A review by audaciaray
The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran

5.0

This book is a serious achievement - a history of black banking and the role of racism in banking institutions in the US, with lots of examples of policies and businesses initiatives and the harm they’ve wrought on black communities. In particular, the author documents the wily ways of racism and capitalism, and how they adapt to appropriate movements. I was especially interested in the sections about Nixon and how he appropriated the messaging of black power and packaged it into black capitalism initiatives that divided radical black organizing with the carrot of black business support structures that were actually ways to segregate and economically crush black communities.

Though the book ends on a slightly upbeat note about what could be possible. But this is otherwise a thoroughly bleak study of the impacts of American capitalism on black communities and the failures (because of white supremacist capitalism) of institutions that have tried to fix it.