Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
From Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
Reflecting on Black History this month I wondered, “What do most Americans know about the people we call Black? The rise and fall and rise again of a people whose American roots are as deep and strong as any of America’s earliest Anglo immigrants? Why their history provides fundamental insights into our most persistent social and economic ills today?”
My wonderings took me back to a time when I preferred not to think about it much myself, but was forced to do so anyway.
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Something was badly wrong with this picture. I should have felt my life was on the rise, and yet the tug I felt on me was a sense of falling back down in time, not rising into a new day as expected. Only a few weeks earlier I had been celebrating in rapid succession one high water mark after another — I had received my graduate degree from Princeton, married my college sweetheart and started my career with a prestigious family office, engaged in a dream project leveraging my urban planning and public policy degree. I had dumped my graduate school furnishings, picked up a few useful items from my parent’s home in Dayton, and settled into my new home in Nashville, Indiana.
Admittedly, part of my fall back in time was intentional. I had chosen to live 25 miles from my place of work in a rustic two bedroom log cabin. I had known I would be residing in a hamlet of 600 people on a two lane county road in southern Indiana. I had been told that there was only one Black family living in the county of 9,000 people. These were all choices made in the spirit of exploring new opportunities, life styles and past times. Six years of Ivy League schools and academic bubbles would now give way to experiencing a different ethos of America in its heartland.
But my trip down the rabbit hole, where time stands still and history’s shame re-asserts itself, was not by choice.
One weekend day a few months after my arrival in Nashville, I picked up a copy of the Brown County Democrat, the weekly newspaper, at the general store along with some supplies. Later that day I sat down with the paper to see what local events and news was deemed important, useful or entertaining. On the lower half of the front page was a notice that stunned me:
Joe White
Will be having a cookout and
cross burning
at his farm next Saturday.
Everyone is welcomed.
After my shock wore off, I mused, “Everyone”? Then dread spread throughout my body. Not fear; I convinced myself this was not about me personally. But rather something more perverse. The lingering ghosts of men who terrorized and killed my ancestors, drove them to the North to claim rights bitterly denied in the South, and haunt their descendants still. This was to be a celebration of white supremacy. And everyone would not be welcomed.
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I had just left a prestigious university campus where Confederate flags were allowed to be displayed in student windows, and the segregationist Princeton President, Governor of New Jersey and President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, was enshrined everywhere. I had survived and excelled within an academic bubble rife with insidious reminders of institutional white supremacy, only to be met on my graduation into everyday life by an expression of unreformed racism so ordinary and unremarkable to my neighbors that it was celebrated as congenial and inclusive community spirit.
This was the beginning of an important insight for me.
I am the descendent of slaves and free people of color and there was no running away from that. I needed to embrace the pain with no shame and proudly accept my heritage of both slavery and the presumption that all Black people had at some time been — deserved to be — property. I also needed to claim my stake in a nation empowered from its beginnings by the brute strength of a people chained to an economic grindstone sharpening and shaping America’s emerging place in the world for 246 years.
Surely that history had run its course and those days were over.
The price for freedom had been paid, the long march toward dignity and respect had begun. But I realized then that although much had been achieved, I did not inherit a completed legacy: the torch had been passed on to me and my generation.
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
My insight did not stop there.
I also came to understand that we all still live in the shadow of our nation’s original sin. Not slavery, its manifestation, but white supremacy, its source. We all have inherited this seed of slavery, bigotry and anti-semitism, just in different ways. And we all need to acknowledge this peculiarly American inheritance. So we can stop passing on even its mildest embodiment of terror and fear from generation to generation.
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
What I saw in my youth I see even more clearly today. The roots of today’s vastly inequitable asymmetry of privilege, opportunity and wealth grew from the seeds of white supremacy and they continue to spread. I see these roots exposed blatantly, as you do, in Charlottesville’s violence or, most recently, in the thwarted mass assassination plans of a white supremacist Coast Guard officer.
But do you see, as I do, the far less visible and pernicious “norms” that permeate our personal and institutional practices? The ones that are supposedly fair and equitable, yet steadily concentrate privilege, opportunity, capital and wealth in the white hands of a few? The ones that inculcate “just like me” as the starting point for determining who is worthy of these things and who is not?
No? Look closer. They don’t scream “white supremacy.” Instead they manifest it, all the while cheerfully proclaiming, “Everyone is welcomed.”
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
The gifts of my ancestors to America have been many, but none more important than the struggle to free it from its white supremacist moorings and release its full promise of equality for all people. Our history is a chronicle of the persistent efforts of Black folks to keep the American Dream alive, to raise it up as still a worthy aspiration. And as we realize the dreams and hopes passed up from one generation to the next, we rise, and raise our nation with us.
Reinventure Capital has joined with others to re-write America history by also chipping away at vestiges of white supremacy in the allocation of private capital. We are part of a growing group of financial intermediaries through which the privilege of wealth can be more broadly shared and new opportunities can be created. Our approach is to channel growth stage capital to innovative founders of color and women who are worthy of investment yet overlooked by the mainstream investment community.
If you care about social impact, join us. If you care about economic justice, join us. If you care about ending racial inequity, join us. And by the way, if you care about building great companies and generating market returns*, join us. Drop me a note at: ed@reinventurecapital.com.
Together, we rise.
* While there’s no such thing as a guarantee in investing and no one can reliably predict the future, Ed’s prior track record provides direct evidence that it is indeed possible to consistently invest for both financial returns and social value creation. If you are an accredited investor and would like to learn more about investments that can advance social, racial, and gender equity by supporting high-value companies led by women and/or people of color, please contact us to start that conversation.
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