While serving as a pastor, it became clear to me that the principles of guidance, service, and fostering conditions for individuals to flourish were not confined within church walls – that there was an expansive ministry of help beyond the ministry of the pulpit. I ultimately found a way to take that genuine belief and translate it into economic development through community economic development financing, ensuring that Black and brown people in particular had access to business opportunities.

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have historical ties to civil rights. While their existence has mitigated some inequities, the overarching journey toward prosperity for communities of color remains unfinished. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reports that median white family wealth ($184,000) dwarfs both Latino family wealth ($38,000) and Black family wealth ($23,000), an astonishing gap that has barely budged over 30 years. Black would-be borrowers are more than twice as likely to be denied a mortgage as their white counterparts, and that cuts across mortgages for purchase, home improvement, or refinancing. Houses in Black-majority neighborhoods are nearly twice as likely to be appraised below contract as houses in white-majority neighborhoods. Black-led CDFIS face a 6:1 asset gap compared to white-led CDFIs. The data doesn’t lie, and neither does the degree to which CDFIs have moved away from their civil rights origin. The modern CDFI is quick to focus on scale rather than impact. Boards do not reflect the communities they serve. There are very few Black and brown leaders operating from CDFI C-Suites.

Even with expansive evidence of glaring inequality, we continue to operate in community development financing with a reflexive narrative that everybody is equal, what the Anti-Racist Community Development research named as the dominant narrative of universal opportunity. In light of a growing “anti-woke” backlash to seemingly any modest effort to remedy racial inequity, moving cautiously, ignoring the evidence, and falling back into that dominant narrative may look even more palatable.

Despite all the noise that things are well on Main Street, do we have doubt that there’s still institutional, systemic, and structural racism thwarting Black and brown fortunes? Have the investment proclamations following the murder of George Floyd translated into any significant, tangible improvement in infrastructure, economic shift, or catalytic community efforts? If you look at CDFIs all across the nation, why is there still not sufficient affordable housing? If you look at decades of federal and state government investment designed to improve local economies having had negligible impact on closing the racial wealth gap, what are we collectively doing wrong? Why is poverty rising? And if we truly are working to eliminate poverty, how do we recapture a requisite civil rights ethos amongst CDFIs?

To genuinely make an impact, we must redefine our strategies. We need to reverse the course on the decline of Black ownership, channel capital resources to organizations led by people of color, and bridge the technological divide for Black and brown-led CDFIs. We need to fundamentally shift how we think about success. Our African American Equity Impact Scorecard is a step forward, focusing on wealth creation, leadership, land access, cultural preservation, and racial equity.

However, this journey isn’t solely about deploying effective solutions; it’s about endurance and commitment. As we strive for justice, we must brace for challenges. Complacency will yield to crumbling infrastructure and educational challenges. Now more than ever, we need to be willing to stand in our moral conviction. Failing to act will leave us prone to move backward. Failing to act will leave us with food deserts, rundown buildings, crumbling roads, and struggling schools. Failing to act will amount to complicity. This moment doesn’t require us to be neutral; it requires more people to stay woke and name the politics of hate and division that prevent us from doing our work with intention.

Invoking the U.S. Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” failing to act today with all that we know about what’s going wrong (and how we could make things go right) holds us back from achieving this aspiration. America simply can never be what it should be without housing equality and economic equality.

Lenwood V. Long, Sr., is the President, CEO, and Co-Founder of the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs. He is co-founder and former president/CEO of Carolina Small Business Development Fund, a CDFI and statewide nonprofit organization known for programs related to African-American small businesses, women entrepreneurship, veterans, and the Latino/Hispanic community. His work with Historically Black Colleges and Universities within North Carolina has been mentioned as a national model. Lenwood has more than 30 years of experience in community economic development, human resources, and business management. He has held leadership positions in a variety of organizations, including statewide economic and community development agencies, national consulting firms, and nonprofit organizations. Lenwood also served as the Chief of Staff for former congresswoman Eva M. Clayton. He is a Senior Pastor Emeritus of New Bethel Baptist Church and a retired Army Vietnam combat veteran.