INTRODUCTION

THE CITY OF LONDON IS the UK's financial district. It's often referred to as the Square Mile because it covers an area roughly 1.12 square miles or 2.90km2.1 Glass-covered modern buildings are occupied by banks, asset managers, accountants, insurers, and lawyers, cogs in a machine that generates approximately 22% of the UK's GDP.2 Among these new buildings are churches, sculptures, and plaques, which signpost the City of London's rich history, but it's incredibly easy to miss them. Busy executives rush from one meeting to another, and on the odd occasion they have some respite from the demands of corporate life, their attention is consumed by mobile phones, even as the hideous figures known as Grotesques on Gracechurch Street gaze down upon them.3 There is one sculpture which, ashamedly, I must have walked past a dozen times before I paid it any heed. On September 4, 2008, Archbishop Desmond Tutu unveiled a monument that commemorates the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807. The artwork consists of a group of granite columns protruding out of the ground. Entitled Gilt of Cain, it is a collaboration between sculptor Michael Visocchi and poet Lemn Sissay.4 Extracts from Sissay's poem "Gilt of Cain" are engraved into the stone.

Cash flow runs deep but spirit deeper

You ask Am I my brothers keeper?

I answer by nature by spirit by rightful laws

My name, my brother, Wilberforce.

It's tempting to focus on the fact that the poem and sculpture address the abolition of slavery, particularly given the reference to William Wilberforce (August 24, 1759-July 29, 1833). Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist, and leader of the movement to end the slave trade.5 But Sissay's poem is also littered with references to the economics of this period:

The dealer lied when the dealer said

the bull was charging the bear was dead,

the market must calculate per capita, not head.

And great traders acting in concert, arms rise

as the actuals frought on the sea of franchise

thrown overboard into the exchange to drown

in distressed brokers disconsolate frown.

In Accounting liquidity is a mounting morbidity

but raising the arms with such rigid rapidity .

The sculptures jutting out of the ground are shaped in the form of sugar cane, a staple and valuable commodity during the slave era, and adorned with excerpts from Sissay's poem.

Similarly, I have now lost count of the number of times I have visited New York, either for business or pleasure, and knew nothing of the slave market that once occupied Wall Street. Wall Street itself was an actual wall, erected by the Dutch to keep out Native Americans who might attack the area.6 But between 1711 and 1762, on the corner of Wall Street and Pearl Street, there was an active market where enslaved were traded.7 On June 27, 2015, Mayor Bill DeBlasio dedicated a plaque commemorating the site in Lower Manhattan.8

I never really questioned my "right" to establish a career in finance. Often being the only Black person in the room, I always felt like an outsider, a guest, on tenterhooks in the event that my pass ran out and I would be asked to leave. Yet, as a British person of Caribbean heritage, my very being is inextricably linked with this world. Black people helped create the wealth of the US, the UK, and Europe, yet we don't participate in it. I do, however, recognize the difference that working in finance has made to my life after growing up in a single-parent family in inner-city London where, on paper at least, my life chances were poor. The journey has been difficult and there are still too few who are able to even conceive of embarking on anything similar. This is a waste-of potential, of life, and of opportunity. So the question is, what can I do to equip others with the belief to take the first step and how can I change the world to accept them?

The Black diaspora is not monolithic, but many segments of the Black community in today's Western democracies face a range of challenges, including higher rates of unemployment, poorer physical and mental health, lower educational attainment, and higher rates of imprisonment or incarceration than our White counterparts. When we think about these challenges, we tend to see these as a social construct caused by the way someone treats us, interacts with us, or behaves toward us. I am 44 years old, live a pretty middle-class lifestyle, and yet when I'm heading back from the gym wearing a tracksuit and I pop into the supermarket, I may still find myself being followed by a security guard. This is demeaning, and the cumulative effects of this cause significant physical and emotional harm. However, my life outcomes cannot be solely attributed to situations like this. Social advantage must be created alongside economic advantage. For example, the prevention of discrimination of Black patients must come alongside equal access to healthcare; preventing the schoolteacher from negatively stereotyping Black pupils must come alongside the opportunity to receive a quality education; and equality of opportunity through promotion in the business world must come alongside equal pay. This book will argue that the key challenges Black communities face stem from our economic position and that the way to overcome them is to change our economic situation alongside combating social prejudice. This "socioeconomic inequality" needs to be deconstructed, because to date the economic considerations have been neglected.

To fully understand this economic inequality, we must assess the origins. We find that they are rooted in the histories of Western democracies through the transatlantic slave trade, industrialization, and the growth of capitalism. These pivotal periods changed both the economic fortunes of the United States and Europe, with vast amounts of wealth created, but concentrated in the hands of a few segments of society. This wealth-which we define as the economic value of assets such as property, land, business interests, and income-affords access to healthcare, education, and employment and improves the life outcomes of individuals. Meanwhile, this same period saw African states and the descendants of the 10 million enslaved who were transported across the Atlantic Ocean and who now reside in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe systematically prevented from accumulating wealth, which has had a detrimental impact on their life outcomes.9

Today, the legacy of this period is plain to see. Our finance system, from banking to insurance or broking, was built during this period and shaped the dominant economic belief system of Western capitalism. Meanwhile, our education, policing, judicial, and health systems have been created to operate in this system.

Attempts to improve the life outcomes of Black communities have been both piecemeal and focused on the symptoms of economic inequality rather than the causes. This might be the crime rates experienced in the Black community being met with increasingly forceful methods of policing and imprisonment or incarceration rather than understanding that they are more likely to be victims of crime and that the issue is one rooted in social deprivation due to the economic position and lack of economic opportunities Black communities face. When we have seen attempts to reduce the racial wealth gap, they have tended to focus on one segment of an individual's life, rather than across an individual's life journey. So if we are to reduce the wealth gap, it can't only be focused on educational attainment; we also need to understand the household a child is born into, their access to healthcare, their ability to enter the workplace, their capacity to be paid and promoted equally, and their adequate retirement and healthcare provisions. By creating an "index," it can allow us to set a benchmark for progression of different cohorts and make and measure interventions during an individual's life.

One might argue that creating economic freedom in a system constructed on racial inequality is impossible, that the system itself requires wholesale change. Others are concerned the progression of Black communities means the regression of White communities, often referred to as a zero-sum game. If we are spending a significant portion of a county's gross domestic product on policing, healthcare, and our prison systems, this presents an ongoing economic burden on a country. And yet there is no universal measure for this risk, and consequently it goes unnoticed. This is in stark contrast to other risks such as inflation, interest rates, longevity, and increasingly climate, geopolitical conflicts, and a pandemic, which are all measured. If we can develop a measure for inequality, it can be monitored and mitigated by governments and corporations. Measuring racial inequality risk presents the prospect of measuring gender, class, or even geographical risks-risks that also impact White communities. The creation of risk measures for Black economic inequality could be transformative for all. These risks are measured and mitigated not because of an individual's belief or values, but because they make rational economic sense.10

Furthermore, the creation of an index alongside an understanding of its economic impact presents us with an opportunity to gain social and economic value from Black communities....