Op-Ed: Break the Last Chains—Teach Our Children Financial Literacy in the USVI

Financial literacy is not merely about money management—it is about freedom, agency, and the capacity to shape one's destiny. For millions of children growing up in historically marginalized communities in the Virgin Islands and across the Caribbean, financial education represents more than just good practice; it is an essential tool for dismantling generational cycles of poverty and economic disenfranchisement. History provides a stark lesson: denying education was a deliberate tactic to suppress freedom. In America's antebellum South, statutes like South Carolina's Negro Act of 1740 explicitly outlawed literacy among enslaved Africans. Slaveholders recognized education as inherently subversive—a threat to their power. Today, the legacy of this systemic denial continues to manifest in troubling economic disparities. African Americans score significantly lower on financial literacy assessments, and similar disparities exist throughout the Caribbean, where prosperity remains uneven and...