May 16, 2024 • 52 mins
In this episode, John is discussing whether or not racism plays a role in banking and financing.
To learn more about John's Operation Hope initiative, visit: https://operationhope.org/how-we-help/credit-money-management/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John O'Brien This is Money and Wealth and
the Black Effect Network. This is the trending topic for
(00:21):
this week. What in the what HBCU fam you who donation?
You call it that purported donation with two hundred and
thirty seven million dollars. Florida A and M University is
putting the pause on a purported largest donation to an
(00:44):
HBCU in the history of America two hundred and thirty
seven plus call it two hundred and thirty four rounded
up million dollars donation by a guy that no one's
ever heard from or heard of before, in a company
no one's ever seen before or done business with before,
(01:07):
Gregory Garami and his so called energy company in Texas,
which I won't bother to name because it doesn't matter.
It appears it doesn't really exist, not exists in literal sense,
but doesn't exist in a sense that it is not
(01:28):
a traded company. It doesn't have a market cap, market
capitalization that is recognized. It doesn't have audited financials, it
does not have published income statements. It doesn't have unaudited financials.
It does not have a board of directors who are
accountable and responsible and are publicly known. It does not
(01:49):
issue annual reports. It does not have a list of
clients that we can be verified and confirmed. The stock
certificates or issue could be like tissue paper. I mean,
anybody can say anything is worth it. So this is
sad because it speaks to with the best of intentions
of the leadership of FAMU. It speaks to our financial literacy.
(02:12):
It reminds me of the bad deals that we cut
meeting African black leaders in Africa with Chinese investors, which
I'll deal with in a separate podcast episode. By the way,
if you want me to cover something on this podcast,
you can lead me a note on one of the
social media platforms where you see promotions for the different
podcast episodes. You leave me a note John Brian, please
(02:34):
cover this, and I do watch the comments and I
will take the best of ideas and use them. So
this FAMUE thing just breaks my heart because it does
speak to our level of financial literacy, making matters worse.
It appears a president when he received this supported purported
donation from somebody nobody knew in the company that nobody
(02:56):
had heard of with the client lists, it doesn't exist
with the stock value. Nobody can confront who was financials
of the company, nobody's ever seen and no one independent
person is verified. When he got this purported donation and
agreed to sign a no disclosure agreement, why would you
ever do that with a donor unless you just don't
(03:17):
tell anybody who the donation was from, not what the
donation is. You can't even to your board of directors,
big red flag board of trustees. In addition to that,
the guy wrote a letter. The president of the university
wrote a letter two days after he received this sham
so called investment, wrote a letter to county governments, the
local county governments where they were considering a fifteen million
(03:39):
dollar additional allocation of funds to the university before I
believe in athletic stadium. It already committed ten million, I believe,
and there was another fifteen million being considered. And the
president of the university wrote a letter and said two
days or three he received this two hundred and thirty
four million dollar piece of tissue paper, I mean purported
investment of two hundred and thirty million dollars. He said,
(04:01):
never mind. He told the local governments, I don't need
you fifty million dollars. I'm cool. And because he thought
this money was real and ex I think it was
one hundred million, it was a sign to the atletic
program or something like that. So you know, whenever you
make an emotional decision, it's going to be a bad one.
You heard it here. Whenever you make an emotional decision,
(04:22):
it's a bad decision. This was bad decision times two,
actually times six, like almost everything went wrong here. If
they called me, I would have told them that this smells.
You know, I'm not trying. I'm not giving shade to this, gentleman.
I don't know them from a holding ground or you know,
I don't know if from the stranger and I seen
(04:44):
on the freeway. I'm just telling you, based on the
data that i'm looking at, the information that i'm reviewing,
and have heard that this smelled from day one, nothing
about this sound kosher. Nobody with this kind of money
is off the grid unless it's inherited or it's criminal.
And it's inherited, you can typically reverse engineer to where
(05:04):
the inheritance comes from if it's if it's criminal, you
probably don't want the money anyway. But this is just
made up, like somebody created some stock certificates gave it
some kind of a phantom value. I want to give
my brother Roland Martin a lot of credit for tracking
this story down and documented online and to go and
watch a cold of Roldan's videos in this he's in
(05:25):
my opinion, he's not wrong. This jury is still out
on all this. You cannot call the gentleman this greg
Greek Garami. You can't call him anything at the moment
because you don't know what he is. You don't know
if he's you know, legit illegit optimism in his head,
a criminal or crunk mentally ill. And we don't know
what he is. But what I know is that he
(05:45):
does not have He did not present the credentials that
back up a two hundred and thirty seven to almost
two hundred and thirty eight million dollar donation, In fact,
not even a two dollars donation the stoff he put up,
no cash stock certificate as he put up with a
marketing value of fifteen dollars or something per share, have
no financial basis tied to them nothing that anybody can confirm.
(06:09):
They're not publicly traded, which is the easiest way that
is the market. Publicly traded is the stock market, the
open market telling you what something's worth, because we will
bo sit and sold the stocks giving it a value.
This is a private company where somebody decided that something
had a value and placed it on it, wrote it
(06:30):
down on a piece of paper, and then tried to
monetize that for reasons that are still strange to me.
I can't figure why he would do this and gave
this universe. He tried to give it to another college
of the university. They rejected it. Unfortunately found you accepted
it and didn't tell anybody until after the gave a
commencement address, and they passed around this fake check and
(06:52):
made all these headlines when maybe that's what the guy wanted,
which means if that's the case, he is mentally I
don't know. Maybe he was trying to use the promotion
and the fame from that to go close business deals
with his non existent company that was doing interesting non
business in I believe, Texas with no and the person
(07:15):
he said he did business with I'm told said she
never worked for the company. She knew the guy, but
was he claimed she was a co founder. This whole
thing to sneak distinct to high heaven, and I feel
bad for the president and the boys, trustees and everybody
at this HBCU, and this is going to unfortunately hurt
all HBCUs. For a minute, it's a little bit of
(07:37):
a laughingstock moment, just so you feel better. I've been there,
not like this, but a brother and I was in
Africa with a bass reader young twenty years ago and
a really really smart brother, much smarter than as Greg.
Dude who was selling art sold me some art and
it was the hotel where everybody was covered by security
(08:00):
because the President of Nigeria was there, and I was
so proud to be there and I wanted to buy
some African arts. I bought this art and I believe
it was like nine hundred dollars or something. So I
gave the guy a check back in the days when
he wrote checks for nine hundred dollars, and he let
me take the art. It was really really smart at him,
and I put the art in my luggage and I
brought I took it home, and about three weeks later,
(08:22):
this guy sends me an email. This is really really savvy,
this this con was off the chain. Savvy sent me
an email. Mister Bryant's so sorry. The check wouldn't go
through my bank wouldn't cash it. They said, I don't
have proper RD. We go to the Western Union where
we go to, you know, go try and cash or
someplace else. Well, you know, I don't know how to
(08:42):
do that, and can you send me a wire instead?
Well sure, so I go to wire him to my
office to wire him nine hundred dollars. It was probably
I think a little bit more than that, but I
think it was twelve undred dollars. But anyway, for seeing
this conversation, it's nine hundred dollars and we wire him
nine hundred dollars. This brilliant guy says, sorry, I can't
(09:06):
receive it the Western Union where the company says, I
don't have the proper ID. What do you mean that,
They say, you know, the proper I D Let me
talk to these people. Well no, let me see if
I can work this out. Now. Mind you, this is
now in the second week of the discussion with this guy.
But this is three weeks after I've left. We're on
the fifth week of me being away. I already got
the art. It's in my home. So these guy says, well,
maybe you can wire it to my sister. Sure, so
(09:29):
I try to wire them. By the way, the first
wire did not go through, so I got a confirmation
that I try to wire the money again to his sister. Success.
His sister received the money. He received the money. I'm
so happy. I don't hear from him again. My assistant says,
by the way, did you ever cancel that shit? Nah? No, no, no, no, no,
(09:51):
can't be went back to the bank check cash. This
dude got me for two grand I think it was
actually tweve hundred dollars, which he got me for twenty
four hundred dollars. It was so smooth, though, I couldn't
be mad at him. And this is back when twenty
four dollars was a lot of money for me. I
believe it was twelve hundred dollars was the original number,
which means he got me twice. I mean that was
(10:12):
everything for me, not everything, but it was a lot
of money for me, and I couldn't afford to lose it.
But I couldn't be mad at him either, because this
was brilliant. He got me and got me good. Well,
Greg whatever, this dude's name is Garam did not get
this university that good. He was not that smooth, that
smart and that smart. This was just this is financial literacy.
This is why I keep saying financial literacy is a
civil rights issue of this generation. We got to know
(10:34):
better so we can do better. This is John Hopebryant.
This is the Money and Wealth Podcast. Go get your
financial literacy and your civer rights. Hey, Hey, it's John
(10:56):
Hope Bryant. And I am honored to cover a topic
that's going to be quite explosive. I'm happy to light
the fuse and this important conversation because we have to
have it. This is something that we have to talk about. Particularly.
I'm talking about racism in America. I'm talking about I'm
(11:16):
talking about being Black in America. I'm talking about racism
and being Black in America and twenty twenty four important.
I say twenty twenty four in particular, and is being
African American specifically the end all be all. If you
read the comments from a post this weekend that Breakfast
(11:37):
Club put up a part of my interview where they
put a provocative title which is not what I said
when I understand why they did it, and that wasn't
inaccurate where I talk about they say what John Bryant
says basically, you know, is racism something like racism? You know,
can you overcome racism with banks or you know, accessing
(11:57):
a mortgage something like that? Is it irrelevant? And of
course that's not what was said. The interview of the
interview was in spite of challenges? Is the color really green?
In spite of challenge? Is a black and white racial issues?
Are you saying, John, the color is really green? Back
it up? And I did back it up. I like
(12:18):
math as I loved the quote Melanie House and quote
get credible credit is due. I like math because it
doesn't have an opinion. So I did back it up.
I backed up what I said about the colors really
green with data and anybody watching the entire one hour
interview on Breakfast Club with Charlemagne and you know the
(12:39):
crew there, we'll see we cover it in great detail
that in a range of other things. By the way,
a teaser I'm going to be doing I covered diversity
equity inclusion of that podcast, and I'm doing a series
of the business plan of America on my podcast series
and on my daily straight talk series on social media.
(13:01):
But getting in detail on my podcast series, I'm gonna
break down the entire future of diversity, equity, inclusion and
how it is a business plan for America and why
I think is going to shut everybody up. So this
is a teaser alert letting all your friends know, tell
them to subscribe to this podcast and follow the conversation
and listen to an intelligent debate about the future of
(13:24):
all of us. But back to this topic. If you
looked at the comments, it was quite troubling because this
one piece, clearly people didn't watch the whole podcast. Not
important the comments themselves or don't bother me, nothing bothers me.
Mostly people were respectful and positive. By the way. What
(13:44):
bothered me was how backwards some of our thinking is.
And we're brilliant people. I went to our way, African Americans,
we are brilliant. We are amazing. We've been doing so
much with so little for so long. We can almost
do anything with nothing right. You know, my grandmother was
a domestic and had a shotgun shot in East St. Louis.
(14:06):
You know, my mother was early on domestic. It worked
an hourly job. My grandfather on my father's side was
a sharecropper. My great grandfather, my second great grandfather, was
fought in the Union cause the Black troops during the
Emancipation Proclamation in Memphis, Tennessee. He was a slave. Clearly,
(14:27):
I understand our challenges. I understand racism is real. I'm
not debating any of that. The debate wasn't about racism, Okay,
So I finally got into it. The debate was not
about race. It had it was a I didn't mention
racism with Charlemagne, didn't mission racism. Dj Nvan didension racism.
The issue was was perseverance and strategy and Israel way
(14:51):
around issues of discrimination and race when they come up
and are you do you think you're correct John in
saying that green is a way around racism of blacks
and browns, And I said, yes, if you get your
credit score right, you get high enough, you can go
over around and through any challenge that faces you. Your
(15:11):
credit score, your adaptly can come, of course. And I've
even went down to say that if you come to
Operation and Hope, we will put up our balance sheet
that Operation Hope and if you follow our criteria. If
the bank turns you down, we'll fund your loan. So
it was not complicated, but it sparked. And I've already said,
if you make a decision emotionally, it's going to be
the wrong decision. So it sparked an emotional back and
(15:36):
forth conversation that I happily engaged in on comments. I
used comment responses sometimes to educate. It wasn't upsetting me
at all, you know, I went out to my self
esteem depends on somebody's acceptance of me. And I am
the best selling author and economics now globally at the moment,
number one on Amazon three categories, and before that published
(15:59):
weekly in the USA. Today the book that just came
out of financial Literacy for all you should all get
a copy. We have built, you know, delivered for to
have billion dolls with the capital the underserved neighborhoods, black
and brown neighborhoods and struggling white neighborhoods and Latin know
neighborhoods by the way, through operation Hope. I think I
know a little bit about capital. I know I'm the
only nonprofit allowed to operate inside of a bank branch
(16:21):
in U it's history. I think I know something about banking.
I'm an advisor to federal regulators, banking regulators. I think
I understand something. I know something about banking regulation. I
think I know a little bit about history. I'm the
only African American, sorry, the only American citizen ever. The
trigger a renaming of the building on the White House campus,
the Treasury Annicts Building, now called the Freedman's Bank Building,
(16:45):
renamed in honor of former slaves who put every dollar
they had in the bank that Abraham Lincoln stood up
with Frederick after the Civil War. Uh, And we went
and got our federal government secretary Jack lou to be specific,
UH and my friend while the Adamo and others helped
me to get the building renamed. This was during the
Obama administration. It's now called the Freedomance Bank Building. And
(17:08):
we had Operation O Break. We believe continuing that work
today three hundred offices across the country. So there's my credibility.
That and a bunch of others I've advised through US presidents.
I think I understand history, I understand the government, I
understand banking, understand money, and I think I understand racism money.
You know, I just said it had nothing to do
with the conversation. The conversation was about how do you
(17:29):
succeed irrespective of racism? But let's deal with this, because
I mean this was people were citing this lawsuit and
that lawsuit in John, how do you say racism doesn't
exist against black people? Because this happened to me subjective.
That happened to me subjective, subjective meaning it was about
(17:51):
this subject It was about this person and this experience
that they had, and their life experience is defined by
that or this lawsuit with this company. And I'm going
to break down banking on a separate podcast. I promise
to do that and dedicate our white banks quote unquote
white banks racist. I'm gonna enjoy doing that podcast, but
I'm gonna say focused on this issue today of racism
(18:14):
and my belief that if you do a class, you
get race for free. Today. Yes, I said it, but
I want you to just follow me on this and
let's have an intelligent conversation. So again, the themes of
the comments you go on my Instagram page in response
to this particular post by the Breakfast Club was you know,
(18:38):
racism is so bad against black people? How could you
ever think about recommending that we access capital or race
creative scores, or why should we have any hope? Essentially,
why should we try anything? Essentially because no matter how
hard we try, no matter what we do, racism against
black people and it's so bad and it's so document
(18:59):
and giant. You should know better then, Why shouldn't we
ever try to do anything? But we're just gonna sit
here and complain about how bad things are because why try?
We all know this system is stacked against us. If
you're black, you've got no chance of succeeding in this country.
When you get up in the morning, people are conspiring
against you. John, you should know better. Again, look at
this lawsuit, that lawsuit. This situation is racism real? Let
(19:23):
me start here. Yes, racism is like rain is either
fall in someplace or as gathering. So you might as
well get out an umbrella in a color you're light
and start strolling through it because it's not going to change,
so you must over a rounded through it. We're gonna
(19:44):
have to get to it. So it's racism real, Absolutely,
it's real. Of course, my friend Stevie Wonder can see
it's real. He won't mind me using making that phrase
to see what there's a great sense of humor. But
I mean the point is anybody can see that racism
is real, and it's been real for a long time,
not just for us, for a whole bunch of people.
(20:04):
And what's the point. Now here's a second pivot on
this conversation. Okay, racism is real. Then how do you
how can you possibly say, John, that we should believe
in this system when clearly racism against black people is
uniform and we can't succeed no matter how hard we try.
(20:25):
The first premise is that black is black. In other words,
when you're black, you're off the grid economically, you're going
to be discriminated against. That's right, right, No, it's not right.
The Boston Globe did a report in concert with I believe.
I know it was Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, but
(20:45):
I think it was also a Duke University look it
up front page. Several years ago. They did a study
of net worth in Boston area and they found that
white people had a net worth of you know, one
hundred and some thousand dollars I recall, and that Black
Caribbean people had a networth of I believe it was
twelve hundred dollars, give or take, and that African Americans
(21:09):
in Boston had net worth of eight bucks. And it
was so bad, yes, eight bucks, and it was so bad,
it was so terrifying of a study that the headline
in the Boston Globe actually said that the black network
in Boston was eight bucks. And this is not a typo.
The headline literally said, this is not a typo as
(21:29):
in topographicable error, that the networth of African Americans was
eight dollars, while the net worth of African Caribbeans, hello,
they're black, it was twelve hundred dollars. Now, the networth
of whites was you know, multiple times that of over
one hundred thousand dollars. So clearly there's disparities there. But
(21:51):
if all black people were in the same bucket, everybody
would have a networth of either twelve hundred dollars in
this one example or eight bucks. But clearly there is
a difference. I said in another podcast episode that and
I've been one hundred countries, I've been to almost half
of all African countries. I've been to a great deal
of the Caribbean. I've said that, and this is a generalization,
(22:14):
and this is what if people want to argue with me,
I guess you can argue about this point. The rest
of it is literally fact based and non refutable. Anybody
likes statistics, facts and data. But this is just my opinion.
But I don't think it's off the mark. If you're
in Africa the Caribbean, you tend to have high self
esteem in lower levels of confidence. High self esteem because
(22:35):
you grew up well, normal mother and father. Generally speaking,
you see the dentist who's black, looks like you. You see
the architect who's black, the lawyer who's black, the mayor
is black. The police who were protecting you, and the
police were abusing you all black, so it's sort of
And you weren't dealing with slavery for the majority of
your ancestral life. It was a short period of time,
(22:58):
but it went away. So I'm to America with high
self esteem. You esteem yourself, you love yourself, but you
have high low levels of confidence because you're not quite
sure you can succeed even though you're really smart in
a leading market economy, because you come from some place
that may be you know, several steps behind the best economies.
(23:19):
The biggest economies in the world, but over time, your
confidence increases. Confidence is based on confidence applied in the
market economy. In this example, Africa is the same thing.
Africans and African Caribbeans tend to have high self esteem
and low levels of confidence or lower levels of confidence
self African Americans tend to have high levels of confidence
(23:42):
and lower levels of self esteem. This is why it's
This gets into why we fight with each other. By
the way, if I don't like me, I'm not gonna
like you. If I don't feel good about me, I'm
not gonna feel good about you. I don't respect me.
I don't have a clue how to respect you. If
I don't love me, I have no idea how to
love you. If I don't have a purpose in my life,
I'll make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around
(24:03):
comes around. But I've gotten too farland we come back
so we have higher confidence because we're competent and we've
applied that confidence or that competence. I'm sorry. In a
market economy, the biggest economy in the world, the United
States of America, we have killed it. In professional sports,
the arts, entertainment, music, etc. Faith, religion, politics, public service,
(24:29):
government rules are published a playing through this level. We
are extraordinarily smart. We hustle, we work hard, We're hyper intelligent.
We're hard working. We succeeded. That competence created success and
gave us confidence because we're succeeded in the largest economy
in the world. But our history of being enslaved and
dealt with with discrimination in jim Crow for most of
(24:51):
our existence in this country, more than three hundred years,
three hundred and fifty years, give or take, has to
damn which our self esteem. That's why you have African
American ghettos in America. You don't have African ghettos in America.
You don't have African Caribbean ghettos in America. I know
there's getting deep and off the topic. I'm going to
get back to the economics here in the moment. It's
(25:13):
a very powerful statement. If I want to lay the groundwork,
we're gonna have a conversation about this. But again, you
don't see African Ghaneian ghettos in America. I don't mean
where African Ghaneans live. I don't remember where saying where
African Jamaicans live in the community are African. Zimbabweans are African,
(25:33):
Nigerians are African. You know Brazilians. Did you get the point?
They live in communities, just like everybody lives in communities,
but they don't have ghettos. You have African American ghettos
in America. Hello. Because they depressed our spirit and repressed
our ambition and aspiration and tried to break us as
(25:55):
human beings. So they just wanted this to be a
human machinery, human doings on human beings and mindset matters.
As you heard me say, I've got a book called
the Memo. I've got that It tries to work on
your mindset. I've got the book up from nothing. The
five pillars of success, your mindset, your your you know,
is that of surviving mindset? Is that the writing and
mindsets are winning mindset, towny, many of us are in
(26:16):
a surviving mindset. We're experts in what we're against, racism
by a discrimination, not what we're for. Hello. So we
double down on this trauma, this PTSD that overtakes us.
And if you whether you believe you can or whether
you believe you can't, you're absolutely right. Is the glass
half full ers and half inb depends who's looking at
(26:38):
the glass. So bassiarger Young would say, to live in
a system of free enterprise. He's on the balcony with
doctor King when he was assassinated. To live in the
system of free enterprise and not to understand the rules
of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery.
And that's why I connect this with credit scores. Uh,
And that's why I said that Charlemagne show Breakfast Club,
(26:59):
get your critical above seven hundred. My mother's credit score
was eight fifty four when she first when she last
access credit, people were even arguing, being about that, oh man,
that your mother's credit score wasn't eight fifty four. It
doesn't even go beyond eight point fifty. See, gotcha? I'm like, hello,
My mother last access credit in twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen
(27:20):
or thereabouts. Maybe even before that, her credit score was
fifty four. It was a vantage score. Hello, Bichael also
went up to nine hundred and vanta score with up
to nine hundred. They changed it in twenty twenty during
the pandemic. But why is this an argument? Why are
we arguing? Why are we re arranging the deck chairs
and the Titanic, the ship is sinking and we're picking drapes.
(27:40):
Why must you convince me that I'm wrong? Why must
you make me wrong? What's your point? My mother's credit score?
God adressed her. So Winnie the Smith was eight fifty four.
Why would I lie about that? She had an hourly income.
She made fifteen to eighteen dollars an hour at McDonald
douglain's aircraft, worked there for thirty two years, bought one
(28:01):
home and comped in one five five o two South
Frankly a broken marriage over money with my dad, Johnny Smith,
who worked very hard but was not very financially literate,
and so on and so forth, And tell that story
in another podcast episode. And my point was, I can
relate to the struggle and the hustle and the challenges.
And we came and we had to live with people
(28:22):
and all that kind of stuff. And my mother bought
and sold seven homes and built a million dollar networks
when she passed away September tenth, twenty and twenty three. Well,
I lie about that. That's crazy. Just take the story
as a source of aspiration, applaud it, and try to
replicate it. But they're folks undermining that story. No, man,
that didn't happen, and John don't understand, and what the
(28:46):
and then my mother they bought and sold seven homes.
I owned seven hundred through the Promise Homes Company, And
there was no government assistance per se. In other words,
there was no government program I used. I I was
financially in literally access capital the market economy. I mastered
the game of capitalism. So my grandmother was owned the
(29:08):
shotgun check. My great grandmother on my mother's side was
a slave. My mother owned seven homes with a high
school education, and I owned seven hundred and the largest
minority owner of single family rental homes in America. And
I access the credit markets and got prime rates and
ultimately got non recourse debts. I'll cover terms of loans, debts,
and financial instruments in another podcast, but non recourse debt means,
(29:31):
in this true example, not personally guaranteed, institutionally guaranteed. So
I became an institutional borrower. And I'm from the hood,
less of my check. I'm black. So people are telling
me this is not possible. But not only did I
do it for myself and I did my mother do it,
but we've done it for four billion dollars worth of capital.
We deployed two people of color and struggling people everywhere
(29:55):
clean non blacks and browns meaning poor white suit which
is the largest population of poverty in America. By the way,
I'll get to that in moment through Operation Hope by
doing the same thing I'm saying, raising credit scores, lowering dad,
increasing savings, making you bank and well, so your color
is not black or white, it's green, so we can
get you approved. But these arguments were almost, like again,
(30:17):
traumatic because they could not accept a different narrative than
the one they had in their head. That's modern day
slavery is mindset, crushed, mindset, a cynical mindset. Don't be skeptical,
but don't be cynical, because when you're cynical, that means
you have no hope. That they're Andrew Young quote. So,
(30:38):
as Malcolm X said, we've been bamboozo we've been tricked,
We've been fooled. Now here's the data. Here's a drop
the mic of this podcast for those who say still
saying listening to this, saying I love what John Bryan
says and all this kind of stuff, but you know,
I just can't buy this this is not true. Racism
(30:58):
is so bad that why should I have hope. Here's
the data. Friend of mine sent me this graph and
it's very powerful. Actually, i'll tell you what the friend was.
That's a brig guy named Charlemagne, who I think is
underrated as an intellect, an intellectual. He sent me this graph.
Here you go. This just confirms what I've been saying,
(31:20):
income by ethnicity median household income by ethnicity in the
United States of America. Okay, so here we go Indian Americans,
not white people. By the way, that's not a racial comment.
It's just that people say it's white and it's black. Right.
White people are rich, and white white people are poor.
(31:40):
White people are elitists and where, and they're repressive against
black people who are being oppressed and where you know,
they got a foot right whatever the phrase is, right?
So I want you to write this down, have this
conversation with people. Let them repeat this podcast in a conversation.
Have a weekly conversation with your posse in your neighborhood,
(32:01):
and go to the barber shop, re open this up,
play it for them. Let's have a conversation about what's
the game here? Because I really believe slavery was actually
about money, not repressing black people. It's about bad capitalism.
There's good capitalism and bad capitalism. Good capitalism is where
I benefit and you benefit more. Bad capitalism is where
(32:24):
I benefit and you pay a price for it. Here's
the large economy in the world. This is the United
States of America. Please listen. Income by ethnicity in this country.
Indian Americans one hundred and fifty two thousand, three hundred
and forty one dollars. Indians are discriminated against. Maybe not
(32:45):
as bad as African Americans, but they have been. Filipino
American one hundred and nine thousand, ninety dollars a year.
This is everybody. Now, you don't seen me, you've heard
of white American. That's why I keep saying the business
plan for America. This country needs everybody to succeed to
continue to be the biggest economy in the world. Asian
(33:08):
American one hundred and six thousand, nine hundred and fifty four,
Chinese American which is different from Asian American by the way,
one hundred and one thousand, seven twenty eight, Russian American
ninety nine hundred and forty six dollars a year. European American. Okay,
here we go Caucasians. So now you've got somebody to
(33:30):
pick on. Maybe they're in ninety six thousand, seven hundred
and forty five dollars, but they are fifth on this list.
There was a time when there was just them. And
I keep saying there's not enough college educated, successful white
man to grow GDP gross domestic product for this country
for the next thirty years. It's not a racial comment.
(33:51):
It's just mad. Go to LinkedIn and read my business
plan for America and again you'll see what I'm saying
that this country, for the first time in the history,
God has a sense of humor. You want to make
God lad, tell me your plan. You're racist. Racism is
bad for business. The lowest credit score of state in
America is Mississippi. The least diverse promoting satan the country
probably is Mississippi. They still arguing about whether they want
(34:13):
to take down the Confederate flag or something. Again, so
it's just crazy discussions. Right. I'm not judging somebody. I'm
saying the decision making is bad. I'm not judging as
a person. I'm saying your decision making is antiquated, is
bad that diverse and inclusive economies are growing economies. America
is the most diverse place in the world, one of
the most It is the biggest economy in the world. Okay,
(34:33):
back to the data so here in nineteen fifty America
was one hundred woman, ninety percent white nineteen fifty, nineteen
fifty five. That's not the reality today. So it was
racism the biggest issue in nineteen fifty probably or one
of the biggest issues. And Jim Crow certainly would suggest
that in the early twentieth century it would slam the
(34:54):
door on any prosperity. Simply what happened in Tosa, Oklahoma,
where they burned down a whole city because people became
prosperous and was a threat, was absolutely a shut down
based on race. What happened after reconstruction or during reconstruction
after Lincoln's assassination, shut down the Freedman's Bank and all
the progress of those becoming black elected officials, et cetera,
(35:15):
et cetera, and the reversal of forty years in the
Meal failed Action fifteen that was clearly white racist forces,
racally motivated forces, or black control. I'm sorry, white control. Sorry,
I say black white controlling interest because they are again
poor whites too at the same time. So I'll get
to that in a minute. Who saw black majorities as
(35:38):
a threat not because first and foremost because of race,
but because they wanted to keep the wealth and the
power and the money for themselves, and they didn't want
other folks out voting them, out numbering them and out
smart them and out thinking them and out doing them.
So keep them, keep them back, keep them down, don't
educate them, don't let them farm proper families, don't let
(35:58):
them understand financial litter to see the freedomans bank, don't
give them, let them have rebuild or have self esteem
and confidence, don't have them have proper role models, and
then blame failure their own failure on them. So, yes,
that was a business plan for a long time. But
this is twenty twenty four. I'm bringing your software over
(36:19):
the round and through it, we're gonna get to it.
Back to the example. I actually think COVID was the
Noah's Art moment. God said, Okay, knock it off, everybody.
(36:40):
You guys have got a bridge too far with all
this messiness, craziness. Let me get you guys refocused and
reset everything, and within a year you had the largest
pandemic since the Spanish flu one hundred and twenty five
years ago. You had a forty year old reckoning of
social justice for Black America. George Floyd. Where everbody's watching
TV because of COVID the news. Otherwise we wouldn't have
(37:01):
been all watching the news black, white, rich, poor, Republican Democrat,
oh and young. And then you had an attack on
our capital, all in the same year, and it reset
everything so that we might grow through legitimate's suffering. Back
to the examples again, Indian Americans number one, Filipino Americans
number two. That's one hundred and fifty two thousand, hundred
(37:21):
and nine thousand a year, respectively of income. Number three,
Asian American one hundred and six thousand, Chinese American one
hundred and one thousand, Russian Americans ninety eight thousand, European
Americans ninety six thousand, seventy forty five dollars a year,
Australian America is ninety five thousand dollars a year, Japanese
Americans ninety four thousand, three hundred nineteen dollars a year,
(37:44):
British Americans ninety thousand, eight hundred and nine dollars. To
see that's different from European Americans. In case that you
want to start getting real specific, all right, and I'll
explained why this is different. In the second Italian Americans
ninety thousand and forty eighty seven. You want to see
some people who are discriminated against, go back to the
early nineteen hundreds and see how Italians were treated. They
(38:05):
were treating horrible in this country. Horrible. In fact, they
were treated in many cases similar to blacks. German Americans
eighty three thousand, nine hundred and eighty nine dollars a year,
Canadian Americans eighty two thousand. They're white. Right, I'm not
giving you the exact numbers of each of these. I'm
(38:25):
giving you I'm grounding it out in some cases, but
it's eighty thousand, five hundred and twenty one dollars Canadian Americans.
White American hello, seventy nine thousand, nine hundred and thirty three.
It will be interesting to find out what describes a
white American versus European American. Probably European American, somebody who
came here from Europe. So white Americans are actually in
the middle of this craft. Now watch this. White Americans
(38:48):
seventy nine thousand, seven nine hundred and thirty three dollars.
Nigerian Americans seventy eight thousand and five dollars a year,
right next to white American. Did you get that? Brazilian
Americans seventy three thousand, two hundred and eighty five dollars
a year. Mexican American sixty six thousand, fortua eighty one
dollars a year. Yes, Mexican Americans. Everybody's talking mess about
(39:12):
the folks who came here honestly, got their credentials and
worked hard are making sixty six thousand for to eighty
one dollars a year for their median household income and
contributing Hispanic Latin American sixty five thousand and eighty two
dollars a year, the average American sixty three thousand, eight
hundred and twenty two. I guess if you average all
(39:34):
everybody out on a graph, Native Americans fifty eight thousand,
eighty two dollars, hello, Hold on, African Americans fifty one thousand,
three hundred and seventy four dollars a year. That's the
end of the graph. Did you get it? That then
aligns with what I just told you about Boston, and
we're brilliant, like I'm African American, We're brilliant. And then
(39:56):
the average fan worth of African Americans and scheduled by
twenty fifty two to twenty fifty three to be about
zero because we don't own homes forty one to thirty
three percent of us own homes. We're not involved in
the free er fries and the capitalist system. Beyond professional sports,
the arts, and a few other categories, we're debating things
(40:18):
that are stupid, like is our banks racism? I mean,
we're spending wasting our time on all these ridiculous conversations
that don't pay any money and they're not building any Well,
we need to get over and get on with and
we need to move on and move on. And this
graph makes it clear that you can be white. And
(40:38):
by the way, this white American category is seventy nine thousand.
My guess is it also factors in poor whites. And
if you if you pulled out poor whites, poor whites
will probably be lower than African Americans. And what happens
is you have a if most people who are white
American making one hundred and I'm making this up one
hundred and two thousand dollars a year. And then you
(40:58):
have poor whites making thirty thousands a year. The average
might be something like seventy nine thousand dollars a year,
and the same would be added by African American gym,
somebody like me who's part of the one percent, and
you have people are part of the one percent. But
that's not enough to offset people making ten thousand and
fifteen thousands a year. You average that out and you
have fifty one thousand dollars a year. So these are
averages again median household actually it's a median household income,
(41:22):
not just not even the average, and median household income
by ethnicity in the United States of America. So this
is complicated people, right, And that doesn't mean the racism
is not is not real, doesn't mean that somebody's not
trying to wake up and hurt you, doesn't mean that
the bank officer you talk to isn't racist. But that
doesn't mean the bank is racist. The bank wants to
(41:43):
make some money, right, they're don't making money, they go broke,
and if they're not lending you money, they may think
they're not that lending you money is going to make
them go broke. Maybe maybe they have a bad image
of you as a person or us as a race.
Is that image incorrect? Maybe? Maybe not. The average credit
score for African Americans and six point twenty, which is
pretty low, actually is the lowest in the country, and
(42:08):
we have to fix it. And it's something we can fix.
By the way, I can't fix how you treat me
or how you feel about me. I can fix my
credit score, and we're doing it at Operation Hope. Now,
let me wrap this up by talking about the largest
group of poverty in this country, just to put a
nail in this coffin, which are poor whites, not African Americans.
(42:31):
The number one group of poverty in this country are
poor whites, right, And the number one group dying are
lasting my check or high school educated white men dying
of depression through opioid addiction and other things, but basically
just depression and poor whites and African Americans we're friends.
(42:51):
Did you know that? That's right? In sixteen early sixteen,
hundreds African Americans and poor whites came here as in
dented servants, and they worked together and became friends and
ran away together, and when they got called, the overseers
were like, hey, boss, we got a problem. These folks
are getting along and they like each other. And the
(43:13):
boss was like, what's the problem with that. The overseer
was like, well, we can have a race problem, but
we cannot have a class problem because we're in the class.
They got to attack us, and they figured this thing out.
So they took the whites and said, look, you ran away.
You can't do that. You need two more years of
attention servitude. Don't do that again. And by the way,
you know you're white like us. That word was, by
(43:35):
the way, the word was made up. The racial word
white is a made up word. That's right. In five
billion years in the world history, four billion years of
organism life in this world, two hundred million years of
quote end quote human life Neanderthal, etc. One hundred thousand
give or take years of modern life human life and
(43:59):
recorded history is we know it. You know, from the
biblical period a few thousand years and there's eight big
people on the planet day. By the way, but somehow
the word white did not get created to the sixteen
hundreds in America. Come on, that's right, you had black royalty,
you had blacks in positions of forwork because because for
(44:20):
hundreds of years, it's about power and position in the
world about your race. You dark in Africa because the
sun is direct, and you're white in Europe because the
sun's indirect. Anyway, back to the topic, right, that whites
and blacks were friends, and they were. It was a
conspire and conspiracy to move them away from each other.
And they told the whites, you're white like us. Now
(44:41):
you're in charge of the black people. Now, these were
poor whites who are not highly educated, so they did
not ask, well, Boston might wealthy like you do, I
have titles like you do, I have land like you do,
I have positions like you, then I could be white
like you. They didn't ask that question. They just said, okay,
I'm white like you. And then they told the blacks,
now you're you don't waity more because you're going to
(45:01):
have lifetime enslavement, lifetime of work. That's with the beginning
of what we call slavery. So now you have a
two tiered system. And I guess they also said to
the white poor whites, you work hard up your own
Some of the blacks so now that goes to friendship,
there goes the kinship that goes to bond. That's where.
And you've heard of the rebellion that happened in the
(45:25):
Believers of late sixteen hundreds, where whites and blacks rebelled
against her overseers together. This is documented. And somehow poor
whites and poor blacks government opposite ends of each other.
And we're still in this stupid argument today. And in
many ways, poor whites who were left who succeeded a
little bit during the Industrial Revolution, no one taught them
free ederprise or capitalism. Either three groups never taught free
(45:47):
or prize, capitalism, economics, ownership, and opportunity. Poor whites, American Indians,
and African Americans intentionally on my dad, out of hundreds
of ethnic groups in this country. So no one taught
them that economic peace. But the Industrial Revolution manufacturing saved
this group and they got a toe hold into jobs.
(46:09):
And with a high school education, we're able to get
a decent job working in a factory or whatever and
have a pickup truck or a you know, vacation home
or you know, the pickle truck was not pejorative. I'm
just saying you know the pickup truck or you know,
second car, or vacation not vacation home. But if they
took a vacation, maybe get a boat or whatever, and
(46:31):
they were happy. And so they weren't. And then the
industrial revolution walked away, the economy evolved, and no one
gave them a business plan for their future. And they
were really for fifty years, no one more than fifty years,
sixty years plus, no one paid them any attention whatsoever.
And now they're riding at the ballot box because they're
upset and frustrated. Black folks may ride on the streets,
(46:53):
My poor white brothers and sisters are riding at the
ballot box. Neither one of them's gonna work. That. Blessans
Anger is not a business plan? Is this graph? I
just shows you work in detail. It's about your mindset.
It's about your education. It's about you understanding how the
system works. It's about you focusing on things that are
productive and then getting And if you hang around nine
broke people, you'll be the tenth. So watching you hang around,
(47:15):
watch the toxicity in your life. I need you to focus, John,
How do you stay so clearheaded? I walk through life
consciously oblivious and most things around me because it just
doesn't matter. So we covered a lot of ground on
this podcast. Let's have a conversation. Yes, racism is real,
of course it is, but your aspiration can outshine somebody
(47:36):
else's racism. I'll put it in another way, My rich frenzy,
my poor friends do better if only to stay rich,
I'll put it. I'll put it in another way or
an additional way. Even the racist needs a black person
to succeed because we all need GDP gross domestic product
to rise. And when GDP rises, everybody prospers. And racism
is a bad business plan wherever you find it. It's
(47:59):
just stupid for business, and it won't create wealth or
opportunity beyond an individual case here or there, But as
a group of people, it is a losing proposition. And
I'll cover that and break that out in detail in
my series The Business Plan for America that you'll hear
on this podcast. So enjoy the rest of your day
and week and be inspired and know that yes, in
(48:21):
spider racism over the rounded, through it, you can get
to what you can succeed because the color ultimately is
not black or white, or red or blue, as a
race in politics, the color actually is green. Hey, Hey,
John O'Brien, this is a fan question. What is the
(48:44):
best investment you can make at this time? What it
appears you already did it. You guess such a unique name.
You clearly understand that your best investment is you. We're
not human doings, you're human beings. God never gave anybody
else the same fingerprints he gave you anybody else in
the world. You're unique, So you're the investment. You're the brand.
Invest in yourself. Get educated as much education that you
can shove down your throat. It's one of my principles
(49:07):
of the five pillars success that I put in my
whole approach to living The Pillars also Up from Nothing
and the memo book that I wrote in my new
books Financial Literacy for all, you are the primary product.
Get educated and then invest in conservative Well four one k.
(49:29):
If you work for somebody else, you want to that
at matching money because it's free money. Get the earn
income task credit. Well, that's not an investment. Let me
back up. Four oh one K. If you work for
somebody in the have a matching program, that's found money,
that's free money. If you start a business. That's an
investment in yourself. Buy some stocks, but make them conservative
(49:50):
stocks by doing investing in the mutual fund, even starts
investing in the stock market, but do it conservatively with
sort of best in class, easy to get, easy to you,
manage you know, actually I'm a professional manager. Manage your
stocks when you first get it. Don't try to do
it yourself until you're comfortable with it, and or buy
a home. You got to listen where if you are
(50:10):
of adult age, so why renference mighty? Like me, you'd
buy something for yourself and see your appreciation happen right
in front of you. There are other things you can do,
but here these are some easy ones, and essentially all
these are versions of me saying, invest in yourself. John
O'Brien Love and Life, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien
(50:45):
is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For
more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
this is John O'Brien This is Money and Wealth and
the Black Effect Network. This is the trending topic for
(00:21):
this week. What in the what HBCU fam you who donation?
You call it that purported donation with two hundred and
thirty seven million dollars. Florida A and M University is
putting the pause on a purported largest donation to an
(00:44):
HBCU in the history of America two hundred and thirty
seven plus call it two hundred and thirty four rounded
up million dollars donation by a guy that no one's
ever heard from or heard of before, in a company
no one's ever seen before or done business with before,
(01:07):
Gregory Garami and his so called energy company in Texas,
which I won't bother to name because it doesn't matter.
It appears it doesn't really exist, not exists in literal sense,
but doesn't exist in a sense that it is not
(01:28):
a traded company. It doesn't have a market cap, market
capitalization that is recognized. It doesn't have audited financials, it
does not have published income statements. It doesn't have unaudited financials.
It does not have a board of directors who are
accountable and responsible and are publicly known. It does not
(01:49):
issue annual reports. It does not have a list of
clients that we can be verified and confirmed. The stock
certificates or issue could be like tissue paper. I mean,
anybody can say anything is worth it. So this is
sad because it speaks to with the best of intentions
of the leadership of FAMU. It speaks to our financial literacy.
(02:12):
It reminds me of the bad deals that we cut
meeting African black leaders in Africa with Chinese investors, which
I'll deal with in a separate podcast episode. By the way,
if you want me to cover something on this podcast,
you can lead me a note on one of the
social media platforms where you see promotions for the different
podcast episodes. You leave me a note John Brian, please
(02:34):
cover this, and I do watch the comments and I
will take the best of ideas and use them. So
this FAMUE thing just breaks my heart because it does
speak to our level of financial literacy, making matters worse.
It appears a president when he received this supported purported
donation from somebody nobody knew in the company that nobody
(02:56):
had heard of with the client lists, it doesn't exist
with the stock value. Nobody can confront who was financials
of the company, nobody's ever seen and no one independent
person is verified. When he got this purported donation and
agreed to sign a no disclosure agreement, why would you
ever do that with a donor unless you just don't
(03:17):
tell anybody who the donation was from, not what the
donation is. You can't even to your board of directors,
big red flag board of trustees. In addition to that,
the guy wrote a letter. The president of the university
wrote a letter two days after he received this sham
so called investment, wrote a letter to county governments, the
local county governments where they were considering a fifteen million
(03:39):
dollar additional allocation of funds to the university before I
believe in athletic stadium. It already committed ten million, I believe,
and there was another fifteen million being considered. And the
president of the university wrote a letter and said two
days or three he received this two hundred and thirty
four million dollar piece of tissue paper, I mean purported
investment of two hundred and thirty million dollars. He said,
(04:01):
never mind. He told the local governments, I don't need
you fifty million dollars. I'm cool. And because he thought
this money was real and ex I think it was
one hundred million, it was a sign to the atletic
program or something like that. So you know, whenever you
make an emotional decision, it's going to be a bad one.
You heard it here. Whenever you make an emotional decision,
(04:22):
it's a bad decision. This was bad decision times two,
actually times six, like almost everything went wrong here. If
they called me, I would have told them that this smells.
You know, I'm not trying. I'm not giving shade to this, gentleman.
I don't know them from a holding ground or you know,
I don't know if from the stranger and I seen
(04:44):
on the freeway. I'm just telling you, based on the
data that i'm looking at, the information that i'm reviewing,
and have heard that this smelled from day one, nothing
about this sound kosher. Nobody with this kind of money
is off the grid unless it's inherited or it's criminal.
And it's inherited, you can typically reverse engineer to where
(05:04):
the inheritance comes from if it's if it's criminal, you
probably don't want the money anyway. But this is just
made up, like somebody created some stock certificates gave it
some kind of a phantom value. I want to give
my brother Roland Martin a lot of credit for tracking
this story down and documented online and to go and
watch a cold of Roldan's videos in this he's in
(05:25):
my opinion, he's not wrong. This jury is still out
on all this. You cannot call the gentleman this greg
Greek Garami. You can't call him anything at the moment
because you don't know what he is. You don't know
if he's you know, legit illegit optimism in his head,
a criminal or crunk mentally ill. And we don't know
what he is. But what I know is that he
(05:45):
does not have He did not present the credentials that
back up a two hundred and thirty seven to almost
two hundred and thirty eight million dollar donation, In fact,
not even a two dollars donation the stoff he put up,
no cash stock certificate as he put up with a
marketing value of fifteen dollars or something per share, have
no financial basis tied to them nothing that anybody can confirm.
(06:09):
They're not publicly traded, which is the easiest way that
is the market. Publicly traded is the stock market, the
open market telling you what something's worth, because we will
bo sit and sold the stocks giving it a value.
This is a private company where somebody decided that something
had a value and placed it on it, wrote it
(06:30):
down on a piece of paper, and then tried to
monetize that for reasons that are still strange to me.
I can't figure why he would do this and gave
this universe. He tried to give it to another college
of the university. They rejected it. Unfortunately found you accepted
it and didn't tell anybody until after the gave a
commencement address, and they passed around this fake check and
(06:52):
made all these headlines when maybe that's what the guy wanted,
which means if that's the case, he is mentally I
don't know. Maybe he was trying to use the promotion
and the fame from that to go close business deals
with his non existent company that was doing interesting non
business in I believe, Texas with no and the person
(07:15):
he said he did business with I'm told said she
never worked for the company. She knew the guy, but
was he claimed she was a co founder. This whole
thing to sneak distinct to high heaven, and I feel
bad for the president and the boys, trustees and everybody
at this HBCU, and this is going to unfortunately hurt
all HBCUs. For a minute, it's a little bit of
(07:37):
a laughingstock moment, just so you feel better. I've been there,
not like this, but a brother and I was in
Africa with a bass reader young twenty years ago and
a really really smart brother, much smarter than as Greg.
Dude who was selling art sold me some art and
it was the hotel where everybody was covered by security
(08:00):
because the President of Nigeria was there, and I was
so proud to be there and I wanted to buy
some African arts. I bought this art and I believe
it was like nine hundred dollars or something. So I
gave the guy a check back in the days when
he wrote checks for nine hundred dollars, and he let
me take the art. It was really really smart at him,
and I put the art in my luggage and I
brought I took it home, and about three weeks later,
(08:22):
this guy sends me an email. This is really really savvy,
this this con was off the chain. Savvy sent me
an email. Mister Bryant's so sorry. The check wouldn't go
through my bank wouldn't cash it. They said, I don't
have proper RD. We go to the Western Union where
we go to, you know, go try and cash or
someplace else. Well, you know, I don't know how to
(08:42):
do that, and can you send me a wire instead?
Well sure, so I go to wire him to my
office to wire him nine hundred dollars. It was probably
I think a little bit more than that, but I
think it was twelve undred dollars. But anyway, for seeing
this conversation, it's nine hundred dollars and we wire him
nine hundred dollars. This brilliant guy says, sorry, I can't
(09:06):
receive it the Western Union where the company says, I
don't have the proper ID. What do you mean that,
They say, you know, the proper I D Let me
talk to these people. Well no, let me see if
I can work this out. Now. Mind you, this is
now in the second week of the discussion with this guy.
But this is three weeks after I've left. We're on
the fifth week of me being away. I already got
the art. It's in my home. So these guy says, well,
maybe you can wire it to my sister. Sure, so
(09:29):
I try to wire them. By the way, the first
wire did not go through, so I got a confirmation
that I try to wire the money again to his sister. Success.
His sister received the money. He received the money. I'm
so happy. I don't hear from him again. My assistant says,
by the way, did you ever cancel that shit? Nah? No, no, no, no, no,
(09:51):
can't be went back to the bank check cash. This
dude got me for two grand I think it was
actually tweve hundred dollars, which he got me for twenty
four hundred dollars. It was so smooth, though, I couldn't
be mad at him. And this is back when twenty
four dollars was a lot of money for me. I
believe it was twelve hundred dollars was the original number,
which means he got me twice. I mean that was
(10:12):
everything for me, not everything, but it was a lot
of money for me, and I couldn't afford to lose it.
But I couldn't be mad at him either, because this
was brilliant. He got me and got me good. Well,
Greg whatever, this dude's name is Garam did not get
this university that good. He was not that smooth, that
smart and that smart. This was just this is financial literacy.
This is why I keep saying financial literacy is a
civil rights issue of this generation. We got to know
(10:34):
better so we can do better. This is John Hopebryant.
This is the Money and Wealth Podcast. Go get your
financial literacy and your civer rights. Hey, Hey, it's John
(10:56):
Hope Bryant. And I am honored to cover a topic
that's going to be quite explosive. I'm happy to light
the fuse and this important conversation because we have to
have it. This is something that we have to talk about. Particularly.
I'm talking about racism in America. I'm talking about I'm
(11:16):
talking about being Black in America. I'm talking about racism
and being Black in America and twenty twenty four important.
I say twenty twenty four in particular, and is being
African American specifically the end all be all. If you
read the comments from a post this weekend that Breakfast
(11:37):
Club put up a part of my interview where they
put a provocative title which is not what I said
when I understand why they did it, and that wasn't
inaccurate where I talk about they say what John Bryant
says basically, you know, is racism something like racism? You know,
can you overcome racism with banks or you know, accessing
(11:57):
a mortgage something like that? Is it irrelevant? And of
course that's not what was said. The interview of the
interview was in spite of challenges? Is the color really green?
In spite of challenge? Is a black and white racial issues?
Are you saying, John, the color is really green? Back
it up? And I did back it up. I like
(12:18):
math as I loved the quote Melanie House and quote
get credible credit is due. I like math because it
doesn't have an opinion. So I did back it up.
I backed up what I said about the colors really
green with data and anybody watching the entire one hour
interview on Breakfast Club with Charlemagne and you know the
(12:39):
crew there, we'll see we cover it in great detail
that in a range of other things. By the way,
a teaser I'm going to be doing I covered diversity
equity inclusion of that podcast, and I'm doing a series
of the business plan of America on my podcast series
and on my daily straight talk series on social media.
(13:01):
But getting in detail on my podcast series, I'm gonna
break down the entire future of diversity, equity, inclusion and
how it is a business plan for America and why
I think is going to shut everybody up. So this
is a teaser alert letting all your friends know, tell
them to subscribe to this podcast and follow the conversation
and listen to an intelligent debate about the future of
(13:24):
all of us. But back to this topic. If you
looked at the comments, it was quite troubling because this
one piece, clearly people didn't watch the whole podcast. Not
important the comments themselves or don't bother me, nothing bothers me.
Mostly people were respectful and positive. By the way. What
(13:44):
bothered me was how backwards some of our thinking is.
And we're brilliant people. I went to our way, African Americans,
we are brilliant. We are amazing. We've been doing so
much with so little for so long. We can almost
do anything with nothing right. You know, my grandmother was
a domestic and had a shotgun shot in East St. Louis.
(14:06):
You know, my mother was early on domestic. It worked
an hourly job. My grandfather on my father's side was
a sharecropper. My great grandfather, my second great grandfather, was
fought in the Union cause the Black troops during the
Emancipation Proclamation in Memphis, Tennessee. He was a slave. Clearly,
(14:27):
I understand our challenges. I understand racism is real. I'm
not debating any of that. The debate wasn't about racism, Okay,
So I finally got into it. The debate was not
about race. It had it was a I didn't mention
racism with Charlemagne, didn't mission racism. Dj Nvan didension racism.
The issue was was perseverance and strategy and Israel way
(14:51):
around issues of discrimination and race when they come up
and are you do you think you're correct John in
saying that green is a way around racism of blacks
and browns, And I said, yes, if you get your
credit score right, you get high enough, you can go
over around and through any challenge that faces you. Your
(15:11):
credit score, your adaptly can come, of course. And I've
even went down to say that if you come to
Operation and Hope, we will put up our balance sheet
that Operation Hope and if you follow our criteria. If
the bank turns you down, we'll fund your loan. So
it was not complicated, but it sparked. And I've already said,
if you make a decision emotionally, it's going to be
the wrong decision. So it sparked an emotional back and
(15:36):
forth conversation that I happily engaged in on comments. I
used comment responses sometimes to educate. It wasn't upsetting me
at all, you know, I went out to my self
esteem depends on somebody's acceptance of me. And I am
the best selling author and economics now globally at the moment,
number one on Amazon three categories, and before that published
(15:59):
weekly in the USA. Today the book that just came
out of financial Literacy for all you should all get
a copy. We have built, you know, delivered for to
have billion dolls with the capital the underserved neighborhoods, black
and brown neighborhoods and struggling white neighborhoods and Latin know
neighborhoods by the way, through operation Hope. I think I
know a little bit about capital. I know I'm the
only nonprofit allowed to operate inside of a bank branch
(16:21):
in U it's history. I think I know something about banking.
I'm an advisor to federal regulators, banking regulators. I think
I understand something. I know something about banking regulation. I
think I know a little bit about history. I'm the
only African American, sorry, the only American citizen ever. The
trigger a renaming of the building on the White House campus,
the Treasury Annicts Building, now called the Freedman's Bank Building,
(16:45):
renamed in honor of former slaves who put every dollar
they had in the bank that Abraham Lincoln stood up
with Frederick after the Civil War. Uh, And we went
and got our federal government secretary Jack lou to be specific,
UH and my friend while the Adamo and others helped
me to get the building renamed. This was during the
Obama administration. It's now called the Freedomance Bank Building. And
(17:08):
we had Operation O Break. We believe continuing that work
today three hundred offices across the country. So there's my credibility.
That and a bunch of others I've advised through US presidents.
I think I understand history, I understand the government, I
understand banking, understand money, and I think I understand racism money.
You know, I just said it had nothing to do
with the conversation. The conversation was about how do you
(17:29):
succeed irrespective of racism? But let's deal with this, because
I mean this was people were citing this lawsuit and
that lawsuit in John, how do you say racism doesn't
exist against black people? Because this happened to me subjective.
That happened to me subjective, subjective meaning it was about
(17:51):
this subject It was about this person and this experience
that they had, and their life experience is defined by
that or this lawsuit with this company. And I'm going
to break down banking on a separate podcast. I promise
to do that and dedicate our white banks quote unquote
white banks racist. I'm gonna enjoy doing that podcast, but
I'm gonna say focused on this issue today of racism
(18:14):
and my belief that if you do a class, you
get race for free. Today. Yes, I said it, but
I want you to just follow me on this and
let's have an intelligent conversation. So again, the themes of
the comments you go on my Instagram page in response
to this particular post by the Breakfast Club was you know,
(18:38):
racism is so bad against black people? How could you
ever think about recommending that we access capital or race
creative scores, or why should we have any hope? Essentially,
why should we try anything? Essentially because no matter how
hard we try, no matter what we do, racism against
black people and it's so bad and it's so document
(18:59):
and giant. You should know better then, Why shouldn't we
ever try to do anything? But we're just gonna sit
here and complain about how bad things are because why try?
We all know this system is stacked against us. If
you're black, you've got no chance of succeeding in this country.
When you get up in the morning, people are conspiring
against you. John, you should know better. Again, look at
this lawsuit, that lawsuit. This situation is racism real? Let
(19:23):
me start here. Yes, racism is like rain is either
fall in someplace or as gathering. So you might as
well get out an umbrella in a color you're light
and start strolling through it because it's not going to change,
so you must over a rounded through it. We're gonna
(19:44):
have to get to it. So it's racism real, Absolutely,
it's real. Of course, my friend Stevie Wonder can see
it's real. He won't mind me using making that phrase
to see what there's a great sense of humor. But
I mean the point is anybody can see that racism
is real, and it's been real for a long time,
not just for us, for a whole bunch of people.
(20:04):
And what's the point. Now here's a second pivot on
this conversation. Okay, racism is real. Then how do you
how can you possibly say, John, that we should believe
in this system when clearly racism against black people is
uniform and we can't succeed no matter how hard we try.
(20:25):
The first premise is that black is black. In other words,
when you're black, you're off the grid economically, you're going
to be discriminated against. That's right, right, No, it's not right.
The Boston Globe did a report in concert with I believe.
I know it was Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, but
(20:45):
I think it was also a Duke University look it
up front page. Several years ago. They did a study
of net worth in Boston area and they found that
white people had a net worth of you know, one
hundred and some thousand dollars I recall, and that Black
Caribbean people had a networth of I believe it was
twelve hundred dollars, give or take, and that African Americans
(21:09):
in Boston had net worth of eight bucks. And it
was so bad, yes, eight bucks, and it was so bad,
it was so terrifying of a study that the headline
in the Boston Globe actually said that the black network
in Boston was eight bucks. And this is not a typo.
The headline literally said, this is not a typo as
(21:29):
in topographicable error, that the networth of African Americans was
eight dollars, while the net worth of African Caribbeans, hello,
they're black, it was twelve hundred dollars. Now, the networth
of whites was you know, multiple times that of over
one hundred thousand dollars. So clearly there's disparities there. But
(21:51):
if all black people were in the same bucket, everybody
would have a networth of either twelve hundred dollars in
this one example or eight bucks. But clearly there is
a difference. I said in another podcast episode that and
I've been one hundred countries, I've been to almost half
of all African countries. I've been to a great deal
of the Caribbean. I've said that, and this is a generalization,
(22:14):
and this is what if people want to argue with me,
I guess you can argue about this point. The rest
of it is literally fact based and non refutable. Anybody
likes statistics, facts and data. But this is just my opinion.
But I don't think it's off the mark. If you're
in Africa the Caribbean, you tend to have high self
esteem in lower levels of confidence. High self esteem because
(22:35):
you grew up well, normal mother and father. Generally speaking,
you see the dentist who's black, looks like you. You see
the architect who's black, the lawyer who's black, the mayor
is black. The police who were protecting you, and the
police were abusing you all black, so it's sort of
And you weren't dealing with slavery for the majority of
your ancestral life. It was a short period of time,
(22:58):
but it went away. So I'm to America with high
self esteem. You esteem yourself, you love yourself, but you
have high low levels of confidence because you're not quite
sure you can succeed even though you're really smart in
a leading market economy, because you come from some place
that may be you know, several steps behind the best economies.
(23:19):
The biggest economies in the world, but over time, your
confidence increases. Confidence is based on confidence applied in the
market economy. In this example, Africa is the same thing.
Africans and African Caribbeans tend to have high self esteem
and low levels of confidence or lower levels of confidence
self African Americans tend to have high levels of confidence
(23:42):
and lower levels of self esteem. This is why it's
This gets into why we fight with each other. By
the way, if I don't like me, I'm not gonna
like you. If I don't feel good about me, I'm
not gonna feel good about you. I don't respect me.
I don't have a clue how to respect you. If
I don't love me, I have no idea how to
love you. If I don't have a purpose in my life,
I'll make your life a living hell. Whatever goes around
(24:03):
comes around. But I've gotten too farland we come back
so we have higher confidence because we're competent and we've
applied that confidence or that competence. I'm sorry. In a
market economy, the biggest economy in the world, the United
States of America, we have killed it. In professional sports,
the arts, entertainment, music, etc. Faith, religion, politics, public service,
(24:29):
government rules are published a playing through this level. We
are extraordinarily smart. We hustle, we work hard, We're hyper intelligent.
We're hard working. We succeeded. That competence created success and
gave us confidence because we're succeeded in the largest economy
in the world. But our history of being enslaved and
dealt with with discrimination in jim Crow for most of
(24:51):
our existence in this country, more than three hundred years,
three hundred and fifty years, give or take, has to
damn which our self esteem. That's why you have African
American ghettos in America. You don't have African ghettos in America.
You don't have African Caribbean ghettos in America. I know
there's getting deep and off the topic. I'm going to
get back to the economics here in the moment. It's
(25:13):
a very powerful statement. If I want to lay the groundwork,
we're gonna have a conversation about this. But again, you
don't see African Ghaneian ghettos in America. I don't mean
where African Ghaneans live. I don't remember where saying where
African Jamaicans live in the community are African. Zimbabweans are African,
(25:33):
Nigerians are African. You know Brazilians. Did you get the point?
They live in communities, just like everybody lives in communities,
but they don't have ghettos. You have African American ghettos
in America. Hello. Because they depressed our spirit and repressed
our ambition and aspiration and tried to break us as
(25:55):
human beings. So they just wanted this to be a
human machinery, human doings on human beings and mindset matters.
As you heard me say, I've got a book called
the Memo. I've got that It tries to work on
your mindset. I've got the book up from nothing. The
five pillars of success, your mindset, your your you know,
is that of surviving mindset? Is that the writing and
mindsets are winning mindset, towny, many of us are in
(26:16):
a surviving mindset. We're experts in what we're against, racism
by a discrimination, not what we're for. Hello. So we
double down on this trauma, this PTSD that overtakes us.
And if you whether you believe you can or whether
you believe you can't, you're absolutely right. Is the glass
half full ers and half inb depends who's looking at
(26:38):
the glass. So bassiarger Young would say, to live in
a system of free enterprise. He's on the balcony with
doctor King when he was assassinated. To live in the
system of free enterprise and not to understand the rules
of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery.
And that's why I connect this with credit scores. Uh,
And that's why I said that Charlemagne show Breakfast Club,
(26:59):
get your critical above seven hundred. My mother's credit score
was eight fifty four when she first when she last
access credit, people were even arguing, being about that, oh man,
that your mother's credit score wasn't eight fifty four. It
doesn't even go beyond eight point fifty. See, gotcha? I'm like, hello,
My mother last access credit in twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen
(27:20):
or thereabouts. Maybe even before that, her credit score was
fifty four. It was a vantage score. Hello, Bichael also
went up to nine hundred and vanta score with up
to nine hundred. They changed it in twenty twenty during
the pandemic. But why is this an argument? Why are
we arguing? Why are we re arranging the deck chairs
and the Titanic, the ship is sinking and we're picking drapes.
(27:40):
Why must you convince me that I'm wrong? Why must
you make me wrong? What's your point? My mother's credit score?
God adressed her. So Winnie the Smith was eight fifty four.
Why would I lie about that? She had an hourly income.
She made fifteen to eighteen dollars an hour at McDonald
douglain's aircraft, worked there for thirty two years, bought one
(28:01):
home and comped in one five five o two South
Frankly a broken marriage over money with my dad, Johnny Smith,
who worked very hard but was not very financially literate,
and so on and so forth, And tell that story
in another podcast episode. And my point was, I can
relate to the struggle and the hustle and the challenges.
And we came and we had to live with people
(28:22):
and all that kind of stuff. And my mother bought
and sold seven homes and built a million dollar networks
when she passed away September tenth, twenty and twenty three. Well,
I lie about that. That's crazy. Just take the story
as a source of aspiration, applaud it, and try to
replicate it. But they're folks undermining that story. No, man,
that didn't happen, and John don't understand, and what the
(28:46):
and then my mother they bought and sold seven homes.
I owned seven hundred through the Promise Homes Company, And
there was no government assistance per se. In other words,
there was no government program I used. I I was
financially in literally access capital the market economy. I mastered
the game of capitalism. So my grandmother was owned the
(29:08):
shotgun check. My great grandmother on my mother's side was
a slave. My mother owned seven homes with a high
school education, and I owned seven hundred and the largest
minority owner of single family rental homes in America. And
I access the credit markets and got prime rates and
ultimately got non recourse debts. I'll cover terms of loans, debts,
and financial instruments in another podcast, but non recourse debt means,
(29:31):
in this true example, not personally guaranteed, institutionally guaranteed. So
I became an institutional borrower. And I'm from the hood,
less of my check. I'm black. So people are telling
me this is not possible. But not only did I
do it for myself and I did my mother do it,
but we've done it for four billion dollars worth of capital.
We deployed two people of color and struggling people everywhere
(29:55):
clean non blacks and browns meaning poor white suit which
is the largest population of poverty in America. By the way,
I'll get to that in moment through Operation Hope by
doing the same thing I'm saying, raising credit scores, lowering dad,
increasing savings, making you bank and well, so your color
is not black or white, it's green, so we can
get you approved. But these arguments were almost, like again,
(30:17):
traumatic because they could not accept a different narrative than
the one they had in their head. That's modern day
slavery is mindset, crushed, mindset, a cynical mindset. Don't be skeptical,
but don't be cynical, because when you're cynical, that means
you have no hope. That they're Andrew Young quote. So,
(30:38):
as Malcolm X said, we've been bamboozo we've been tricked,
We've been fooled. Now here's the data. Here's a drop
the mic of this podcast for those who say still
saying listening to this, saying I love what John Bryan
says and all this kind of stuff, but you know,
I just can't buy this this is not true. Racism
(30:58):
is so bad that why should I have hope. Here's
the data. Friend of mine sent me this graph and
it's very powerful. Actually, i'll tell you what the friend was.
That's a brig guy named Charlemagne, who I think is
underrated as an intellect, an intellectual. He sent me this graph.
Here you go. This just confirms what I've been saying,
(31:20):
income by ethnicity median household income by ethnicity in the
United States of America. Okay, so here we go Indian Americans,
not white people. By the way, that's not a racial comment.
It's just that people say it's white and it's black. Right.
White people are rich, and white white people are poor.
(31:40):
White people are elitists and where, and they're repressive against
black people who are being oppressed and where you know,
they got a foot right whatever the phrase is, right?
So I want you to write this down, have this
conversation with people. Let them repeat this podcast in a conversation.
Have a weekly conversation with your posse in your neighborhood,
(32:01):
and go to the barber shop, re open this up,
play it for them. Let's have a conversation about what's
the game here? Because I really believe slavery was actually
about money, not repressing black people. It's about bad capitalism.
There's good capitalism and bad capitalism. Good capitalism is where
I benefit and you benefit more. Bad capitalism is where
(32:24):
I benefit and you pay a price for it. Here's
the large economy in the world. This is the United
States of America. Please listen. Income by ethnicity in this country.
Indian Americans one hundred and fifty two thousand, three hundred
and forty one dollars. Indians are discriminated against. Maybe not
(32:45):
as bad as African Americans, but they have been. Filipino
American one hundred and nine thousand, ninety dollars a year.
This is everybody. Now, you don't seen me, you've heard
of white American. That's why I keep saying the business
plan for America. This country needs everybody to succeed to
continue to be the biggest economy in the world. Asian
(33:08):
American one hundred and six thousand, nine hundred and fifty four,
Chinese American which is different from Asian American by the way,
one hundred and one thousand, seven twenty eight, Russian American
ninety nine hundred and forty six dollars a year. European American. Okay,
here we go Caucasians. So now you've got somebody to
(33:30):
pick on. Maybe they're in ninety six thousand, seven hundred
and forty five dollars, but they are fifth on this list.
There was a time when there was just them. And
I keep saying there's not enough college educated, successful white
man to grow GDP gross domestic product for this country
for the next thirty years. It's not a racial comment.
(33:51):
It's just mad. Go to LinkedIn and read my business
plan for America and again you'll see what I'm saying
that this country, for the first time in the history,
God has a sense of humor. You want to make
God lad, tell me your plan. You're racist. Racism is
bad for business. The lowest credit score of state in
America is Mississippi. The least diverse promoting satan the country
probably is Mississippi. They still arguing about whether they want
(34:13):
to take down the Confederate flag or something. Again, so
it's just crazy discussions. Right. I'm not judging somebody. I'm
saying the decision making is bad. I'm not judging as
a person. I'm saying your decision making is antiquated, is
bad that diverse and inclusive economies are growing economies. America
is the most diverse place in the world, one of
the most It is the biggest economy in the world. Okay,
(34:33):
back to the data so here in nineteen fifty America
was one hundred woman, ninety percent white nineteen fifty, nineteen
fifty five. That's not the reality today. So it was
racism the biggest issue in nineteen fifty probably or one
of the biggest issues. And Jim Crow certainly would suggest
that in the early twentieth century it would slam the
(34:54):
door on any prosperity. Simply what happened in Tosa, Oklahoma,
where they burned down a whole city because people became
prosperous and was a threat, was absolutely a shut down
based on race. What happened after reconstruction or during reconstruction
after Lincoln's assassination, shut down the Freedman's Bank and all
the progress of those becoming black elected officials, et cetera,
(35:15):
et cetera, and the reversal of forty years in the
Meal failed Action fifteen that was clearly white racist forces,
racally motivated forces, or black control. I'm sorry, white control. Sorry,
I say black white controlling interest because they are again
poor whites too at the same time. So I'll get
to that in a minute. Who saw black majorities as
(35:38):
a threat not because first and foremost because of race,
but because they wanted to keep the wealth and the
power and the money for themselves, and they didn't want
other folks out voting them, out numbering them and out
smart them and out thinking them and out doing them.
So keep them, keep them back, keep them down, don't
educate them, don't let them farm proper families, don't let
(35:58):
them understand financial litter to see the freedomans bank, don't
give them, let them have rebuild or have self esteem
and confidence, don't have them have proper role models, and
then blame failure their own failure on them. So, yes,
that was a business plan for a long time. But
this is twenty twenty four. I'm bringing your software over
(36:19):
the round and through it, we're gonna get to it.
Back to the example. I actually think COVID was the
Noah's Art moment. God said, Okay, knock it off, everybody.
(36:40):
You guys have got a bridge too far with all
this messiness, craziness. Let me get you guys refocused and
reset everything, and within a year you had the largest
pandemic since the Spanish flu one hundred and twenty five
years ago. You had a forty year old reckoning of
social justice for Black America. George Floyd. Where everbody's watching
TV because of COVID the news. Otherwise we wouldn't have
(37:01):
been all watching the news black, white, rich, poor, Republican Democrat,
oh and young. And then you had an attack on
our capital, all in the same year, and it reset
everything so that we might grow through legitimate's suffering. Back
to the examples again, Indian Americans number one, Filipino Americans
number two. That's one hundred and fifty two thousand, hundred
(37:21):
and nine thousand a year, respectively of income. Number three,
Asian American one hundred and six thousand, Chinese American one
hundred and one thousand, Russian Americans ninety eight thousand, European
Americans ninety six thousand, seventy forty five dollars a year,
Australian America is ninety five thousand dollars a year, Japanese
Americans ninety four thousand, three hundred nineteen dollars a year,
(37:44):
British Americans ninety thousand, eight hundred and nine dollars. To
see that's different from European Americans. In case that you
want to start getting real specific, all right, and I'll
explained why this is different. In the second Italian Americans
ninety thousand and forty eighty seven. You want to see
some people who are discriminated against, go back to the
early nineteen hundreds and see how Italians were treated. They
(38:05):
were treating horrible in this country. Horrible. In fact, they
were treated in many cases similar to blacks. German Americans
eighty three thousand, nine hundred and eighty nine dollars a year,
Canadian Americans eighty two thousand. They're white. Right, I'm not
giving you the exact numbers of each of these. I'm
(38:25):
giving you I'm grounding it out in some cases, but
it's eighty thousand, five hundred and twenty one dollars Canadian Americans.
White American hello, seventy nine thousand, nine hundred and thirty three.
It will be interesting to find out what describes a
white American versus European American. Probably European American, somebody who
came here from Europe. So white Americans are actually in
the middle of this craft. Now watch this. White Americans
(38:48):
seventy nine thousand, seven nine hundred and thirty three dollars.
Nigerian Americans seventy eight thousand and five dollars a year,
right next to white American. Did you get that? Brazilian
Americans seventy three thousand, two hundred and eighty five dollars
a year. Mexican American sixty six thousand, fortua eighty one
dollars a year. Yes, Mexican Americans. Everybody's talking mess about
(39:12):
the folks who came here honestly, got their credentials and
worked hard are making sixty six thousand for to eighty
one dollars a year for their median household income and
contributing Hispanic Latin American sixty five thousand and eighty two
dollars a year, the average American sixty three thousand, eight
hundred and twenty two. I guess if you average all
(39:34):
everybody out on a graph, Native Americans fifty eight thousand,
eighty two dollars, hello, Hold on, African Americans fifty one thousand,
three hundred and seventy four dollars a year. That's the
end of the graph. Did you get it? That then
aligns with what I just told you about Boston, and
we're brilliant, like I'm African American, We're brilliant. And then
(39:56):
the average fan worth of African Americans and scheduled by
twenty fifty two to twenty fifty three to be about
zero because we don't own homes forty one to thirty
three percent of us own homes. We're not involved in
the free er fries and the capitalist system. Beyond professional sports,
the arts, and a few other categories, we're debating things
(40:18):
that are stupid, like is our banks racism? I mean,
we're spending wasting our time on all these ridiculous conversations
that don't pay any money and they're not building any Well,
we need to get over and get on with and
we need to move on and move on. And this
graph makes it clear that you can be white. And
(40:38):
by the way, this white American category is seventy nine thousand.
My guess is it also factors in poor whites. And
if you if you pulled out poor whites, poor whites
will probably be lower than African Americans. And what happens
is you have a if most people who are white
American making one hundred and I'm making this up one
hundred and two thousand dollars a year. And then you
(40:58):
have poor whites making thirty thousands a year. The average
might be something like seventy nine thousand dollars a year,
and the same would be added by African American gym,
somebody like me who's part of the one percent, and
you have people are part of the one percent. But
that's not enough to offset people making ten thousand and
fifteen thousands a year. You average that out and you
have fifty one thousand dollars a year. So these are
averages again median household actually it's a median household income,
(41:22):
not just not even the average, and median household income
by ethnicity in the United States of America. So this
is complicated people, right, And that doesn't mean the racism
is not is not real, doesn't mean that somebody's not
trying to wake up and hurt you, doesn't mean that
the bank officer you talk to isn't racist. But that
doesn't mean the bank is racist. The bank wants to
(41:43):
make some money, right, they're don't making money, they go broke,
and if they're not lending you money, they may think
they're not that lending you money is going to make
them go broke. Maybe maybe they have a bad image
of you as a person or us as a race.
Is that image incorrect? Maybe? Maybe not. The average credit
score for African Americans and six point twenty, which is
pretty low, actually is the lowest in the country, and
(42:08):
we have to fix it. And it's something we can fix.
By the way, I can't fix how you treat me
or how you feel about me. I can fix my
credit score, and we're doing it at Operation Hope. Now,
let me wrap this up by talking about the largest
group of poverty in this country, just to put a
nail in this coffin, which are poor whites, not African Americans.
(42:31):
The number one group of poverty in this country are
poor whites, right, And the number one group dying are
lasting my check or high school educated white men dying
of depression through opioid addiction and other things, but basically
just depression and poor whites and African Americans we're friends.
(42:51):
Did you know that? That's right? In sixteen early sixteen,
hundreds African Americans and poor whites came here as in
dented servants, and they worked together and became friends and
ran away together, and when they got called, the overseers
were like, hey, boss, we got a problem. These folks
are getting along and they like each other. And the
(43:13):
boss was like, what's the problem with that. The overseer
was like, well, we can have a race problem, but
we cannot have a class problem because we're in the class.
They got to attack us, and they figured this thing out.
So they took the whites and said, look, you ran away.
You can't do that. You need two more years of
attention servitude. Don't do that again. And by the way,
you know you're white like us. That word was, by
(43:35):
the way, the word was made up. The racial word
white is a made up word. That's right. In five
billion years in the world history, four billion years of
organism life in this world, two hundred million years of
quote end quote human life Neanderthal, etc. One hundred thousand
give or take years of modern life human life and
(43:59):
recorded history is we know it. You know, from the
biblical period a few thousand years and there's eight big
people on the planet day. By the way, but somehow
the word white did not get created to the sixteen
hundreds in America. Come on, that's right, you had black royalty,
you had blacks in positions of forwork because because for
(44:20):
hundreds of years, it's about power and position in the
world about your race. You dark in Africa because the
sun is direct, and you're white in Europe because the
sun's indirect. Anyway, back to the topic, right, that whites
and blacks were friends, and they were. It was a
conspire and conspiracy to move them away from each other.
And they told the whites, you're white like us. Now
(44:41):
you're in charge of the black people. Now, these were
poor whites who are not highly educated, so they did
not ask, well, Boston might wealthy like you do, I
have titles like you do, I have land like you do,
I have positions like you, then I could be white
like you. They didn't ask that question. They just said, okay,
I'm white like you. And then they told the blacks,
now you're you don't waity more because you're going to
(45:01):
have lifetime enslavement, lifetime of work. That's with the beginning
of what we call slavery. So now you have a
two tiered system. And I guess they also said to
the white poor whites, you work hard up your own
Some of the blacks so now that goes to friendship,
there goes the kinship that goes to bond. That's where.
And you've heard of the rebellion that happened in the
(45:25):
Believers of late sixteen hundreds, where whites and blacks rebelled
against her overseers together. This is documented. And somehow poor
whites and poor blacks government opposite ends of each other.
And we're still in this stupid argument today. And in
many ways, poor whites who were left who succeeded a
little bit during the Industrial Revolution, no one taught them
free ederprise or capitalism. Either three groups never taught free
(45:47):
or prize, capitalism, economics, ownership, and opportunity. Poor whites, American Indians,
and African Americans intentionally on my dad, out of hundreds
of ethnic groups in this country. So no one taught
them that economic peace. But the Industrial Revolution manufacturing saved
this group and they got a toe hold into jobs.
(46:09):
And with a high school education, we're able to get
a decent job working in a factory or whatever and
have a pickup truck or a you know, vacation home
or you know, the pickle truck was not pejorative. I'm
just saying you know the pickup truck or you know,
second car, or vacation not vacation home. But if they
took a vacation, maybe get a boat or whatever, and
(46:31):
they were happy. And so they weren't. And then the
industrial revolution walked away, the economy evolved, and no one
gave them a business plan for their future. And they
were really for fifty years, no one more than fifty years,
sixty years plus, no one paid them any attention whatsoever.
And now they're riding at the ballot box because they're
upset and frustrated. Black folks may ride on the streets,
(46:53):
My poor white brothers and sisters are riding at the
ballot box. Neither one of them's gonna work. That. Blessans
Anger is not a business plan? Is this graph? I
just shows you work in detail. It's about your mindset.
It's about your education. It's about you understanding how the
system works. It's about you focusing on things that are
productive and then getting And if you hang around nine
broke people, you'll be the tenth. So watching you hang around,
(47:15):
watch the toxicity in your life. I need you to focus, John,
How do you stay so clearheaded? I walk through life
consciously oblivious and most things around me because it just
doesn't matter. So we covered a lot of ground on
this podcast. Let's have a conversation. Yes, racism is real,
of course it is, but your aspiration can outshine somebody
(47:36):
else's racism. I'll put it in another way, My rich frenzy,
my poor friends do better if only to stay rich,
I'll put it. I'll put it in another way or
an additional way. Even the racist needs a black person
to succeed because we all need GDP gross domestic product
to rise. And when GDP rises, everybody prospers. And racism
is a bad business plan wherever you find it. It's
(47:59):
just stupid for business, and it won't create wealth or
opportunity beyond an individual case here or there, But as
a group of people, it is a losing proposition. And
I'll cover that and break that out in detail in
my series The Business Plan for America that you'll hear
on this podcast. So enjoy the rest of your day
and week and be inspired and know that yes, in
(48:21):
spider racism over the rounded, through it, you can get
to what you can succeed because the color ultimately is
not black or white, or red or blue, as a
race in politics, the color actually is green. Hey, Hey,
John O'Brien, this is a fan question. What is the
(48:44):
best investment you can make at this time? What it
appears you already did it. You guess such a unique name.
You clearly understand that your best investment is you. We're
not human doings, you're human beings. God never gave anybody
else the same fingerprints he gave you anybody else in
the world. You're unique, So you're the investment. You're the brand.
Invest in yourself. Get educated as much education that you
can shove down your throat. It's one of my principles
(49:07):
of the five pillars success that I put in my
whole approach to living The Pillars also Up from Nothing
and the memo book that I wrote in my new
books Financial Literacy for all, you are the primary product.
Get educated and then invest in conservative Well four one k.
(49:29):
If you work for somebody else, you want to that
at matching money because it's free money. Get the earn
income task credit. Well, that's not an investment. Let me
back up. Four oh one K. If you work for
somebody in the have a matching program, that's found money,
that's free money. If you start a business. That's an
investment in yourself. Buy some stocks, but make them conservative
(49:50):
stocks by doing investing in the mutual fund, even starts
investing in the stock market, but do it conservatively with
sort of best in class, easy to get, easy to you,
manage you know, actually I'm a professional manager. Manage your
stocks when you first get it. Don't try to do
it yourself until you're comfortable with it, and or buy
a home. You got to listen where if you are
(50:10):
of adult age, so why renference mighty? Like me, you'd
buy something for yourself and see your appreciation happen right
in front of you. There are other things you can do,
but here these are some easy ones, and essentially all
these are versions of me saying, invest in yourself. John
O'Brien Love and Life, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien
(50:45):
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