Abolitionist Sanctuary
Join Founder and Executive Director of Abolitionist Sanctuary, Rev. Nikia S. Robert, Ph.D., in a podcast about Black women/mothers, religion, and mass punishment. Connect with us to be apart of a faith-based abolitionist movement!
Abolitionist Sanctuary
Black Women, Wealth, And The Work Ahead
Faith, numbers, and land meet in a bold conversation about how Black families—and especially Black mothers—can move from survival to ownership. With guest Tawan Davis, CEO of The Steinbridge Group and NYU adjunct professor, we unpack the cycles behind DEI whiplash and government contraction, then chart a different route: activating underused HBCU and church land, replacing consumer debt with asset-backed leverage, and negotiating from ownership in a global economy that won’t wait for anyone.
We look squarely at the statistics: rising unemployment for Black women, the caregiving load, and a persistent wage gap that stings hardest when paired with student debt. Then we pivot to solutions that build compounding value. Tawan lays out the matching principle in plain language—pair long-term debt with long-term, appreciating assets—and shows how mortgages, whole life policies, and stock portfolios differ from credit cards and car notes. From there, we zoom into practice: structuring projects on HBCU campuses and church-owned land to create housing, services, and jobs while keeping control and sharing upside.
The heart of the story is ancestral. Matriarchs who crossed hostile highways bought homes, welcomed relatives, and built neighborhoods a down payment at a time. Their method still works—small money, big conviction, assets first—and their faith still sets our posture. We carry that ethic into a global frame: build mutual aid and community funds while accessing institutional capital on our terms. It’s not either-or. It’s Ubuntu and underwriting, legacy and leverage, scripture and spreadsheets.
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Welcome to the Abolitionist Sanctuary Podcast, where we talk faith, abolition, and black motherhood. I am your host, Reverend Dr. Nikia Smith Robert, the founder and executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. We are a national coalition leading a faith-based abolitionist movement. Thank you to our audio and visual audiences for joining us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and all streaming platforms. Let's build abolitionist sanctuaries together with this critical and candid conversation for today's episode. Greetings to our viewers and listeners. I am excited for today's episode and to introduce our guest, Tawan Davis. Tawan Davis is a founding partner and CEO of the Steinbridge Group. He is recognized as one of America's emerging business, economic, and social leaders. In this role, Mr. Davis leads the company by combining his deep training and experience in finance and economics with a prolific attention to social activism. He is also a member of investment and management committees. Davis began his career as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and was later a real estate private equity investor with Prudential Financial Managing Investments in Europe and the United States. Davis later served as vice president and head of public private partnerships and administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and as the chief investment officer of a$5 billion real estate development firm. In addition to leading Steinbridge, Davis is an adjunct professor of real estate at New York University and serves on the boards of Harlem Hospital, the New York Urban League, and the New Horizons Children's Advocacy Group. Tawan Davis earned his bachelor's degree with honors from Georgetown University, a Masters of Science degree from England's Oxford University, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard University. Tawan, welcome.
SPEAKER_02:Good to be with you.
SPEAKER_00:I'm excited to have you on the show. And as we begin, can you share with us what are your pronouns? Give us a visual of how you're showing up in this space and who are your people.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Let's see here. He, him, his. I have on a yellow button-down shirt, dark brown with tortoise spectacles. My people, I'm an African-American. My family's been in the United States for at least 300 years that we know, and possibly long.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. I am wearing a blue pinstripe blazer with a white shirt and a Fenty MVP lipstick with blonde boho braids. And my background is a sanctuary at a local church here in Los Angeles. Let's jump right into the question of the hour. Much of your work focuses on economic justice. At Abolitionist Sanctuary, we also focus on the economy with a specific interest in Black motherhood and the criminalization of survival. Can you talk to us about the significance of black women and black mothers for the U.S. economy?
SPEAKER_02:First of all, to clarify by background, I'm sitting in my New York office and have a white background with a red penny. Certainly, I think what is unique about the participation of African-American women in the American economy is by both necessity and opportunity, they have over time carved out unique niches for themselves that have created significant wealth for our community and propelled our community at times when there may be or appear to be fewer opportunities than should be available to us. I think Madame C.J. Walker is a great example of that. A woman who became the first African-American millionaire, male or female, and one of the first self-made women millionaires of any color in the United States because she focused on an area specific to the African-American community. That's African-American hair. So I think that these opportunities that have emerged in our community are often driven by unique needs that aren't being addressed by the black market. African-American women have found ways through generations to capitalize on that and to commercialize all the opportunities.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. And we're also seeing that Black women are thriving in industries such as the government, teaching positions, social services, and civic positions.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:We are seeing a backlash that is directly affecting Black women, thinking particularly of African Americans seeing the highest unemployment rate since 2021, which is currently at 7.5% as of August, and the 300,000 Black women who were forced out of the workplace. While Black women have lost 319,000 jobs from February to July 2025, white men have gained 365,000 jobs during that same period. What can you tell us about the reasons for this economic disparity and how has the Trump administration adversely impacted black women and the black community?
SPEAKER_02:Let's take a broader context. The African-American middle class rose after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rackets Act of respectively 64 and 65. And then again in the early 1970s with the passage of affirmative action, which Billy would point to somewhere between 1972 and 1974, the United States economy is over 400 years old. The African-American economy and its relative independence and participation is only about 60 years old. It began with the Civil Rights Act. That's the first context. Second thing to understand is that for the first 350 years of African American history, African Americans were largely unable to participate in the ways in which Americans make, save, and pass along money. So not allowed to have bank accounts, now participation in the stock exchanges, no board seats, and certainly during slavery, no inheritance. And so it's important to put the African American economic context into the broader context of American economic history. The last thing I would say is that if you think about how the African-American middle class emerged after the Civil Rights Act and after affirmative actions, there were two industries that drove the immersion of the African-American economy. The first industry was the automotive industry. So the largest employer of African Americans after the Great Migration into the Midwest and the North, the Stendheast, Ohio, Michigan, and upstate New York, was the automotive industry. The second largest employer that created the African American middle class was the government at every level, federal, state, and local government. And that is why when the government begins to shrink, when there is specific targeting of large amounts of folks employed in the public sector, it has an unusually powerful effect on the African American community and African-American women, because that is their largest employment opportunity. So you'll see what happened a few times in American history. In the 1980s, when President Reagan began to shrink the federal government, you saw an unusual climb in African American unemployment in particular. In the late 80s and early 90s, with the collapsed large portions of the automotive industry, you also saw a spike in African American unemployment, particularly among African men, and then secondarily among African men. So what we are seeing today is the fact that because the administration has sought to dramatically shrink the United States government, that impacts the African-American economy dramatically because of the middle class's source of employment being largely or initially in the government space. And then secondarily, all of these other industries, but automotive and government have been the largest employers. And so what you're saying is not just the impact of DEI, it is actually the broader impact of government shrinkage.
SPEAKER_00:It seems as though the government is playing both sides and continually changing and moving the standard. And what I mean by that is when we looked at welfare reform policies, it actually punished single women, particularly Black women, for not working. And now what we see is the government's participation and essentially forcing Black women outside of employment. And so it seems like it puts Black women and Black communities, those who benefit from DEI and otherwise, between a rock and a hard place. Damn if they do, damn if they don't. And so there are multiple ways in which Black communities are disadvantaged. And for the sake of abolitionist sanctuary in our organization, we focus specifically on the survival of Black mothers. So I hear you saying, and I agree, that part of the problem is historical disadvantage that Black women and Black communities have experienced, and that has showed up with unemployment. I'm curious to know what other unique challenges are there, particularly when we look at debt profiles. Black women are the most educated demographic. We also see that student forgiveness has been eliminated by this administration. I imagine, at least for my own profile, having a terminal degree, that black women also carry substantial debt as being the most educated. Black women are also the primary caregivers in about 80% of our households. However, we make only 63 cents to the dollar of white men. We are poorer than every other ethnic group except for Native American. Talk to us about the impact using this racial, gender, class lens. What is the impact for debt for black women in addition to the challenges of unemployment? And how does that also factor into what you know about the housing market?
SPEAKER_02:Here's my United States as an enterprise has rarely, if ever, expressed a vested interest in the long-term economic well-being of African. So the idea that the United States government is going to rescue us from economic peril is absurd. At the very beginning, in 1789, when the Constitution is written, there was only one group of people explicitly carved out in Article I of the Constitution, and that was enslaved persons. And so the United States government sanctioned and incorporated into its founding document. We haven't written another constitution, we incorporated into our founding document the economic subjugation of people of African descent. After the Civil War, there was an attempt, rather briefly, in reconstruction to build an independent African-American economy. The most famous initiative was 40 acres and a mule, which was General Sherman's idea of as he was working his way from South Carolina down through Georgia in the defeating of the Confederates to turn over the plantations to slades and 40 acres and mule. After Lincoln died and Andrew Johnson emerged as president, the other generals in other parts of the country objected to the idea. That whole idea basically fell apart. Reconstruction lasted only until the re-establishment of Southern participation in the federal government and in Reconstruction. And so the idea that the United States government is going to come to the rescue of the African-American economy is a fool's error. I believe is more important for African American people to figure out together how to activate our own economic resources. That is what I feel called to do. I am not one to point to government programs and dependence or policies because it will change every two, four, eight years. When DEI emerged, my CFO was a remarkably accomplished African-American team, one of the most famous black women in the history of Wall Street was my CFO at the time. And she and I discussed how long would this last. We said about 18 months, and we were right almost to the day. Because she's in a generation before me, and she's seen this cycle before. I am in my late 40s. I have seen this cycle before. And so I think we have to accept that idea and go back to the premise of what do we do for ourselves? That's my answer to DEI, and that's my answer to government programs and welfare and all of these things, which are helpful from time to time, but on which we cannot depend.
SPEAKER_00:Well said, I completely agree that the U.S. has only been interested in the exploitation of our labor and bodies, and the founding documents never factored in non-European or non-white property holding bodies. The Constitution was written for white property-holding men. And anyone outside of that didn't benefit from the same protections. We see through capitalism, particularly racial capitalism, that it is designed to benefit and exploit those who are of the lower classes. So I agree with you, and I also agree with your turn to the intervention of how to create self-sustaining economies. I've worked with a village in Malawi, and I'm interested to see how we can harness the communal values that we see across the African diaspora to build economic empowerment so that we are independent of government intervention. And so I want to know what are some of the ways are you doing that with Steinbridge and your work?
SPEAKER_02:One of my favorite sermons is by Adam Clinton Powell.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's 1968. He goes through the Bible and he says, God said Moses shows up at the Red Sea and he's worried about crossing the Red Sea. He or God have a conversation and God asks him, What's in your hand? The same rod that was used when you threw it down and it became a snake. But when you turn the Annihilate River into blood, stretch out that same rod and cross the Red Sea. Then he talks about David, and he says, David shows up to battle with Goliath, and he has a slingshot and five smooth stones. King Saul puts on all of this armor and sins and out. David says, This doesn't work for me. And God tells David, you don't need the armor, you don't need King Saul's sword. Use what's in your hand. So Reverend Clayton Powell's point was that we are often looking outside of our communities for the resources and momentum to economically move ourselves further along. But the reality is that God is asking us what's in your hand. What do we are charged to do to be optimize the resources, the land resources, the economic resources, the human resources, the relational resources that we have. And we are charged to optimize that to maximum outcome, maximum family outcome, maximum healthcare outcome, maximum educational outcome, and maximum economic outcome. What does that mean for our business? It means that we're trying to identify, I'm in the real estate space, we're trying to identify where there are resources within our community that own land, that own real estate, and we are trying to help those landowners activate that land to economically productive uses. There are 105 historically black colleges. Many of them own land in very well-located parts of the United States. Some of them are land grant colleges that have had that land since the 1860s. That land's often underutilized, whereas you have some of the larger universities, state universities, the Ivy League, who own and have activated every single piece of land around them. Well, why aren't our universities doing the same thing? So we're working with universities. We've committed$100 million to historically black colleges and universities to help them activate their underutilized land. We're also doing that with churches. We're working with several churches in the United States right now, large congregations and some of the main African nations to identify land in their collective religious folk that sometimes is in the middle of the best growth, economic growth past in their town. And we're helping them to activate that land into economically productive use of another country. And so I'm building on what I heard Reverend Powell say, and that is trying to identify what's in our hand and use that as my slingshot and my stone, and use that as my rod over the Red Sea and not wait for somebody to come along and rescue. All right, Evan.
SPEAKER_00:Speak more about real estate. Why is real estate and the land important for our community?
SPEAKER_02:Real estate is roughly 20 to 25% of the United States' economy, real estate and adjacent industries and activities. One-third of the net worth of the average American household is in the value of the home that they own. We are living in a post-pension society where most people don't even have a pension. They're lucky if they've got a solid 401k. In that context, real estate is one of the most sustainable ways to lift an individual and a family out of poverty. It is also one of the sustainable ways for institutions to muster, increase, and be good stewards of wealth over the long term. And so it's a key factor in actually helping to respond to the economic disparity in the African American. And it is most important, Dr. Robert, because it's what we have.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It's one of those things that the African-American Church is a powerful institution because the African American Church owns its own land.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:There's not a single African-American company traded on the New York Stock Exchange today that has enjoyed the ownership of African American. There's one started by an African-American person, someone who's Jewish, and it he started a company and he's now owns a small part of it. He's a CBO. But if you look at the New York Stock Exchange, the NASA, the American Stock Exchange, there aren't any African-American habits. So where is our wealth? Where are the institutions where we can point to collective wealth? They're really not true. It is historically by college, and it is the church. That's where we have large amounts of money, large amounts of cash flow, large amounts of regular predictable income. It's in the church and it's in the HBCU. And when I say large, I mean multi-billion dollars, not a few hundred thousand, not a few million, if you collectivize those institutions, those economically impactful institutions. And so that's why a church, that's why the HBCU, and that's why the land, because that's their large land.
SPEAKER_00:Talk about what are some of the barriers and what are some breaks that we're seeing in the economy, particularly with the interest rate cuts, but then some of the historical barriers, such as redlining, you have environmental challenges. I'm thinking of the black middle class community in Altadena, close to where I live, that 54 families in my church lost their homes to the Eaton Canyon wildfires, which one would argue is also a racially systemic issue. What are some of the barriers historically, environmentally? And then when you think economically, we we already mentioned the challenges Black women in particular face with poverty, debt, and so forth. How do those challenges hinder wealth creation or becoming self-sustaining within the black community?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's a good question. Let's go back to the debt issue and then let's talk about the real estate issue, Hurricane Katrina. My family was in something called the Van War floods from the 1940s in the Pacific Northwest. When it rains, it always floods in the African Americans. That's important then to talk about. So let's talk about debt. This is America. Everybody's in debt. United States government has$37 trillion. Every publicly traded corporation issues bonds, and bonds are basically borrowing from individual investors. Every city issues municipal bonds, and all bonds are borrowing to do work. Debt isn't the problem. The problem is the kind of debt that we get. There's something in accounting called the matching principle. The idea is that you're supposed to match your liabilities with your assets in terms of time. So you match your long-term liabilities with your long-term assets and your short-term liabilities with your short-term assets. You're not just matching it in terms of dollar amounts, but in terms of duration. What does that mean? That means we are taking on a lot of long-term debt and we're not matching it with a long-term asset that will appreciate any time. We're taking on credit card debt, car notes, even education notes, against which there is no identifiable increase in asset in value. So you have this debt that basically ends up personal debt because it's not secured by, or not covered by, or not creating additional wealth for you because it's not associated with an asset that is increasing in value. Automotive loans are my favorite example. But I don't have a loan in part because it's a depreciating asset. You want to be careful not to match an increase in liability because that debt is going to be there. And you're going to have to service that debt with a rapidly decreasing asset. Similar to credit cards. You have to be very careful with the use of credit cards. I only have one credit card, and that's used entirely for my company's activities. That is because I want to be careful about taking on a credit card debt, is a short-term liability that doesn't really give me any access to more assets. So what are the kinds of debt that give you access to more assets? A mortgage.
SPEAKER_00:And land doesn't appreciate.
SPEAKER_02:Land doesn't appreciate, exactly. If you have a long-term asset against something that increases in value, insurance policies. If you have a good insurance policy, a whole life policy, that whole life policy will increase in value. Borrow against that. That's an asset. If you have certain stocks, careful. If you have stocks or as increasing value, if you need money, don't pull it. Borrow against that. Borrow against things that have long-term value. And do two things. When you're finished using the money, either put it back or buy more things with long-term value. If you borrow against your house, do not borrow against your home to pay your bills. That's a recipe for disaster. Churches do it all the time. They borrow against new pastor comes in, he wants to fix the roof, he takes out a second mortgage. Usually not a great idea. New pastor comes in, he wants to do an outreach program to the community, takes out a mortgage on the church. Usually not a good idea because it's a short-term liability. So what you want to focus on is getting out of consumer debt and then trying to find assets that have long-term value. And then if you have to borrow or choose to borrow, borrow against those long-term assets. And then when you're finished using that hash, you pay that account or use that cash to buy more long-term assets. So buy another business with another mortgage, or buy more stocks, or invest more in your 401k, but use that borrowed cash for additional long-term assets. That is what wealthy people do, working folks, and everyday folks aren't told to do. Everyday folks are told stay out of debt. What you need to be told is to stay out of bad debt, stay out of consumer debt, and focus on borrowing for things for which there is long-term value creation.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for that. I hope our listeners were able to follow that crash course on how to use good debt and stay away from bad debt in order to optimize wealth creation. As you know, Tawan, you and I met while I was working on Wall Street. And so with a background in public accounting and investment banking, you are talking my language. But we also have to bear in mind that there are systemic inequities that nullify some of the prudence you've mentioned in terms of managing debt. There's bad debt that's not just consumer debt, but it's also the ways in which we live in this capitalist society that seeks to exploit and extract the labor of Black and brown bodies that will rather invest in the creation of prisons, for example, than to allocate funds to social programs that would help Black families and marginalized communities to thrive. I understand that leverage can be good, but there's been a debt by society that has been more detrimental, more damaging than personal finance could navigate when we're up against systemic inequities. But that's not to say I'm not hopeful and that it's not prudent to follow the insights that you shared with us. I think that's invaluable. But I want to go back to what you mentioned about the HBCUs and the churches. I think there's something really important here that I want to extract is that you are identifying the HBCUs and the churches as primary institutions for the black community to amass power and economic wealth. If these institutions invest in real estate as one form of impact investment, that will trickle down to the black community in ways that we would be independent of government intervention.
SPEAKER_02:I believe that churches and historical black colleges are two paths to what I call full economic participation. The United States is the most powerful economic engine in the history of mankind. The African American community is the wealthiest African community in the world. We are the wealthiest African Brazil, Africa, Caribbean. The African-American is the wealthiest African on the globe. And so, in fact, we do not want to sit out the American economy. We want full participation. Wait, let me stop in there too.
SPEAKER_00:Do we want participation or do we want to build something better? It sounds like you're saying both.
SPEAKER_02:No, I'm not. I'm not saying that we want to build something better. It's because individually, as a community, we don't have the resources to outstrip the mammoth that is the American economy.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:If you put all the African American churches together, their annual type and offering is about$14 billion. That is still smaller than the smallest company in Fortune 500. So even if you put all of the African American churches together, it doesn't be quality. Economy as far as revenue collection is concerned. So, yes, I believe in the collectivization, but I also am realistic in the ability for us to actually set up a fully independent economy. What I would like for us to do is to go do what the civil rights was at was leading us toward. And that's full participation, just like all other immigrants to the American system. Remember, nobody's from here. Everybody here, save the Native Americans, is from somewhere else. And so, inasmuch as everyone else whose ancestors are from the uh far-flung beautiful places of the world, we Africans in America are also from one of the far-flung beautiful places of the world. And we have participated in the creation of what is the American kind. I knew my great-grandmother. I knew my great-great-grandmother, who was the 11th of 11 children. Her parents were born into slavery in Mississippi, and then she and her children moved to Arkansas where there were sharecrawlers. And why would I give up the America that they helped to build? Why would I walk away from the economic juggernaut that my ancestors helped to create? Part of the wealth of America belongs to African-American people because we helped build it. So I do not believe that we build a salary economy. I believe we begin to participate fully in the economy we helped to create. I have a very different view. I'm not anti-American economy. I actually want African-American men, women, and children to participate fully in the economy. Work, unpaid work of our ancestors, and the sweat and tears of our mothers and fathers. The economy that we helped build actually belongs to us. And so I don't believe in walking away from it. I believe in fighting for and figuring out ways to participate in it fully.
SPEAKER_00:That's very interesting. And I agree that much of this country's flourishing was built on the backs of indigenous and black labor. We think about what has been stolen from us in terms of our bodies and labor in the antebellum south and slavery and the plantation, whether it's comic leasing, whether it's modern-day slavery through mass incarceration. We look at Black Wall Street, right? You mentioned the Reconstruction era. There are many ways in which Black people have contributed to the American economy. I'll just say that I still am a bit confused on your argument that we can be independent and fully participate in the American economy. Another approach, I think, would be this argument about reparations, as well as the abolitionist argument, right? Let's take our resources and build something better where we are truly independent, right? Because the master's tools cannot dismantle the master's house. And so let's build something different. Speak to that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I would say that the participation, for example, let's start with that. So let's say that you go to a uh a large denomination and you want to build economically impactful development right in the middle of Atlanta. Where do you get the money? In today's economy, the largest African-American bank is only$800 million in assets. The largest non-African-American bank is$3 trillion. And if you look at it globally, it's closer to$6 trillion.
SPEAKER_00:So let me answer your question. How did your great-grandmother, grandmother, mother pull their resources together to get you to George Washington University and invest in your upward mobility, right? I think what we see, the alternative, is this communal ethic of Ubuntu and mutual aid, whether it is the women's club movement in the 19th century, whether it's the church fish fry, whether it's a mutual aid society, we have seen black people pull their resources together, making the argument that we are all we need. So when you ask where do we get the money for that loan, we build it organically and make it to the billions.
SPEAKER_02:I believe in that 100%, but I'm saying it's not either whole.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I believe in it 100%. My grandmothers turned over the land in Portland, Oregon, donated the land that is now the Vancouver Atman First Baptist Church. And it stood there almost 100 years, at least 80, 90 years ago. So I believe in that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:We live in a global economy. It is unwise for us not to accept that idea. We live in a global, interconnected economy, and we want that because we don't just want the African American community to be gold.
SPEAKER_01:We want Ghana's community to be gold.
SPEAKER_02:We want Nigeria's economy to be goal. We want Jamaica's economy to be gold because we want them to be able to participate in the global economy, to buy and sell on the global markets. We want people to buy things that are made in Ghana. We want people to buy things that are made in Jamaica so that Jamaica can increase. So we actually don't want to sit out the global economy. President Reagan predicted the bad outcomes of tariffs. Here we are, with high tariffs that began to cause a downward spiral in the economy. Why? Because sitting out the global economy, no matter how big you are or how impactful your economy, it actually is a bad idea. So we don't want the American economy to have two high tariffs, that it sits out the global economy. And we don't want the African American economy to sit out with the global economy. We actually want to participate in the economy as it goes, not just the American economy, but the global economy. So I'm not saying either or, I'm saying and. We absolutely want to bind our resources together in as much as we have them and apply them to the things to which they can be applied. But we also want to be open to trade with Japan and France. And we want the folks in Ohio to trade with the people in Washington state, because that is the reality of the global economy. I think it is thinking too small and not recognizing the global economic realities to accept the idea that something I have on today, either my thread or a button, was made somewhere else. And that's not going to stop. If we face that reality, then we can do both what you described and have the fish fry and the lady society, but we can also figure out how to access capital and opportunities globally, including the United States and around. So I'm not disagreeing with you.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just adding to the When I think about the global economy, I wonder from your expertise: do we need France? Do we need China? Africa, with all of its natural resources and wealth, can there be this global economy across the African diaspora, independent of European countries and other markets?
SPEAKER_01:That's a powerful question.
SPEAKER_02:Here's why I don't think that's a great idea.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Adam Smith on Wealth of Nations. Yeah. It's a basic idea of competitive and comparative advantage. Who does what? Nigeria has oil. But so does Norway, Saudi Arabia, and so does Texas. There may not be enough oil in Nigeria to power the whole of Africa. There might not be. So if there's not, you still want Botswana to get away. So they're gonna need maybe to buy from Norway. But on the other hand, Norway is cold. They don't have large wheat production in Norway. So you want them to buy in Euros or whatever it is, the corner, whatever it's there. You want them to buy Botswana and wheat. You want them to send Norwegian money to Botswana so that some farmer in Botswana gets richer than he ever thought. Here's why is because I do go back to the idea that ultimately the earth is the forest. The earth is the force and the fullness thereof. The land and they that dwelt therein. And so, on the one hand, yes, we should be driven by the opportunities that need to impact the growth of African-American people and the African diaspora. We should not forget that the earth is the force. And so the resources of the earth don't just belong to Europe, and they don't just belong to Africa. We are stewards of the resources that God has given us on the earth, but they all belong eventually to all of us. That's my view. And it is a little bit nuanced because I am very much focused on impacting the African-American communities. But I also see the world as global. I see God's creation from maybe a bar context.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. I know our time is coming to an end. So I just want you to invoke the stories of the women in your life, particularly your great-grandmother, mother, your lineage. What has been the power of black women in your life? And how has their survival strategies informed your faith and the work that you do for the economy?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. I have often said that every corner you get to the street, and you have to figure out how to cross the street or turn the corner. Every intersection, there has been an African-American standing there, either to help me cross the street or to point me in the right direction. I can go all the way back to my great-great-grandmother, whom I born in 1896, to her daughter, her sisters, who moved up as migrant workers from Arkansas, drove across the United States because there were no hotels for African Americans to stay in between Arkansas and Oregon. So they took the cell and went through Texas because going to some of those other states was the Warren Circle West through Texas to all the way to Paris and Pennsylvania. Got California and then drove north, the IFA core. They did that in the 1830s, 40s, and 1950s. Got to Oregon, there were no extended state hotels. There was no real welcoming opportunity for African Americans to house temporarily while they were doing sealed work and day work. My day work was their dignified way to say they were housemates. I didn't realize what dating was until I was a teenager. When she was saying to me, she was a housemaid.
SPEAKER_00:She was a domestic.
SPEAKER_02:Domestic. And with that money, she bought five ten houses. And her sister bought five or ten houses. Her other sister bought a few houses. So between all of them, when the rest of the family came from Arkansas to the Pacific Northwest, they would start in one of my grandmothers, one of my great-aunts' homes, and get on their feet, get their family all, their immediate family up to Oregon, and then they would buy a house. And so there's a great book called The Ones of Other Sons by Isabel Wars. And there's a section in our chapters that specifically talks about the migration of African-American people from Arkansas to the Pacific Northwest. When I grew up, I didn't meet anybody whose grandparents were from the Carolinas or from Virginia until I went to college. Everyone I grew up with, their grandparents were the ones. And these women built this community by, like you said, fish fry and the kind of petite bourgeois approach, right? A little at a time and you move on. That's how we did hand-to-hand combat. Those are the women who impacted my life and created for me the context of self-determination. And then, of course, the community changed. And you had the 1960s riots, you had heroin in the 70s, you had disinvestment in the 80s, you had gangs in the 90s. And Colin Morgan, there's a great study that talks about why it became a center for gang bias in the 1990 late 80s and 1990s after California passed this three-strike shroud law. A lot of that ducked to my car part of the country. So part of the country that they helped build as a refuge haven for African-American migrants was suddenly distorted by the scourge of bad policy and of even natural drug crises. But those women were able to share with me the clarity of their convictions. They told me enough of the stories that I can remember to help me understand, maybe not all the times, the what, but the why. And those two whys were always God and family. They were always God and family. And so even though I can remember some stories I can't tell without tears in my eyes, I remember my mother's face when she taught me how to read Psalm 23. By the way, she had an eighth-grade education, best, maybe seventh grade. But when I would open up Psalm 23 and read it to her, she would say, That's not strong enough. She would say, Start over. Throw your shoulders, put your head up, and start over. And I would say, The Lord is my shepherd. She'd say, No, no, no. She just called me. She said, no, buddy, that's not right. If I say the Lord is my shepherd, she said, no, no, no. Start over. I would say, Big Mom, what do you mean? She said, when you read it, throw your head back and say, the Lord is my shepherd. The idea. And God of the universe.
SPEAKER_01:Life at eight years old. Breathtaking idea. So focus, clarity, deep conviction. That life is not about me as an individual.
SPEAKER_02:It is about us.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:The God of the universe is involved in that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It remains with me.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And so to women in their life. That is my greater grandmother. That is my grandmother. That is my mother who ultimately had to raise me by herself.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Strength.
SPEAKER_00:I am also a product of a single black mother, and I am getting chills just hearing about the survival strategy.
SPEAKER_02:Same clarity. Same fortitude.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:That's what gives me who I am today. That's what gives me the great confidence in the calling, despite disadvantages and challenges.
SPEAKER_00:We honor them, Tuan. This is the work we do at Abolitionist Sanctuary. We lift up the stories of resilient black women who society would otherwise disregard according to negative stereotypes. Instead, we reappraise and reclaim their survival strategies as a source of salvation. It saves our lives, that they were able to make a way out of no way. Thank you for embodying that and sharing your story with us. Extremely powerful. I deeply admire how the work that you do in real estate to empower the Black community is a full circle moment that pays tribute to those Black women who took a little to do a lot, starting with real estate to build their family lineage. All right, we're gonna end high.
SPEAKER_01:Money more faith. Always health honor.
SPEAKER_00:Freedom. Black mothers.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Your favorite food? Favorite church song.
SPEAKER_02:Order my steps.
SPEAKER_00:Favorite color?
SPEAKER_02:Navy.
SPEAKER_00:Favorite thing to do? Biggest pet peeve.
SPEAKER_02:People will make noise when they chew.
SPEAKER_00:Greatest fear. Spines and snakes. Turn up or Netflix and chill.
SPEAKER_01:Ooh. How about 50-50?
SPEAKER_00:And finally, abolitionist Sanctuary.
SPEAKER_01:An impactful hundred.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much. Thank you for joining this conversation on the Abolitionist Sanctuary podcast. Please download and share on all platforms. I am your host, Reverend Dr. Nikia Smith Robert, the founder and director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and download our social mobile app. Also enroll in our courses at abolitionacademy.com. Don't forget to become a member and subscribe to our mailing list at abolitionistsanctuary.org. As we conclude this episode, remember that abolition is not only a practice, but it is a way of life. And for me, abolition is my religion. Let's lead a faith based abolitionist movement together. Thank you, Tawan, for joining us. We appreciate the time you've spent on our show.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Thank you, Red.
