Class Descriptions

Financing the Revolution: How the Financial System Contributes to Inequality and What You Can do about it

SW647

Pathway Associations

Course Description

A stream of public scandals during the last two years have marred well-known financial services, whose discriminatory practices disparately impact communities at risk for exclusion and marginalization. Federal regulators fined Wells Fargo $1.5 billion after discovering that the bank’s employees opened transaction accounts and lines of credit without consumers’ knowledge, targeting Native consumers and undocumented immigrants. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s lawsuit against Capital One Bank alleged their practice of shuttering branches in Black and Brown communities was racially discriminatory. Bank of America’s questions to customers about citizenship and immigration status raised fears of surveillance and deportation. City governments pulled their money from banks providing financing for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The financial system’s predatory practices belie its increasing responsibility to the economy by undercutting the efforts of people hoping for a piece of prosperity. Banks levy higher fees in Black and Latinx communities, charging more for their entrée into the economy and extracting their economic power. Banks’ divestment from communities of color and lower-income white communities via branch closures shrinks the system’s physical footprint and forces reliance on inadequate financial technologies. Online and mobile banking are still a long way from narrowing the distance between people and the financial system given geographically-varying internet download speeds, intermittent cell phone service, and costly data plans. These practices contribute to a growing chasm between people and the economy and amount to predatory inclusion, whereby marginalized groups and communities receive access to the financial system in ways that undermine any potential benefits.

While the news media has widely publicized financial system scandals, less observable are the everyday impacts of the financial system—changing the labor market, enabling globalization, and participating in racial capitalism. What is the financial system? In what ways is the financial system important to families and communities? What are the financial system’s racialized patterns and disparate impacts? How is the financial system entangled with global labor market trends? What are the roles of regulatory policies? Without reckoning with the reinforcing mechanisms of racial capitalism, globalization, technologization, and financialization, the financial system’s predatory practices reproduce and further entrench inequalities under the guises of opportunity and prosperity. This course explores these critical questions through readings, discussions, and activities.