#13 || NAVIGATING WEALTH WITHIN CROSS-CLASS RELATIONSHIPS
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Reckonings is produced to be heard, not read. The audio includes emotion and emphasis unavailable on the written page. Transcripts may contain errors, and corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print.
Michelle: I was taught that it's not something you talked about; it was something that if you talked about, you were likely to get taken advantage of. Once people knew you had money, they would want things from you.
. . .
Michelle's great-grandfather owned and then sold a large phone company. He invested the profits well, and over the generations those investments grew, propelling her family into the 0.5%. Today Michelle has a trust fund, which she started getting money from when she was 25, and will finish getting all of it when she turns 35. That's in just two years.
This is Reckonings. I'm Stephanie Lepp, and today we are reckoning with wealth and inequality.
In the U.S., the top 1% of households control almost 40% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% of households have a meager 2.5%.
Because, as they say, money begets money, most upper-class income doesn't even come from working anymore. In 2008, of the households making over 10 million dollars per year, less than 20% of that came from wages and salaries.
And of course, there's a major racial component here. For every dollar of white median family income, Latinos earn 59 cents and blacks earn 57 cents. Economic inequality in the U.S. has been growing for the last 30 years. It's greater now than at any time in the last century, and wider here than in any other democratic and developed economy.
Today we'll be talking to two young people who are inheriting immense wealth, who are deeply concerned by the inequality in our country, and who are wrestling with what that all means within the context of cross-class relationships.
We're kicking it off back with Michelle, growing up in Texas and how she felt about her wealth when she first found out about it.
. . .
Michelle: My thought was, "I don't want it. I don't know what I wanna do with it. That's a burden." It felt like a huge, overwhelming weight... Which is such a privileged thing to be able to say, that "Oh, this money was such a burden", but I didn't see that as fun spending money, I saw it as a huge responsibility.
Stephanie: A responsibility to what?
Michelle: To make the world more fair.
This created a conflict for Michelle. She felt her responsibility to use her wealth to make the world more fair, but she didn't know how to do that, and she couldn't talk to anyone about it because she wasn't supposed to talk about money. So she just kind of pretended that the money wasn't there.
Over in Florida, Viola was growing up very differently than Michelle. Both of her parents worked minimum wage jobs. Her mom was a housekeeper at a local Super A motel, and her dad was in the military.
Viola: I remember when I was my first year of undergrad, telling my liberal arts colleagues that I worked when I was in high-school, that I worked at McDonald's, and how they thought that was "adorable." They thought that it was really cute that I had to work in high-school, which was not novel at all to my experience, but the idea of working through high-school was really adorable and novel to them.
My mother calls anybody who has any slight amount more wealth than she does a "rich bitch." [laughs] She has a lot of pretty serious feelings about people who are in a better economic position.
Stephanie: And what did you think when she said that?
Viola: I suppose I thought she was right.
After college, Viola and Michelle both ended up getting jobs in Durham, North Carolina, which is where they collided.
Michelle: I remember there was a dance party called [unintelligible 00:04:45.20] in Durham. We had established I think that there was a mutual crush, but we had not gone out. But there was a dance party that I was definitely going to, and there was a chance she was gonna be there.
I remember she so coolly, when I asked her if she was going, told me that she'd see maybe about stopping by. I was just agonizing over it all day, I was just wondering if she was gonna be there.
This was a costume party, and I was... I mean, head-to-toe, I had a wig and I had face paint on, and I had a corset and fishnets and tall boots, and I was all out at this costume party.
She showed up, and I just remember we were apart no more than three minutes that whole night. We just danced all night long.
When Michelle and Viola first started dating, it seemed like they were in similar financial situations. They both worked and they both lived off their incomes, and Michelle hid her wealth well. But then they started grad school at the same time, Michelle in education and Viola in economics focusing on inequality, and the disparity between them started to show.
Viola had to change her lifestyle and be much more cautious with money, while Michelle didn't.
Viola: I wanted to do something — go out to eat, go on vacation; I wanted to do that and I wanted to get my way, and it seemed like a silly obstacle that the only obstacle to us doing this thing wasn't that she didn't want to, it's that she didn't feel comfortable with me paying for the whole thing. She would rather not do the thing and wait until she had enough money, and I did not want to wait.
But the disparity between Michelle and Viola really revealed itself when they went to visit Michelle's childhood home.
Viola: It has columns in the front of it, and it's really big, and they had a piano, and she mentioned that they had a housekeeper when they were growing up, or someone who came and cleaned up every now and then, and I think seeing that home was my moment of being like, "Wow... You're from a different place than I'm from.
Stephanie: Did you make a connection between that and "rich bitches"? [laughter] Were you like "Oh my god, she comes from that world that I used to associate with rich bitches"?
Viola: Yeah, I mean I think for some time when I was younger, my parents had a business where they cleaned people's private homes, and my mother is a housekeeper, and I cleaned condos when I was growing up, and I think it was kind of the moment of, "Oh... Michelle is from one of these families that we used to service."
So Michelle and Viola really saw the full extent of their class differences, and they fell in love and they moved in together, and they kept wrestling with Michelle's wealth. Michelle still didn't really wanna talk about it, and Viola still didn't want it to be used on them. And that's when they discovered an organization called Resource Generation.
Michelle: I went for a swim and a beer with a friend of mine, and she just started telling me about Resource Generation, and my eyes just lit up. I remember hanging out with her for a couple hours and just coming home and couldn't wait to tell Viola about this organization. I was so excited, because I had never talked about money to someone other than my family.
I found myself feeling very comfortable talking about money, and she was telling her story and she was talking about money, and it felt so good and comfortable and not scary.
Viola: It was like a lightbulb went off for her. She's had her foot in this access to wealth world and she's had her foot in this social justice values world, and had no idea that there was a space that existed where she could bring these two halves of herself, and that they would both be welcome and fit.
Resource Generation mobilizes young people with wealth to work towards the equitable distribution of land, wealth and power. Michelle and Viola dove into Resource Generation (RG) together. Soon after they started going to meetings they went to RG's major event of the year, a conference called Making Money Make Change (MMMC).
Michelle: I was involved with Resource Generation for about six months before I went to MMMC. That first six months was really spent internally-focused, thinking about how I can become more comfortable with this money, how I can become more comfortable talking about this money... I still wasn't clear on what I could do with this money.
Resource Generation believes that inner and outer change are deeply connected, and that in order to address economic inequality in the world, people with wealth need to first come to terms with it in themselves.
Michelle: At MMMC — there was really a switch that flipped when I went to that conference, because I was with so many people that were doing things, and it gave me lots of ideas and inspired me about the types of things that I might be able to do. That was really when it flipped to thinking outwardly what I could do with this money.
Viola: Part of what they do there is you have a pod, it's a group of people that you will check back in with over and over throughout the conference to process things, and they put all the partners together in their own pod. You have this group of partners who are all in these cross-class relationships, and one of the things that can happen at MMMC is that people's net worth is expressed, so you're meeting all these people who have net worths that are just inconceivable that one person could have access to that.
My roots are with people who work really hard to better their economic circumstances, and that's kind of what we're told to believe as the working class. But then you meet people who have astronomical net worth that they've inherited, and it's because our system wants to make that easy, to make money with money, but they're telling the working class "If you just worked harder, you could be rich, too." Actually, the system is really not set up for the working class.
You get to go back to the partners pod and sit with other people who are experiencing that at the same time. It was a lot of just like "We're gonna put our arms around each other and we're gonna have this feeling, and we're gonna acknowledge that the system is fucked up." That's not news to anyone who's in RG, but to actually be confronted with it really head on is a different story.
I think there's something about the fact that it's called "net worth", right? We could say "net assets", but a lot of people like to say "net worth", and as an economist I know those are the same things, and I know that net worth actually has nothing to do with your worth as an individual, but when you're in the moment and you're having those conversations about how there are some people in the world whose net worth is just so many orders of magnitude higher than yours, you find yourself feeling like they are worth more.
Michelle: When you are trying to redistribute land, wealth and power, when you want to move the money, there is an inherent problem with you as the rich person deciding where to move that money. My privileges are bountiful. I am cisgendered, I am white, I come from wealth, I was raised Christian, so I am not intimately familiar with all types of oppression. So me making choices about where to move this money has inherent bias in it, based on my experiences, and I'm gonna donate to things that matter to me.
I remember getting the idea about doing what's called a donor-advised fund. So me, or the rich person setting up this money to be given away, finding a group of people that find another group of people to sit down and say, "Okay, we've got $100,000. Where should it go?" I can move money without being the sole decider of where the money goes.
Something that donors really internalize is this idea that you wanna make sure that you make really smart decisions about who you donate to. You wanna make sure that they're gonna use that money in the most efficient way possible. That can be really paralyzing, to feel like "I don't know if I can donate to planned parenthood. I don't know if I can donate to Black Lives Matter, because I don't know exactly their plan for how they're gonna spend this money."
I think the one thing I've learned from Resource Generation is you're gonna start donating money, and sometimes you're gonna donate to an organization or to a person that's not gonna use it wisely. And sometimes you might give some money away to someone who's using you. But better do something, act, and make some mistakes, than to be paralyzed by this notion that you need to always make perfect decisions.
You're opening yourself up, you are making yourself vulnerable. In the world at large I'm not really vulnerable. Why not be vulnerable?
Viola: Trying to give money to my parents? I wish they would let me help them. I like to think if there was a tragedy, that they would allow us to help them out, but I think anything other than that is not really on the table.
Stephanie: I know that when you and Michelle first started dating, you didn't wanna let her pay for things. How did you both want your parents to let you help them and meanwhile not want Michelle to help you to go out to dinner, or go on a vacation?
Viola: Well, because I am financially independent... Oh, and so are they. Dang it! [laughter] Well, yeah... I don't know. I think my parents do the same thing to me that I do to Michelle. I may tell them about that later, and tell them that Stephanie totally was like "Do you know you're doing that? Do you know you're doing the same thing?" [laughter]
Michelle: Resource Generation lead to conversations about what it means to come from money and how it impacts the way you think about money and the decisions you make at the grocery store or about a vacation. I brought to the table lots of assumptions and ideas, and I was accustomed to getting my way and getting what I wanted because of my wealth background.
Going to the grocery store together is always a really exciting thing. If I want laundry detergent, I just grab the most colorful one and throw it in the bin, and she's gonna look at which one is the most cost-effective, which one's the cheapest. I didn't grow up looking at prices for every little thing. Just like, "I need toilet paper, I just grab toilet paper."
It opened our eyes and made us realize that there were some disagreements or arguments that we may have had that were actually linked to our differences in class background.
Before Resource Generation I was largely ignoring the money and not really dealing with it. Resource Generation gave me a way to talk about money. And that being said, this whole podcast conversation does feel a little stressful.
Stephanie: I know...
Michelle: I can say I'm comfortable talking about it - I am much more comfortable talking about my wealth than I was five years ago certainly, but I'm definitely pushing up against my comfort zone. I've still got work to do.
Michelle: Viola was actually traveling and she was coming back into town. We knew that the ruling might go down... She was stuck in Chicago, had to sleep in the airport, rushed home... We went straight to Raleigh to wait at the courthouse, and at about 4:30 they said that if the ruling came down before five, they would stay open and issue marriage licenses.
At five o'clock no ruling had come down, so we decided while we were in Raleigh let's get dinner, and by this time our phones are almost completely dead because we'd been refreshing Twitter for the last three hours, waiting for news on the decision.
We finished dinner and we started driving home, and on the last bars of our battery text messages started flooding in that we should turn around...
Viola: I know they were asking us if we were married, and they were congratulating us because everyone knew we were gonna get married as soon as it was legal, and it was the Religious Liberties case that surprised everyone and came in a little after five o'clock. The Raleigh register of the deeds actually closed and then reopened to issue marriage licenses.
Stephanie: Wow...
Viola: So we turned around, we rushed to the register of the deeds and instead of getting a license and getting married at the courthouse, we ended up getting our license and then taking it back to Durham and asking a friend who was ordained to perform a quick ceremony. We were able to get enough juice to invite some friends, and everyone met us at this bar... And we didn't know this, but there was a celebration taking place at Motorco for the ruling.
Stephanie: Oh, perfect!
Viola: They were showing a documentary, they had speakers coming up, I think they had cake, and it was a big celebration. They invited us to get married on stage, at the bar.
Stephanie: Wow...
Michelle: ...with every gay person [unintelligible 00:21:39.00] [laughter]
Viola: And our friend that was actually performing the ceremony, when she got to the part "By the power vested in me and in accordance..."
Michelle: ...with the laws of North Carolina...
Viola: ...with the laws of North Carolina, I now pronounce you married." But in that moment when she said, "in accordance with the laws of North Carolina", the entire bar erupted.
Stephanie: How has being queer been a part of healing your relationship with wealth?
Michelle: Being queer solidified my desire to not use the money for myself. It opened my eyes to other forms of oppression and privilege, because I didn't have a straight privilege.
Viola: It's very hard to see all the privileges that you have, unless there's maybe a little kink in your own privilege armor, and that allows you to see... I've had these specific examples in my life where I've been judged for these characteristics, and if that's happening to me, it's happening to other people.
Viola has moved up the economic ladder not just once, but twice. First, she surpassed her parents, being the first in her family to go to college, and then she climbed further by marrying Michelle. Naturally, Viola's change in class is changing the way she lives her life, including inspiring a career shift that she wouldn't otherwise have made.
Viola: The primary reason that I'm doing this shift is because I'm interested in the kind of work that I get to do with this skill set, and not because it's gonna guarantee me more financial security. That was the moment when I felt some of this class transition most acutely, with starting to think of my work as a place to derive happiness. So just hearing myself articulate my career goals in that way was really different, and I think sounds like the more affluent people that I've known sounds like a different class.
Still, Viola's economic leap hasn't actually made her feel entirely financially secure.
Viola: As I make more and more money, I always feel like "Oh, when I hit that next level, I'm gonna feel wealthy. I'm gonna feel like I'm making a lot of money." Then I hit it, and that lasts for a pretty short amount of time and I think I need to make more to feel stable. That fear is a moving target, like many things that we chase through life, and we always think "When I hit that level I'm gonna know", and you eventually just realize that that whole sense is maybe false.
Michelle: There's this idea of scarcity that I think spans classes. You can have millions of dollars and talk about not wanting to give away too much, because you wanna make sure you have enough for yourself. I would love to just eliminate that completely from my thinking. I don't wanna worry about not having enough, because we have so much.
Viola: When Michelle and I first started conversations about her access to wealth, I was very adamant that we would never use it for anything, except for giving. But I feel like the more I think about how safe I am now, and how I get to do everything that I want, and we get closer to starting our family, and I want our kids to be able to have everything that they want, it gets harder to think... "Do you really wanna give away every cent? I don't know..." [laughs] It gets harder for me to be like, "Absolutely! Yes, we do!" and I worry about that.
I'm starting to get used to the privileges that I gain from this position, and that makes me uncomfortable, that I'm sacrificing values for comfort.
So it's complicated. Michelle and Viola are working to overcome this idea of scarcity, but Viola doesn't wanna get too comfortable with abundance, for fear that it might cloud her social justice values. Does having some discomfort with wealth help hold us accountable to our values?
Or at a certain level of wealth, does it just create a false tradeoff between giving to ourselves and giving to the world? At the level that Michelle and Viola are at, it may certainly be a false tradeoff, but they might certainly experience it as a real one.
Inner and outer change are connected. Our inner stuff does get in the way of making a change in the outside world... Which brings us to the outside world. The system.
Viola: This was the first time we did taxes as a married couple, and because I'm an economist and a data scientist and it's my idea of a good time to look at effective tax rates, I looked at our effective tax rate for just our earned income portion, and then we've added in the trust money, and I looked at our effective tax rate for what it looks like when we're just pulling large amounts of money out of the trust. Our effective tax rate dropped, which isn't surprising - I understand how capital gains work and I understand how our tax system works, but seeing really first-hand and benefitting from this system that is taxing people who work for their income - my people - it gets me every time...
These are what I call "my people", this is how I think about my parents and my family and everyone that I know growing up - just seeing that those are the people who get taxed these higher rates, and we just pulled this money effectively out of thin air and we get a lower tax rate for that, we're rewarded for that, we exist in this system where that is what is valued...
Michelle: I think what RG does a really good job at is really teaching folks who have access to wealth that the fact that you are in this position, that's a symptom of something that's wrong with the system.
In other words, the fact that such few people have so much money to give is itself a symptom of a broken system... So for Resource Generation it's not enough to give money away. It has to be given away in a way that changes the system that created this situation in the first place. It has to be given in a way that transforms how the system functions, so that as Viola saw when doing her taxes, inequality doesn't inherently perpetuate itself.
That kind of giving, that transforms the system, is something we'll get into more deeply in this next story. This time a cross-class relationship between friends.
. . .
Abe: There's a voice in my head saying, "Wow, this is awesome! Look at this... This thing that everybody talks about - everybody talks about being rich; this means you're set!" But then there's this icky sense of like "I didn't do anything to earn that. I don't know what to do with this."
Abe's parents revealed the magnitude of his family's wealth to him in one sitting, on their annual Thanksgiving family trip, when he was 24 years old. They sat him down at a table in their hotel room and matter-of-factly presented him with documents that laid out the structure of their wealth, including his trust fund. And like Michelle's parents, they told him not to talk about money, because it would complicate relationships and people would take advantage of it.
Halfway around the world from Abe in Ohio, Ivan was born in Cape Verde, an island off the West coast of Africa. He moved to the U.S. when he was four, and grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Boston. Why did Ivan's parents come from Cape Verde to America?
Ivan: Why do most people come to America? It's in pursuit of the American dream, or what they believe to be the American dream. A lot of people have this false perception of America is. It's hard...
There was a point in time when I was working at Samsung; I felt like I was making more money than my parents. And I'm here making $16/hour at Samsung, and my mom hasn't reached a point in her work experience where she's even making $15/hour.
Indeed, the American dream was elusive for a poor immigrant family of color, but while Ivan saw the holes in the American dream, Abe believed in it. He believed our systems of government and finance and education were fundamentally just; they just needed some tweaking.
Abe: I went into teaching. I thought I can help poor kids of color have a better chance at succeeding. And underneath that is a belief that the system can work.
And with that belief, fresh out of college and right around the time when he was learning about his family's wealth, Abe started teaching in an after-school program in Boston called Citizen Schools, where Ivan was a student.
Ivan: The first day he actually kicked me out the class. I said something about a kid, like "Joseph, I'm gonna punch you in the face", or something like that... We were just messing around. He said, "Ivan, get out."
Abe: I said, "Ivan, can you please leave the room?" and he left, good-naturedly... And that was our first interaction. [laughs]
After that initial session I went up to him and I said, "Ivan, I know you were just kidding, but I want you to understand that we have a responsibility here to keep our environment safe." He knew it, and he was okay with it.
I tried to be a very transparent teacher and admit when I'm wrong, and he also had this humility about him, where he could admit when he was wrong. That made me want to connect with him.
Abe ended up choosing Ivan to be his student for that year, and they started developing a friendship. Although they came from different worlds and were a decade apart in age, they stayed in touch after that year.
A year later, when Ivan started college, he asked his mom, his dad and Abe to help him move in.
Ivan: Abe's my friend, he's my dawg, he's my boy. It's unconventional, it definitely is, but it teaches you the reality that people can be relatable.
And while they've built their unconventional friendship, Abe continued struggling with his wealth. He didn't talk about it or know what to do with it, and almost denied its existence... Which is when he came across a New York Times article written by a woman who was a member of Resource Generation. She was talking openly about her personal wealth, which went against everything Abe had been taught.
Abe: Here she was, talking about money in the largest newspaper in the United States, with her picture; I think she even might have included numbers. I got a sense of the freedom that comes with that, that I started to realize I didn't have. I was locked down by this idea of money and not being able to talk about it and not being able to act based on its existence, and it was like my whole world shifted.
I kind of think of like a wall in my brain just crumbling, and this whole other realm of possibility coming into view.
Moved by that article, Abe jumped into the Resource Generation chapter in Boston, and into experiences that allowed him to confront his wealth. One experience was a street retreat with an organization called The Zen Peacemakers. As part of the group, Abe spent four days living on the streets of Manhattan, with no food, no money, no electronics, begging for anything he needed.
It's not about pretending to be homeless. The group tells everyone the truth, and they know they're going home at the end of it. It's about bearing witness to life on the streets.
Abe: During that retreat we had some allies that came along with us, folks who were homeless or who had been homeless. One woman who was with us, who used to be addicted to crack and was homeless, and currently has housing but has that history, at one point I wanted to call my partner and our kids, and I didn't have any quarters. She immediately offered me a dollar in quarters, and showed me where the phone was.
I made the call, and then later on I realized this woman, who has very little resources financially, just offered me, a wealthy person, a dollar, and I took it. I would do the same thing in a second. I was the person in need, and for someone like me, that is so rare. And to have it not only where it would be me in need, but have someone who is so much lower on the totem pole of power to be able to help me... What a gift for me to have that experience.
And through these kinds of experiences, like Michelle in our last story, Abe started talking about his wealth, and in turn doing something with it. He also started questioning his work as a teacher. He was starting to see the education system not as fundamentally just, but as fundamentally broken. Like Ivan, he could now see those holes in the American dream.
Abe: Underneath that was this changing worldview from one of trying to hide what our privilege would allow me to do, and instead step into it and say, "Me hiding privilege serves nobody. I still have the privilege, I still have access to money, whether I hide it or not. I'm doing the wrong work. Well, what is my work? What's my work to do?" and that's really the question that has been guiding me. Resource Generation was huge in allowing me to ask that question. That was the start of me ending up deciding I actually need to leave teaching.
After almost ten years as a teacher, Abe quit. Ivan had also just left his job. He'd been fired from the Samsung counter at the local BestBuy.
Ivan: I was super depressed, and I was like "Oh my god, what am I gonna do?" I called Abe, and I was going through it...
Abe: ...and I thought, "Well, he is very trapped financially. He's in a really bad place right now. What if I can offer Ivan the opportunity to go on a road trip?" So I said to Ivan, "Name the place, let's go."
Ivan: ...and I'm like, "Alright, you know what? Let's go see Tony."
Abe: Tony is the coordinator of the after-school program that I had been a teacher at and that Ivan had been a student at.
Ivan: Tony Dougas.
Abe: And Tony lives in Madison, Wisconsin, so that was it. We decided we were gonna go do it.
So both of them out of their daily grinds, Abe and Ivan took off on a road trip together, from Boston to Madison in Abe's gray Prius.
Abe: On the drive back, Ivan and I were talking... He was talking about his dreams and what he wants to accomplish in life, and how frustrating it is to not have money...
Ivan: And I'm like, man, I would wanna meet anybody in the 1%, because the questions I would like to ask that person, like "What do you control? What do you influence? Are you using that influence for good or bad? Why not help? Why not change things? Why not make life better for everyone? If you have the means, why not?"
Abe: So I said, "Ivan, my family is part of the 1%"
Ivan: ...and I'm like, "Dude, I've known you half my life and I never knew this?"
Abe: I think he didn't really know what to do or that he was probably in some kind of shock.
Ivan: Honestly, I was confused. I was like, "Dude, you're lying to me. Stop playing." What am I supposed to feel, what am I supposed to think? I can't follow him or blame him for nothing. The only thing I could do is respect it and try to understand, and motivate him to take advantage of where he's at and the privileges that he has.
Stephanie: Is that something you had ever said out loud? I am, or my family is part of the 1%?
Abe: No. No, that was the first time. But it felt like it was safe to tell him, even if on principle I should not be; not only because my dad told me not to, but I'm actually gonna talk about it with a person who I know is poor, who I know doesn't have anywhere near enough money.
After that, we talked about me helping him out in some way. He felt really embarrassed to be asking for anything, and I felt insecure about proposing anything, so we were both very much not knowing what to do with it, except that it did make sense to both of us, for me to try to give him something that would help him get back on his feet.
I remember very clearly me saying, "For me to do this, I need a clear ask. I can't just make something up." Like, "Help me out, what's a number that would be helpful." He was very clear that he felt like it was wrong for him to ask for something specific like that, so we kind of had an argument. But we were able to argue, that was the good thing. We were able to openly have a conflict about this, and we didn't run away.
In the end, I made him — I think it was a loan or a gift of $2,000. I also helped his father with fees for his citizenship, and I've also helped raise some money and used some of my money to get his books for his schooling.
Ivan: Confiding in Abe in terms of financial help is something new and forming to myself.
Stephanie: How did it feel to accept money from Abe the first time?
Ivan: Weird as hell! Weird. And it's crazy, because you should be able to go to your friends and ask them for money, but to say "Yo, Abe, I need $5,000 right now", that's not stuff I'm doing; that's not things that's within my nature.
Stephanie: Why?
Ivan: It's just my own, personal pride. I feel inadequate. There is a sense of like, "Damn, I wanna get this on my own, without any help." And then there is another reality that like, "Damn, nobody goes from nothing to become something without help."
Abe's in the position to help me. All he has to do is listen. You can listen, hear me say, "Damn, I'm not working. Damn, I need to pay my rent, and damn, I do not know how I'm going to do that!" So if you're really listening to me, you should know that "Oh, snap! You know what? I can help him." And for you to wait for Ivan to come and tell you, "Yo, can you please not...?"
People tell you what they need all the time, without telling you exactly what they need. You've just gotta be able to listen. What are the things that you're saying? What's the rhetoric? What's your mannerism? What's your mind state? Do you have social media? What things do you post?
It's not that hard.
Abe: Offering somebody money can be deeply offensive. Some people at all, but some people if you do it the wrong way... There's some people who might feel like they're giving a clear message that they could use some help, but they wouldn't say it, and they're offended if you don't pick up on the more subtle messages.
So even though they'd been friends for ten years now, it's a tricky situation. Ivan doesn't want to need help, and doesn't want to have to ask for it either. He wants Abe to know when he needs help, because Abe's listening and being a good friend. But Abe doesn't necessarily know exactly what Ivan needs, and doesn't wanna offend him by offering money in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount.
How would you feel if you needed a friend to give you money? Or if you didn't know how to offer money to a friend who needed it?
Abe: Nothing is clear. There's no resolution that has happened, there's no agreement we've worked out. Some of the money was given in loan, but I made clear that I was never gonna ask for it, and I'd be okay with it never getting paid back. It's a mess. It is a total mess, but not because it causes conflict between us, just because there's so many loose strings and unknowns; in my head I say, "Why not more?" and then I say, "Why him and not someone else?" I can come up with justifications for not moving any money to him, and I can come up with justifications for moving a lot of money to him. Me being someone who loves him, who says "I love you" and he says "I love you"... What does that mean in terms of what makes sense for support in the form of money?
I interviewed Abe and Ivan both individually and together. The day I interviewed Ivan on his own was the same day I interviewed both of them. They were at Abe's house, and I was on Skype. I talked with Ivan, we took a break and then I talked with Abe and Ivan.
During the break, something interesting happened.
Abe: Can I tell her what just happened?
Ivan: Yeah.
Abe: Okay... So just now, after Ivan did his interview with you, Stephanie, and then we had a break, we had some food and I had decided I'm just gonna give him $40. Not for any specific reason, just I feel very aware that right now Ivan's taking his time to do this podcast that I asked him to be a part of, and I'm gonna give him $40. I'm not gonna make a big deal out of it; I left it in front of him on the table, as he sat down and we were gonna eat.
He was sitting there. Either he didn't notice it or he chose not to say anything about it — I don't know — but at the end he got up and left and left it there. I was like, "Hey, that was for you."
Ivan: I'm like, "For what, though? Don't do that, man... That's not the way you do it."
Stephanie: So how would you do it, Ivan?
Ivan: The hand-off.
Abe: We'd do this hand-off... It's sitting in my hand and I just pass it off without a word as we — bam![shake hands].
Ivan: Don't just leave it on the table, man. Because we've been friends for such a long time, I can see how your face turns red when you're trying to find a way of telling, "Yo dude, I'm trying to help you out without disrespecting you." Just be straight up with it.
Along with just giving money to Ivan, Abe has also tried commissioning him to do things he's skilled at, like make paintings. But that can make their friendship feel weirdly transactional.
Abe and Ivan's friendship is a microcosm of the ways we're trying to redistribute wealth. Should money just be given to those who need it? Should they have to do something "productive" for it? Should they be taught how to fish, or taught how to organize all of the above?
Stephanie: So Ivan, you didn't take the money?
Ivan: Shit, I'm leaving this house with $40. [laughter] [unintelligible 00:49:03.08] but goddamn, I'm taking it now! [laughter] But there's tons of different ways I can see this. I'm a man asking another man for money. I could see it like that. Or I can also see it like -- I remember wishing, like saying "Man, I wish I had a best friend that was rich." Oh, my god! That's [unintelligible 00:49:26.28]
Abe: I want to figure out a way to both be a part of supporting him and not threaten the friendship that we have or his own dignity. The narrative I want is "I love this guy. He's my friend, and we are here to support each other, because that's what friends do." Within that includes the possibility of money being a part of it, but it is not out of a sense of obligation or debt or guilt or something like that; it's because we are friends, and friends support each other. And because he's my brother, and he's struggling.
Stephanie: Did you ever fear - and it sounds like Ivan took care to be cautious about this - that Ivan was using you for money?
Abe: I mean, the question I'm always asking is who is served by this or that? Who is served by the tier of wealthy people, of poor people? When I ask that, I think "Well, the maintenance of power is served by wealthy people being scared of poor people." Because when you have relationships between classes, you create the conditions for a transformation of everyone involved, and power does not want people to transform, power wants people to stay in their lanes. So to connect it to systemic power and oppression helps me to see that fear and remember who is served by that fear. And it's not the people.
Ivan is in the situation, and I'm in this situation because of systems of oppression and privilege. It's not just our individual choices that got us here. So the problem that creates this imbalance is not gonna be solved by some magical transfer of power between me and Ivan.
Stephanie: So what can address this imbalance? What kind of giving can transform the system?
Abe: The metaphor I keep coming back to is Star Wars. I'm in the Death Star, I'm part of the Death Star. If I'm senior commander on the Death Star and I have these thoughts of rebellion, the best thing I can do is not to run off and fly an X-wing; the best thing I can do is to throw the wrench inside the controls, inside this inner sanctum of the Death Star. When I do that, I can feel proud to tell people what I do, because it is my work and it's rooted in who I am and where I come from and where I am in society. It feels like it's my work to do.
A lot of people say, "I wanna help my people", and I think that actually for wealthy white dudes, I wanna have the same answer... Most straight white men saying, "I wanna help my people", that sounds awful. It sounds like I'm saying I want the people in power to have more power. No, I want us to have less power, because that's actually what's gonna help us.
I want people who are in a position like me, as wealthy white dudes, to be whole and healthy and to actually have a sense of community and to belong. In order to do that, I think we're gonna have to dismantle the systems that materially privilege us like this.
Who can tell me that there is no cost that comes along with having money? When I first started being a little more bold about giving, I sent money to Ferguson, right around the time that Mike Brown's murder happened, and I have no idea what happened with it. I know which organizations I sent it to... I didn't ask, I wasn't expecting some sort of follow-up report, with metrics and a nice, glossy report; I wanted them to do the freakin' work, and I knew that the freakin' work is not sending me a report. But I have to challenge myself, because my instinct is "Yes, I deserve a report. I deserve to know what's happening. I deserve to know where that money went."
The opportunity to get to practice not being in control and being okay with it, that's what I call two-way philanthropy. I'm getting something out of this. I get the chance to let go of my need to try to control everything. You get some material means to do the work that you need to do. That to me is two-way philanthropy.
Pointing back to Resource Generation's idea that inner and outer change are connected, two-way philanthropy suggests that giving to the world is giving to ourselves. And what two-way philanthropy is giving Abe is the opportunity to let go of control. Like Michelle, to give without needing a fancy follow-up report. It's giving him humility in witnessing a formerly homeless black woman help him, a wealthy white man. It's giving him empathy in learning how to help Ivan the way Ivan wants to be helped. And it gives him self-actualization. Talking about his wealth has gone from being something Abe felt uncomfortable doing to being a foundation of the work he feels is truly his to do.
Abe: I think the power that someone like me has is that I can talk to people with money and I can just tell my story of how moving money and thinking differently about money has allowed me the chance to transform who I am and to make me a happier and a more whole person. We all need transformation.
If I'm gonna give a hundred dollars to try and change the outside world, I try and think of it as "Okay, what's a hundred dollars of internal change gonna look like?"
What's a hundred dollars of internal change going to look like? A great question to end on.
Abe is a philanthropist and organizer who works with white people for racial justice and wealthy people for redistribution. He believes we must open ourselves to internal change at the same scale as the change we wish to see in the outside world.
Ivan is a sales associate at Bodega, a hit men's clothing store in Boston. He dropped out of college the first time around, but is now back, slated to graduate from Roxbury Community College in May 2017. He's also a tutor at Citizen Schools, the after-school program where he and Abe met.
Stephanie: So the baby is being born...
Viola: Any minute now. [laughter]
Michelle: Our phones are in the other room, they could be ringing right now.
Stephanie: [laughs] Your baby could be being born right now.
Viola: That's right.
. . .
Indeed, Michelle and Viola just adopted a newborn baby girl, and they just moved from North Carolina to Texas, to be closer to Michelle's family for parenting purposes and for a job opportunity for Viola.
Michelle is now the primary caregiver, and Viola is working at a startup that provides financial services to the underbanked.
There is no Resource Generation chapter in Fort Worth yet, so maybe they'll start one.
Big thanks to Jessie Spector and Resource Generation for connecting me with Michelle, Viola, Abe and Ivan. Big thanks to the musicians featured — Chris Peck, Brak Oczu, David Sestay, Tannhauser and Rob Voigt. All tracks on this episode are on our website at reckonings.show/episodes/13.
And big thanks to you for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please spread the word — a post on social media, leave an iTunes review, fly a blimp with www.reckonings.show written on it. This is how folks find out about this show, which keeps me going.
Reckonings is in the process of transcending the podcast medium and coming to life in more experiential ways, so stay tuned for events and experiences like street retreat Abe went on, that allow you to inhabit these stories a little more deeply and a little more personally.
I'm Stephanie Lepp, and you've been listening to Reckonings.
Note: Reckonings is produced to be heard, not read. The audio includes emotion and emphasis unavailable on the written page. Transcripts may contain errors, and corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print.
Michelle: I was taught that it's not something you talked about; it was something that if you talked about, you were likely to get taken advantage of. Once people knew you had money, they would want things from you.
. . .
Michelle's great-grandfather owned and then sold a large phone company. He invested the profits well, and over the generations those investments grew, propelling her family into the 0.5%. Today Michelle has a trust fund, which she started getting money from when she was 25, and will finish getting all of it when she turns 35. That's in just two years.
This is Reckonings. I'm Stephanie Lepp, and today we are reckoning with wealth and inequality.
In the U.S., the top 1% of households control almost 40% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% of households have a meager 2.5%.
Because, as they say, money begets money, most upper-class income doesn't even come from working anymore. In 2008, of the households making over 10 million dollars per year, less than 20% of that came from wages and salaries.
And of course, there's a major racial component here. For every dollar of white median family income, Latinos earn 59 cents and blacks earn 57 cents. Economic inequality in the U.S. has been growing for the last 30 years. It's greater now than at any time in the last century, and wider here than in any other democratic and developed economy.
Today we'll be talking to two young people who are inheriting immense wealth, who are deeply concerned by the inequality in our country, and who are wrestling with what that all means within the context of cross-class relationships.
We're kicking it off back with Michelle, growing up in Texas and how she felt about her wealth when she first found out about it.
. . .
Michelle: My thought was, "I don't want it. I don't know what I wanna do with it. That's a burden." It felt like a huge, overwhelming weight... Which is such a privileged thing to be able to say, that "Oh, this money was such a burden", but I didn't see that as fun spending money, I saw it as a huge responsibility.
Stephanie: A responsibility to what?
Michelle: To make the world more fair.
This created a conflict for Michelle. She felt her responsibility to use her wealth to make the world more fair, but she didn't know how to do that, and she couldn't talk to anyone about it because she wasn't supposed to talk about money. So she just kind of pretended that the money wasn't there.
Over in Florida, Viola was growing up very differently than Michelle. Both of her parents worked minimum wage jobs. Her mom was a housekeeper at a local Super A motel, and her dad was in the military.
Viola: I remember when I was my first year of undergrad, telling my liberal arts colleagues that I worked when I was in high-school, that I worked at McDonald's, and how they thought that was "adorable." They thought that it was really cute that I had to work in high-school, which was not novel at all to my experience, but the idea of working through high-school was really adorable and novel to them.
My mother calls anybody who has any slight amount more wealth than she does a "rich bitch." [laughs] She has a lot of pretty serious feelings about people who are in a better economic position.
Stephanie: And what did you think when she said that?
Viola: I suppose I thought she was right.
After college, Viola and Michelle both ended up getting jobs in Durham, North Carolina, which is where they collided.
Michelle: I remember there was a dance party called [unintelligible 00:04:45.20] in Durham. We had established I think that there was a mutual crush, but we had not gone out. But there was a dance party that I was definitely going to, and there was a chance she was gonna be there.
I remember she so coolly, when I asked her if she was going, told me that she'd see maybe about stopping by. I was just agonizing over it all day, I was just wondering if she was gonna be there.
This was a costume party, and I was... I mean, head-to-toe, I had a wig and I had face paint on, and I had a corset and fishnets and tall boots, and I was all out at this costume party.
She showed up, and I just remember we were apart no more than three minutes that whole night. We just danced all night long.
When Michelle and Viola first started dating, it seemed like they were in similar financial situations. They both worked and they both lived off their incomes, and Michelle hid her wealth well. But then they started grad school at the same time, Michelle in education and Viola in economics focusing on inequality, and the disparity between them started to show.
Viola had to change her lifestyle and be much more cautious with money, while Michelle didn't.
Viola: I wanted to do something — go out to eat, go on vacation; I wanted to do that and I wanted to get my way, and it seemed like a silly obstacle that the only obstacle to us doing this thing wasn't that she didn't want to, it's that she didn't feel comfortable with me paying for the whole thing. She would rather not do the thing and wait until she had enough money, and I did not want to wait.
But the disparity between Michelle and Viola really revealed itself when they went to visit Michelle's childhood home.
Viola: It has columns in the front of it, and it's really big, and they had a piano, and she mentioned that they had a housekeeper when they were growing up, or someone who came and cleaned up every now and then, and I think seeing that home was my moment of being like, "Wow... You're from a different place than I'm from.
Stephanie: Did you make a connection between that and "rich bitches"? [laughter] Were you like "Oh my god, she comes from that world that I used to associate with rich bitches"?
Viola: Yeah, I mean I think for some time when I was younger, my parents had a business where they cleaned people's private homes, and my mother is a housekeeper, and I cleaned condos when I was growing up, and I think it was kind of the moment of, "Oh... Michelle is from one of these families that we used to service."
So Michelle and Viola really saw the full extent of their class differences, and they fell in love and they moved in together, and they kept wrestling with Michelle's wealth. Michelle still didn't really wanna talk about it, and Viola still didn't want it to be used on them. And that's when they discovered an organization called Resource Generation.
Michelle: I went for a swim and a beer with a friend of mine, and she just started telling me about Resource Generation, and my eyes just lit up. I remember hanging out with her for a couple hours and just coming home and couldn't wait to tell Viola about this organization. I was so excited, because I had never talked about money to someone other than my family.
I found myself feeling very comfortable talking about money, and she was telling her story and she was talking about money, and it felt so good and comfortable and not scary.
Viola: It was like a lightbulb went off for her. She's had her foot in this access to wealth world and she's had her foot in this social justice values world, and had no idea that there was a space that existed where she could bring these two halves of herself, and that they would both be welcome and fit.
Resource Generation mobilizes young people with wealth to work towards the equitable distribution of land, wealth and power. Michelle and Viola dove into Resource Generation (RG) together. Soon after they started going to meetings they went to RG's major event of the year, a conference called Making Money Make Change (MMMC).
Michelle: I was involved with Resource Generation for about six months before I went to MMMC. That first six months was really spent internally-focused, thinking about how I can become more comfortable with this money, how I can become more comfortable talking about this money... I still wasn't clear on what I could do with this money.
Resource Generation believes that inner and outer change are deeply connected, and that in order to address economic inequality in the world, people with wealth need to first come to terms with it in themselves.
Michelle: At MMMC — there was really a switch that flipped when I went to that conference, because I was with so many people that were doing things, and it gave me lots of ideas and inspired me about the types of things that I might be able to do. That was really when it flipped to thinking outwardly what I could do with this money.
Viola: Part of what they do there is you have a pod, it's a group of people that you will check back in with over and over throughout the conference to process things, and they put all the partners together in their own pod. You have this group of partners who are all in these cross-class relationships, and one of the things that can happen at MMMC is that people's net worth is expressed, so you're meeting all these people who have net worths that are just inconceivable that one person could have access to that.
My roots are with people who work really hard to better their economic circumstances, and that's kind of what we're told to believe as the working class. But then you meet people who have astronomical net worth that they've inherited, and it's because our system wants to make that easy, to make money with money, but they're telling the working class "If you just worked harder, you could be rich, too." Actually, the system is really not set up for the working class.
You get to go back to the partners pod and sit with other people who are experiencing that at the same time. It was a lot of just like "We're gonna put our arms around each other and we're gonna have this feeling, and we're gonna acknowledge that the system is fucked up." That's not news to anyone who's in RG, but to actually be confronted with it really head on is a different story.
I think there's something about the fact that it's called "net worth", right? We could say "net assets", but a lot of people like to say "net worth", and as an economist I know those are the same things, and I know that net worth actually has nothing to do with your worth as an individual, but when you're in the moment and you're having those conversations about how there are some people in the world whose net worth is just so many orders of magnitude higher than yours, you find yourself feeling like they are worth more.
Michelle: When you are trying to redistribute land, wealth and power, when you want to move the money, there is an inherent problem with you as the rich person deciding where to move that money. My privileges are bountiful. I am cisgendered, I am white, I come from wealth, I was raised Christian, so I am not intimately familiar with all types of oppression. So me making choices about where to move this money has inherent bias in it, based on my experiences, and I'm gonna donate to things that matter to me.
I remember getting the idea about doing what's called a donor-advised fund. So me, or the rich person setting up this money to be given away, finding a group of people that find another group of people to sit down and say, "Okay, we've got $100,000. Where should it go?" I can move money without being the sole decider of where the money goes.
Something that donors really internalize is this idea that you wanna make sure that you make really smart decisions about who you donate to. You wanna make sure that they're gonna use that money in the most efficient way possible. That can be really paralyzing, to feel like "I don't know if I can donate to planned parenthood. I don't know if I can donate to Black Lives Matter, because I don't know exactly their plan for how they're gonna spend this money."
I think the one thing I've learned from Resource Generation is you're gonna start donating money, and sometimes you're gonna donate to an organization or to a person that's not gonna use it wisely. And sometimes you might give some money away to someone who's using you. But better do something, act, and make some mistakes, than to be paralyzed by this notion that you need to always make perfect decisions.
You're opening yourself up, you are making yourself vulnerable. In the world at large I'm not really vulnerable. Why not be vulnerable?
Viola: Trying to give money to my parents? I wish they would let me help them. I like to think if there was a tragedy, that they would allow us to help them out, but I think anything other than that is not really on the table.
Stephanie: I know that when you and Michelle first started dating, you didn't wanna let her pay for things. How did you both want your parents to let you help them and meanwhile not want Michelle to help you to go out to dinner, or go on a vacation?
Viola: Well, because I am financially independent... Oh, and so are they. Dang it! [laughter] Well, yeah... I don't know. I think my parents do the same thing to me that I do to Michelle. I may tell them about that later, and tell them that Stephanie totally was like "Do you know you're doing that? Do you know you're doing the same thing?" [laughter]
Michelle: Resource Generation lead to conversations about what it means to come from money and how it impacts the way you think about money and the decisions you make at the grocery store or about a vacation. I brought to the table lots of assumptions and ideas, and I was accustomed to getting my way and getting what I wanted because of my wealth background.
Going to the grocery store together is always a really exciting thing. If I want laundry detergent, I just grab the most colorful one and throw it in the bin, and she's gonna look at which one is the most cost-effective, which one's the cheapest. I didn't grow up looking at prices for every little thing. Just like, "I need toilet paper, I just grab toilet paper."
It opened our eyes and made us realize that there were some disagreements or arguments that we may have had that were actually linked to our differences in class background.
Before Resource Generation I was largely ignoring the money and not really dealing with it. Resource Generation gave me a way to talk about money. And that being said, this whole podcast conversation does feel a little stressful.
Stephanie: I know...
Michelle: I can say I'm comfortable talking about it - I am much more comfortable talking about my wealth than I was five years ago certainly, but I'm definitely pushing up against my comfort zone. I've still got work to do.
Michelle: Viola was actually traveling and she was coming back into town. We knew that the ruling might go down... She was stuck in Chicago, had to sleep in the airport, rushed home... We went straight to Raleigh to wait at the courthouse, and at about 4:30 they said that if the ruling came down before five, they would stay open and issue marriage licenses.
At five o'clock no ruling had come down, so we decided while we were in Raleigh let's get dinner, and by this time our phones are almost completely dead because we'd been refreshing Twitter for the last three hours, waiting for news on the decision.
We finished dinner and we started driving home, and on the last bars of our battery text messages started flooding in that we should turn around...
Viola: I know they were asking us if we were married, and they were congratulating us because everyone knew we were gonna get married as soon as it was legal, and it was the Religious Liberties case that surprised everyone and came in a little after five o'clock. The Raleigh register of the deeds actually closed and then reopened to issue marriage licenses.
Stephanie: Wow...
Viola: So we turned around, we rushed to the register of the deeds and instead of getting a license and getting married at the courthouse, we ended up getting our license and then taking it back to Durham and asking a friend who was ordained to perform a quick ceremony. We were able to get enough juice to invite some friends, and everyone met us at this bar... And we didn't know this, but there was a celebration taking place at Motorco for the ruling.
Stephanie: Oh, perfect!
Viola: They were showing a documentary, they had speakers coming up, I think they had cake, and it was a big celebration. They invited us to get married on stage, at the bar.
Stephanie: Wow...
Michelle: ...with every gay person [unintelligible 00:21:39.00] [laughter]
Viola: And our friend that was actually performing the ceremony, when she got to the part "By the power vested in me and in accordance..."
Michelle: ...with the laws of North Carolina...
Viola: ...with the laws of North Carolina, I now pronounce you married." But in that moment when she said, "in accordance with the laws of North Carolina", the entire bar erupted.
Stephanie: How has being queer been a part of healing your relationship with wealth?
Michelle: Being queer solidified my desire to not use the money for myself. It opened my eyes to other forms of oppression and privilege, because I didn't have a straight privilege.
Viola: It's very hard to see all the privileges that you have, unless there's maybe a little kink in your own privilege armor, and that allows you to see... I've had these specific examples in my life where I've been judged for these characteristics, and if that's happening to me, it's happening to other people.
Viola has moved up the economic ladder not just once, but twice. First, she surpassed her parents, being the first in her family to go to college, and then she climbed further by marrying Michelle. Naturally, Viola's change in class is changing the way she lives her life, including inspiring a career shift that she wouldn't otherwise have made.
Viola: The primary reason that I'm doing this shift is because I'm interested in the kind of work that I get to do with this skill set, and not because it's gonna guarantee me more financial security. That was the moment when I felt some of this class transition most acutely, with starting to think of my work as a place to derive happiness. So just hearing myself articulate my career goals in that way was really different, and I think sounds like the more affluent people that I've known sounds like a different class.
Still, Viola's economic leap hasn't actually made her feel entirely financially secure.
Viola: As I make more and more money, I always feel like "Oh, when I hit that next level, I'm gonna feel wealthy. I'm gonna feel like I'm making a lot of money." Then I hit it, and that lasts for a pretty short amount of time and I think I need to make more to feel stable. That fear is a moving target, like many things that we chase through life, and we always think "When I hit that level I'm gonna know", and you eventually just realize that that whole sense is maybe false.
Michelle: There's this idea of scarcity that I think spans classes. You can have millions of dollars and talk about not wanting to give away too much, because you wanna make sure you have enough for yourself. I would love to just eliminate that completely from my thinking. I don't wanna worry about not having enough, because we have so much.
Viola: When Michelle and I first started conversations about her access to wealth, I was very adamant that we would never use it for anything, except for giving. But I feel like the more I think about how safe I am now, and how I get to do everything that I want, and we get closer to starting our family, and I want our kids to be able to have everything that they want, it gets harder to think... "Do you really wanna give away every cent? I don't know..." [laughs] It gets harder for me to be like, "Absolutely! Yes, we do!" and I worry about that.
I'm starting to get used to the privileges that I gain from this position, and that makes me uncomfortable, that I'm sacrificing values for comfort.
So it's complicated. Michelle and Viola are working to overcome this idea of scarcity, but Viola doesn't wanna get too comfortable with abundance, for fear that it might cloud her social justice values. Does having some discomfort with wealth help hold us accountable to our values?
Or at a certain level of wealth, does it just create a false tradeoff between giving to ourselves and giving to the world? At the level that Michelle and Viola are at, it may certainly be a false tradeoff, but they might certainly experience it as a real one.
Inner and outer change are connected. Our inner stuff does get in the way of making a change in the outside world... Which brings us to the outside world. The system.
Viola: This was the first time we did taxes as a married couple, and because I'm an economist and a data scientist and it's my idea of a good time to look at effective tax rates, I looked at our effective tax rate for just our earned income portion, and then we've added in the trust money, and I looked at our effective tax rate for what it looks like when we're just pulling large amounts of money out of the trust. Our effective tax rate dropped, which isn't surprising - I understand how capital gains work and I understand how our tax system works, but seeing really first-hand and benefitting from this system that is taxing people who work for their income - my people - it gets me every time...
These are what I call "my people", this is how I think about my parents and my family and everyone that I know growing up - just seeing that those are the people who get taxed these higher rates, and we just pulled this money effectively out of thin air and we get a lower tax rate for that, we're rewarded for that, we exist in this system where that is what is valued...
Michelle: I think what RG does a really good job at is really teaching folks who have access to wealth that the fact that you are in this position, that's a symptom of something that's wrong with the system.
In other words, the fact that such few people have so much money to give is itself a symptom of a broken system... So for Resource Generation it's not enough to give money away. It has to be given away in a way that changes the system that created this situation in the first place. It has to be given in a way that transforms how the system functions, so that as Viola saw when doing her taxes, inequality doesn't inherently perpetuate itself.
That kind of giving, that transforms the system, is something we'll get into more deeply in this next story. This time a cross-class relationship between friends.
. . .
Abe: There's a voice in my head saying, "Wow, this is awesome! Look at this... This thing that everybody talks about - everybody talks about being rich; this means you're set!" But then there's this icky sense of like "I didn't do anything to earn that. I don't know what to do with this."
Abe's parents revealed the magnitude of his family's wealth to him in one sitting, on their annual Thanksgiving family trip, when he was 24 years old. They sat him down at a table in their hotel room and matter-of-factly presented him with documents that laid out the structure of their wealth, including his trust fund. And like Michelle's parents, they told him not to talk about money, because it would complicate relationships and people would take advantage of it.
Halfway around the world from Abe in Ohio, Ivan was born in Cape Verde, an island off the West coast of Africa. He moved to the U.S. when he was four, and grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Boston. Why did Ivan's parents come from Cape Verde to America?
Ivan: Why do most people come to America? It's in pursuit of the American dream, or what they believe to be the American dream. A lot of people have this false perception of America is. It's hard...
There was a point in time when I was working at Samsung; I felt like I was making more money than my parents. And I'm here making $16/hour at Samsung, and my mom hasn't reached a point in her work experience where she's even making $15/hour.
Indeed, the American dream was elusive for a poor immigrant family of color, but while Ivan saw the holes in the American dream, Abe believed in it. He believed our systems of government and finance and education were fundamentally just; they just needed some tweaking.
Abe: I went into teaching. I thought I can help poor kids of color have a better chance at succeeding. And underneath that is a belief that the system can work.
And with that belief, fresh out of college and right around the time when he was learning about his family's wealth, Abe started teaching in an after-school program in Boston called Citizen Schools, where Ivan was a student.
Ivan: The first day he actually kicked me out the class. I said something about a kid, like "Joseph, I'm gonna punch you in the face", or something like that... We were just messing around. He said, "Ivan, get out."
Abe: I said, "Ivan, can you please leave the room?" and he left, good-naturedly... And that was our first interaction. [laughs]
After that initial session I went up to him and I said, "Ivan, I know you were just kidding, but I want you to understand that we have a responsibility here to keep our environment safe." He knew it, and he was okay with it.
I tried to be a very transparent teacher and admit when I'm wrong, and he also had this humility about him, where he could admit when he was wrong. That made me want to connect with him.
Abe ended up choosing Ivan to be his student for that year, and they started developing a friendship. Although they came from different worlds and were a decade apart in age, they stayed in touch after that year.
A year later, when Ivan started college, he asked his mom, his dad and Abe to help him move in.
Ivan: Abe's my friend, he's my dawg, he's my boy. It's unconventional, it definitely is, but it teaches you the reality that people can be relatable.
And while they've built their unconventional friendship, Abe continued struggling with his wealth. He didn't talk about it or know what to do with it, and almost denied its existence... Which is when he came across a New York Times article written by a woman who was a member of Resource Generation. She was talking openly about her personal wealth, which went against everything Abe had been taught.
Abe: Here she was, talking about money in the largest newspaper in the United States, with her picture; I think she even might have included numbers. I got a sense of the freedom that comes with that, that I started to realize I didn't have. I was locked down by this idea of money and not being able to talk about it and not being able to act based on its existence, and it was like my whole world shifted.
I kind of think of like a wall in my brain just crumbling, and this whole other realm of possibility coming into view.
Moved by that article, Abe jumped into the Resource Generation chapter in Boston, and into experiences that allowed him to confront his wealth. One experience was a street retreat with an organization called The Zen Peacemakers. As part of the group, Abe spent four days living on the streets of Manhattan, with no food, no money, no electronics, begging for anything he needed.
It's not about pretending to be homeless. The group tells everyone the truth, and they know they're going home at the end of it. It's about bearing witness to life on the streets.
Abe: During that retreat we had some allies that came along with us, folks who were homeless or who had been homeless. One woman who was with us, who used to be addicted to crack and was homeless, and currently has housing but has that history, at one point I wanted to call my partner and our kids, and I didn't have any quarters. She immediately offered me a dollar in quarters, and showed me where the phone was.
I made the call, and then later on I realized this woman, who has very little resources financially, just offered me, a wealthy person, a dollar, and I took it. I would do the same thing in a second. I was the person in need, and for someone like me, that is so rare. And to have it not only where it would be me in need, but have someone who is so much lower on the totem pole of power to be able to help me... What a gift for me to have that experience.
And through these kinds of experiences, like Michelle in our last story, Abe started talking about his wealth, and in turn doing something with it. He also started questioning his work as a teacher. He was starting to see the education system not as fundamentally just, but as fundamentally broken. Like Ivan, he could now see those holes in the American dream.
Abe: Underneath that was this changing worldview from one of trying to hide what our privilege would allow me to do, and instead step into it and say, "Me hiding privilege serves nobody. I still have the privilege, I still have access to money, whether I hide it or not. I'm doing the wrong work. Well, what is my work? What's my work to do?" and that's really the question that has been guiding me. Resource Generation was huge in allowing me to ask that question. That was the start of me ending up deciding I actually need to leave teaching.
After almost ten years as a teacher, Abe quit. Ivan had also just left his job. He'd been fired from the Samsung counter at the local BestBuy.
Ivan: I was super depressed, and I was like "Oh my god, what am I gonna do?" I called Abe, and I was going through it...
Abe: ...and I thought, "Well, he is very trapped financially. He's in a really bad place right now. What if I can offer Ivan the opportunity to go on a road trip?" So I said to Ivan, "Name the place, let's go."
Ivan: ...and I'm like, "Alright, you know what? Let's go see Tony."
Abe: Tony is the coordinator of the after-school program that I had been a teacher at and that Ivan had been a student at.
Ivan: Tony Dougas.
Abe: And Tony lives in Madison, Wisconsin, so that was it. We decided we were gonna go do it.
So both of them out of their daily grinds, Abe and Ivan took off on a road trip together, from Boston to Madison in Abe's gray Prius.
Abe: On the drive back, Ivan and I were talking... He was talking about his dreams and what he wants to accomplish in life, and how frustrating it is to not have money...
Ivan: And I'm like, man, I would wanna meet anybody in the 1%, because the questions I would like to ask that person, like "What do you control? What do you influence? Are you using that influence for good or bad? Why not help? Why not change things? Why not make life better for everyone? If you have the means, why not?"
Abe: So I said, "Ivan, my family is part of the 1%"
Ivan: ...and I'm like, "Dude, I've known you half my life and I never knew this?"
Abe: I think he didn't really know what to do or that he was probably in some kind of shock.
Ivan: Honestly, I was confused. I was like, "Dude, you're lying to me. Stop playing." What am I supposed to feel, what am I supposed to think? I can't follow him or blame him for nothing. The only thing I could do is respect it and try to understand, and motivate him to take advantage of where he's at and the privileges that he has.
Stephanie: Is that something you had ever said out loud? I am, or my family is part of the 1%?
Abe: No. No, that was the first time. But it felt like it was safe to tell him, even if on principle I should not be; not only because my dad told me not to, but I'm actually gonna talk about it with a person who I know is poor, who I know doesn't have anywhere near enough money.
After that, we talked about me helping him out in some way. He felt really embarrassed to be asking for anything, and I felt insecure about proposing anything, so we were both very much not knowing what to do with it, except that it did make sense to both of us, for me to try to give him something that would help him get back on his feet.
I remember very clearly me saying, "For me to do this, I need a clear ask. I can't just make something up." Like, "Help me out, what's a number that would be helpful." He was very clear that he felt like it was wrong for him to ask for something specific like that, so we kind of had an argument. But we were able to argue, that was the good thing. We were able to openly have a conflict about this, and we didn't run away.
In the end, I made him — I think it was a loan or a gift of $2,000. I also helped his father with fees for his citizenship, and I've also helped raise some money and used some of my money to get his books for his schooling.
Ivan: Confiding in Abe in terms of financial help is something new and forming to myself.
Stephanie: How did it feel to accept money from Abe the first time?
Ivan: Weird as hell! Weird. And it's crazy, because you should be able to go to your friends and ask them for money, but to say "Yo, Abe, I need $5,000 right now", that's not stuff I'm doing; that's not things that's within my nature.
Stephanie: Why?
Ivan: It's just my own, personal pride. I feel inadequate. There is a sense of like, "Damn, I wanna get this on my own, without any help." And then there is another reality that like, "Damn, nobody goes from nothing to become something without help."
Abe's in the position to help me. All he has to do is listen. You can listen, hear me say, "Damn, I'm not working. Damn, I need to pay my rent, and damn, I do not know how I'm going to do that!" So if you're really listening to me, you should know that "Oh, snap! You know what? I can help him." And for you to wait for Ivan to come and tell you, "Yo, can you please not...?"
People tell you what they need all the time, without telling you exactly what they need. You've just gotta be able to listen. What are the things that you're saying? What's the rhetoric? What's your mannerism? What's your mind state? Do you have social media? What things do you post?
It's not that hard.
Abe: Offering somebody money can be deeply offensive. Some people at all, but some people if you do it the wrong way... There's some people who might feel like they're giving a clear message that they could use some help, but they wouldn't say it, and they're offended if you don't pick up on the more subtle messages.
So even though they'd been friends for ten years now, it's a tricky situation. Ivan doesn't want to need help, and doesn't want to have to ask for it either. He wants Abe to know when he needs help, because Abe's listening and being a good friend. But Abe doesn't necessarily know exactly what Ivan needs, and doesn't wanna offend him by offering money in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount.
How would you feel if you needed a friend to give you money? Or if you didn't know how to offer money to a friend who needed it?
Abe: Nothing is clear. There's no resolution that has happened, there's no agreement we've worked out. Some of the money was given in loan, but I made clear that I was never gonna ask for it, and I'd be okay with it never getting paid back. It's a mess. It is a total mess, but not because it causes conflict between us, just because there's so many loose strings and unknowns; in my head I say, "Why not more?" and then I say, "Why him and not someone else?" I can come up with justifications for not moving any money to him, and I can come up with justifications for moving a lot of money to him. Me being someone who loves him, who says "I love you" and he says "I love you"... What does that mean in terms of what makes sense for support in the form of money?
I interviewed Abe and Ivan both individually and together. The day I interviewed Ivan on his own was the same day I interviewed both of them. They were at Abe's house, and I was on Skype. I talked with Ivan, we took a break and then I talked with Abe and Ivan.
During the break, something interesting happened.
Abe: Can I tell her what just happened?
Ivan: Yeah.
Abe: Okay... So just now, after Ivan did his interview with you, Stephanie, and then we had a break, we had some food and I had decided I'm just gonna give him $40. Not for any specific reason, just I feel very aware that right now Ivan's taking his time to do this podcast that I asked him to be a part of, and I'm gonna give him $40. I'm not gonna make a big deal out of it; I left it in front of him on the table, as he sat down and we were gonna eat.
He was sitting there. Either he didn't notice it or he chose not to say anything about it — I don't know — but at the end he got up and left and left it there. I was like, "Hey, that was for you."
Ivan: I'm like, "For what, though? Don't do that, man... That's not the way you do it."
Stephanie: So how would you do it, Ivan?
Ivan: The hand-off.
Abe: We'd do this hand-off... It's sitting in my hand and I just pass it off without a word as we — bam![shake hands].
Ivan: Don't just leave it on the table, man. Because we've been friends for such a long time, I can see how your face turns red when you're trying to find a way of telling, "Yo dude, I'm trying to help you out without disrespecting you." Just be straight up with it.
Along with just giving money to Ivan, Abe has also tried commissioning him to do things he's skilled at, like make paintings. But that can make their friendship feel weirdly transactional.
Abe and Ivan's friendship is a microcosm of the ways we're trying to redistribute wealth. Should money just be given to those who need it? Should they have to do something "productive" for it? Should they be taught how to fish, or taught how to organize all of the above?
Stephanie: So Ivan, you didn't take the money?
Ivan: Shit, I'm leaving this house with $40. [laughter] [unintelligible 00:49:03.08] but goddamn, I'm taking it now! [laughter] But there's tons of different ways I can see this. I'm a man asking another man for money. I could see it like that. Or I can also see it like -- I remember wishing, like saying "Man, I wish I had a best friend that was rich." Oh, my god! That's [unintelligible 00:49:26.28]
Abe: I want to figure out a way to both be a part of supporting him and not threaten the friendship that we have or his own dignity. The narrative I want is "I love this guy. He's my friend, and we are here to support each other, because that's what friends do." Within that includes the possibility of money being a part of it, but it is not out of a sense of obligation or debt or guilt or something like that; it's because we are friends, and friends support each other. And because he's my brother, and he's struggling.
Stephanie: Did you ever fear - and it sounds like Ivan took care to be cautious about this - that Ivan was using you for money?
Abe: I mean, the question I'm always asking is who is served by this or that? Who is served by the tier of wealthy people, of poor people? When I ask that, I think "Well, the maintenance of power is served by wealthy people being scared of poor people." Because when you have relationships between classes, you create the conditions for a transformation of everyone involved, and power does not want people to transform, power wants people to stay in their lanes. So to connect it to systemic power and oppression helps me to see that fear and remember who is served by that fear. And it's not the people.
Ivan is in the situation, and I'm in this situation because of systems of oppression and privilege. It's not just our individual choices that got us here. So the problem that creates this imbalance is not gonna be solved by some magical transfer of power between me and Ivan.
Stephanie: So what can address this imbalance? What kind of giving can transform the system?
Abe: The metaphor I keep coming back to is Star Wars. I'm in the Death Star, I'm part of the Death Star. If I'm senior commander on the Death Star and I have these thoughts of rebellion, the best thing I can do is not to run off and fly an X-wing; the best thing I can do is to throw the wrench inside the controls, inside this inner sanctum of the Death Star. When I do that, I can feel proud to tell people what I do, because it is my work and it's rooted in who I am and where I come from and where I am in society. It feels like it's my work to do.
A lot of people say, "I wanna help my people", and I think that actually for wealthy white dudes, I wanna have the same answer... Most straight white men saying, "I wanna help my people", that sounds awful. It sounds like I'm saying I want the people in power to have more power. No, I want us to have less power, because that's actually what's gonna help us.
I want people who are in a position like me, as wealthy white dudes, to be whole and healthy and to actually have a sense of community and to belong. In order to do that, I think we're gonna have to dismantle the systems that materially privilege us like this.
Who can tell me that there is no cost that comes along with having money? When I first started being a little more bold about giving, I sent money to Ferguson, right around the time that Mike Brown's murder happened, and I have no idea what happened with it. I know which organizations I sent it to... I didn't ask, I wasn't expecting some sort of follow-up report, with metrics and a nice, glossy report; I wanted them to do the freakin' work, and I knew that the freakin' work is not sending me a report. But I have to challenge myself, because my instinct is "Yes, I deserve a report. I deserve to know what's happening. I deserve to know where that money went."
The opportunity to get to practice not being in control and being okay with it, that's what I call two-way philanthropy. I'm getting something out of this. I get the chance to let go of my need to try to control everything. You get some material means to do the work that you need to do. That to me is two-way philanthropy.
Pointing back to Resource Generation's idea that inner and outer change are connected, two-way philanthropy suggests that giving to the world is giving to ourselves. And what two-way philanthropy is giving Abe is the opportunity to let go of control. Like Michelle, to give without needing a fancy follow-up report. It's giving him humility in witnessing a formerly homeless black woman help him, a wealthy white man. It's giving him empathy in learning how to help Ivan the way Ivan wants to be helped. And it gives him self-actualization. Talking about his wealth has gone from being something Abe felt uncomfortable doing to being a foundation of the work he feels is truly his to do.
Abe: I think the power that someone like me has is that I can talk to people with money and I can just tell my story of how moving money and thinking differently about money has allowed me the chance to transform who I am and to make me a happier and a more whole person. We all need transformation.
If I'm gonna give a hundred dollars to try and change the outside world, I try and think of it as "Okay, what's a hundred dollars of internal change gonna look like?"
What's a hundred dollars of internal change going to look like? A great question to end on.
Abe is a philanthropist and organizer who works with white people for racial justice and wealthy people for redistribution. He believes we must open ourselves to internal change at the same scale as the change we wish to see in the outside world.
Ivan is a sales associate at Bodega, a hit men's clothing store in Boston. He dropped out of college the first time around, but is now back, slated to graduate from Roxbury Community College in May 2017. He's also a tutor at Citizen Schools, the after-school program where he and Abe met.
Stephanie: So the baby is being born...
Viola: Any minute now. [laughter]
Michelle: Our phones are in the other room, they could be ringing right now.
Stephanie: [laughs] Your baby could be being born right now.
Viola: That's right.
. . .
Indeed, Michelle and Viola just adopted a newborn baby girl, and they just moved from North Carolina to Texas, to be closer to Michelle's family for parenting purposes and for a job opportunity for Viola.
Michelle is now the primary caregiver, and Viola is working at a startup that provides financial services to the underbanked.
There is no Resource Generation chapter in Fort Worth yet, so maybe they'll start one.
Big thanks to Jessie Spector and Resource Generation for connecting me with Michelle, Viola, Abe and Ivan. Big thanks to the musicians featured — Chris Peck, Brak Oczu, David Sestay, Tannhauser and Rob Voigt. All tracks on this episode are on our website at reckonings.show/episodes/13.
And big thanks to you for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please spread the word — a post on social media, leave an iTunes review, fly a blimp with www.reckonings.show written on it. This is how folks find out about this show, which keeps me going.
Reckonings is in the process of transcending the podcast medium and coming to life in more experiential ways, so stay tuned for events and experiences like street retreat Abe went on, that allow you to inhabit these stories a little more deeply and a little more personally.
I'm Stephanie Lepp, and you've been listening to Reckonings.
