Talented 90th
W.E.B. Du Bois, a dynamic Black scholar in 1903 is best known for his concept of the “Talented Tenth”; he argued that full citizenship and equal rights for African Americans would be achieved through the advocacy of an intellectual elite the Talented 10th. His theory seeded Black exceptionalism, which has created hallmarks of success that seek to legitimize constructs of meritocracy. This theory has long been criticized by many other scholars and practitioners including by Booker T. Washington and others.
This is already deeply pronounced in the American South with two million Black households with zero or negative net worth today. These conservative estimates, comparable to the entire population of Montana, Wyoming, and Vermont. This compromises pillars of democracy and a thriving economy that can work for all.
The reality is wealth begets wealth, so the wealth divide will widen without a targeted approach.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis recently released Wealth Inequality data and the findings are quite clear, while Black wealth grew by 66% since 2019, the Black-White Median Wealth Gap has soared to $242,000, accounting for the largest dollar gaps since the data set began. Wealth is not stagnant. We need targeted and substantial investments to bolster Black wealth. We also fundamentally need to interrogate our North Star. We do not want to replicate harm. We know that centuries of systemic racism, oppression and extraction created this divide. It’s time to reimagine bold investments that allow more Black people to produce, own, and thrive in our economies and democracies.
The reality is we need to redefine what wealth means for Black people in this country. The Structural Determinants of Black Wealth framework provides an interdisciplinary analysis of understanding wealth along four core domains: finance, health, environment and democracy. We also know it is important to center our work on collectivism, it is important to move the mean, we commit to the Talented 90th to transcend Black exceptionalism.
