Panel, Fireside Chat, Statement
Racial Justice and Centering the Black Community: A Milken Institute Community Discussion
- Diversity and inclusion initiatives are currently ineffective, with women earning approximately 77 cents for every dollar earned by men and people of color facing underrepresentation and unequal access to capital and healthcare.
- Corporate affinity groups have struggled to solve problems they did not create, while real estate remains an industry with low barriers to entry but significant generational wealth gaps and minimal African-American representation at the large development scale.
- Access to capital and development deals constitute the primary challenges for African-American entrepreneurs, evidenced by minority and women asset managers receiving less than 1.3% of the $70 trillion available in venture capital and private equity despite Black women launching 30% of new small businesses.
- CalSTRS intends to widen capital access, audit due diligence processes, and internalize asset management with diverse teams, while other entities aim to shift contract goals from 25% to 35% for minority businesses, a target previously exceeded for over 30 years.
- Strategic plans include launching emerging developers funds and unlocking private sector capital to address systemic inequities, aiming to transition the U.S. economic model and address historical systemic failures regarding African American wealth creation.
- Future outlooks warn that failure to maximize every American's potential will result in significant long-term losses for white America due to foreign competition, necessitating an investment in economic opportunity comparable to the resources deployed for the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Business leaders are expected to move beyond diversity initiatives to genuine inclusion, stop assigning empathy burdens to Black colleagues, and implement aggressive affirmative steps to create a profitable, fair, and productive business environment.