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Public: Recent News

North Carolina Lawyers for Entrepreneurs Assistance Program (NC LEAP), a project of the North Carolina Bar Association Foundation, will host Meizhu Lui, executive director of Americans United for a Fair Economy (UFE), for a public conversation on the growing racial wealth divide in the United States and the role that entrepreneurship plays in remedying that divide.

The program, which is open to the public and the media and no charge, is scheduled Monday, Oct. 8 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the N.C. Bar Center located at 8000 Weston Parkway in Cary.

Lui’s discussion will be based on the book, “The Color of Wealth,” which concludes that for every dollar owned by the average white family in the United States, the average family of color has 18 cents.

Written by five leading experts on the racial wealth divide the book recounts the asset-building histories of Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and European Americans.

With its focus on public policies, such as the fact that many post–World War II GI Bill programs helped whites only, “The Color of Wealth” is the first book to demonstrate the decisive influence of the law on Americans’ net worth.

Lui will explore why people of color have so little wealth and what role the law has played in creating this uneven playing field. She will lay bare a little known fact: for centuries, people of color have been barred by laws and by discrimination from participating in government wealth-building programs that should have benefited all Americans.

Before leading UFE, Lui was a Boston City Hospital kitchen worker for 20 years, a grassroots organizer and later become president of AFSCME Local 1489. She is a recipient of the Randolph-Rustin Award for the Education of African American Workers from the Labor Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and more recently of the prestigious Barr Foundation Fellowship. 

“There is a correlation between small business ownership and wealth building that is proving increasingly important to women, people of color and the communities and state in which they live,” said Milan Pham, NC LEAP director.

“Now NC LEAP attorneys are helping to create wealth for those individuals who have been on the margins and to create a broader understanding of the role that the law has played in denying economic justice.

“There is simply no better advocate than Meizhu Lui to lead this difficult discussion in a thoughtful, powerful and challenging manner.”

NC LEAP is a public service of the NCBA Foundation and provides free legal services to low-wealth business owners to start or expand their businesses.

Recognizing that successful small business ownership is a proven means for lifting people out poverty and that small businesses will be responsible for the economic growth of the state, North Carolina lawyers created NC LEAP to provide necessary legal services, education and advocacy on the issues of small business owners.