Some People Just Don’t Get It

We know the names.

JPMorgan Chase.

Bank of America.

Aetna.

Wells Fargo.

New York Life.

These aren’t just companies. They are landmarks in our economy. Anchors in our cities. They are the quiet signatures on mortgages, student loans, retirement accounts, and insurance claims. They show up on the skyline, on the paperwork, in the fine print.

And if we look with intention, we can follow their rise.

It’s all there. The mergers, the market decisions, the expansion strategies.

But when we pay close attention to how they got here, not just when they got here, we begin to see something beneath the surface.

We see blueprints.

Blueprints that were never just about brilliance or business.

Blueprints that used human beings as property.

That treated life as collateral.

That insured bodies for someone else’s benefit.

They profited from stolen labor.

They grew through systems that were written to protect some and exploit others.

And they carried that growth forward.

Uninterrupted. Unapologetic. Untouched by consequence.

Now, today, those same institutions invite the rest of us to build.

To build businesses.

To build credit.

To build wealth.

To build futures.

But they want us to build within certain parameters.

Follow the rules.

Maintain the image.

Stay inside the lines of legitimacy.

And here’s the thing.

We’re not opposed to structure.

We don’t mind parameters.

We understand the value of order and discipline.

What we value even more is consistency.

And here’s where we pause for a truth that some people never think about.

The United States measures its success with something called the Gross Domestic Product.

GDP.

It’s the total value of everything this country produces in a year. Goods, services, labor. All of it.

And if we look at what makes up that number,

If we look at what is driving the American economy,

We will see that money is making America money.

The financial sector alone brings in over 20 percent of our GDP.

That includes banks, investment firms, insurance companies, and real estate institutions.

Together, they contribute more than five trillion dollars annually to the economy.

That is more than manufacturing.

More than healthcare.

More than construction.

More than education.

More than energy.

Out of the top ten sectors that contribute to GDP,

Finance has ranked in the top three for more than two decades.

In many of those years, it ranked number one or number two.

Let that sit.

The biggest driver of wealth in this country is managing wealth.

The biggest product we produce is profit itself.

But if we celebrate that without asking where the money came from,

If we quote those numbers without questioning the soil that money was grown in,

We’re only telling part of the story.

We’re asked to trust a system that has never truly reconciled with how it came to be.

We’re told to believe in fairness from blueprints that weren’t designed to include us.

We’re not just trying to make it.

We’re trying to make it make sense.

Because when we hear that these companies are leaders in equity,

When we see them launch campaigns around diversity and inclusion,

When they tell us they are committed to closing wealth gaps,

We are still waiting for the part where they tell the truth about how those gaps were created and who helped create them.

We’re not pulling history out of nowhere.

We’re pulling it from ledgers.

From archives.

From court records.

From boardroom minutes.

The past is not some side note.

It is the point.

It is the reason some people start miles ahead,

And others are still trying to find the starting line.

We believe in legacy.

That’s what the Legacy Lab is all about.

But a legacy cannot be clean if its foundation is covered in dust we refuse to sweep up.

Some people just don’t get it.

And maybe they don’t want to.

Because getting it means acknowledging that the playing field was never level.

Getting it means recognizing that some empires were built on injustice that was never accounted for.

Getting it means asking what we’re all still standing on.

So here we are.

Not to tear down.

But to build better.

To build aware.

To build consistent.

To build legacies that do not skip over the truth just to sound good in the present.

We’re not afraid of the work.

We’re not afraid of the rules.

We just want them applied evenly.

Because when we get it,

We can grow something that finally reflects who we are,

And who we are becoming.