A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues

Learn how to address racial wealth disparity in the United States today

From the life, professional experiences, and research of former Harvard Business School professor Steven Rogers, comes his boldly stated, A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues. This informative epistle investigates the causes of racial wealth disparity in the United States and provides solutions for addressing it. Through extensive data and historical research, anecdotes, teaching, and case studies, it presents practical ways White people can work with and help the Black community. It teaches readers that eliminating the $153,000 wealth gap between Black and White people is the solution to over 75% of our problems and offers solutions to help improve Black-White racial relations in the United States.

In straightforward language, filled with facts, stories, advice, and sometimes even humor, A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues encourages every White person to share his/her wealth with the Black community—plain and simple. This book recommends that you spend a portion of your annual household budget with Black-owned companies. If more money is spent at Black-owned businesses, those companies can grow and create more jobs for Black people. Rogers also proposes White people make large savings deposits into Black-owned banks. These are the financial institutions that are the backbone of the Black community that provide loans to the Black community for businesses, education, automobiles, and home mortgages.

And finally, he resolutely encourages White people to support government reparations to Black Americans who are descendants of Black men and women, who were enslaved from 1619 to 1865. Those who read the book will:

• Understand the root causes of racial disparities in America
• Discover how you can personally contribute to reducing the inequality between Black and White people in the United States today
• Get concrete recommendations on how to redirect your spending to Black-owned institutions to help decrease the racial wealth gap

This groundbreaking book provides financial recommendations that you can put into practice today, using his helpful instructions in most of the chapters, to address the systemic inequality between White and Black Americans. Read A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues and be part of the path forward.

STEVEN S. ROGERS retired from Harvard Business School in 2019 where he was the “MBA Class of 1957 Senior Lecturer” in General Management. He taught Entrepreneurial Finance and his own course, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.”

PRAISE FOR A LETTER TO MY WHITE FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES "Steven Rogers is a brilliant and courageous thinker who makes us unsettled in order to get us to be real forces for good!" --Cornel West "Steven Rogers brings a unique perspective to America's long-standing challenge over the issues of race. Educated at Williams and Harvard Business School, he has leveraged his education, his intellect, and his ambition to achieve great success in both business and academia. From his professional perches, Rogers offers highly valuable advice to help diminish, if not erase, racial bias in our society. We can and need to do better, and Rogers's prescriptions for the privileged among us is a solid roadmap to do just that." --John A. Byrne , former Executive Editor of Businessweek magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company magazine, currently CEO and Editor-in-Chief of C-Change Media "This book is a comprehensive accounting of the ongoing effects of racism. Rogers brings his finance and business expertise to explain the legacy of systemic exclusions on the current gaps in wealth. Not only does he cover the facts and the history with meticulous care, he also proposes solutions for businesses, individuals, and governments focused on tangible remedies. This book is a must-read not just for Rogers's white colleagues, but for anyone interested in being a part of the solution." --Mehrsa Baradaran , author of The Color of Money and Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law

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