LaSha Patterson-Verona, the founder and voice of Kinfolk Kollective, one of the strongest and most uncompromising voices for Black women, made an audacious move a few weeks ago, that left me breathless and speechless. 

LaSha initiated a GoFundMe, in which she invited her followers to pay off her mortgage. 

I don’t think I can explain it better than LaSha did herself, so you can read about the GoFundMe here

Now that you have read her case, I have a few more thoughts to add. 

Black women are ‘allowed’ to raise funds for anyone but themselves. This is a pervasive attitude when it comes to the very women who are expected to nurture, in macro and micro ways, the entirety of the world, but are themselves never cherished and nurtured. The Lace on Race Mental and Emotional Health Fund speaks to this in a small way. LaSha is making the covert overt, is asserting and affirming her right to the love she provides for others and to which she has been denied, even by those who say they admire and follow her. 

These days, we consider it progress to ‘dialogue’, to ‘initiate a discussion’, to ‘prayerfully consider’ the idea of reparations. When I say ‘we’ I mean white people. But just as there is a cohort of conservatives who take strong positions, knowing that they will (probably) never have to live in the very environment that they say that they want, so it is with progressive issues

What LaSha didn’t mention, but I will, is the structural inequity baked into the homebuying and home loan process itself, both in terms of property Black people are ‘allowed’ to consider, and the terms of the loans we are able to secure. That is a *direct result* of white supremacy and racism. 

We talk about money a lot, *a lot* here at Lace on Race, sometimes to our seeming detriment; a lot of people are put off and put out at the primacy we give to money issues. 

We do it for a good reason though. Here at LoR, we feel that racism and white supremacy are primarily economic constructs; that is, that the dynamic, the soup, that we all live in is grounded in power and capital, and that the way that this plays out is primarily to allow one cohort to hoard wealth at the expense of the other. 

The numbers are stark. LaSha didn’t go granular on this, but I will. In the most recent studies, including the one discussed here by Brookings, the accumulated wealth (roughly equivalent to net worth) of white families is literally, *literally* 10 times greater than the wealth of Black families; 171k to 17k. That is no accident. 

These days, people ‘in the know’ talk about the Tulsa Massacre and other, perhaps less violent, but no less economically and  psychologically devastating ‘incidents’ that are baked into our history, the history that informs where we, Black and white alike,  and which informs where we are in this present moment.  

It’s clear that even small, more accurately, only seemingly small, ‘helps’, in the form of tuition assistance, down payments and or co-signing on property and cars (or buying or gifting them outright) for young white people just starting out on their life journeys make for compounded wealth down the road. 

Moreover, because of historic and systemic racism, even those who have managed to secure footholds, however tenuous, on the ladder to economic stability face greater challenges, as both the article from Brookings and an article they reference in Fast Company show. 

In dominant culture, families’ wealth and income transfer confer downward to children and grandchildren.

By contrast, for marginalized people,  income that could be converted into equity building for the income earner is transferred across and up, to siblings, parents, grandparents, and even friends, either in the form of direct cash transfers, or, if the person is fortunate enough to have property and or securities, to borrow against or sell them off in order to fulfill familial obligations. 

We also know that, again, because of pervasive racism, Black people’s almost always only income based ‘wealth’ is more perilous and transient, and without the buffer of access to wealth, is more vulnerable to even the smallest of hiccups in the economy, both on a national and a regional/local level. That is why two teachers, one white, the other Black, each making roughly 35k as fledgling teachers 30 years ago in their twenties, look very different in their 50’s.

We have talked about this, but I will lightly go over it here. These two teachers only looked like they started at the same place. As a student, the Black teacher either had to take out more loans (at higher interest rates than their white counterpart), or take longer to finish their degree and teacher cert, because they had to work. So while it may not seem like much, their getting into the classrooms at different ages (24  for the white teacher rather than, say, 28 for the Black teacher) will be a factor. 

Continuing this hypothetical, 3 years later, the white teacher gets a Master’s, and is rewarded with a car and or a down payment; so income rises and cash payments are affected. That master’s makes it more likely that  she can move to lead teacher and/or admin,  increasing her earning power. There might even be an inherited house. So the graphs in the two articles referenced are not at all far fetched; income alone does not build wealth. 

For these and other reasons, equity building is harder and less likely. Even if the two teachers do both buy homes, there might be a difference in the price of the homes because of de facto steering and redlining, which is  offset by different interest rates. 30 years later, the house in a mostly white area will be worth more, both in real dollars and proportionally, than a comparable house in a mostly Black area. So the wealth gap is even more stark. 

Again, this is not by accident. This is by design, and to ignore the effects of white supremacy on economics, even as we strive for equity and parity (or say we do) nullifies and renders impotent the optics that dominant culture, even (especially) progressive dominant culture makes. A BLM sign in a white area where it’s virtually a given that there will be no significant Black presence is for…whom exactly? 

When I read Ms. Patterson-Verona’s GoFundMe, I am struck by the morality–and the immorality– of the deep ethic woven throughout. I find this morality both in the words, and in the spaces between the words. LaSha uses the word ‘righteous’; she is correct to do so. 

When we think of the ethics of first acknowledgement and then remediation, I hope we would agree that no justification is necessary; after all, given the facts detailed above, the studied and intentional hoarding of wealth by one cohort through denial, theft, and violence to another, there should be no need to, in any way, justify or rationalize the validity of LaSha’s claim. 

On the issue of collective morality, both practical and less tangible, what the United States did, and continues to do, in its favoring of one group at the literal expense of the other has been and still is unconscionable. 

One does not have to look to the far horizon of 1619 to find examples of this favor throughout US history, from the first arrivals of Africans to these shores, for whom the later words of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ were distinct cruelties–to the incomplete emancipation of 1863-1865, moving forward into Jim Crow, then the modern civil rights era of the 1950’s, onward to today, there has never been anything close to an equitable playing field. In terms of housing,it was not until the Fair Housing Act of 1968-69 that America even attempted to right centuries-old wrongs, and it did so essentially toothlessly and impotently. Today, metrics for home ownership and equity/acquired and inherited wealth are little better than when I was born in 1963, the year of the March on Washington. We have learned to say the right words, both in casual speech and even in codified laws. But those dulcet words have not resulted in fairness. 

Black Americans, who built both the South and North, who enriched this country, and who have never been exempted from the collective responsibility of citizenship, even as the collective benefits of said citizenship have been elusive–again by design–are indeed owed a collective debt. That this has finally been acknowledged–by a tiny slice of white people–speaks to a morality of truthtelling; but truthtelling alone does not, cannot, rectify the wrongs. And both the speakers and the writers, as well as the hearers and readers, know this. 

But this is the era, it seems, of dialog and hand wringing and grandiose gnashing of teeth and placating wails; now that that slice of white people have conceded that there is indeed a debt, they have often used deflection and denial cloaked with a certain disingenuous remorseful self flagellation; that the debt is so large and so deep that it can never be repaid; therefore there cannot be any effort that can be made with integrity; any attempt would be a fool’s errand. 

And the status quo remains. 

Just as now racism is acknowledged but actual sightings of racism and white supremacy are minimized and denied; and just as the presence of overt racists are conceded, even as they are rationalized and caped for, so it is when the subject arises of anything that hints of words that begin with ‘R’–reparations, restitution, recompense, restoration. There is talk of method; of measurement of harm (I mean, how bad was it; how bad is it *really*?); of who should receive the remittance that no white person seriously thinks they will ever have to unhand. 

This talk, this stalling, derailing, insulting talk–this era of dialog–will surely outlive me; and you. And another generation will perpetuate the cycle and dynamic; one cohort will profit from compounded and exponentiated supremacy; and another cohort will pay. We know that health and educational outcomes are tied directly to capital; both economic and social. We know that even modest monetary interventions make large differences. But even modest interventions cannot and have not survived the verbal machinations and the sober ‘voices of reason’. 

But we do know it can indeed be done. Slaveholders were reimbursed when slaves were released; that deep immorality has had repercussions, both in hard numbers, as well as less tangible repercussions; the fact that said monies were transferred speaks to the provisional and and only partly acknowledged fact of our priceless humanity–the very priceless humanity that white people now use to sidestep reckoning.

That brings us to the personal. 

That LaSha felt she had to list her myriad acts of benevolent service is an affront. Knowing all of the above, of both the economics and of the applied social ethics, that should not have been necessary. 

It should not be necessary for any of us. Just like we have done the heavy lifting for a societal problem created by white people, and which still benefits white people–and the confronting, interrogating, and dismantling of which should be the focus and deep conviction of every white person–this conversation should be faced with courage and moral conviction.

Those white people for whom racial justice is a stated value cannot sidestep or turn away from a marrow deep recognition of the unearned spoils that came, and come, at the expense of the very people you say you stand with. A house purchased by our hypothetical white teacher in Clairemont, a San Diego neighborhood hostile to Black people in 1975, the year my parents purchased, would have been nominally more expensive than the house my parents purchased in Logan Heights/Mountain View. 

Today, the average price for an average tract home in that zip code is about 190k more than my parents’: 590k for the least prosperous part of Clairemont as opposed to about 400k for my parents’ area. That is huge. We know that home prices in white areas are shored up by demonizing neighborhoods of color. We know that systemic educational barriers drive school rankings. And we all know what a ‘good neighborhood’ means. 

All of these things, the facts and figures, the history, and the willful collusion with supremacist narratives and racist tropes, make the case for any one of the many ‘R’s’ one could consider. That the discussion is considered a nonstarter; that the very idea of serious consideration of them is considered premature at best and laughable at worst; and dismissed out of hand by every white person on the spectrum–including those who would say they are Ride or Die, is why racism will continue. 

So the conversation is forced. I am not at all sure that LaSha truly feels that she will receive the full measure that she demands. But I do know that the insistence that she be looked in the eye and either affirmed or denied is a worthy exercise in itself. That this time, LaSha is asking for herself, and not on behalf of the hundreds of women she has stood with is not lost on me; and it should not be lost on you. 

Black women, who have driven the narrative of the last four years, and whose efforts will be a major factor, if not *the* deciding factor in the probable outcome of an election where, again, we have shouldered the bulk of the burden, and of which we will receive the least benefit, are only valued when we are doing for others. We have seen this here in this space, where people balk at the notion of my own recompense; where people question the validity of my person, even as they laud my words and the community that I founded. 

So it is with LaSha. She has over 100k followers; literally ten times more than our community here.

As of this writing, she has had 278 people tangibly respond. 

She has received more than 5100 shares, though. 

Let that sink in. No, seriously. All of these people who say they go the distance. 

So, this month our Community Partner is LaSha Patterson-Verona of Kinfolk Kollective. As with the re-running of our own Ask (yes, I am just that bold and confident in the righteousness of *our* community), I am going to require that all who read mark ‘Confronted’ in the comments, regardless of how you choose to respond. 

I have struggled with this for two weeks. We are not ready to have this conversation; not least because of how we struggle with reliability and congruence in our own community. That needs to be confronted too. 

But, for now, this. Go back and re-read this. Then read LaSha’s words. Then come back and read this again. Then do your action and mark ‘Confronted’. 

Candidly stated, Black women are this close to getting this country–this country that hates us–back for you. We deserve consideration, collectively and personally.