by Curlan Campbell
- Grenadian by birth, spent his first 9 years in Tivoli, St Andrew, with great-grandparents
- Dedicates career to addressing anti-Black racism through social and economic empowerment
- Established the Black Opportunity Fund
A family’s ability to create and pass on generational wealth, including assets such as cash, investments, and property, determines a family’s financial success. Historical injustice and a lack of access to financial services created a racial wealth gap between white and black families, excluding the latter from creating generational wealth.
Ray Williams, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Financial Markets at National Bank Financial knows how these disparities can have tangible and far-reaching implications for black families in Canada and worldwide. Williams, a Grenadian by birth, dedicates his career to addressing anti-Black racism through social and economic empowerment by establishing the Black Opportunity Fund, of which he is Co-Founder and Chair.
Williams, whose parents were among the first wave of “Windrush Generation” Grenadians to travel to the UK to help rebuild after WW2, spent his first 9 years in Tivoli, St Andrew, with his great-grandparents. He later migrated to Canada, where he specialised in global capital markets. For his contribution, Williams will be among this year’s honourees at The University of West Indies (The UWI) Toronto Benefit gala on 29 April 2023 for his outstanding work towards changing the narrative in his community.
The gala brings together career professionals for an inspiring evening of giving, sharing and celebrating. The event supports a scholarship fund for outstanding academic achievers in the Caribbean who lack the funds necessary to realise their fullest potential. It also recognises community work by honourees dedicated to solving real-world problems.
“This particular award holds substantial significance for a number of reasons,” Williams told NOW Grenada. “Education for me has been key and has created access to helping me be who I am today. As a lifelong learner, I believe in access to education. This award coming from an educational institution that is West Indian has substantial significance and honour.”
According to the Black Opportunity Fund website, the organisation is a community-led registered Canadian charitable organisation that supports a prosperous, healthy and thriving Black Canada by challenging anti-Black racism by responding to long-standing underinvestment in Black communities through the delivery of “sustainable and needs-informed capital streams, managed by Black people for the benefit of Black communities, which disrupt ineffective and disempowering contemporary funding practices.” The organisation also “works nationally to strengthen collective actions by Black organisations and leaders, helping them to create new and more impactful ways to support and advocate for our community.”
“The challenge is overcoming embedded systems of behaviour that do not contribute to Black economic well-being. Establishing a narrative that reflects that this is not a zero-sum but an additive approach that benefits not just Black communities but all of Canada when we create additional wallet capacity for Black Canadians,” Williams explained. “The establishment of Black Opportunity Fund, a Black national charitable organisation designed to address economic and social challenges, is one such approach.”
Williams understands that many black families struggle to translate their income into wealth without the ability to affordably save, invest, and insure themselves against risks.
“Institutionalised, systemic and endemic anti-Black racism has been and continues to be a substantial challenge that has contributed to this outcome,” Williams said. “During the Covid period here in Canada, Black communities, if they had the same proportional ownership as white communities in real estate, would have been $100 billion richer.”
The issue of discriminatory redlining in the real estate market has prevented Africans in the US from accessing or gaining wealth in the real estate market. Redlining is racial discrimination within the US housing market where government maps deemed areas where Black residents lived to be risky investments, dropping the property value as opposed to areas where white people lived.
Williams said while Redlining is not the historic mortgage lending practice of banks in Canada by way of policy, other systemic ways support housing discrimination.
“Redlining is not as apparent here in Canada via policy; however, the systemic issues facing Black entrepreneurs and lack of access to loans is a relevant pointer to challenges for Black communities more generally,” William said. “Real estate represents a substantial part of the wealth of Canadians, and with the increasing wealth gap and lack of affordability, the challenges for Black communities to bridge that gap becomes worse with each passing year.”
How can the Black community achieve economic empowerment? Williams said one of the most actionable ways to support the Black community is to put investment dollars to work in Black-owned businesses and other purposeful investments that make a direct impact.
Williams’ community-driven activism has led him to win countless awards, including The Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) Rev Addie Aylestock Award in 2018.
