Entrepreneurial Appetite

Black Power Score Card: Measuring and Closing the Racial Wealth Gap with Dr. Andre M. Perry

• Langston Clark • Season 6 • Episode 20

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Dr. Andre Perry brings a revolutionary approach to understanding Black economic power through his groundbreaking research at the Brookings Institution. Sharing his personal journey from being raised by a neighbor in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to becoming a Senior Fellow at America's preeminent think tank, Perry offers a masterclass in how data can illuminate pathways to Black community thriving.

The conversation centers around Perry's innovative Black Progress Index, which uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms to identify the factors that most significantly impact life expectancy in Black communities nationwide. What makes this approach revolutionary is Perry's deliberate choice to measure Black communities against other Black communities—not white ones—revealing "Black Blue Zones" where life expectancy exceeds statistical predictions.

Perry's definition of power as "the ability to live your full life" cuts through symbolic victories to focus on tangible factors that extend and improve Black lives: homeownership, income levels, business ownership, and community composition. His research demonstrates that thriving Black communities exist across diverse political landscapes, challenging assumptions about where and how Black success can flourish.

Perhaps most provocatively, Perry dismantles popular discourse around Black relationships by showing how structural factors shape personal outcomes. "Healthy communities build healthy relationships," he argues, redirecting energy from gender-based blame toward addressing systems that extract wealth and opportunity. His approach to reparations similarly focuses on practical, local-level initiatives, particularly around environmental justice issues where causation and harm are clearest.

Throughout our discussion, Perry weaves together rigorous statistical analysis with cultural touchpoints and historical context, creating a compelling roadmap for Black community development. Rather than accepting DEI initiatives as end goals, he pushes for mainstream resource access and institutional reform. This conversation offers essential insights for anyone committed to understanding and advancing Black economic power in America today.

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Langston Clark:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's up everybody?

Langston Clark:

Once again, this is Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. And today we have a very special guest, dr Andre Perry, who is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and author of Black Power Score, measuring the Racial Wealth Gap and what we Can Do to close it. So let me give you some background, dr Perry, and then I think it'll help shape our conversation moving forward. So this podcast started off as dinner and discussion because we found that there was a black business here on the east side of San Antonio, which is historically where black community has developed here in the city, and there was a brother named Mark on a burger joint called Mark's Outing, and when Facebook Live was a thing, it first came out, people were talking about their business and stuff. So Mark went on Facebook Live and talked about how his business was suffering. So me and my homeboy Jason got together with 25, 35 young black professionals and had a conversation about how to be successful in San Antonio, and our guest speaker was a state representative named Barbara Girvin Hawkins, and people asked a number of questions about policy, political engagement housing was one of the questions that came up, and so the spirit of this podcast and how it has evolved from those dinners and discussion to being what we are now is, I think, in a lot of ways aligned with what you do the people who support the podcast on Patreon and we have our live conversations, people who donate to come. A percentage of that goes to an endowment that I started with my homeboy and homegirl, who all went to North Carolina A&T and we are some ways along our PhD journeys. One just got tenure, one is a PhD candidate, and we are some ways along our PhD journeys. One just got tenure, one is a PhD candidate and I'm deep in my career, so I appreciate the work that you do as it aligns with what I try to do here with the podcast.

Langston Clark:

Real quick. I have been somewhat aware of your work for a long time, just based upon following you on LinkedIn, but I had the opportunity to see you in person at South by Southwest and it was at South by Southwest where you and some others were talking about, you know, housing issues in black America and the efforts that are being put forward philanthropically and through other organizations to support housing, and so you had a really interesting story to share, a very personal, very interesting personal testimony, and since we kind of evolved from that dinner and discussion to becoming a book club, I always try to frame the conversations in this way Before we get into you know talking about the concepts in the book, tell us your story. What's your autobiography, what are the life experiences that brought you to where you are right now?

Andre M. Perry:

biography. What are the life experiences that brought you to where you are right now? Well, how the story was told to me, I was before I was born. There was a deal made between my maternal grandmother and a woman in the neighborhood by the name of Elsie Boyd, at the time my. The deal was that she would take me and Elsie Boyd would take me and I would live with her in a place called Wilkinsburg, pennsylvania.

Andre M. Perry:

It's a borough inside of Pittsburgh and at the time my mother was very poor. She had me when she was 17, had my older brother when she was 15. My older brother when she was 15, there was a lot of turmoil in the household in that my father was drug addicted. He was in and out of jail and prison. Eventually he was murdered in prison. But mom did what a lot of black matriarchs did at the time she took in kids. So she took in my brothers. My younger brother also came along later, but she reared 12 to 15 kids of varying durations. Some would stay a few weeks, some would stay a few months, some would stay for years, and I was one. But I stayed from birth to um graduation.

Andre M. Perry:

But the you know a lot of people will point to her as a um a story, or point to me the story of exceptionalism. I always got to remind people that, um, she owned a home. She was actually her son's home, that he got through the GI Bill, but the home was owned and she leveraged that asset to uplift our lives, and so mom, she's no longer with us. She was older when I was born, but my origin story is one that I gotta serve communities in interesting ways, that I gotta use my ancestors to to help others thrive, and and that's a lot of the position I take in my work- all right and real quick for those who don't know what is the Brookings Institution and what does it mean to be a senior fellow there.

Langston Clark:

So I know I got people who are aware of what people with PhDs do in academia, but not for something like the Brookings Institution.

Andre M. Perry:

Brookings Institution is a think tank, and think tanks are generally policy shops, policy institutions that can be focused on a particular area. So we have five major areas here at Brookings. We're known as the preeminent think tank, but we do research that's in service to policy, that when legislators and others look for the numbers to support or or reject the policy, they come to places like Brookings. So, but as a senior fellow, what it means is I've you come in as a fellow, that's sort of a professor that doesn't teach classes, and so you're doing research. A senior fellow is someone who's reached a level of impact or has had a level of impact that warrants professional advancement.

Langston Clark:

So, in a nutshell, that's what a think tank is, so you're like a full professor at the Brookings Institution.

Andre M. Perry:

Yeah, you're not tenured. You're not tenured. But what it means is, yeah, I'm an established researcher, I have a research team, I organize multiple projects, I oversee multiple projects, I oversee multiple projects. So, yes, I'm a senior fellow.

Langston Clark:

All right, and so you told us your autobiography. Can you tell us the story of the book? How did the book emerge as one of your projects? What was the inspiration?

Andre M. Perry:

The inspiration was the summer of 2020, certainly spurred by the death of George Floyd the killing of George Floyd and at the time, the phrase Black Lives Matter was still being debated. You know they were saying should be all lives matter, black Lives Matter to all those things. They were still being debated. You know they were saying it should be all lives matter, black Lives Matter, too, all those things. They were still debating it.

Andre M. Perry:

But for me, as a researcher, I saw the research question in the phrase Black Lives Matter. It was one of the most important factors that impact life expectancy, and that question turned into a project called the Black Progress Index, where we identified the most significant factors on life expectancy. And that's what we did, and From there, I identified multiple cities where Black people live the longest and, by the way, we measure Black people to Black people, we don't compare Black people to white people, because when you do that, you mask the real growth that can happen at the local level. So for me, we did that. It had success, but I also wanted to see what's happening in those cities that exceed expectations. So the book is pretty much a narrative of what's happening in places where Black people are thriving and even in places where we're not, there are good things that we can build upon for future growth.

Langston Clark:

Let's stay there, because I thought that was one of the most interesting parts of the book. And, and, to be fair, I think sometimes when we, when we think about black scholars who apply a critical lens to what's happening in society, we assume that they're Afro-pessimistic, and you mentioned Afro-pessimism in the book. But I think you did do a good job of finding places where black people are actually thriving, but then also talking about places where, like we're, we're below. We're below our own average, right. So when I read that part of the book, I was like I think there's that thing called blue zones, right. And there I read that part of the book, I was like I think there's a thing called blue zones, right, and there's blue zones in the world where people live to be 100 plus or whatever. And so just talk a little bit more about what I call black blue zones and why life expectancy, which may seem obvious, is an indicator of black thriving and black power. But what's going on in these Black blue zones?

Andre M. Perry:

Yeah. So to get at where we're living the longest, we use the machine learning algorithm, lasso, which is a type of regression analysis that identifies the strongest predictors of a dependent variable. We use life expectancy. So say plain talk, we look for the factors that matter most on life expectancy. And when you apply that regression, you can apply dozens of databases and we looked at everything from census data to the Fed reserve data, irs data, facebook data. It's an amazing tool and what came out were the most significant factors on life expectancy. So everything from the share of immigrants living in an area of home ownership income, business ownership, all these different things.

Andre M. Perry:

And when you also do that, you get to see where cities exceed their expectations, their predictions. So say, for instance, we predicted life expectancy at 75 and there are places that it turned out to be 78. So we wanted to know okay, why did this place have above average expectation or exceeded, outperformed what we predicted? But and you know it's hard for me to remember the places, but there are so many, there are dozens of places, but there are dozens of places where Black people exceed national averages and exceed what they are predicted to post into the life expectancy. So we should not look at Black people as a deficit or that in the yes, in the aggregate, black people live less longer than white people. But what I do, I don't compare black people to white people, I compare black to black and you could really see the differences in life expectancy across place.

Langston Clark:

One of the things I appreciate about the book is the way you wrote the book, and so there are three things that stand in mind thematically and how you wrote the book. And so there are three things that stand in mind thematically in how you wrote the book to me. So you have a mix of pop culture, you have a mix of statistics and then you have a mix of scholarship, and I separate scholarship from statistics because you're quoting scholars who are historians, education scholars and all of that. You have this really interesting mix that you used to tell what was going on in a book. So talk a little bit about the, the why and how of what you did to convey the messages in the book yeah, you know, I actually have a a small background in journalism, so there's that.

Andre M. Perry:

And also, I am very focused on communicating the ideas, and if you're serious about communicating, then you're serious about making sure that you have a number of modalities to convey an idea. So, yeah, in some cases I'm quoting rappers and in other cases I'm quoting professors. I'm certainly generating my own data, but I'm also citing others. So it's a healthy mix, I think, of narrative and policy, narrative and policy, but overall it's also just a guidebook that say, hey, we can actually change our communities when you focus on the most important factors of life expectancy, you have sort of a guide to what we should be focused on, and so, for me, you won't hear me talk along about swag, surfing on the White House lawn or Juneteenth holidays and how many Grammys Beyonce wins. You know those things don't matter on life expectancy. So I also call for us to be very focused on the things that matter. And but in order to get people focused, you need to tell this various stories of, as well as use different modalities to connect with different people. So that's what I do.

Langston Clark:

So, as you're saying that, you're having me think about outliers, and so the way you began the book is basically what you just said. We can't. We can't use the celebrities and a few billionaires that we have as the barometer for black success, and you mentioned them early in the book. But then you talk about the Black Blue Zones, which in some ways are outliers too, but they're more practical.

Langston Clark:

This is something that, if you think about it from your everyday policy or the way that we think about how we take control of our future and our destinies, it's easier for me to think about. You know this random town, even though it's in Iowa like what are those people doing in Iowa? And you can look at it from yourself, from your own household. You can look at it if you're on a city council, if you're on some committee somewhere and you're helping to shape policy in your community. You this book. I liked it because it gave examples of places that we can look at, where black people are thriving, and we can take, take that information, help apply it to our lives in more practical ways, because not everybody is going to make it be in a rapper or or all the stereotypical things that we get placed in a box for. So that's another thing that I appreciate it.

Andre M. Perry:

But even you know I do. The places may seem like outliers, but they're still driven by populations and lots of data. So the difference is yeah, I try to say hey, there are places where Black people are thriving, and it varies. You have Republican places, democrat places, democratic places. You have small, large Black people are thriving in lots of different places and we need to acknowledge that. And it's not just because coincidence, it's because something's going on in these places. People are taking action and getting results. So for me, I take that approach, but it's driven by literally by dozens of databases, hundreds of millions of people that go through this algorithm. So it is a very robust way at looking. How are we doing in communities all across the country?

Langston Clark:

This next question is a three in one. Ok, so what is the Black Power scorecard, what is Black Power? And give us some more insights on the Black Power, the Black Progress Index score and I think all three of those kind of come together, and I think all three of those kind of come together. So maybe tell us how you define Black Power and how the scorecard and the index score, how those two things play together.

Andre M. Perry:

I'll give a little bit of history After, in 2022, we created the Black Progress Index in that effort to identify the places where we are living longer. But clearly, after George Floyd, it became clear that one the absence of life is sort of the opposite of power. Right, and so there's that. Then we also saw that much of the policy that was created was sort of centered around what harms us. I wanted to look at the factors of what keeps us thriving so and so, once we had the the Black Progress Index in place, we had the outcomes. I then started going on the ground and looking for what was going on in those places, and that's the foundation for the book.

Andre M. Perry:

So there's two things. The Black Power Scorecard is literally saying we should be measuring life expectancy. I define power as the ability to live your full life. I define power as the ability to live your full life, and so and we can measure that life on many different dimensions, on the most significant factors of life expectancy, so social determinants as well. So that's what, generally, I used to measure, but the goal is to say, yes, these issues are the most important, we should hold ourselves accountable to them by measuring them, and let's also be mindful that there are good things happening in places all across the country.

Langston Clark:

There was, there are. There are two chapters actually three chapters in the book that really resonate with me, but I want to talk about two right now. There's obviously the chapter on home ownership, and then there's a chapter on family, marriage, and I'm going to try to paraphrase this the best way I can, but you said something about that. Family isn't. It's not just about having the family unit. It's about something related to owning your home. Owning your home is related to maintaining your family and keeping things together and all that. So talk about the intersection of home ownership and family. What is, how is that a big part of all of this?

Andre M. Perry:

I know I say this that some people say it all starts at home as a way to to look at people, individual social failures. I say it all starts with owning a home, that in these discussion I talk about marriage. I do not shy away from discussions of marriage in this book. We get it wrong when we constantly have these discussions and you see them all the time online and social media about what Black women are bringing to the table, what Black men are not doing. Those conversations are, you know, I don't won't say they're unhelpful, but they completely miss the policy context of relationships.

Andre M. Perry:

When you control for wealth and income and other factors, relationships are just fine and we should look at it that way. Healthy communities build healthy relationships and so men and women should be working to dismantle racism, sexism and other ills that extract wealth and opportunity, which ultimately harms relationships. So I know I'm going to get a lot of feedback on that chapter because I'm saying that you know we should be working to end these sort of structural factors, not necessarily just blaming one another for relationship issues. I mean counseling works. But let me tell you, when you live in areas in which there's higher home ownership, better schools, better safety, relationships are just fine, yeah.

Langston Clark:

You know it's interesting. I was going to ask you this question. The reason why I'm smiling was because I was going to ask you this question. If Kevin Samuels was alive today right, and it was you and him on a show what would that conversation be like If you, if you were, if you were, if Kevin was alive today, and y'all I wouldn't even say it was a debate, y'all were just having a conversation what, what would you say to that audience? I think you you said a lot of it just now, but I thought it was interesting that you even you put his name in a book. And that goes back to what I was saying how I like how you wrote the book, because you, you were very much in touch with, like, what's going on in the culture as you were writing the book.

Andre M. Perry:

You know, I, I just also pay attention how people misuse data, you know, and they don't look at root causes. I mean Samuels, to his credit, the great communicator, great communicator, um, but to put black people on a virtual auction block misses the point on how all assets, including human beings, that are in black communities are devalued. And his work was largely using white framing white sort of framing of Black people to determine a person's value. And you know it's just off, I'll just put it that way. And that again, my book was very purposeful. My book was very purposeful. We should not compare black people to white people in many ways because of the various histories. And but that's what essentially, kevin Samuels, what he did, it was like use white frames to measure black value, yeah, and not say that these frames devalue blackness along the way. I see. And more importantly, it's like look, yeah, Resource deprivation has an impact.

Andre M. Perry:

It hurts relationships, it hurts communities. And why not look at the resource deprivation? Why continuously try to get men and women to sort of try to, you know, marry their way, or relationship their way out of poverty? You know, no, we should be saying let's just solve criminal justice systems, let's solve or change broken educational systems. These are the things that are creating mismatches in relationships. These are the things that are creating mismatches in relationships. These are the things that are creating worse outcomes, and we can see it in the data. So I'm just very clear that we need to focus on creating robust and healthy communities, and relationships will be just fine, yeah.

Langston Clark:

Yeah, I am, I'm wrestling with. I'm wrestling with. I'm wrestling with DEI and I've been wrestling with it for a while before people didn't want it to go away. And I'm going to say this and you might look at some data and be like Langston, you're completely wrong, but this is a thing that has been with me for the longest and I'm going to tie it to your book.

Langston Clark:

In some ways, I think DEI is for white people and the reason let me, let me, let me, let me, let me just give you, give you sort of where I'm coming from. So I had benefited from DEI. I went to North Carolina A&T for undergrad. I went to Ohio State for my master's degree because of DEI. I went to University of Texas for my PhD because of DEI, support programs, funding all of that stuff. But then in my mind I'm like, well, what DEI did was it took money, or it allocated money for black folks to have access to white institutions. Well, why couldn't black institutions just get that money that was going to white institutions. You know what I'm saying. And so, as I think about that, I'm looking at these by the block back initiatives, right, and so in my mind I kind of frame those, as this is an opportunity for us not to take resources that would allow black folks to thrive in predominantly white institutions, but take resources and allow black people to thrive in black communities and build black institutions. So your thoughts on that?

Andre M. Perry:

I'm very clear about DEI and affirmative action. In the last paragraph of the first, or the introduction, I say DEI and affirmative action have never been the goals. They were various programs that were trade-offs for policy that worked for everyone. And so, for me, I don't want us to lose sight that Black people need mainstream access to capital markets, to educational institutions. We don't need set-aside programs and various initiatives. I mean, that's what we've been given. Yeah, right, I wrote this book to remind us, to say hey, you know, don't forget, the goal is to not have these programs. Yeah, but this is where the left and the right come together.

Andre M. Perry:

Many people on the left want to do away with these programs just as much as people on the right. Yes, that's true, right, and because nobody wants to deal with the bureaucracy of discrimination. But these programs are there for a reason because there's discrimination. Yeah, yeah, but for me I'm like we need to still always fight for mainstream access to resources, just like everyone else. Yeah, but so I do talk about the EI, but it's very a brief thing in that these are not goals. These are not things we should hold on to. They should be at this point. We need real access to real capital, institutions and other things. So I do challenge us a bit to say let's not. I mean, yes, we need the lawyers to fight vigorously because DEI is really a slur at this point. Because DEI is really a slur at this point, it's a way to say don't invest in black and brown people. With that said, we do need real access to capital and other institutions that heighten life expectancy.

Langston Clark:

Yeah, talk about reparations and what your thoughts are. Yeah, talk about reparations and what your thoughts are.

Andre M. Perry:

Yeah, People will see I have thoughts on reparations and I make an argument for local reparations and I'll let people read it. But we are actually doing relocating people because of environmental injustice but we're not giving them the full amount of the pain and damage to those families because of these polluting governments and industries. So for me, I just basically say, hey, reparations are happening all across the country. We should focus on reparations at the local level, but, more importantly, that we deserve the resources that we're owed and I'm very clear about that. If you can show discrimination, we need to show impact. I mean we need to show the receipts and the payout. So I'm pro reparations in this book, particularly around environmental justice issues. So people will find that part of the book, I think, very compelling. I try to make a good case for reparation.

Langston Clark:

When I think about environmental injustice, to me that's that's like the thing that you most clearly can't blame the victim for. Yeah, right, it's like those people with Houston Cancer Alley and all that stuff. It's not their fault, right, but those factories are there, that those chemicals are there. It wasn't their behavior that put it there, it was the fact that marriage rates were some some certain way or some other way. They had no control over that situation happening. None that's right, and so I think you focusing on that to me was really like the clearest it's the clearest example of how and why reparations should, should happen. So, yeah, well, thank you, thank you, I was in with this last question I would. I would say, if there, if there was an additional chapter of the book or an additional section of the book that maybe you to have room to put in, or maybe it just didn't quite fit, what would that chapter or that section be? That's a good question.

Andre M. Perry:

I think that I wrote the book in a different political environment. I actually wrote the book during the Biden administration, but it holds up. It really holds up in this moment because I was also very clear that we need a policy agenda. We've had DI programs. Affirmative action has been went down. What we need is real legislation. So if I had to write another chapter, it would be even could I give. I give examples throughout the book of what we need. But I could also go a little bit further and say, okay, here are the policies that I'm advocating for. I mean, I do it subtly by showing the examples of things that are working. But if I write another follow up to this, it's going to be on the policies that go along with the activities I mentioned Once again everybody.

Langston Clark:

Our guest today is Dr Andre Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, author of Black Power Scorecard Measuring the Racial Wealth Gap and what we Can Do to Close it. Dr Perry, thank you for being a guest today. Thank you for telling us what the remakes of the book will be. And, yeah, enjoy your day. All right, you be easy, all right. Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.