We live in such silly times. Writers and intellectuals obsess over oppressed black people. The present remains haunted while amongst us walk young black people ill at ease with ancestral fortune. I never met a George Floyd. I have known young black people tormented by the disconnect between the public mask of Blackness as Oppression and a private life lived above money. Robert F. Smith may be the wealthiest black American. His net worth is $12.2 billion. Smith is not Black Old Money.
Why is Smith, a proud Alpha Phi Alpha man, not Black Old Money? I offer several reasons. First, Smith grew up middle-class which is great. Middle-class, however, means one learns the intimate connection between work and income. Second, both of Smith’s parents were public school principals which is a solid inspiration for children. However, a day job as a principal will not result in generational wealth. One can provide for one’s family and score a nice pension in retirement. Not sufficient for the young Smith to have forgotten the meaning of a hard-earned dollar in his youth. Third, three of Smith’s grandparents were public employees, his paternal grandfather being a Pullman Porter like Joseph Hayne Rainey II. A secure funding level for a stable family but not the genesis of ancestral fortune.
I did a quick internet search for “Black Old Money.” All of the search results were unsatisfactory or surface level. Once again, it seems easier to write about poor black people than black Americans at the opposite end of the social class spectrum. Why is that? I urge more curiosity on the part of writers, scholars and intellectuals.
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I define Black Old Money as an upper class populated by those who self-identity as Black Americans. If you choose to pass for white, well, good on you. You are also on my naughty list. An Open Letter to Distant Cousin Passing for White Abandonment of One’s Identity (And to be fair, it is unclear whether my own retirement from Blackness would disqualify me from my definition as well.) The defining trait of this upper class would be inherited wealth. Discernible habits, customs, and attitudes result from inherited wealth. The rules of psychology don’t change because one is black. Those who are Black Old money have a distorted relationship to money. Self-reliance is a painful aspiration in life. The mental conflict is ongoing throughout life. Does it ever end? Hard to say.
What is the meaning of money if grandfather or great grandfather won the economic race for unborn generations? We are not accustomed to exploring these questions of meaning in black American families. Maybe that should change.
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Imagine a young man, Nelson,* who attends an Ivy League institution. He is a natural born artist. It is his step in life. He has garnered some success thus far in the fine arts but he needs to fully commit. The problem is our young adult recognizes the odds are against him. He is likely to make no money as a fine artist. And that is the problem, his relationship to money in life. He is trapped by where he came from.
His parents are gifted artists. They devote themselves to their craft. And has their artistic pursuits proven profitable? Nope. None of their creations have produced a profit. How can this be you might ask? Indeed, our young man was handicapped growing up. He never saw a connection between labor out and money in. Money was just…there.
I don’t know that feeling. I worked two summer jobs during college and sundry jobs on work study during law school. Yes, law student by day, hapless distributor of flyers around Harvard Yard at night. Had to earn my keep. Everyone in my family worked because we had bills to pay.
Now imagine you grow up in a black family where for two or so generations, money was just there. Sometimes, Blackness is Old Money. I have witnessed these things with my own eyes and ears.
The young man I am thinking of lives a hyper private life as do most Black Old Money types. Discretion is valued. Living below one’s means is a virtue. Trust funds to pay for law school and college are a given. Remember my girlfriend in law school? She was comfortably Black Old Money. Her great grandfather began the family’s ascent above money cares and grandfather cemented the family’s place within Black Old Money. Trust funds paid for private school, Ivy league college and Harvard Law School tuition.
When money is just there because of the blood, sweat and tears of a great grandfather or grandfather, the result would be psychological dissonance. One never learns to connect labor and income. One is shy about revealing one’s reality to others. Believe it or not, one feels extreme guilt and shame accepting help from parents. Nelson, if you want to become a writer and live in Manhattan, don’t you worry about money. We will cover it.
The young man I know of is most comfortable in the world at Martha’s Vineyard, The Black Dog, the ski slopes, New Haven, Cambridge, Palo Alto, the secret society. He is ambiguous in appearance. If he told you he was Puerto Rican, you would believe him. If he said he was Cuban, you would believe him. If he said he was Arab, you would believe him. He chooses to be black which I respect immensely. He dresses down like the billionaire sons he knows. His best friend’s father is someone we all recognize.
Ergo the privacy and secrecy of Black Old Money. Who needs the spotlight? The young man is two or three degrees of separation from the Obama children. He doesn’t know Rick Rubin…yet. As I type, he is hanging out for the holidays on some tropical island. And I say more power to him. Someone once said we should spoil young black girls more. I don’t know about that but I do think America would benefit from more Black Old Money scions.
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The young man I am thinking of lives in a small social world. His peers are Ivy League types, either New Money or Old Money. I imagine the world can feel very small if one was born into a social bubble. At least expand the class of Black Old Money so that this young man can have more dating options/smile and more people who get him. I sometimes feel the same sense of isolation coming from a southern small-town suburb. One grows tired of explaining oneself to other black people. I am guessing there are more residents on Coronado than Black Old Money young adults in the U.S. See The Black Privilege Vibe.
More black Americans should live above money. The freedom from the market place would enable more young adults to pursue the arts and literature without fear of starvation. We might even find more blacks in low-pay publishing house positions as a result. A renaissance in Black Culture and Consciousness as a knock off effect of more Black Old Money would be foreseeable.
More black great grandfathers should be revered in black American families. I do my part by hanging up old pictures of ancestors from the 1800s on the wall at home. When one discovers that one’s good fortune in life is due to an ancestor long dead, one is reminded of one’s good fortune. Our Great Grandparents Never Knew These Times The case is strengthened for pietas. But for grandfather, one wouldn’t have that BMW as a 16th birthday present or that swank summer condo on DuPont Circle in D.C. with the door man and marble lobby.
Is there a downside to expanding the ranks of Black Old Money? I think so. We will increase the inner existential crisis among some. We may need to increase therapy support for those who are handicapped in their relationship with money. To grow up never knowing money comes from labor is a psychological handicap. Too much mental angst is created as one wars with Mom and Dad over whether to accept money for the place in Manhattan. Aren’t writers meant to be poor and starving? It is hard to cos play poverty when Mom and Dad are there as a back stop. And only a few black peers will understand your “rich boy problems.”
Another possible downside to expanding the ranks of Black Old Money would be increased disaffection and alienation. We are ensuring more young adults would grow up feeling isolated and alienated from mainstream Black Culture and Consciousness. It is one thing to be of Chester, Virginia and feel downtown Baltimore, Maryland is an alien place. It is another level of therapy to feel alienation from the great American middle-class, as a young Black American. One is reduced to living in double think. My parents work for nothing but money is just there…but I am black too, so shouldn’t I feel oppressed? Error. Error. Error.
I could not propose marriage to my girlfriend in law school for many reasons. One reason was it felt wrong to be stripped of the need to earn my way in life. There was something disabling about marrying into a family ignorant of debtors and creditors. Would I become a “heavily subsidized” mediocrity in five to ten years? I wanted to be hungry in life. I wanted to want in life. I wanted to be the scrappy great grandfather from nothing (as I was), not the indulged great grandson-in-law. Does that make sense, dear readers?
A child of riches is not at the beginning of anything. He or she is all outcome, ending, goal. And not of his own efforts or her own dreams, but of someone else’s. An inheritor is a mere effect—the creature and dependent, the accidental, and largely unfortunate consequence of someone else’s success in the race, the contest, or the market warfare of life. — Old Money, p. 114
Conclusion: There are two plausible reasons why writers, scholars and intellectuals do not explore these questions of Black identity and Old Money more. Perhaps, the numbers do not warrant in-depth investigation. Why care about the embarrassments and angsts of a couple of thousand young people while millions are languishing in inner-city despair and misery? I can understand the question but the oversight means slices of race reality are ignored in the literature. Another more disturbing reason for the lack of interest in Black Old Money annoys me. Could it be that the Academy chooses to look the other way because the human experiences of Old Money are more human than racial? Would a deep dive into Black Old Money humanize black Americans to the consternation of dogmatists and sloganeers?
Think about it.
I did not want my life to be robbed of its vigor, its verve, its pioneer spirit, its aims and freedoms. I wanted to live a fully human life, so I said no to a life with Black Old Money. “Old money people are fated to pass their lives forever out of touch with the common ground, where others all walk on their own two feet.” Old Money at p. 140. May Nelson on the tropical island this morning feel the bite of costs and consequences. Choose to write in Manhattan and earn the blessings of your ancestors.
I regard futility as the real nemesis of [Old Money]. It turns our lives to nothing; it makes of our fairest garden a desert; it robs us, in our very cradles, of our lives, our liberties, and our happiness. It leaves us groping about in a world of shadows, longing for the substance, dreaming of realities we can never know, wishing always for change, sighing always for worlds that are out of our reach.— Old Money at p. 140
*Details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
You got it, issues of old money more human than racial.