#generational wealth

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Mr. Mack – Long Road to Greatness

Before Wall Street became the face of American wealth, it was the site of a slave market. Black bodies were bought, sold, and collateralized, right where the New York Stock Exchange stands today. Generational wealth started here. Generational pain did too. That’s the foundation of the American economy.

I Have Become the Rich Relative I Always Wanted

When I was but a wee baby bitch, penniless and loaded down with student loans, I used to wish I had some rich relative to swoop in and solve all my money problems.

I’m not sure where I got the yearning for a rich relative. I could blame books like Little Women for putting the hope of discovering an Old Mister Laurence into my preadolescent head. (Or even an Aunt March! I’d settle for an Aunt March!) Mr. Brewer in The Babysitter’s Club was not only an engaged and loving father-figure to Kristy, but a walking plot device to ensure all the Babysitters could go on bookworthy adventures together.

Pop culture told me that a rich relative was my birthright, as a bossy yet pure-hearted tomboy. And as I got older, I saw for myself that this character was anything but fictional.

I went to an expensive private college. (It was the style at the time.) Many students came from modest middle-class backgrounds, like myself. But some came from, shall we say, means. They’d casually reveal that their car was a graduation present from an aunt, or that their student loans were “handled” by their grandfather.

One of my college friends was invited to join a chill vacation to a cousin’s cabin in Montana. Wanting to visit a western state, and enthusiastically prepared to rough it, she agreed. She was picked up at the airport by a helicopter. As the helicopter skated over clouded hilltops, pine forests, and clear blue lakes, my friend asked when they would reach the fabled cousin’s place. “Oh, this is it,” her host said, casually waving her hand over the entirety of the Bob Ross painting below them. The “cousin’s cabin” turned out to be a private hunting lodge of unparalleled luxury, situated on hundreds of acres of pristine wilderness, with full-time staff. She spent the week in a very comfortable class daze, like a romance novel heroine.

So I knew that these people were not only theoretically possible. They walked among us! And what I wanted from mine felt so much more reasonable than a palatial lodge with a private staff.

If fairy godmothers exist, where the hell is mine?! (keep reading)

🔗: https://tinyurl.com/mwayz6dw

For over 120 years, one Black family’s work has played a monumental role in shaping America’s built environment, from churches and college campuses to airports and major transit projects across the United States. Their journey begins with Moses McKissack I, brought to this country from West Africa as a child in bondage.⁠