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Filed under: Dr. Boyce Money, News, The Economy, Education

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. I feel that he is better than the previous chairman, Alan Greenspan, but the Fed Chairmanship (like the presidency) is almost never given to the right man. Just the fact that it is almost always given to a man is problematic enough, and the truth is that only white men need apply for the job.

Well, when you are limited in your option pool for the top job, bad leadership and flat out ignorance can sometimes be the result. While Fed Chairman Bernanke might know some nuts and bolts about economics, he appears to be shockingly misinformed about economic disparities between blacks and whites. His embarrassing and highly inappropriate statements at Morehouse College serve as a significant case in point.

In a recent interview at Morehouse, the Fed Chairman was asked what he felt to be the reason for the wealth gap between blacks and whites. In response, Bernanke said that the gap was due to a lack of “financial literacy” and “financial education” on the part of African Americans. That’s all he mentioned.

What? Sorry Ben, but did you ever hear of this little thing called “slavery”? What about this other thing called “Jim Crow laws,” which made it nearly impossible for African Americans to pass wealth onto their children? Do you truly believe that whites have the bulk of American wealth because they were simply harder working and more intelligent in their wealth building strategies? Do you know how silly you sound?

According to the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median household wealth of white Americans is 10 times greater than that for African-Americans. And in spite of what the Fed Chairman might believe, it is not due to the fact that black people are financially ignorant. Rather, it is due to leaders such as Bernanke who refuse to acknowledge how 400 years of racially-biased wealth distribution can impact structural and financial inequality.

The other point that Mr. Bernanke fails to mention is that white American saving and investing habits are incredibly problematic as well. The recent financial crisis was due to the fact that the American savings rate had become negative for the first time since the Great Depression. Additionally, Americans (not just black people Ben) were borrowing money for homes they could not afford and not preparing for retirement. So, the idea that Chairman Bernanke would sum up the black/white wealth gap as “White people smart….black people illiterate” is a shocking disappointment and a glaring reminder of the fact that our economic captains in the Obama Administration have almost no understanding or respect for the unique economic challenges of the African American community.

I won’t even get into Obama’s appointment of Lawrence Summers as Treasury Secretary, given that Summers disrespected Dr. Cornel West, one of the most significant black scholars in American history. During a spat when Summers was president of Harvard, he criticized Dr. West’s work as not representing “appropriate” scholarship. Translation: you are doing something that white scholars don’t understand, which thus implies that you must be inferior – I get it all the time here at Syracuse, a school that hasn’t tenured a black man in Finance in their entire 140-year history – perhaps we lazy black folks are just not good enough. Professor Summers is also the one who implied that women might have a natural deficiency in their ability to understand mathematics. The idea that Obama supports individuals who continue to embrace mindsets reflective of white male supremacy should be problematic to us all. The financial team within his administration needs a makeover, and their “expertise” and qualifications should be questioned by the American people.

A note to Chairman Bernanke: The present around us has been created by a set of tasks that were performed in the past. If you are only able to see wealth disparities through a lens created in the year 2009, one that is blurred by your own biases as a white male in an elitist profession, you are missing 99% of the picture. To cite African American ignorance as the sole driver of wealth gaps in America is a reminder that our leadership still thinks of black people as second class citizens. Rather than presuming cultural superiority on the part of whites, why not engage in creative and intelligent policy analysis that might actually fix the problem that America has created. It was not the flaws of black America which created structural inequality; it was poor decision-making on the part of the very institution with which men like Bernanke, Summers and Obama are employed. It’s time for some personal responsibility.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of the forthcoming book, “Black American Money.” To have Dr Boyce commentary delivered directly to your email, please click here.

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