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Two Wrongs Do Not Make A Generational Wealth: Elvin, Sondra, The Huxtables – And A Wilderness Store

Posted on January 15, 2024 by | Leave a comment

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. – Khalil Gibran

Building wealth in this country is hard. Building African American wealth in this country feels like trying to send a man to the moon, but airplanes have not even been invented yet, you are blind, your hands are tied behind your back, and there is a constant threat of someone threatening to kill you because you breathed wrong that day – as you try to send a man to the moon. This is not just hyperbolic speak. The Brookings Institution reported that European Americans in the bottom 20th percentile have a 500 percent greater chance of reaching the top than their bottom 20th percentile African American counterparts.

This is in large part rooted in two key economic moments in African America’s economic history. First, post Civil War when African Americans were supposed to be given what would be equivalent to 160 million acres of land, Andrew Johnson reneged in typical European American fashion as the Native Americans can attest to on seemingly every treaty they tried to agree to. The 160 million acres of land is impossible to truly value in some ways in today’s dollars because of opportunities for development and where exactly that land would have been is unknown. However, using the USDA’s land valuation as an elementary measuring stick, “The United States farm real estate value, a measurement of the value of all land and buildings on farms, averaged $3,800 per acre for 2022, up $420 per acre (12.4 percent) from 2021.” Based on that $3,800 per acre valuation holding constant, then African America’s 160 million acres would be worth $608 billion. Again, this is just a valuation of that land holding constant as farm land. Given the urbanization of the United States over the past 150 years, it is safe to say that a good portion of that 160 million acres would have been developed and could move the value of that land into the trillions. The $608 billion would be worth almost $15,000 per every African American man, woman, and child today. It is in fact almost 40 percent of African America’s $1.6 trillion in buying power alone and almost 25 percent of African America’s $2.6 trillion in real estate holdings today.

Then there is the grand slam policy that truly dug a grave for African America’s economic future, America’s post World War II G.I. Bill that Russell Huxtable, Dr. Huxtable’s father and army veteran in the 761st tank battalion (Season 3 Episode 11 “War Stories), would have been likely denied along the rest of the 1.5 million African American soldiers who served in World War II. The G.I. Bill arguably built the wealth gap today as we known it because it provided government funds in a way never seen before and not seen since to a group in this particular case to European American veterans to go to college, buy homes that today are alone worth trillions to their descendants, start companies which have created trillions in wealth. It should be noted that a good deal of that wealth has flowed back into PWIs coffers over the years, where there are today more PWI endowments with $1 billion or more in value than there are HBCUs – who have yet to see even one of our institutions reach such endowment value. The government sponsored leverage to European Americans and denial to African Americans contributes today to the institutional depletion of African American owned banks that have dwindled from 134 to just 16 left as of 2023, African American owned hospitals from 500 to 1, African American boarding schools from 100 to 4, and the list goes on and on. And while Russell and Anna Huxtable did well for their children, the denial of those early access to capital would show up generations later in the form of fear that would have Dr. and Mrs. Huxtable encouraging their child and her partner to choose security over risk. It also causes Sandra and Elvin to be irrationally independent and not look to the Huxtables as initial investors in their wilderness store.

It is one of the more memorable storylines told within The Cosby Show’s universe. Elvin Thibodeaux and his bride the former Sandra Huxtable inform Dr. Huxtable and Mrs. Huxtable, Esq. that they are both abandoning the tried and true formula of doctor and lawyer professions to be entrepreneurs. After Mrs. Huxtable talks Dr. Huxtable off the cliff from Elvin’s announcement, it is then Dr. Huxtable’s turn to do the same for Mrs. Huxtable, Esq. who learns that her daughter plans to join her husband in their entrepreneurial journey and to quote Mrs. Huxtable’s feelings about her daughter’s husband “dragging” her daughter into this endeavor, “and ruin what is potentially the greatest legal mind of this century”. Mrs. Huxtable demands that Sandra repay her $79,648.22, the amount the Huxtables paid for Sandra to attend Princeton. Today, that same Princeton education would cost $83,140 per year or $332,560 for four years for perspective. Not only do Sandra and Elvin push forward with extreme begrudging support the Huxtables they do so as Sandra is pregnant with what everyone believes is one child that we know turns out to be twins who are aptly named, Winnie and Nelson as an ode to the Mandelas. Sondra and Elvin refusal to ask for any help or initially take any help finds them living in a slum apartment with a slumlord where the water coming out of the faucet is brown and a myriad of other problems. Ironically, it is Denise who brings the warring parties together and both sides apologize, make amends, and Sondra and Elvin agree (for the sake of the babies) that they will seek new housing with financial assistance from the Huxtables.

However, The Thibodeaux Wilderness Store (TWS) viewed through the lens of a sporting goods store would be part of an industry in the United States alone that has grown from $15.6 billion in 1992 to $64.5 billion as of 2021 according to Statista. An increase of over 400 percent. Led by the U.S. largest publicly traded sporting goods store, Dick’s Sporting Goods valued at $10 billion. The largest individual shareholder is the son of the founder, Edward Stack who has a 10 percent ownership of the company and a net worth of $1.9 billion according to Forbes. Now imagine for a moment instead of Dick Stack’s grandmother giving him a loan of $300 to start Dick Sporting Goods that the Huxtables give Sandra and Elvin the amount needed to start The Thibodeaux Wilderness Store that becomes worth $10 billion and would be the most valuable publicly traded African American owned company. Whereby, the Huxtable-Thibodeaux family clan is worth $1.9 billion and making them solidly among African America’s wealthiest.

Thibodeaux Wilderness Store as a company is easily the largest employer of African Americans in the country employing over 50,000 workers. Dr. and Mrs. Huxtable, Esq. become Hillman’s largest donors with the Huxtable name adorning Hillman’s medical school and Hanks (Claire’s maiden name) adorning the Hillman law school transforming Hillman into the only second full service HBCU along with Howard University. They are taken public by an African American investment banking firm and a percentage of the company’s stock is purchased and held by Hillman and other HBCU endowments. Their corporate banking sits with an African American owned bank that allows the bank to in turn provide loans to thousands of small African American businesses and potential African American homebuyers. This is the power of transformative wealth – it quite literally can transform if it is in the hands of the right people. However, as we see it takes a family taking the risk to build a firm backed by the capital, security, and support of the family and community around them. The latter is exactly what the Huxtables had to offer Elvin and Sondra as they sought to build their company.

Encouraging firm building within African American/HBCU families is vital to build generational wealth. Dr. and Mrs. Huxtable, Esq.’s jobs as doctor and lawyer, respectively allows a family to build up the capital base and stability needed to take on the risk of starting a firm. To take the family to the next level requires both their stability and their willingness to see their children and grandchildren take risk the stability provides. We often lose sight of this in thinking that high paying jobs are the thing that will build generational wealth when they are still ultimately just that – jobs. In both respects the Huxtables are vital and Sondra and Elvin are vital in the evolution of a family’s resources. Fighting the urge to settle is hard for many African American families because stability has been and is still a generational fight for many African American families with over 20 percent of African American families still trying to climb out of poverty, the largest among any ethnic group in the U.S., is easy to understand the reluctance. Yet, that reluctance is costing us greatly in our ability to create generational wealth for our families and transformative wealth for African American institutions and communities. Sondra and Elvin ultimately needed to embrace the help of the Huxtables and the Huxtables needed to embrace the risk of Sondra and Elvin. This is how we move forward, this is how we close the gap, and this is how we change the lives of 40 plus million that make up African America.

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20 Years Later: Bill and Camille Cosby’s Great HBCU Gift – But Is Hope Lost?

Posted on December 28, 2012 by | 3 comments

By William A. Foster, IV

“We must claim and therefore support those institutions at the heart of our peoplehood.” – Dr. Johnetta B. Cole; Former President of Spelman

"Fat Albert" Block Party

If one takes a walk on the campus of Brandeis University, a secular European Jewish institution, in Waltham, MA right outside of Boston they will notice a name that appears numerous times on buildings throughout the campus. That name is Carl & Ruth Shapiro. It is almost comical to ask someone to tell you where the Carl & Ruth Shapiro building is without getting a response of “which one?”. A student was once noted as asking Mr. Shapiro why he gave so much to Brandeis, a school he nor his wife ever attended, and it is said he simply replied that he was Jewish, the school is Jewish, and he wanted it to be the best representation of himself and the Jewish community. When I first was told about this exchange it sent a tingle down my spine. Primarily, I wished African Americans as a whole had the same love and tenacity of supporting our own institutions regardless of whether they had attended an HBCU or not because whether they like it or not what they produce reflects and is a reflection of us all.

It would be twenty years ago last month that Bill and Camille Cosby would be the example of just what that love and tenacity could look like. Their donation to Spelman College would catapult it into the pantheon of HBCU endowments and put it on path to become what is now the second largest HBCU endowment behind Howard University. Their $20 million donation in 1988, equivalent to roughly $40 million adjusted for inflation in today’s dollars, still stands as the largest donation by African Americans to a college or university. An amazing feat for Spelman College who at the time only had a $42 million endowment and is now in a viable position to become the first African American college to reach the billion dollar endowment mark. That neither Bill nor Camille Cosby had attended an HBCU, although her father attended Southern and Fisk while her mother attended Howard, speaks much to their understanding of building African America’s institutional power not just individuals. At the time the Cosbys’ made it clear that they were not only supporting Spelman College but that they were throwing down the gauntlet to other African Americans in a challenge to truly support African American colleges and universities and give them the resources they had been long deprived of by state and federal governments as well as the abandonment by the African American private community since the late 1960s. The African American community’s support waned as desegregation took root and the Civil Rights Movement leaders convinced African America that equality meant not access to equal funding to build up our institutions but abandoning our institutions to build up European American institutions. A failed strategy still prevalent in almost every sector of African American life even to this day.

Sadly, it is twenty years later and while Spelman College is in the hunt to become the first African American college or university with a billion dollar endowment the challenge presented by the Cosbys’ to African America was largely never answered. The numbers suggest that there should be multiple HBCUs with billion dollar endowments amongst the ranks now, but as it stands just being in the $100 million endowment club is the air of HBCU endowment glory of which we only have 5 while an estimated twenty percent have no endowment at all according to AK Research. Of the 100 plus HBCUs that are left in existence, they share an estimated $2 billion in combined endowment value with the top ten HBCU endowments holding a disproportional $1.5 billion of that value. It also appears that of the HBCUs in contention to become the first to reach the billion dollar mark, none are less than a decade from achieving the mark. Truly a problematic notion with the rising cost of higher education and a far cry from something that could have been achieved over a decade ago had the challenge been answered.

The wealth disparity between African Americans and other groups is so pronounced (and widening) it limits our ability to give in larger amounts. African America lost eighty three percent of its wealth in the Great Recession making a complicated situation even more so. That five percent of gifts account for eighty percent of endowment giving, large donors play an enormously important role in building a college’s endowment. However, there is only one African American who has the known net worth to match Gordon and Betty Moore’s $600 million donation to California Institute of Technology in 2001, which is the largest donation ever given to an American institution of higher learning. That person being Ms. Oprah Winfrey, who has been an avid supporter of HBCUs and especially of African American male achievement being a primary donor to Morehouse College. As a percentage of America’s wealth elite, African Americans comprise one-fourth of one percent of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans. In fact in order for every HBCU to receive just a $10 million infusion would be well over $1 billion. The 20 richest African Americans have a combined net worth of approximately $9 billion while the 5 richest European Americans have approximately $235 billion. Yes, the disparity is that great.

Bill and Camille Cosby’s gift twenty years ago brought a hope and optimism that a donation by arguably the most popular African American in America at the time would have spurred six, seven, and eight figure investments in our institutions of higher education by more of our well to do African Americans seems all but lost today. Simply put we have arguably reached a point that without the buy in of African Americans (and African Diaspora) who never attended HBCUs as donors we just simply do not have the number of alumni or individual wealth to usher in a new age of HBCU growth without losing control of the institutions themselves to others.

Where and who are today’s Bill and Camille Cosby? It is honestly hard to say. Their education obviously ensured that their value toward formalized education would always be a central value in their lives and philanthropy. Is it Shawn and Beyonce Carter? They have the economic means and social standing in African America that a donation from them would be impactful way beyond the financial impact but hard to say it would generate any more of a ripple than the Cosby donation a generation ago. In fact in this post-racial era, high profile African Americans stand a grave career risk attaching themselves to anything perceived as “too” Pan-African or empowering of the African Diaspora. However, when easily over ninety-five percent of African Americans at HBCUs are dependent on financial aid and HBCUs are still the predominant producer of degrees for African America sitting idle is not an option for those that can.

Since the Cosby donation there has been only 1 eight figure donation to HBCUs. It would come from Reverend Solomon Jackson, Jr. who gave $10 million to Morris College after winning the Powerball lottery. Unfortunately, if we plan on waiting for lottery winners we are truly in a lot of trouble. While it is true that we need alums to pick up the giving pace we can not be unrealistic that African Americans have wealth 50 times less than our counterparts. Like President Obama calling for tax increases on the rich, we too must call on those African Americans who can afford to shoulder a little more load to ensure future generational wealth is more evenly spread amongst us to sacrifice and do so. It is still truly amazing that the Cosby gift transformed the lives of so many African American women, families, and communities and given at a time when the Cosby family themselves had not reached anywhere near the zenith of their wealth. They realized it was an imperative that could not wait. Their gift was a fire from a match now flickering and almost out but with still enough flame left – what we need now is a wildfire.

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