capital to produce ethical value out of an imperfect system and improve the life chances of the economic majority rather than the elite minority. 3. Black Capitalism is a unique form of fugitive planning The undercommons is a term coined by theorists Fred Moten and Stefano Harney and used to describe a subversive space wherein marginalized groups within an institution resist and challenge power structures without fighting for inclusion or attempting to reform these institutions. In what these scholars call 'fugitive planning,' members of the undercommons discover ways to exist beyond the grip of institutional power to evade capture. If this concept seems abstract, consider the creation of the Underground Railroad as one concrete example of fugitive planning in action. As people (enslaved and free) realized that they could not upend the system, they created an undercommons within it—the Underground Railroad—where activists became conductors and carried out the work of fugitive planning to liberate themselves and each other. Similarly, the practice of Black Capitalism serves as a blueprint for how we can break free from the version of capitalism that aims to trap us. 4. The tools of capitalism utilized by Black Capitalists During the antebellum period, Black entrepreneurship required enslaved men and women to double as bondsmen who hired their own time and depended on human capital to support their nascent businesses. During the War of 1812, an enslaved man named Free Frank McWorter contracted his time to build a saltpeter factory in Kentucky (saltpeter being a key ingredient in the creation of gunpowder). By 1817, he was able to purchase the freedom of his wife, and then his own two years later. He expanded his enterprise and went on to purchase freedom for 16 of his enslaved family members. Examples of Black ingenuity and resilience in capitalism were on full display then and now. In the recent past, a Black couple in Northern California whitewashed their home (i.e. removed all evidence that a Black family lived there, including swapping their family photos for photos of a white family and having white friends front as the homeowners) all in an effort to have their home appraised for what it's worth—$1,482,500—almost half a million dollars more than the $995,000 estimation they initially received from a white appraiser. Black Capitalists are finding meaningful ways to redesign capitalism's house in various sectors, including industry, entrepreneurship, academia, the arts, and more. In corporate America alone, these visionaries are volunteering their time to recruit and retain Black talent in predominantly white institutions, leading the crucial conversation on Black ownership, consumerism, and communal methods to unlocking generational wealth, building grassroots programs to increase cultural competency across industries, democratizing access to financial and investing literacy, establishing special purpose credit programs to grant access to lending opportunities otherwise inaccessible to many, and allocating millions of dollars' worth of capital to communities most affected by systemic inequality. 'Black Capitalists are finding meaningful ways to redesign capitalism's house in various sectors, including industry, entrepreneurship, academia, the arts, and more.' In the entrepreneurial sphere, founders like Wemimo Abbey are striking the balance between profit and social good. Having been born in Nigeria and immigrated to America as a young adult, Wemimo is the cofounder of Esusu Financial, a U.S.-based fintech company that automates credit building by reporting monthly rent payments to credit bureaus. Esusu was built to unlock access to better credit health or a new credit history entirely for millions of people. Those best positioned to benefit from Esusu's technology are the economically disenfranchised. Due to the racial wealth gap in this country, the people in question are disproportionately people of color. Today, this 7-year-old fintech company has a valuation of more than $1 billion. By December 2023, Esusu had reported the creation of over 107,000 new credit scores and more than $21.9 billion in capital unlocked for renters through new tradelines. More than 8,000 evictions were prevented. Mortgages totaling more than $14 billion became accessible, in addition to thousands of student and car loans for people who were once financially invisible. Wemimo describes his work as 'bridging the racial wealth gap by leveraging technology to create a permanent bridge to financial access and inclusion.' Wemimo is using the tools of capitalism anew to build a bridge to economic access, namely for immigrants and minorities in America. This is Black Capitalism. 5. Black Capitalism is a global and scalable practice that prioritizes profit and social good. The story of Sangu Delle and his Ghana-based venture is a perfect example. Having been born in Ghana but professionally trained in the U.S., Sangu built CarePoint, a real estate, financial services, and healthcare business designed to create value for African consumers across the continent. A proponent of Pan-Africanism (a movement that aims to build solidarity between indigenous people and diaspora of the African continent), Sangu realized that the remittances of African diaspora in America are a large market and funder of economic activity on the African continent. In 2023 alone, migrant workers remitted $95 billion to their communal networks in Africa. One way Sangu's firm is capitalizing on this phenomenon while producing social good is through the development of a product akin to health insurance. The diaspora pays a monthly fee, and physicians on the ground conduct regular check-ups on family members and provide access to the best medical care. As Sangu argues, 'If the African Union represents 54 African countries, $2 trillion, and a billion people, it's a different bargaining situation . . . .If Black purchasing power can move with one voice, it suddenly has tremendous economic power.' This is Black Capitalism.
Entrepreneur
10-06-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Inside 'Culture Shock' at Goldman Sachs, 'Black Capitalism'
Dr. Rachel Laryea shares what it means to be a Black capitalist — and how anyone can use capitalism as a force for social good. "I've always been someone who has a curiosity about people and society and culture," Dr. Rachel Laryea tells Entrepreneur. Image Credit: Courtesy of Penguin Random House. Dr. Rachel Laryea. Raised by a single mother who immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana, Laryea started her career at Goldman Sachs and holds a dual PhD in African American studies and sociocultural anthropology from Yale University — experiences that helped shape the founding of her lifestyle brand Kelewele, current research at JPMorgan Chase and her new book, Black Capitalists: A Blueprint for What Is Possible. "It was certainly a culture shock," Laryea says of her time working in Goldman Sachs' corporate services and real estate division, "and I've had a few culture shocks in my short life thus far. But it was also an experience that set me on [my] trajectory in a very pragmatic way, that unlocked a lot of the questions and curiosities that led me to write [Black Capitalists]." Related: 5 Trailblazing Black Women Entrepreneurs Share How They're Breaking Barriers — And How You Can Too In her academic work, Laryea examined Black radical tradition and how history and critical race theory around the Black lived experience intersect with capitalism. Often, such scholarship suggests that Black people can't have a relationship with capitalism that isn't exploitative because of the history of American capitalism, given that Black people "were, and often still are, the laborers of capitalism, but hardly ever the beneficiaries of it," Laryea says. However, at Goldman Sachs, Laryea saw many people of color have " complicated, interesting, contradictory relationships" with the "belly of the beast" — Wall Street. The experience made her rethink a lot of what she'd learned and consider how to make space for Black people within the U.S. economic system, to explore how they might benefit from capitalism themselves. "Anyone can be invested in and practice Black capitalism." Laryea's work on Black Capitalists began as she researched and wrote her dissertation, which focused on Black capitalists in the trans-Atlantic industry. As she continued with the project, she confronted the question of how people might use the tools of capitalism to uplift their communities. Image Credit: Courtesy of Penguin Random House Laryea's book hinges on two essential terms: "Black capitalist" and "Black capitalism." " I define a Black capitalist as an individual who identifies as a Black person and strategically repositions themselves within the economy in order to benefit from it [and] in order to create social good," Laryea explains. On the other hand, "Black capitalism" is race agnostic, Laryea notes. "Anyone can be invested in and practice Black capitalism," she says, "because it can be an individual or collective that is doing that same thing of repositioning themselves within the economy in order to create social good." Related: This Black Founder Was Denied a Business Loan and Set Out to Prove the 'Gatekeepers' Wrong. He's Made More Than $500,000 So Far — But It's Just the Beginning. According to Laryea, that communal mindset has the potential to "rupture" contemporary ideas about capitalism — about what it can be and how we can participate in it. "For many people, the idea of a Black capitalist is oxymoronic or even an identity crisis." Laryea admits that some people will have a "visceral reaction in a negative way" to the title of her book: Black Capitalists. "For many people, the idea of a Black capitalist is oxymoronic or even an identity crisis because the question becomes, How could I adopt an economic system that has never allowed me to benefit from it, and in fact has only been exploitative towards me and my community?" Laryea explains. It's a tense question that's fueled by a history of legalized slavery in the U.S., generations of economic trauma carried into the present and the continuously widening racial wealth gap, Laryea says. Related: America is Becoming the Land of Inequality and Diminishing Returns. Here's Why. Laryea also notes the distinction between a Black capitalist and a Black person who participates in capitalism. In the latter case, someone who is participating in capitalism to "reproduce the harms of capitalism" wouldn't fit within Laryea's definition. "It became apparent to me that I would need to use my own story." A couple of the stories Black Capitalists unpacks are those of a Black Goldman Sachs employee and Ifa priest who describes himself as a "spy" gaining access, acquiring excess resources and giving back to his Black communities in Brooklyn, New York, and the Nigerian entrepreneur Wemimo Abbey, who co-founded unicorn fintech company Esusu, which allows low-to-moderate-income households in the U.S. to report rent payments and build credit. "[Esusu is] this win-win-win construct," Abbey told Entrepreneur in 2023. "It's a win for the renter because they can establish their credit score or build their credit score and not go through what my mother and I went through when we came to this country, and during a tough time, [renters also] get access to zero-interest rent relief. The landlord can also get paid instead of evicting the renter. And the last win is for society — to prevent eviction and homelessness." Related: This Black Founder Stayed True to His Triple 'Win' Strategy to Build a $1 Billion Business Laryea also made the "difficult choice" to tell her own story in the book. As she conducted interviews for the book, many of the women she spoke with had concerns about being included and identifiable despite anonymity. "It became apparent to me that I would need to use my own story in a way to stand in for so many of the women that I spoke to," Laryea explains. "Because at the end of the day, so many of our stories and experiences were similar in terms of how we navigate corporate America — so many of the negative experiences that we've had, the diminishing returns many of us experience in being in these spaces but never really reaping the benefits of them." Ahead of the publication of Black Capitalists on June 10, Laryea hopes the book moves readers to unified action. "What's so important, especially in the time in which we're living, [is to] lock arms and get on the same page about how we are going to live through this moment and get through this moment," Laryea says. "We know that capitalism isn't going to be dismantled tomorrow, so from a pragmatic standpoint, it's a question of, How can we can use the tools of this system in order to create social good [and] a more equitable system, in a constant endeavor to get us to something that's a little bit more just?"
