Outdoing everyone (10 times over)... Yesterday, JPMorgan Chase announced that it'll spend $30B over the next five years to help close the racial wealth gap. That's the biggest monetary commitment any company has made to advance racial equity by far.
Pull up the stats... In 2016, the net worth of a typical white family was ~10X greater than that of a typical Black family ($171K vs. $17K). The legacy of slavery, discrimination and the fact that Black families are more likely to be denied mortgages all contribute to this massive gap in generational wealth-building. So:
The purpose of the corporation has changed... For decades, public companies were all about returning value to shareholders through profits. Generally, more profit = more dividends and/or higher stock price. The $30B that Chase pledged to spend over the next 5 years represents ~83% of its total 2019 profit ($36B). But it might just be enough to change JPM’s image of "big bad corporation" into "big good corporation." That's strategic.