Lasting change and benefits for minorities in this country and to try to close inequality gaps in the boardroom and in peoples paychecks. Discuss some concrete steps that this audience that is with us, the tens of thousands who are with us, and corporate america, what we can take to create some lasting change and benefit for minorities in this country and close the inequality gap in the boardroom and in peoples paychecks. Ursula burns is here. I should tell you she was the first and only female ceo of a fortune a black female ceo of a fortune 500 company when she ran xerox. Board,she is on ubers and ive had the honor and pleasure to have known her for quite some time. Weve had some very important discussions. Also with us, robert smith, founder and chairman of vista equity partners. He is the wealthiest black american in the country, and i should tell you you have him and theched student debt crisis at morehouse. He has the 2 solution, and we are going to discuss that. Render, hee michael is killer mike, cofounder of greenwood, a mobile banking platform. Hes a rapper and entrepreneur and someone who has moved me in so much of the country after George Floyds murder earlier this year when he gave a speech impromptu in atlanta. If you have not seen it, you must. I just rewatched it, and mike, i have to tell you, it will bring you to tears every time. It is so moving and such an important commentary on where we are in this country and all the work we have to do. I want to talk about that work and what we need to do. Talking about that work, let me start with rob, if i could. Solution,out this 2 you have been very public talking about this and i think having success in corporate america. Companies are starting to do this. Why dont you tell everybody what it is that you are advocating and what they are doing . Robert sure. Thanks, andrew. Ursula and mike, good to see you both. The thing we have learned is there has been a systemic removal of goods and services from the black community for generations. When you start thinking about the irony of it, the opportunity is for corporations to deliver back into the Community Infrastructure for economic development. I think about creating the ks to permanently close these racial wealth gaps, and the 2 solution takes from the tradition of families who donate 2 of their income to charity. Lets call on Top Companies across key sectors of the economy to donate income over the next two years to help close the racial wealth gap. If you to companies that have industrybased initiatives with what they do, they have the ability to drive their best thinking, their best use of resources to solve problems in areas like modernizing Banking Systems in the Africanamerican Community, eliminating food deserts, health care, education deserts, and we have the capability and know how to do it. 2 of thatt is income, or you take a unique approach that bank of america did, and they offered a bond. With these lowinterest rates, they are able to issue about 2 billion of this bond and intolly drive capital affordable housing, deposits, and investments for minority institutions or depository institutions and to benefit minority funds. Part of theirg Economic Activity into the communities that needed the most, and by the way, its not just a moral imperative. Its an economic one. To 2l add 1. 5 trillion trillion to our countrys gdp. Weve been working with everybody from the Business Roundtable to mckinsey, at t, verizon. A number of our partners are delivering institutions Solutions Throughout communities in the u. S. Andrew just to follow up, speak to the issue. It is not just a moral imperative. It is an economic one. Speak to the economic imperative for the Market Opportunity for Companies Involved in this. This is not philanthropy. You think about it, all americans want certain things. Africanamericans want to pursue their dreams without the hindrance of racism. We want to raise our kids safely. We want our communities to have opportunities to work, which means funding entrepreneurs, because that is typically where jobs come from. We want health care. We want great parks and a houses and affordable markets. All of that means if you create the capital inflows into those communities, it becomes utilized effectively, and by the way, consumption goes up. Cyclereates a virtuous that all of americans can now embrace. Im in the world of software, and i tell people, the real challenge is there are 7. 5 billion on the planet. Only 20 million of us know how to write code, and we have to 300 millionplus people in the United States to be contributors to the economy. Education is the biggest gap, and health and nutritious food and access to opportunity. If you do that well, then the effect in those communities are better skills, more contributions to the productivity of america, which makes us a more competitive country. I get the macro argument. I think we all get the macro arguments. How do you persuade people on the micro . Companies are going to have to make an investment decision. They have cost of capital. Can they make more over here or more over here . Robert its simple examples, and her. One of our companies provides learning systems for schools. We looked at all 13,000 school 36 ofts, and said, africanamerican committees dont have broadband access, which means kids do not have access to learning management systems. That is what covid has brought out so starkly. Provider,oadband number one, School Districts can teach their kids, and by the way, it enables telemedicine. Health Care Companies have an ability to create Economic Opportunity. By the way, it provides broadband infrastructure for businesses, small to medium businesses. When businesses utilize software, there is a 900 roi. They can become more efficient and more effective and create more jobs in those communities. Everyone knows when you have an increased Economic Activity in a community, it becomes safer. It becomes a better place. The increase in the value of the houses and the real estate goes up. It creates more mortgage activity. Weve seen it so many times, but the question is, how do we make sure it hits everyone in the Africanamerican Community . Ursula, weve had this conversation unfortunately for far too long, you and i. Do we feel that this is an Inflection Point . I recognize that it is a journey. Its a journey that has taken far too long, but where are we in it . Ursula i think that we are at a very important and high opportunity point. Mostis probably the excited and optimistic i have felt in a long time, and it comes from some of the worst situations we have had, the murder of a man by the police, a pandemic that has disrupted the lives of the world, but the poorest people, the people who need the most help, and a government structure that is not supporting bringing us together and solving the problems. What has happened is people, regular guys who walk the streets, me, robert, killer mike, you, but also my kids, people who march in the street have realized that they have to get involved. I loved this statement that lynn manwell made famous before we had these moments where everybody got into the moment and then went back to our other way of living, because of the pandemic and the discourse, this kind of pulling apart, the moments are becoming a movement. Even if we decided to not have this discussion, there was enough disruption today in the system sprinkled around the United States and around the world that we are not going to be able to slow it down. I dont think we are at the point yet where we can turn away, but we are getting close. I think there will still be a level of energy, but we have to talk longer and be engaged longer. We have to deal with the 2 solution. We have to speak up when we see injustice, when we see a lack of opportunity, when we see literally people being left out of opportunity. One of the things we did was start this Board Diversity action. It is straightforward. After george floyd is killed, i get a call. I fly home and land on the day and learned this man had been murdered. I take a shower and get a call from a ceo of a very large company, and he says, have you heard what happened . Thisid, i think ive got i feel im missing something. What is this thing . He said, people are in the streets marching. White people, young people, asian people, black people are marching because this guy got killed that nobody even knew. What is happening . Why are you calling me . Why dont you call your Board Members or Management Team . Nosaid because we have africanamerican Management Team. Ofalked with him and a lot ceos. All of the black leaders got these calls. What i realized was they shouldnt have to call us. They should be able to look in their rooms and literally pick up the phone to their board member, see suite executive that have experienced or know they are close to the action and are part of the movement and engage them. The Board Diversity action alliance, one black director, one latinx director at least on 500,of the fortune 1000, 4000, whatever. Without representation, you have blind spots. If you dont have diversity, you have blind spots. We have to do that for every single problem, every opportunity we have. We have to use these action. Erbs to move the problem i think we are at a point where there is too much excitement. Its gotten to broadly disperse to clamp it down. We are not over the point, but we are getting there close. Mike, contextualize this for everybody. I am a product of the wish list. I know the wrapper shows up in the baseball cap. [laughter] findursula say, you better a way to monetize. We are trying to grow, and we are going to compete with great places. I didnt have a haircut. Ursula and rob have much better haircuts than i. I am a product of what they are talking about. Atlanta is a very unique place. For over 120 years, atlanta has been a place of Economic Opportunity and prosperity. Is atlanta is just like america, the chocolate version of america. Although we still have high income inequality, for the most part, all of your heroes have been white. We have an amazing mayor in Maynard Jackson in the early citys who said, any contract with atlanta had to deal with minorityowned businesses. This allowed a company to grow. That started in the 1970s. Before that, as early as 1948, the neighborhood i grew up in was a neighborhood of mixed income black neighborhoods. Everyone from Hermann Russell to major bob lived there, and then you had all of these workingclass black folks. Because i grew up in that mixed community that was gentrified by four black people, they took this neighborhood. The schools that i went to were comparable to rich kid schools. I went to Collier Heights elementary. I went to Frederick Douglass high school. I went to Morehouse College on a scholarship. I got an opportunity to receive the best education possible because the tax base was a great tax base. You had people who are rich. Not a minority. I didnt have to get bust anywhere. I was comfortable where i was. Lonelyf times, you get being the only black person in the room and the only person getting that phone call. Person here today, as a who is being meant toward by some of the biggest best business minds, i married a very businessminded woman, and i am sitting here because the city i grew up in was started not the city was started, but people like john wesley dawes, people like Hermann Russell, people like Maynard Jackson understood the importance of private and public cooperation. The investment my grandparents made in 1952 and it up helping me as a kid who went to kindergarten in 1980. They had the ability to see if i invest in plans i have now, 10, 15 years down the line, it is not only going to be fruitful to me because my house goes up in equity, not just to my community. It is going to be helpful for these children walking up and down my street. The program was written about Restorative Justice that the state is picking up now. Us, they go around helping us start businesses, whether it is churchs chicken or popeyes. You have people that graduated with me, cameron dollar, ucla champion. I had the chance to be around a pedigree of children because the potential we heard was all around us. All we saw was success or failure based on choice. It was not based on race. The kids who went to school with me who chose to congregate with the kids who studied, they did best. The children who chose not to didnt. Because we were in atlanta, we didnt have an excuse to say, its racism. It doesnt mean systemic racism didnt exist. A didnt mean it didnt pull base out of our community. It did. My grandmother marched me into a bank and helped me open up my first bank account. My sister made a much more money than i ever did. My sister went to trade school and understood the importance of education postsecondary. For me, i am a product of what we are talking about today. Im a product of selfreliance. Im a product of public and private cooperation. Im a product of believing in oneself and returning the dollar to the Africanamerican Community. The Grocery Stores that we went to were owned by black people. We have at mean problem with corporations. It means the dollars we put into that community should be immediately put back into our community. For me, it is about doing what it made me, which is keeping it in my community longer. The Greater Community gets bigger. I watched an interview with paul robison the other day in 1960. Paul robison was a phenomenal actor, phenomenal athlete, but he understood first i am an africanamerican. Im an african by birth. We were kidnapped and brought here, but i am an american, and i have something to contribute. If america would water this side of the bar, i promise you your return will be 10, 20, 100 fold. Sitting before you is a product. Andrew im so glad we have you as part of this conversation because that was such a brilliant articulation of all of this. Let me try, if i can, to break some of it down if i can. Fromf the things you hear michael is the education story, and the other is keeping that money in the system. Those are two issues i know youve been working on. We talked about the 2 solution. Lets talk about the education piece and what you think needs to happen. As you know, theres an effort in washington this moment to potentially cut some student debt, which could be a good thing across the country, but i imagine you think it should be done how would you imagine it should be done . Free oure need to young people from this pressing debt. The short answer, in the Africanamerican Community specifically, 65 of the wealth of africanamerican families goes to servicing Student Loan Debt. Many of our families dont have the option of actually going and using the equity in their home and borrowing at a low cost, so they have to turn to some of the private loans that typically have a higher interest rate, based on where their jobs are located. Africanamericans are likely to take make a little less money and have more debt on average, so that cycle is frankly a spiral. If you have a sick parent, you change your job, and those payments are still do. That is a problem. Ist of what we have to do think realistically about it and say the vast majority of Student Loan Debt gets paid back to the student government. This is a problem the government can solve. Answer is to free our young people so that they can do things like become, not be crushed with student debt, borrow money to start a business, start on their Wealth Creation buying a home or securities or areas that create longterm economic benefit for their community. If you graduate from morehouse and want to be, a teacher, you should be able to go become a teacher and support that lifestyle in a way where you have a comfortable life. You can live in the same community as those kids. Those kids see you as an africanamerican teacher. I have never had an africanamerican Science Teacher my entire life. Andrew neither have i. Never had an africanamerican science or math teacher. Robert the only africanamerican instructor i had was a man in my neighborhood who took a group of us and taught us about rocketry in the 70s, and three out of the eight kids in that rocket club became engineers. He just did it out of the goodness of his heart to teach these young africanamerican kids about science. If you think about that dynamic, i would love to see more of our to doave the opportunity that. Areas we needthe to focus on, and if the federal government can make changes, thats an area i have been pushing specifically. Andrew Mike Bloomberg recently made a big donation to some of the black colleges on the medical side to create more doctors in large part because he argues that they will actually stay in the community, which i think is a remarkably important thing. Let me ask you about pipelines. The reason i am connecting pipeline to education is one of the things you often hear, especially at the most senior levels but also at junior levels, people say, theres no pipeline. They dont exist. We cant find these people who should be on the boards or should be at these levels. You know the story. Do you believe it . Ursula i know the story, andrew. Let me make it easy for you. I will say the answer before you ask. I love the story. This is the story. We have a Playing Field that i designed, this white man designed. We have a set of referees that are the white guys. We have the rules that the white guys wrote. We have all of the judgment in the long term that is done by this group of people, and then you say, you, robert, ursula, michael, you have to play on that field, and we will judge whether or not you can make it out of that Playing Field and sit in our space. If you lay out the pipeline with that narrow set of rules, i guarantee you you will not have a lot of participation. Blacks, ofispanics, anything other than the rule makers. I say, there are people there. Saying that the people shouldnt be able to read and write, have college degrees, etc. , but i always hear we need a board member. We want a black board member. I said, i can give you someone. They say, no, no. They have to be a sitting or past ceo. I say, there are 11 guys i can give you who fill that position, 15. You dont need me to find them. All of the boards we are looking at, all of the Board Members arent past or sitting ceos . Why for black members do we have that requirement specified . What i say is we do have talent out there that can serve on a board. We did it with women. When there were no women in the u. K. Or california, they mandated it. In a year, we went 8 to 30 . Born yesterday. They were always the slayer. I guarantee you you can fill every single spot on the board when the boards are out there with black or brown people, latinos, latin people, you name it. Rules, dont to lower the standard. Change the standard. Im really comfortable with the top. The bottom, robert said it. Economic food and educational deserts out there. You can pick a zip code. I can pick a zip code. I could tell you for sure whether a child born in that zip code will get out of high school. We know it has nothing to do with what the family wants, how smart the kid is. It is the structure and funding of the schools, the teachers, the infrastructure. No one outside of that Community Cares about that zip code because they dont fund it. I say at the beginning you have to fund education. You have to make it a priority. Parents have to get involved. Believe it or not, they do. You know the harlem childrens story. All of the kids want to go to school in harlem because they made it its a cycle of good action and good behavior. We have to stay close to home. We have to literally have at the beginning, the beginning pipeline. Its all about education. Its all about mentorship. Its about examples. At the top, i say there is no excuse. I will train them all if you need to. The three of us, we will take them on and get them ready for board service. Just get people in there. It is a change of mind and change of heart. No more excuses. We have to absolutely punish people this is where i get into quotas punish people who do not perform. Just like we do with profit and loss, if you spill into the water, you get fired. If you do not diversify your company inside, there should be some negative consequences for that. We as what i think peoplers, we as pressure have to make sure it is clear what we expect. We expect diversity throughout the company. I dont believe. , its for a fact the top not they dont exist. It is you arent looking in the right places to find them. Andrew mike, where do you end on quotas . Its a controversial theres a lot of controversy when you say the word quota. What do you think . Michael its not a controversy when youre talking to black folks. There was no controversy on quotas when they were doing land giveaways in middle of america and they needed europeans. There wasnt a problem with quotas when the country was started. Its like, we dont want to pay taxes to the u. K. We have to make sure not only for the planter class in the south, we want to make sure that the new people, the irish, we need to find somewhere to put them so that they can achieve whiteness and they can get this camaraderie among poor people. Its interesting. Adidnt know this, but i am walking, talking example of possibility. It doesnt make me better or worse. It means the things they are proposing have been done in my life. I had three white teachers my entire life. One of them wasnt even mine. That was just a classroom i went to go visit my cousin at. I only had one white Science Teacher my entire life. Mr. Sam. We know we are bigger than you, but youve got to teach us. My Science Teacher, most powerful influence in my life, was a woman. Miss wilde wasnt plain. If you came in her class, you are getting together. The atlanta that i grew up in produce to me produced me, produced more than four sitting city council members, produced our mayor. When the system works, what kidsns is, you can have who come out of historically black colleges and use of her cities universities. I didnt have an excuse to do bad. That neighborhood because her loan was underwritten by Citizens Trust blank bank. Bank underwrote people to live in the community they taught in. When i was 13, 14, i couldnt bullshit about my education. I understood the amount of sacrifice and work i had to put in. Prior to my graduating, Frederick Douglass high school had only been run by two principles. Butts replaced alonzo crim. In the middle of the crack era, he headed the National School of x. Atlanta, 65 of schools are named for black educators and emancipate hers. I had the responsibility of knowing i was walking into Frederick Douglass high school. Without struggle, there is no progress. That is the quote i had to say every day. I had to take self accountability. I had a strong stable base, and the community i lived in house to my teachers and police men. I had selfdetermination with the circle of kids i was in. I thought i wanted to be a thug. I want to go to college, too. Thenk accountability, and my grandparents only dealt in businesses that would good that were good for us and good tower community. What ursula was talking about, in terms of even black business, i define a black business three ways. It is either totally owned and operated by black people and good to my community, or it is not owned by black people, but it employs black people, and lastly, the Small Businesses that came in from immigrant populations moving into our city, even if they couldnt hire sometimes youve got to just higher your family even if they couldnt hire us, as long as they dealt fairly with our community, those were the three things in my household. Treated to my Community Well by reinvesting, and that included everything from workshops and helping to sponsor tutors, helping to feed the hungry, all of these things. I never left the tradition of my community. Our superintendent called me earlier in the year and said, this pandemic has brought out a food desert shortage we didnt understand was going on. With a blackphone Telecommunications Company built his own phones, has done telemedicine, has done diabetes testing, just a great guy, yet freddie had nowhere to go to help. I got him hooked up. Not only did he help her. He said, the john lewis district, which douglass is housed in, used to be a 70 house ownership district, and it was much more stable. , 80 renters district, and our kids are moving around so much. Freddie said i would love to sit down with the city of atlanta and figure out a broadband solution so kids will have an opportunity to be properly educated at home. Circle its time for the of the black business community, black workingclass and middleclass to plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize and take our plans to ,he federal government and say not just you are going to wipe away student loans, but after that, we have given so much to this country. Im watching paul robison interviews. Weve given so much of this country, we deserve some special treatment, and i dont want welfare. I dont need social programs to take care of everything. I like social medicine, but not everything. What i want is a targeted investment in communities like the john lewis district that says, we are going to produce in 20 years its a 20year plan, but we are going to see increases in two months, two years, 12 months, 20 years. We are going to put into place an Investment Plan where we take kids who are prek and kindergarten and follow those kids and give them the inspiration they need. What you will have produced is people who are able to be in, in a circular way, that circle of to thoseto come back communities, to be the teachers, doctors, lawyers, and dentists you need, and what you will be able to do that is replicate that in tampa, jacksonville, charlotte. 54 of africanamericans in this country live in the south. The fact that the south has food and educational deserts is something that is systemically evil, and if we do not something to change that narrative, our country is going to be the biggest, strongest giant with a torn achilles heel. And youre an athlete have an achilles heel, you are not an athlete. You are just a performer. This country needs to stop seeing itself as the preeminent, best at the helm of the world stage when we are not. We have a torn achilles heal. If we invest in the community whose free labor was the cornerstone of the countrys wealth, not only would we have a healed achilles heel. We would have a faster and stronger athlete in terms of economics and education. Let me ask a question. I will pose it to robert and ursula building off what michael was saying. Its one thing to persuade the black community to create systems for the black community to help the black community. I want to be sensitive how i say this. Part of what has to happen is persuading the White Community that they need to do this. Thats a huge part of this. The question is whether there is a way to do that not just about the moral imperative, because people are often selfish. They are not selfless, and there are people in the White Community that look at quotas or look at targeted goals even and say, you can get out the smallest violin that you want and say, if we do this, its going to be bad for me. Im just saying, that is what you hear. What do you say to that . Be tof this effort has to make the case. Ursula can i start, robert . Robert why dont you start, ursula . Ursula i will start with the quotas story and make sure we are clear. I think michael said it to start with. Its interesting how this becomes a divisive issue. [laughter] quotas are used every single day all the time, particularly in government programs. That is one. World whereave a 60something percent of the population is not white and male. The wealth of the world, because it was built with this supreme mist belief and structure, is concentrated in whites and ma les. I dont want to fix everything at once. Fair and you have reasonable economic acumen, mathematical acumen, you understand that participating in a fight for greatness when two thirds of the population is hindered, is hampering your. Rogress is a stupid idea thats why after a long time they start to include women. We cant make progress without bringing some of these women along with us. Result of failure by business to do what they should be doing naturally. You dont have to have a quota if you do what you should be doing. Being equitable, diverse, and inclusive. California said, we tried it for years. Ofck people, for hundreds years, waited and hoped that people who got it off the backs of black and brown people to give some of it back. We willn just work for it, but they said no. The government said, no problem. We are going to force you to do it. You dont have to do quotas if we do the right thing. I dont think we do the right thing fast enough, so quotas are just fine. About rest of the story convincing people, the last time we were on the tv i said its toe asking a sleeve slave please convince the slave owners not to have slavery anymore. Go to psychology. Have them deal with that. I want equal opportunity based on opportunity, based on skills and ability. Give us the skills and ability. If you dont give it to us, we will actually have a virtuous circle where we create our own. Defend want to have to theirlain to people why unfair grasp of things, hopefully it will be nice, but if not, we have to have forcing functions. Some of the forcing functions are quotas. Thats the safest, easiest way. There are other forcing functions we dont want to talk about. Robert thank you for that. That is exactly right. I will tell you the thing that Martin Luther king said was that we are tied together in a single garment of destiny. Killer mike talks to that saying, if you have a torn achilles heal, i dont care what kind of athlete you are. You arent getting up and doing the things you want to be able to do. That is america. There has never been a single solitary concerted effort on the vast majority on the part of the vast majority of white americans to addressee quality addressk americans equality for black americans. We will do what we can for our committee, but our community does need sue how some help. We need a modernized banking infrastructure that gets to our community. There is work that is being done, but we need that to work. We need that to happen. We need the government and people to charge those banks with capital. We are seeing netflix and Reed Hastings and people saying, let me deposit 100 million. J. P. Morgan,can, lets open branches in these communities, but we also need to charge them with capital and loan capacity. A man who is going to be on the transition with biden, he was on a board where a year ago they modernized the lending infrastructure. They processed over 7400 loans in over four months. That is what modernization can do. The average loan was 11,000, which changes the dimensions of a small business. Part of what we have to do is get this concerted effort across many dimensions. Andrew and i, our alma mater cornell, the agriculture school, we are working with them on ways to spearhead Racial Equity across health and food in the u. S. Do isf what we have to work and give institutions, corporations, and hopefully the federal government to come in and write some of these wrongs and repair this achilles that has been torn. Otherwise, we will be hampered in the face of global competition. Michael i want to tell white folks, its in your best interest. Im not going to take too much time trying to convince you. If you look at the olympics, you dont care what color the athlete is. You want to win the olympics. You want to have the most metals. You want them to run faster. Watching. Re what im it could be lacrosse. If they have the United States on it, i am cheering for it. Start to look at the Africanamerican Community. What weve done for baseball we have made baseball 1 billion. What we have done for basketball , the nba of the 1960s is a totally different game. Weve done the same for football. These africanamerican mind can do the same things. Si am proud to be of african heritage. Im as proud as any scotsman or irishman, but i am affirmatively american. You are not denying black americans. You are denying all americans. The fact that black children know who john brown is as early as third grade and you didnt know who john brown was, it shows you you have been as miseducated as we are. Your educational level had a ceiling put on it so you dont know the full history. Alonzo herndonow started the Atlanta Life Insurance Company from a barbershop, he learned about bonds and stocks and ensuring and brought that to his community, he got those from the Bigger Companies. His company helped the Bigger Companies grow. We have to start to understand we are not a bunch of subgroups living next to each other. I am an africanamerican. I am an american. If you invest in my community, i community returns tenfold, 20 fold to the Greater Community. White people are going to have to start understanding that. We are not trying to replace white people. There is not some grand design to genocide white people away. What we say we want when we say we want fair and equitable opportunities, it simply means dont hinder us from the start and ask us what is wrong at the end. Dont say there is no pipeline when you know most bankers have been involved in lacrosse. Do those very simple andgs of opening the door, on a very individual level, the same way ursula got that call at 3 00 in the morning, i got that call. Mike, what do i do . That call should not be a distraught call. It should be an engaged call once a week saying, ursula, what do you think we should do about this . It should be a call and engagement with other people you know. Seek to mentor and build that. I speak at white colleges and at black colleges. I tell white kids, if you really want to help, the best thing you can do is leave the campus of m. I. T. Or harvard, find a bright child or an average child with the potential to do well, and mentor that child so they take your place at that college. If you get a ninth grader as a College Freshman and you guys have an educational relationship, by the time you graduate, that child will be going to morehouse or harvard. Saying that individual relationships count, making sure you open up that pipeline counts, and i think the White Community in this country has to get over their fear of revenge. If black people have not tried to get revenge in 100some odd years, we are not going to do it now. And understand that when we grow, the whole community grows. I will tell you, and the factors it has been interesting to see people like the world sayomic forum and others lets actually put at the high end where capital is being raised and delivered and actually making decisions as to who is on those boards, they do. Ot all engage we are seeing kids on the streets but also seeing treasurers and Business Roundtable and others standing back and saying, lets figure out ways to solve this problem where capital is actually being floated to the communities. One of the things that i was going to say i know we are running out of time the question you asked is one that always makes me uncomfortable. Makes me uncomfortable, too. Because it actually almost choices ofhits kamala, equal things. This is not a zerosum game. Its not if we give money here, we dont give money here. The world has never been the United States for sure has never been a zerosum society. We have 7. 5 liam people here today living at a standard that is higher than when we had one Million People on the planet we have 7. 5 billion people. We always feel as though we have to explain that from that perspective. We are going to support the black community or Latin Community or poor community, and if we do that, that must mean we thenot going to support other in the short term, that may be true, but we know for a study,t literally any that that is not the fact on average over time. We actually have to change the question. It is not give money here or give money here, its how do you give money here and give money there . How do you give opportunity here . Nd give opportunity there we dont have to fight over a scrap of food. Thats not the country we live in. This has been a fabulous conversation. We are not going to end just yet. Before we finish this conversation, robert, you have been lauded, and rightly so, for using your voice on this issue. We talked about doing this conversation a long, long time ago, and since that happened, just in the past couple of weeks, there was a headline, and it is incumbent upon me to ask you about that headline, which is that you admitted to evading taxes and agreed to pay 139 Million Dollars back taxes, interest, and penalties. I know that as part of that settlement, you cannot talk directly to the settlement, but i would hope that you could talk to perhaps the lessons that you think you learned as a result of this experience and also what impact you think it might have on your ability to have this kind of voice and participate in this kind of philanthropy. Sure. Thanks for asking. Part of life is, of course, you make mistakes. You have to clear up things, get beyond them. I can learn from my mistakes and i have. It is clear to me that to focus on the problems of the present, i need to resolve the issues of the past, and the fed has offered me the ability to do so. I have made right with the im absolutely committed to philanthropy, really driving returns to my stakeholders in my company, the employee is in my company. I apologize for creating any disturbance in that dynamic, but it is critically important that i and others step up now more than ever, and thats where we are, looking at the future. Before we get out, let me im a fanthis because and people like me have been firm in our defense. People make mistakes. I tell people all the time. I tell people when they give me too many accolades, im going to mess up someday. Will make right, but never forget that this country was founded by people who did not want to pay taxes. Never forget that our forefathers, who we love and adore, who are on the dollar pockets,ave in our with the exception of this guy, they were slaveholders. Let us never forget the sins of our past because when you do, you start to judge people and your moral authority gets higher. You start to castigate people for mistakes they have made and you do not have empathy in your heart. As hard as it is to forgive a rich guy, it matters to me that he did what he did at morehouse before that. What he did for morehouse was not let me clean my image backup, it was his honest and true heart, right . I want to tell black people on the others, defend him vigorously when you are arguing in your barbershop because if you dont, you prevent the pathway for the next one. People are going to mess up, and some babyi have mamas. Lord have mercy. They are my business partners. Will defend him and will continue to. I thank you. Just keep doing the good work, brother. Thank you. Let me tell you what, if you made a mistake and you fix it this is not rocket science, you know . Him. Because its by the way, i mean big mistake, small i dont know mistakes, for sure. Pay 140 million because i dont have it. It is important that we actually you back and realize that screwed up. Say youcrewed up, you screwed up and go on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Theres no way in the will to operate when people see me, they say that im so perfect. I used to always tell them, you should be a fly on the wall in my house, when my husband was alive and we had two kids at home. You would have said this is a crazy family. [laughter] peoplejust regular old trying to make a way. Some of us have been more successful on the monetary side, and therefore, we have a big light shine on us, and i say to robert, who had not follow all the stories, just keep going. I want to grow up and kind of be like you. [laughter] thank you both. Thank you for all your support. We are going to end the conversation there. I am grateful for all of you joining us on this very important topic. I want to thank everyone who has joined us online for your questions and comments throughout this conversation. Theill have lebron james on other site at 4 00 p. M. With chairman ifill in just a little bit. Thank you all for use our website, cspan. Org coronavirus, to follow the trends. Track this bread with interactive maps and watch updates on demand any time at cspan. Org coronavirus. Next, the House Rules Committee holds a hearing on possible rule changes for the upcoming 117th congress which begins in january. Members discuss modernization effort, the realignment of committee jurisdiction, and the use of proxy voting. This is three and a half hours. Is 3. 5 hours. The rules committee will come to order. Us ins an opportunity for the committee to do something radical. To listen more than we talk. [laughter] this is a chance for us to hear from our colleagues over both sides of the aisle. Regardless of who is in Congress Next year, i believe we believe this means listening to all members and thats what what we will do here today. We took a collaborative approach for the rules committee