Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

The Color of Money

Mon, February 13, 2023
Dinner Program
Mehrsa Baradaran

Since the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the total wealth held in the Black community in the U.S. has barely budged. In The Color of Money, Mehrsa Baradaran, professor of law at UC Irvine, investigates the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the Black community: Black banks. Studying these institutions over time, she 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. This conversational style format will consider this history and suggest the bold policies necessary to remedy this legacy.

Nishant Dass, the Charles M. Stone Associate Professor of Finance and director of  the Financial Economics Institute at CMC, will facilitate the conversation.

Professor Baradaran’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute at CMC.

 

Mehrsa Baradaran, professor of law at UCI Law, was previously 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.

Nishant Dass, the Charles M. Stone Associate Professor of Finance and director of the Financial Economics Institute at CMC, will facilitate the conversation.

Professor Baradaran’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute at CMC.

 

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

Contact

Phone: (909) 621-8244 
Fax: (909) 621-8579 
Email: