JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, why car thefts throughout America over the last four years have skyrocketed.

Then the effect of racial disparities and financial literacy on America's widening wealth gap.

MAN: What do we see growing up on TV?

We see black athletes in the in our pop culture.

What's cool, we see black rappers.

We don't see black entrepreneurs.

That's the psychological shift that has to happen.

JOHN YANG: And NewsHour Student Reporting Labs takes a look inside of DC community helping foster black owned businesses.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

The Biden administration said today it's confident Israel will move forward on the path to ending the war in Gaza that the President outlined if Hamas agrees to it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as chief foreign policy adviser said in an interview published today that Israel had agreed to the proposal, but he also underscored the Israeli position that Hamas must be destroyed as a genocidal terrorist organization before there can be a permanent ceasefire, despite that apparent sticking point, White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby sounded optimistic on ABCs This Week.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: Are we in a situation now where if Hamas says yes, then Israel is going to say no?

JOHN KIRBY, White House National Security Communications Advisor: No, this was an Israeli proposal.

We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them and Israeli proposal that Israel would say, yes.

JOHN YANG: There's pressure on Netanyahu from far right coalition partners, who say they'll bring down the government if he goes along with a deal and from centrist in the wartime government, who say they'll end their support if the prime minister doesn't come up with a clear path forward by the end of this week.

In an interview that aired today, former President Donald Trump told Fox News, he'd be fine if he's sentenced to either house arrest or prison time for his conviction on 34 felony counts, but he said his supporters might not be so understanding.

DONALD TRUMP, Former U.S. President: I don't know that the public would stand it.

You know, I don't I'm not sure what the public would stand for.

With a -- MAN: House arrest for -- DONALD TRUMP: I think I think it'd be tough for the public to take, you know, at a certain point is a breaking point.

JOHN YANG: Trump's to be sentenced on July 11.

That's four days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention.

Three people were killed and a pair of overnight shootings in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Police in a Pittsburgh suburb say an exchange of gunfire in a bar left two people dead and seven others wounded.

And an Akron, Ohio police say a shooting at a street party killed one person and injured two dozen others some of them critically.

There have been no arrests in either incident.

And in France, the skies over Normandy with filled with parachutist jumping from vintage flames today.

It was the beginning of a week of commemorations of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Some of the ever dwindling survivors of what's considered the biggest land sea and air invasion are gathering for it's likely to be their last major reunion.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, why financial education could be the key to closing the racial wealth gap.

And how a DC community is helping black businesses rebound from the pandemic.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: According to government and insurance industry data while reports of overall property crimes that's things like robbery, theft, and vandalism while they fell between 2019 and 2022 car thefts soared, surpassing a million in 2022 for the first time in 14 years, and then cities like Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington DC, more and more car thefts are headline grabbing carjackings.

Alex Piquero is a criminology professor at the University of Miami.

He's also the former director of the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Alex, why the big increase in car thefts.

ALEX PIQUERO, Criminology Professor, University of Miami: So thanks for having me, John.

So look, I mean, the pandemic is really when we started to see the upsurge in car thefts.

Some of that was attributed to the ease of which some Kia and Hyundai models were able to be broken into and stolen.

There were reports of YouTube videos and those kinds of things.

But you also had a lot of people, you know, having their cars out and about and a lot of people don't have them locked up.

And so what started to happen is because they were quick and easy not only to steal, they're also valuable for various kinds of parts, and they're easily these cars and parts of cars.

It's a very quick crime to occur and very, very lucrative.

So the chance of finding a stolen car or parts of cars are really, really hard and it's economically advancable for individuals who are stealing these kinds of vehicles.

JOHN YANG: And why carjacking?

So Philadelphia's reporting a record pace of carjacking.

Chicago last year, the highest in decades here in Washington, more than 400 last year, why are carjackings up?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, so there's a there's a double-edged sword of that we don't have really good national level data, John on carjackings, because individual police departments, some of them will code them as a separate carjacking category, others will code them other kinds of crime types.

But again, you know, vehicles are extremely profitable for offenders.

So you can you can easily steal them, you can easily put them on a on a ship, you can easily put them on 18 wheeler, and you can easily strip their parts down and sell them really, really quickly.

The thing with a lot of these offenses is that they occur at nighttime and they occur in dimly lit places.

So the ease of which that kind of crime type can occur is what I think has fueled the increases that we're seeing in certain cities around the United States.

JOHN YANG: Anecdotally, we're also seeing reports of cars taken in carjackings not ending up in chop shops being you know, chopped up for their parts, but being found later, being found out of gas or being found disabled.

Is that a change?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting what there's some anecdotal reports, John, that a lot of the carjacking events that occur, they're using other crime types.

And so they're stolen for ease of getting away with something else that the individual does, and then they just leave them on the side.

So there are reports of those as well.

And there's always going to be you know, part of the carjacking that we know we know as well is, you know kind of joyriding except it's done with a weapon.

And so, there's all kinds of different quote unquote types of carjackings.

And they're all I think, combining at least the motives and there and the reasons why they're being used in crime types.

They're kind of coalescing right now in many cities around the United States.

JOHN YANG: But there are also reports that a lot of these carjackings are being done by young people, teenagers and even preteens.

What do you make of that?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, you know, there are reports of that, John, I'm not sure I would hang my hat on that those reports come from a limited number of police departments.

But again, also what we see on media and social media, there is always an element of age, i.e., youthful offenders engaging in motor vehicle theft and carjacking.

So I'm not necessarily surprised in understanding or knowing that that's what we're seeing.

The preteen and earlier kids, that worries me a lot more, because that's a very early age to start getting into very serious kinds of personal crimes like carjacking.

So that's something we really need to watch closely in most cities in the US.

JOHN YANG: Are there things that law enforcement can do to combat this?

ALEX PIQUERO: Yeah, I think there are things that law enforcement can do and things that law enforcement can't do.

So number one, they can't be everywhere.

Remember, police departments are stretched thin already.

There's homicide units, there are gang units, there are drug units.

And the crime of carjacking is something that it's hard to pinpoint in certain parts of town or this, that and the other.

So there's an element of cops not being able to be every single place.

But we do know that there's a lot of investigatory work that police agencies do, a lot of which you and I will never know about.

So they do have a lot of social network analysis.

Individuals involved in carjacking, John, are also likely involved in other kinds of crimes.

And so they're putting all this intelligence together.

But independent of law enforcement, things that people can do is they can make sure their cars are locked.

They can make sure that their cars are parked near lighted places, they can make sure that if they're out at night that they they're cognizant of their surroundings.

People around on them, cars around them.

So it really involves both people doing what all they can do and the police doing what they can do and a lot of what they're going to be doing is kind of investigatory behind the scenes work.

JOHN YANG: Alex Piquero of University of Miami, thank you very much.

ALEX PIQUERO: My pleasure.

JOHN YANG: A recent poll by the website MarketWatch found that 65 percent of those surveyed said personal finances are their biggest source of stress.

Knowing how to budget and save money are skills that can help but not everyone is taught how to manage their money.

Only 25 states require high school students to take a personal finance class in order to graduate and the schools with predominantly black and brown students are less likely to offer those courses.

Laura Barron-Lopez reports on how younger generations are working to improve their financial literacy and help close the wealth gap.

It's part of our ongoing coverage of race matters.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In the U.S., the racial wealth gap is stark.

According to the Brookings Institute, the median wealth for a white household is $188,200, nearly eight times more than the average black household, which is just over $24,000.

And experts predict that without improved financial literacy, that gap will only grow.

We spoke with black Americans about the obstacles they faced on their journey to financial success.

CHARLES WINFREY: My name is Charles Winfrey.

I'm a freshman business finance major here at Morehouse College.

CAPRICIA SAMPSON: My name is Capricia Sampson, and from Paterson, New Jersey.

I'm 27 years old, and I started my career as a design consultant in tech.

ALYSSA CABEZAS: My name is Alyssa Cabezas.

I am originally from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

I am 23 years old.

And I currently work at JPMorgan doing commercial banking, CAPRICIA SAMPSON: I grew up in a two parent household with four siblings, and was introduced to money in a way where my parents really wanted to steal their part as a financial literacy and also just education and hard work.

So my dad, at some point, he was like, you need to learn the value of $1.

And with that, he would give me an allowance for doing chores around the house.

Every two weeks.

CHARLES WINFREY: My family comes from finance.

So I was really had that exposure early on to a lot of money finance business talks.

ALYSSA CABEZAS: I'm a first generation college student, I'm also a first generation high school graduate.

And when I stepped into swimming, everybody was like, so financially literate girls was talking about how like other parents had trust funds set up for them.

And that's how they pay for school.

And I'm like, I was working for Senate 25 with a team.

So being in the environment, that's what really exposed me to wanting to know more about financial literacy.

CAPRICIA SAMPSON: The challenges of being able to grow wealth as a black person in America is really the disproportion of wealth.

As you know, for every dollar a black person makes, it's not in comparison to what white people make in this country.

ALYSSA CABEZAS: One of the things that we need to work on in our community is like, just being more intentional and methodical about how you use your money.

But in order for that to happen, we also have to be in a position where we aren't just trying to survive.

And like just make it day to day.

CHARLES WINFREY: What do we see growing up on TV, we see black athletes, and the -- in our pop culture was cool, we see black rappers.

We don't see black entrepreneurs.

That's the psychological shift that has to happen.

ALYSSA CABEZAS: Once you like, help our generation understand financial literacy, then they'll be able to do it for that generation.

And it'll really like revolutionize the trajectory of what it means to be like a black person with money.

CAPRICIA SAMPSON: What I'm seeing now is that we're in this financial revolution, where people actually are being excited and taking ownership of understanding how to maximize their income and also what it looks like to grow and to have ownership, which are things that weren't necessarily our story in history.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Joining me now to talk about the importance of financial literacy is Robert Smith, philanthropist and CEO of the private equity firm, VISTA Equity Partners.

ROBERT SMITH, CEO, Vista Equity Partners: Thank you.

It's my pleasure.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: What do you make of the current state of financial literacy in the black community?

ROBERT SMITH: There are a number of challenges, some of them are systemic, and some of them are personal.

The systemic ones are access to capital access to enablement.

And then on the personal side is financial literacy and understanding how, you know, utilization of the capital constructs here in the U.S. can enable an improvement of their condition in their lives.

And we've just found that those two areas are areas that require some focus and, frankly, some resources and capability to enable the community to actually continue to excel.

And to accelerate further to make up the gap in this in this this wealth gap that we've seen for decades.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Why is there such a low level of financial literacy in the black community?

And what are the factors contributing to it?

ROBERT SMITH: You know, it's knowledge and information, you know, for so long, you know, there was just lack of access to information.

You know, I am the first generation to go to the segregated schools and where you are now enabled to participate in here information about everything from, you know, educational systems to investing to, you know, how to actually improve your condition by buying houses, borrowing money, all those sorts of things.

You know, my parent's generation was really the first generation that had access to pension plans in the African American community.

And, you know, understanding the importance of being able to work and retire.

And in some cases, use that ability to enable your children should not go to school, to borrow money against the house so that they can get educated and move the next generation poor.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Student loan debt, as you know, is a significant barrier to financial success for many Americans in 2019, you paid off student loans for an entire graduating class at Morehouse College, the historically black university, why did you decide to do that?

ROBERT SMITH: You know, they had already bet on themselves, which is very important.

You know, from my perspective, you know, they're at the point of graduation, it taken out the student loans.

And I really started to evaluate, you know, if I were going to do something to help these students, what's the best answer, you can write a scholarship to the school, but I want to actually reward people who had already done the work had already bet on themselves.

And so that's why I did it in that fashion.

But 60 percent of the wealth generated an African American communities goes towards servicing student loan debt, and I just thought that was just unconscionable in many respects.

Look, it's important that these children get educated, it's important that we give them the opportunities to improve their condition in life.

But I think it's also important, they have an ability to create their own personal wealth and wealth for their families.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: There are other initiatives supported by corporations that address these kinds of financial inequities.

And you've asked a number of them, how can corporate America help in closing the racial wealth gap?

And does it actually want to?

ROBERT SMITH: One of the things that I did coming out of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd was formed the Southern Communities Initiative, which was a consortium of companies to address some of these, you know, these issues, specifically for communities of color in the south, where almost 50 percent of black Americans live.

And we've identified in essence, six communities with Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Houston, Memphis and New Orleans.

And what we're looking at to do and are offering corporate and philanthropic organizations are measured and vetted, shovel ready ways for them to help fulfill, and not only their pledges, but some of the racial wealth gaps and opportunity gaps that exist.

Many of them are looking for ways to do it and looking for ways that are reliable, we built out what we'll call the infrastructure so that you can now drive if you want to drive capital to improve the condition in the banking infrastructure, or the healthcare infrastructure or the things for, you know, food disparity issues.

So that's been one of the most important parts of this is actually betting and pulling together the systems and the infrastructure and the partnerships so that people have reliable places to put their capital.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: If you had two pieces of advice for people to get on the road to financial literacy, what would it be?

ROBERT SMITH: First, get up to speed and understand what is financial literacy for your family.

In some cases, it might be gaining some independence, through some investments for your, you know, for your retirement.

In this case, it might be you know, buying a house, investing in stocks, investing in bonds, and really understanding how to do that.

And the second, which enables you to do the first rank is you know, I think about to go call on your Congress, people to get them to ensure that your community and your businesses all have access to broadband, and the internet.

I mean, that is now the purveyor of information and insights.

And we've just found too many communities of color, actually don't have access to that level of service that enables you to you know, teach, educate and train.

And so those are the two things that I would point to as important for depending upon how far away you are from getting on the road to financial literacy to really embark upon.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Philanthropist and entrepreneur, Robert Smith.

Thank you for your time.

ROBERT SMITH: Thank you, Laura.

JOHN YANG: Four years ago, black owned businesses were among the hardest hit by the disruption of the pandemic.

Many of them have rebounded and in one retail space in Washington, DC, supporting local black entrepreneurs has been a key mission.

From the NewsHour Student Reporting Labs journalism training program, Morgan Hawkins has our story.

KEYONNA JONES, Owner, Soufside Creative: We are a tribe like a Black Wall Street tribe.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): Sycamore and Oak and Washington DC is a retail village showcasing 12 black owned businesses, ranging from a food market and art boutique to a gym.

It also serves as a community space that supports black entrepreneurs through training and mentorship.

KEYONNA JONES: Sycamore and Oak has been an incredible resource for myself and for my business coming in here as a small business.

It has been an incubator space where we learn all the professional things.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): This retail village opened in June of 2023, one of many black owned businesses to open in the past few years.

According to the city's annual business survey, the number of majority black owned businesses has gone by nearly 30 percent since 2017.

But black entrepreneurs still face struggles.

According to Bridget Weston, the CEO of Score, a nonprofit free mentor and educator for small businesses.

BRIDGET WESTON, SCORE: From what I can see in my role and in talking with black entrepreneurs across the country, unfortunately, a lot of the challenges that they see as entrepreneurs are the same that they face throughout the nation because of systemic issues that persist.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): According to the National Bureau of Economic Research during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, black owned businesses closed at a higher rate than any other race.

BRIDGET WESTON: Specifically, black entrepreneurs had bigger problems with the lack of childcare.

They had more challenges with people or either themselves their family or their staff being affected by COVID-19.

And unfortunately, they also had less access to the funds that were available to them to help their businesses survive during the pandemic.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): However, black entrepreneurship has come back at a higher rate than before the pandemic, according to The Washington Post.

Back at Sycamore and Oak in Washington, DC., Joe Houston has opened a gym that promotes holistic wellness.

JOE HOUSTON, Owner, Wefit DC: We talk about nutrition a lot and nutrition is highly important.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): Most people who live in the area around Sycamore and Oak are black.

These neighborhoods tend to be farther from a full service grocery store, or commercial gym than anywhere else in Washington, DC.

JOE HOUSTON: This facility is my first ever brick and mortar and being around a lot of different business owners is great, you know, especially business owners of colors that come from where I come from.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): Those who work at this retail village say that this business community helps with the well-being of customers and the well-being of each other.

KEYONNA JONES: I hope that black entrepreneurs they know that they have a space within each other and within tribe to thrive.

They keep me sharp, they're making sure that that I'm working at my highest potential and I'm grateful for that.

MORGAN HAWKINS (voice-over): For the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting labs, I'm Morgan Hawkins in Washington DC.

JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.