Ric Mathis is the filmmaker responsible for B1: The Movie, a perspective on the current economic crisis and its impact on Black Americans which emphasizes prioritizing the needs of Black people by “getting on code.” Mathis’ book, B1: The Curriculum, gives participants the chance to interact with different prompts and activities relevant to the Black community.
Financial adviser Ash Cash participated in the groundbreaking film, and he and Mathis sat down with rolling out to talk about the project and Black wealth.
Tell us about B1: The Curriculum.
Ric Mathis: What we’ve done is we’ve taken the five episodes that are in the movie, broke that down, and created this 140-page curriculum that has exercises that mirror the film. One of the exercises deals with building wealth as a family. We talk about trust; we talk about families that have built wealth, from some of the ones that are right here in Atlanta [such as] the Russell family and people like that.
We start with a look at the Constitution and then we write our own family constitution, sign it, and have meetings because we must operate as a family. Business is a family; it’s a team sport. We’ve been taught that business is a singular sport where you go in business as one person. But if you look at the Rockefellers and people similar to them, they approach business as a team. When you look at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they approach business as a team — and those are some of the things that we have to start doing as Black families.
What are your thoughts on the message that B1 is conveying?
Ash Cash: When you think about the Black family, that equals Black wealth. I recently saw a stat that talked about the average Black family having $17,000 worth of wealth, while the average White family has $177,000 worth of wealth. That wealth divide keeps widening: you see a decrease in marriage; you see a decrease in positive images … as a family. Think about the last time you saw a positive Black family on television, and then ask yourself, is there a direct correlation between us seeing positivity and seeing what a unified front looks like in the widening of generational wealth?
We must go back to our roots, and B1: The Movie and B1: The Curriculum is doing that with a focus. Kwanzaa is here — and cooperative economics is one of the seven tenets — so how do we get back to that? This African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together.” It is the family unit; it is us putting ourselves first and understanding that this is not the time to allow division to put us further apart. I think once we start to understand that — and again, B1 is the beginning aspect of it — it is vital that we come together to build Black wealth.
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