Dismantling the Racial Wealth Gap

Dismantling the Racial Wealth Gap is a research tool and guide tailored to Huntington that begins to outline how the American financial system has historically oppressed and continues to oppress Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The guide describes strategies on how Huntington can create trusting, active, and equitable relationships with communities that have been oppressed and exploited for centuries. These strategies, techniques, and activities are derived from analytical, participatory, and design-centered research techniques like workshops, interviews, literature reviews, surveys, and other methodologies surrounding liberation, community engagement, and design justice.

The guide proposes an eight phase process for establishing relationships and working towards systemic change through actions such as internal reflection, conducting workshops, and understanding and implementing the results of phase outcomes. These phases are opportunities for Huntington to acquire more knowledge about themselves by conducting research through design techniques and taking direct action against financial systems of oppression built upon Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The guide works with a still in-progress activity workbook that details steps of different actions, toolkits, and planning techniques that Huntington would need to complete the recommended phases.

As Huntington starts to potentially work through these phases, they will work towards understanding their positionality in upholding financial systems of oppression, building horizontal relationships, creating lasting coalitions, having open discussions, and conducting focused workshops to work closely with oppressed communities to begin to design and ignite systemic change and direct action within Huntington, and by extension, the broader American financial system.