Shareef “Ross Mac” McDonald, Instagram
Shareef “Ross Mac” McDonald bills himself the first Wall Street rapper. A former Wall Street professional and creator/host of Revolt TV’s weekly segment, “Maconomics,” Mac often shares his thoughts on financial literacy from an urban perspective.
The Ivy League-educated Ross Mac recently spoke out on Black deaths and the life insurance racial gap.
Black Americans tend to view life insurance mainly as a way to pay for burial costs, and not as a way to grow wealth. Also, Black people tend not to carry lots of coverage. Black life insurance policyholders invest a lot less than their white counterparts.
There is a movement lately by Black people to look at life insurance as a wealth-building tool. A recent survey from Haven Life found that 22 percent of Black people value life insurance as a way to pass along generational wealth, compared to only 8 percent of white respondents.
Ross Mac said life insurance could not only be used to build welts in Black communities but also as a tool to get rid of violence in those communities.
In an interview that was posted to Twitter by an account with the name BlacXOcean Edutainment, Ross Mac explained how this would work.
“To actually get rid of inner city murders and violence, go out and get everybody insured,” he said, adding that since “money rules the world,” people would no longer be turning to the local government for help. Under his theory, “if every person in the hood had life insurance,” and that area had high numbers of deaths due to gun violence, insurance companies would have a lot of payouts to make.
“It would no longer be what’s the mayor doing because Wall Street would be impacted…the way you get” violence address in the community is “when Wall Street says we gotta stop this.”
He added, “If everybody had a $1 million life insurance policy and they die and their parents inherit a $1 million…insurance companies are going to” look for a way to stop the violence in the community.
Ross Mac also has a YouTube channel that he uses to further financial literacy. His series is also called called “Maconomics,” and was launched in 2019 prior to his partnership with Revolt TV.
“Maconomics is all about introducing people that look like me to something they might not have been exposed to otherwise. You are not required to attend the Wharton school. You do not have to work on Wall Street. Those are the steps I took, so you didn’t have to,” Mac explained to Forbes.
He hails from the South Side of Chicago, and claims to be the first hip-hop artist to have had a career on Wall Street. He also has a degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business school, The Hype Magazine reported.
Mac started his Wall Street career working for Morgan Stanley after graduating. Three years, he accepted a position at Grosvenor Capital Management in his hometown of Chicago, Forbes reported.
“Being from Chicago and attending an ivy league institution, where just six percent of the students at that university were Black, was an eye-opener for me. I was the first Black person to work on my particular trading desk while working on Wall Street. Because of that, I felt that one of the most important things I had to do was take what I learned and share it with my community. We, the people, are not exposed to this. I sought to serve as the funnel connecting main street to Wall Street, and that is where Maconomics originated,” Mac told Forbes.
As far as his music, going under the name RO$$ MAC, he dropped a collaboration with his brother, award-winning songwriter Sayyi, called “What We Doin.” Ros Mac is also co-founder of the events brand DRILL, which hosts events nationwide.
Shareef “Ross Mac” McDonald, Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/imrossmac/?hl=en
