Who We Serve
People of Black African Descent
Many forget that the original purpose of racism was to justify economic exploitation. Since 1619, for 400+ years of American history, melanated people of African descent have been consistently targeted for dehumanization for the purpose of being exploited as beast of burden and objects for gratification.
Even after the crime against humanity of chattel slavery, Black people consistently survived socioeconomic ethic cleansing, especially when they thrived. White people razed entire cities of successful black people, burning them to the ground, lynching them, raping them, and even flooding entire cities into the lakes we know of today.
By no surprise, decades and centuries of targeted and codified oppression have led to a wealth crises that is eliminating black lives by reducing the means for black people to survive and thrive. Black people might only have made it this far by being designated as the established bottom caste of American society. It is time for a change.
Now, black people are in the midst of a silent economic crisis which is being completely ignored by every institution in America. Urban Legacy was conceived for the purpose of reversing every trend of socioeconomic oppression by reestablishing a sense of black self-determination.
Black Youth & Young Adults
These are our future. We are here to serve this population that K-12 education has designated for the school to prison pipeline. Black youth are subject to underfunded schools, excluded from functional education, overly referred to special education, suspended, expelled, drugged, arrested and failed at multiple times the rates of their white counterparts.
Our mission is to take the natural energy, spirit of entrepreneurship and inquisitive nature of black youth and bring them directly into the economy as owners.
Modeled after their successful peers, we will provide them the resources, information and encouragement necessary to instill a sense of self determination and ownership of their skills. Observing emerging economies, demands for skills and feedback from modern captains of industry, we will train black youth in the skills necessary to own their fair share of the economy of tomorrow. Listening to their passions, we will encourage them to double down on their interests, since everything they are interested in has a billion dollar industry associated with it.
We will empower black youth to be more than just a growing crop of future consumers for other communities to harvest paychecks from. We will teach them the skills necessary to be the future of skilled labor, entrepreneurship and property ownership, to build their wealth.
Black Opportunity Youth
Opportunity youth are defined as youth and young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are both unenrolled in academia and unemployed. The state of being unenrolled and employed is called the “disconnection rate,” and black youth are found to be statistically more disconnected than their Asian, white and Latino counterparts. The scholastic industrial complex and other unrepresentative institutions are provided billions of dollars annually to address these problems and achieving very poor results.
Urban Legacy is introducing disruption to bring opportunity youth directly into the economy as skilled professionals and entrepreneurs. Our goal is to establish and maintain a self-employment rate among opportunity youth so that they are consistently generating income by contributing to the economy, and inspired to learn more skills to build on the work they have an ownership stake in.
Black Women & Girls
Black women face unique challenges and barriers to entry do bias against their race and gender simultaneously. Racism was designed to exploit the laws of nature, exhibited in 1662 when black women’s motherhood was used in conjunction with their race to establish lifelong slavery in America. The Laws of Virginia Act XII in 1662 decreed that “Negro women’s children” are to “serve according to the condition of the mother” so white men could continue to rape black women for entertainment, forced prostitution, and slave inventory.
In the present, black women are still subject to socioeconomic disenfranchisement. Although black men and women have the smallest wage gap of all races, black women make 40% less than white men and 25% less than white women. Although black women are more college educated than any other race/gender combination, they are also facing disproportional levels of crippling student loan debt.
Urban Legacy is dedicated to supporting black women as they overcome glass ceilings and glass cliffs in their pursuit of socioeconomic success. Our goal is for black women to be the primary beneficiaries of their intelligence and hard work for the first time in American history.
Black Men & Boys
Black men and boys are subject to unique methods of disenfranchisement and physical exploitation. Whether or not we individually believe men are natural providers, society perceives this to be true and has created barriers to the socioeconomic means necessary for black males to become said providers.
In 1654, the racist court system of early colonial America exploited a dispute between two black men to codify slavery for those of black African descent. Castration, “Buck breaking” rape and other methods were used throughout slavery to establish dominance over black men to maintain economic exploitation, all of which were sanctioned by local, state and eventually federal laws.
Since emancipation, black codes, pig laws, Jim Crow and the drug war have used media to demonize black men in order to justify reintroducing them into the prison industrial complex. Since the late 1800s and early 1900s, black men have been prevented from participating in labor unions, benefiting from their military service, had cultural practices prohibited by law, and more. Now, black men make 40% the wages of their white male counterparts, and even 35% less than white women! So much for the patriarchy…
Urban Legacy supports black men who are working hard to benefit from the fruits of their labor and industriousness. We see them. We hear them. We support their endeavors. We support healthy masculinity.
Black Families
We specifically target the black community for economic advancement because the black community has been the most intricately targeted for economic exploitation and exclusion, even by other marginalized groups.
For example, home ownership is currently the #1 mothed of transferring intergenerational wealth. Just as much as the Federal Housing Administration facilitated “redlining” to exclude black people from buying suburban homes for generations, we will work for generations to promote black home ownership until we achieve parity. There are a plethora of other examples we will work to counteract.
We do not discriminate. People of all demographics can participate in our programming. Just understand that we train and speak from the perspective of the black experience, and we will not deviate. Intersectionality waters down the black experience in every other arena. Our mission will not be diluted.
Justice Involved
The scholastic industrial complex and the prison industrial complex often collaborate to ensure that black boys are marked early for institutionalization. Black people are disproportionately subject to the whims of systemic racism, including but not limited to over-referral to special education, suspension, and even law enforcement by schools.
Merge poor scholastic conditions with removing economic opportunity from black communities places many in a position to either starve, work jobs that do not provide a living wage, participate in illicit activities, and too often some combination of these, for economic gain. For these reasons and many more, black people are disproportionately reintroduced to slave labor in the prison industrial complex. This must end.
Urban Legacy is dedicated to serving justice involved black people in the effort to eliminate slave labor.
Afro-Latinx & Multi-Racial
We specifically target the black community for economic advancement because the black community has been the most intricately targeted for economic exploitation and exclusion, even by other marginalized groups.
For example, home ownership is currently the #1 mothed of transferring intergenerational wealth. Just as much as the Federal Housing Administration facilitated “redlining” to exclude black people from buying suburban homes for generations, we will work for generations to promote black home ownership until we achieve parity. There are a plethora of other examples we will work to counteract.
We do not discriminate. People of all demographics can participate in our programming. Just understand that we train and speak from the perspective of the black experience, and we will not deviate. Intersectionality waters down the black experience in every other arena. Our mission will not be diluted.
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