The White Wall Audiobook By Emily Flitter cover art

The White Wall

How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America

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A deeply reported, “important, and infuriating” (The Guardian) look at the systemic racism inside the American financial services industry, from acclaimed New York Times finance reporter Emily Flitter.

In 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black employee without cause. Flitter had been searching for a way to investigate the deep-rooted racism in the American financial industry, and that one tip lit the sparkplug for a three-year journey through the shocking yet normalized corruption in our financial institutions.

Examining local insurance agencies and corporate titans like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo and reveals the practices that have kept the racial wealth gap practically as wide as it was during the Jim Crow era. Flitter exposes hiring and layoff policies designed to keep Black employees from advancing to high levels; racial profiling of customers in internal emails between bank tellers; major insurers refusing to pay Black policyholders’ claims; and the systematic denial of funding to Black entrepreneurs. She also gives a voice to victims, from single mothers to professional athletes to employees themselves: people who were scammed, lied to, and defrauded by the systems they trusted with their money, and silenced when they attempted to speak out and seek reform.

Flitter connects the dots between data, history, legal scholarship, and powerful personal stories to provide a “must-read wake-up call” (Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, president of KNOWN Holdings)about what it means to bank while Black. As America continues to confront systemic racism and pave a path forward, The White Wall is an essential examination of one of its most caustic contributors. Banks & Banking Racism & Discrimination Social Sciences Sociology
Eye-opening Content • Well-articulated History • Enlightening Information • Personal Stories • Thorough Journalism

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Great and will listen to it again. Sharing with friends. I have also experienced discrimination in the work place.


I share some of these experiences

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This book is eye opening and the topic is perfect. There are great and all to common exspirance in this book that many people of color are asked to get over. This book perfectly breaks down for readers, especially if white, why people of color are cautious when banking. I hope all people read this book and make meaningful efforts small or large to change the narrative and actions, see something say something. A copy of this book should be repeatedly sent to all bank CEO as a protest to their continuing lack of taking responsibility for their microagression towards people of color

Perfectly Written

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The author is a true journalist which is a dying breed and she dug deep into a polarizing topic

Great insight

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Extremely thorough and a fair look at the catastrophic decisions that the finance industry makes that have affected (and continue to affect) Black Americans.

Outstanding read on a vital subject

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The value of this book is all the numerous examples and stories of so many people existing in the finance and banking industry who are facing the truth of a prejudice system. We already knew about the racism in the field but getting such insight as various personal experiences made it more real.

So many examples!

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