Remarks of Congressman Gregory W. Meeks Economic Agenda Awards Luncheon Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project

I’m happy to join with all of you once again for the annual conference of the Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project. Let me begin by extending my best wishes to each of you for a happy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year.

Although I always try to be optimistic and fervently believe there is reason for optimism, I must admit that I extend New Year’s greetings this year with some apprehension. The economic reports that accompanied the arrival of 2008 are far from encouraging. The economy created a paltry 18,000 jobs last month. It seems that that the home mortgage crisis, the foreclosure crisis, and the lending crisis that resulted from the abuse of the subprime market by predatory lenders have not been contained. The Federal Reserve Bank, which has had to go back to the drawing board several times, is prepping to try again.

Even President Bush, before heading to Texas to clear brush from his ranch, has said that he is open to talking with Congress about a stimulus package. While the demand for a change of direction is sweeping through the American economy and America’s politics, it remains to be seen whether the Administration has discovered reality or still singing the same old song just with a different melody. This is one of the main questions my colleagues in Congress and I will have to answer when we return to Capitol Hill shortly for the second session of the 110th Congress.

Somehow the contrast between the optimism that naturally accompanies a new year and the carry over of old problems and accumulated difficulties is a metaphor for the situation African Americans confront in 2008. And, because of the credit crisis, the home mortgage crisis, the home foreclosure crisis, it is both timely and appropriate that the Rainbow PUSH Wall Street Project has convened here in the heart of America’s financial services industry, understanding that Wall Street is also the financial center of the global economy.

There was a time when a discussion of Wall Street and Black economic opportunity would have been an exotic topic. A decade and a half ago when Rev. Jackson launched the Wall Street Project, the emphasis was on letting us in, on opening up the doors of middle and senior management to African Americans, on creating opportunity for Black-owned firms to participate in the financial services sector. Ten years ago when I was elected to represent the Sixth Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, not a single Wall Street firm had had a Black CEO, board chair, or executive vice president.

Now, Black CEOs are no longer novelties or novices. In fact, an African American CEO was recently dismissed over investment performance issues without a hue and cry going up.

This doesn’t mean thereisn’t still a long ways to go or that vigilance and concerted effort is no long necessary. I have been a member of the House Financial Services Committee for ten years. During that time I have constantly visited and interacted with financial services firms. Progress with respect to diversity is undeniable, yet it is still common for me to attend meetings in which none of a firm’s representatives were minorities.

As a result of this concern, I introduced H.Con. Res. 140, the Financial Services Diversity Act, was adopted by the House last September. This measure calls on the government and the private sector to take affirmative steps to increase diversity on all levels of the financial services industry through recruitment, mentoring, board appointments and partnering with minority firms.

So that the federal government would not be hypocritical in asking the private sector to do something that the federal government is not doing itself, I also proposed an amendment in committee to the Government-Sponsored Enterprise Reform bill that would require the proposed new regulator of the GSEs, which will be called the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to take steps to make sure it has a racially diverse staff.

My amendment reflects the reality is that people enter the financial services industry through many doors. This includes moving from a regulatory agency to the private sector.

To repeat, progress has occurred; progress is occurring. Nonetheless, in the face of slow economic growth, rising unemployment, tight credit, and possibly a full-blown recession, we may confront a year from now another rendition of the “last hired, first fired” predicament that sunk African Americans prospects for progress in the past.

Put another way, we could and perhaps should ask: “Is there a future for Black professionals in the financial services in 2008 and beyond?”
I think there is. I submit that there must be. We all know that it is easier to talk about advancing Black employment and economic prospects when the economy is growing. We’ve all heard that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” We know from our experience during the Clinton presidency that it’s even tolerable if some boats rise faster and higher than other boats as long as all boats are rising. But, what should the public sector, the private sector, and the Black community do when the tide recedes and when, as we all know, a falling tide does not sink all boats, just some boats and those boats are disproportionately minority boats.

When the tides of the economy, the stock market, housing construction and home sales are flowing, employers seem to be more generous, more flexible, and more open about diversity. But when the economic tides are ebbing, all of the old patterns of discrimination and privilege resurface. Corporate executives, human relations officers, and industry columnists start talking about seniority, merit, experience, connections, relationships, legacy, and all the other euphemisms for preserving a legacy of privilege or should I say a privileged legacy.

Crises in the era of globalization can make these old patterns of exclusion worse, more severe, more intense.

The old patterns won’t be changed until the dynamics and structures and attitudes that sustain them are changed. As my diversity resolution suggests, the channels by which minorities are educated, employed, and promoted in the financial sectors have to be widen and deepen.

Diversity initiatives are needed that begin with financial literacy in elementary school and junior high school; internships in high school and college. Initiatives that include enrollment and retention programs at business schools sponsored jointly by those schools together with financial services firms. Initiative involve aggressive recruiting of minority college graduates, as well as minority business school, law school, and engineering school graduates by financial services firms and the agencies that regulate them. Initiatives that encompass ongoing mentoring and monitoring projects, partnering with minority-owned companies, hiring more minority-owned investment fund managers and underwriters to handle private equity funds, pensions, and government bonds. Initiatives aimed at dramatically increasing the presence of minorities and women on corporate boards.

Unlike the past, Blacks particularly through public or private pension funds, 401k accounts, IRAs, and other investment vehicles are now major participants in the stock market, in capital markets, equity funds, etc. Blacks need to do more to turn their participation into the kind of shareholder leverage that can influence corporate behavior.

This calls for greater Black involvement and assertiveness on the boards of union pension funds.

It demands greater boldness and more initiative on the part of Black elected officials who have jurisdiction over state, county or municipal pension funds.

It calls for more discussion, more creativity, more collective action, and more confidence that greater and greater breakthroughs of the size and scope that the first gathering of the Rainbow Coalition Wall Street Project would have had a hard time envisioning a decade and a half ago. But, these possibilities and prospects are clearly coming into view. Our country and our community are closer to inclusion than we ever have been.

Now is the time to increase the points of pressure.

Now is the time to push harder.

Now is the time to open up more and more paths to the destination we seek “somewhere over the rainbow.”