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Since the 19th Century, African-American-owned banks have played a vital role in the economic development of our communities. Between 1888 and 1934, there were more than 130 U.S. banks owned by African-Americans, which is believed to have been the force behind the explosion of African-American businesses, which grew from 4,000 in 1867 to approximately 50,000 by 1917. While the 1960s produced a growing number of African-American banks, by the 1980s, many of them had failed. Today, according to a March 2010 Federal Reserve Board report, only 30 U.S. banks are owned by African-Americans.

The structural exclusion of African-Americans from the mainstream economic sphere led black entrepreneurs to build their own financial infrastructure to support the economic development of our communities, but the dramatic decline in the number of black-owned banks has led many to question the role of African-American-owned banks in revitalizing our neighborhoods today.

According to Dr. Brooks Robinson, economist and director of blackeconomics.org, black banks are critical to creating loans for black businesses. “Black-owned banks in black communities can even draw the traditionally unbanked poor into the formal economy,” Dr. Robinson states. “And [they can] push egregiously exploitative pay-day and check-cashing operations out of business.”

Indeed, African-American owned banks and other opportunity financial institutions, including Community Development Financial Institutions, tend to serve low-income communities and communities of color. Their strength and appeal is that they have the power to alter African-Americans’ relationship with the financial industry, offering a promise of trust and accountability when others are content to exploit or neglect. Their reach is into the neighborhoods — and blocks — where the alternative is often the abusive “pay-day” structure that locks too many of our households into the cycles of economic harm from mounting, uncontrollable debt…

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This article was originally posted on TheGrio.com

Last Friday, transit officer Johannes Mehserle, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July for the killing of Oscar Grant, was sentenced to two years in prison — the minimum sentence, which is expected to carry little more that a few more weeks of incarceration, with time served.

The sentence has opened old wounds, causing many to question the extent to which the justice system values the lives of African-American males, or whether it is predisposed to validate the perception that black men’s lives are disposable.

As the family continues to pursue its options with the Department of Justice, our broader community should recognize this moment as a critical opportunity to reflect on the top five lessons we can learn from the Oscar Grant case.

Lesson 1: Justice is not now, nor has it ever been, colorblind.
After Mehserle’s sentencing was delivered, Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson openly declared that the criminal justice system was “racist.” While the family has voiced concerns about the extent to which key judicial decisions may have influenced the outcomes of the case, the truth is that they — and others like them — are haunted by a legacy of perceived and real violations of African-Americans’ human and civil rights in the criminal justice system.

“The US Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to proceed in a way that results in more executions of those who kill whites than those who murder black people,” said Eva Paterson, President of the Equal Justice Society. “The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in liberal San Francisco recently held that despite the fact that disenfranchising ex-felons disproportionately excludes brown and black people from voting, it still would not eliminate the racial bias from the criminal justice system. The jury and the judge in the Oscar Grant case perpetuated this blatant bias. It’s business as usual. Post-racial? Not really.”

Lesson 2: A local killing is never just local.

Oscar Grant’s fatal shooting in Oakland. Mark Anthony Barmore’s fatal shooting in Rockford, Illinois. Sean Bell’s fatal shooting in New York. Seven-year old Aiyana Stanley’s fatal shooting in Detroit. While these cases tend to be treated as isolated incidents, they are actually symptomatic of a larger trend of excessive force that undermines the legitimacy of law enforcement in many communities of color.

“These isolated incidents rarely receive national attention, and it is not until the trial or sentencing that the general public becomes aware of what’s happened,” said Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, based in Washington, DC. “There’s no connectivity seen nationwide, so it becomes a story of one cop or one police department. No one sees that this is a pattern of police misconduct that occurs often, with African-American men as targets. It’s one of the reasons there hasn’t been a prioritization of these issues in the proper context or the development of a coherent action plan by activist organizations and leaders nationwide.”

Lesson 3: Images Matter.
Research on implicit bias shows that as people who live in a racially stratified society, we unconsciously harbor biases that sometimes we’re not even aware of — and they inform our decisions, ideas, and actions. These negative stereotypes, often reinforced through media and entertainment, have a terrible impact on the outcomes of African-Americans in the criminal justice system.

However, multimedia can also be a powerful advocacy tool, if used appropriately. When the video of Oscar Grant’s killing went viral, it became a force for collective mobilization, ultimately providing the grounds for a murder charge against the officer, and sparking local legislative changes, investigations, and trainings that we all hope will prevent something like this from happening again.

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