FPAJournal.org
May 2018 | Journal of Financial Planning 13
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Kathleen Boyd, CFP®, is a diversity and inclusion
activist, a wealth adviser, and a doctoral student at
Kansas State University’s Financial Planning and
Therapy program. Before entering the financial
profession, she worked in the social justice arena. FPA
of Orange County named her a Rising Star in 2016. She
is also a recipient of the 2017 FPA Diversity Scholarship.
Diversity anD inclusion, and
its importance, has been underscored
countless times over the years through
a wide variety of publications, profes-
sional organizations, and conference
panels and speakers—and with good
reason. The U.S. Census expects minori-
ties to become majorities, projecting
they will comprise 57 percent of the
population by 2060.
1
Therefore, it is
increasingly imperative for financial
planning firms to hire and retain
professionals who reflect this growing
demographic.
From a client perspective, many times
talking with a financial planning profes-
sional who looks like you and who can
relate to you, can make someone more
likely to work with a planner. It is vital
that our clients have access to planners
who represent diverse groups.
Firms and organizations have
attempted to acknowledge and address
this problem through various diversity
initiatives. Yet, we keep hearing the same
questions from leaders in our profession:
“Why aren’t the diversity initiatives
working?” “Why are the demographics
still predominantly old, white males?”
“I want to hire a diverse candidate; why
can’t I seem to find one?”
The answer to these questions is:
because our profession has failed to
understand and apply core principles of
critical race theory.
Critical race theory (CRT) is a
theoretical framework researchers use
to examine culture as it relates to race,
law, and power.
2
It started in the late
1980s as a progressive movement within
American law schools, but over the
years it has been applied to other disci-
plines including politics and education.
It combines the issues of power, race,
and racism to address notions of “color
blindness” and “post-racial societies.”
3
It argues that racism is engrained in
the very fabric of American society and
ignoring racial dierences perpetuates
institutionalized injustices to people
of color. It also seeks to analyze the
experiences of racial minorities while
examining existing power systems like
white privilege and white supremacy.
A central tenet of CRT is the concept
of intersectionality—a term theorized
in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an
American civil rights activist, UCLA
and Columbia law professor, and
leading scholar in critical race theory
who specializes in race and gender
issues. Crenshaw used the theory of
intersectionality in an essay to describe
the simultaneous experience of multiple
oppressions faced by women of color.
4
In her essay, Crenshaw used the
analogy of “trac in an intersection
coming and going in all four direc-
tions.” She described discrimination as
an intersection as it “may flow in one
direction or another, and if an accident
happens it can be caused by cars
traveling in any number of directions,
and sometimes all of them.” Likewise,
if a woman of color is harmed because
Using Critical Race Theory
to Solve Our Profession’s
Critical Race Issues
by Kathleen Boyd, CFP
®
Discrimination does not
always fit neatly into the
categories of racism or
sexism … many times it’s
a combination of both.
FPAJournal.org14 Journal of Financial Planning | May 2018
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
she is in an “intersection,” her injuries
could result from “sex discrimination
or race discrimination or both.”
Crenshaw’s essay eloquently illus-
trated what the financial planning
profession fails to understand—that
discrimination does not always fit
neatly into the categories of racism or
sexism, but many times it’s a combina-
tion of both. Firms and organizations
attempt to address diversity and
inclusion holistically, but hierarchies of
privilege and exclusions are still found
within these initiatives, especially
when they’re focused on gender while
ignoring race.
So how can we apply CRT to our
diversity and inclusion eorts?
First, by understanding that we do
not live in a post-racial society. Just as
racism is entrenched in society at large,
so has it spilled over into the financial
planning profession. Our profession
has played a part in perpetuating the
ever-growing racial wealth gap through
asset-based fee structures that act as
barriers to certain racial groups who have
not had the chance to build assets due to
Jim Crow laws and other racist policies.
5
Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise
that firms fail to attract the people of
color they inherently marginalize.
Secondly, financial planning
firms must understand that true
inclusion addresses both racism and
sexism, among other combinations of
oppression. While 23 percent of CFP
®
practitioners are women, CFP Board
estimates that as of the end of 2017
only 1,200, or 1.5 percent of CFP
®
practitioners are Black; 1,500, or 1.9
percent are Latinx; and 2,800, or 3.5
percent are of Asian descent. When you
look at the numbers, women of color are
at a significant disadvantage compared
to white women in our profession. All
women are experiencing challenges
breaking through barriers in financial
planning; however, women of color are
having an even harder time.
Third, our firms need to challenge
the willingness to promote gender-
only focused diversity. It’s easy to
overlook race because gender issues are
more palatable for some to deal with.
Many planners tend to be heterosexual
white men who have wives, girlfriends,
sisters, daughters, and colleagues who
are women, so it’s easier to empathize
with their experiences in our profes-
sion. But how many of these planners
have worked close enough with a
woman of color to begin to understand
her experiences?
Speaking as a queer woman of color
who is subject to multiple intersections,
I can tell you that when you are an
“only” in the classroom, in a firm, or in
a client meeting, the financial planning
profession can be very lonely. Many
times, you feel you have no choice but
to check yourself at the door every day,
constantly choose your battles, decide
whether to point out something racist,
or sexist, or homophobic that has
just been said, or stay silent and hate
yourself for not being brave enough to
speak up.
This leads to the fourth thing finan-
cial planning firms can do: use your
discomfort when it comes to conver-
sations on diversity (and the lack of
it) to feel empathy for the people who
are marginalized and the discomfort
they feel. Refrain from talking about
your discomfort or making excuses for
the status quo, and just listen. Listen in
the same empathetic manner you would
have for your clients.
Despite the many job opportunities
in financial planning, we are still not
making room for everyone. Until that
happens, we will continue to struggle for
the change we want to see. Our current
diversity initiatives are working on
patching a system that is fundamentally
broken. Firms and organizations are
focused on making incremental change
for one privileged group instead of
working to dismantle systems like white
privilege and white supremacy. Let’s stop
setting back the cause of true diversity
and inclusion, and instead use CRT to
challenge the exclusion of other systems
of oppression in our discourse.
Endnotes
1. See “U.S. Census Bureau Projections Show a
Slower, Growing, Older, More Diverse Nation
a Half Century from Now,” at census.gov/
newsroom/releases/archives/population/
cb12-243.html.
2. See Lewis R. Gordon’s research in the spring
1999 issue of APA Newsletters on Philosophy,
Law, and the Black Experience titled “Backup of
a Short History of the ‘Critical’ in Critical Race
Theory.”
3. See Aja Y. Martinez’s research in the November
2014 issue of The Journal of Literary Studies
titled “Critical Race Theory: Its Origins
History, and Importance to the Discourses and
Rhetorics of Race.”
4. See Crenshaw’s essay, “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist
Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Femi-
nist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” in Issue 1
of the 1989 University of Chicago Legal Forum,
available at chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf.
5. See the Forbes article, “The Racial Wealth Gap:
Addressing America’s Most Pressing Epidemic,”
by Brian Thompson, J.D., CFP®, at forbes.com/
sites/brianthompson1/2018/02/18/the-racial-
wealth-gap-addressing-americas-most-pressing-
epidemic/#51bf9df47a48.
Refrain from talking
about your discomfort or
making excuses for the
status quo, and just
listen. Listen in the same
empathetic manner you
would have for your clients.
