WARWICK, R.I. (WJAR) — The Rhode Island Black Businesses Association held its Annual Legislative Breakfast on Friday morning.
The breakfast event, themed “Closing the Racial Wealth Gap,” was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.
RIBBA said the breakfast event had presentations from RIBBA members and a panel discussion with prominent people such as Congressman Gabe Amo.
RIBBA’s Director of Policy Kristina Contreras Fox said that the event discussed what is going on with the racial wealth gap currently, why the problem exists and what can be done to reverse that problem.
“We’re going to be talking about a lot of disparity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change it and change it fast. We just need to act,” she said.
The group looks at four main pillars when discussing racial wealth gap, including home ownership, higher education attainment, starting a business and retirement, Fox said.
She presented that in every part, data shows that Black Americans are cut short.
Fox said an example is that Black Rhode Islanders are having trouble passing assets on to the next generation because there is no wealth to pass on.
“This is very actionable, we just want to make sure that everybody has the same opportunity to be successful, to build wealth work hard and you don’t give up, and at the end of your life, you can have security in retirement, and you can have it passed on to the next generation,” she said. “That needs to be a reality, but it’s not the reality right now.”
RIBBA officials said that it is crucial to have events like this to have an opportunity to present data and analysis of the problems. They said this allows communities and leaders to have a discussion on how to address problems such as wealth gap.
“As community organizations, we cannot turn a blind eye to the alarming data revealing the persistent racial wealth gap. We must invest boldly and intentionally, as the same old approaches have yielded very little change,” RIBBA President and CEO Lisa Ranglin said. “RIBBA is committed to leading by example and actively working to counteract this downward trend by fostering genuine inclusion and empowerment through our services and partnerships.”