BUILDING INTERGENERATIONAL WEALTH IN OUR RACIALIZED COMMUNITIES: AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN BELLOT

Growing up in Dominica, I never came into the world thinking that I was “less than” … We didn’t have Black History Month - We just had “our history”. I grew up in a country where Prime Ministers and leaders and mentors are all Black. I grew up with a refusal to believe that I’m anything less. 

I grew up seeing people who looked like me in positions of wealth. I think it’s very different from a North American mindset, where real systemic barriers exist to Black and Brown individuals who don’t often have a chance to see themselves represented in positions of leadership. 

For the first 14 years of my life, the Prime Minister of Dominica was a Woman. It never really crossed my mind that this wasn’t possible. 

In corporate Canada, I think it’s relationships that have helped me along the way. Yes, I work hard - my job I started in a call centre and four months in, I was the top customer service rep on the floor. That was just working hard.

 It’s become clear to me though, that working in the downtown Toronto financial district that there aren’t a lot of people there who look like me. I am not as familiar with how the school system works in Canada, but I think it has something to do with how they divert certain students away from certain subjects. 

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Carla: There’s a reckoning happening right now in the Canadian landscape as to why there are not racialized people who have accessed these roles and positions.  If you make it into these school programs, you’re likely to be taught by a white man, you’re likely to have teachers and classmates who don’t look like you, and unlikely to have a teacher with a culturally-informed lens who might support you in creating a path into higher-level jobs in financial institutions. The education system in Ontario isn’t currently designed for racialized youth to reach the top level CEO jobs of Fortune 500 companies. 

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The median net wealth of a single white woman in the USA is $41,000. The median net wealth of a single Black woman in the USA is $140. 

This is the definition of WEALTH INEQUALITY.

Nearly half of all Black and LatinX women have zero wealth or negative wealth (when debts exceed assets). 

57% of white women own homes vs. 33% of Black women and 27% of LatinX women. 

Prior to the age of 50, most racialized women report having no accumulated wealth. 

In Canada, racialized residents own 86 cents for every dollar owned by their white counterparts. 

Accumulating wealth is a lifeline to education, healthcare and safe housing. 

How do individuals who are single parents, who work multiple jobs and live in high-density housing - who don’t have the option or flexibility of just getting another side hustle - start to accumulate wealth? 

Creating intergenerational wealth for our children and our children’s children has historically felt impossible to oppressed and under-served people and communities. 

My Mum finished high school and my dad didn’t finish high school. They worked hard to accumulate wealth, which gave my siblings and I an opportunity to go abroad and go to university. 

This became up to me, to make the most of this opportunity = it wasn’t lost on me that I was given a change that many don’t receive, and it was essential to me, not to squander it. 

For many people, there isn’t a gap between income and expenses. Or for many, expenses outweigh the income. 

Saving a dollar a day is a great place to start. A dollar a day gives you $30 per month and $365 per year. If you look at a five year period, that doesn’t just equal $365 x 5 - you’re also earning interest on that money. 

Eventually saving a dollar per day can grow to saving $2 per day … and eventually up to $5 to day. 

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, you don’t need to see the whole staircase to take the first step. 

My Caribbean upbringing certainly shaped how I spend money and how I think about waste. I grew up with my dad always running around the house to turn out all the lights, so I think a lot about where I’m spending money that I don’t need to spend. 

Sacrifice … Something you do for your children and your children’s children. Most migrants come to Canada in search of a better opportunity. 

For myself as a Canadian, I wasn’t born here. My citizenship could still be revoked. I still, no matter how hard I work, will never have that absolute safety. This is why it’s so important for marginalized citizens to start to generate wealth. 

Wealth dictates where you live, what school you go to, the company that you keep, your comfort level in taking risks.

One of the best things you can do for your kids - beyond loving them - is to exposure them to education. Give them the gift of curiosity. Education can be free. As a kid, I loved to read. 

My dad took the unusual step of buying shares in his company in our names. By the age of 9, I was attending the AGM with my dad and receiving the Annual reports. In high school, my dad bought me a subscription to the economist magazine - and guess what, I ended up studying economics. It was curiosity from a young age that helped me to begin learning and studying finances. 

We’re blessed right now with internet. We can spend time with our kids, having conversations about “adult” things - We can talk to our kids about finances. If we give them that gift of curiosity, that will take them far. 

They don’t teach you in school, how to live with debt and manage debt. The funny thing, debt isn’t a bad thing. We don’t learn that if we can take care of our debt and accumulate a good credit score, then we have an opportunity to borrow money more cheaply. 

When I was a kid, I was all about seeing my bank account grow. I remember by the age of 7, asking my parents not to give me anymore gifts. I wanted money and I wanted to see my bank account grow. I remember rationalizing it to my brother, that if we got toys and destroyed them in 3 weeks, then that gift only lasted 3 weeks, but if I had money in my bank account would last me longer. 

I was practicing principle of economics before I even knew what economics was - that was likely just my personality, but I think it speaks to helping to turn this into a game with your kids - can you give them a bonus for saving money? We do need to make this idea of saving money, to be “fun” for kids. 

FIND JONATHAN BELLOT:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanbellot/