The consequences of a segregated economy remain ever present in the discriminatory financial institutions of today. This is the system Arlo Washington fights against in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Barber of Little Rock.”
The documentary, directed by John Hoffman and Christine Turner, features Washington, a barber in Little Rock, Arkansas who founded the nonprofit community bank People Trust and the Washington Barber College.
The film was screened at Pitzer College’s Benson Auditorium on Feb. 20, followed by a panel discussion with Hoffman, Washington, Pitzer philosophy professor Ahmed Alwishah and William Marshall PZ ’25. The discussion was moderated by Jan Barker Alexander, the vice president for Student Affairs at Pitzer.
People Trust, founded in Little Rock in 2008 and certified by the U.S. treasury as a community development financial institution (CDFI), is the sole bank within a 10-mile radius of the majority Black section of the city. The bank aims to reduce poverty by increasing access to financial services and improving credit availability.
“The Barber of Little Rock” highlights Washington’s work at the bank and his efforts to combat the effects of generations of segregation and systematic racism against the city’s African American community.
Specifically, Washington’s mission is to combat the racial wealth gap and help his community create generational wealth.
“The racial wealth gap is … a trillion dollar problem … it’s a never-ending story,” Washington said in the documentary. “I’m trying to … stop the bleeding effects of generational poverty [through] investment in resources. My purpose in life is to advance equity, create opportunities and build the community.”
The film depicted the effects of redlining and the deeply segregated structure of Little Rock where in 1985 the newly constructed highway I-630 cut into the Black business district, displacing thousands and creating a division between the rich and poor. South of I-630, a primarily Black area with 30,000 residents has no banks, while the predominantly white northern area with 8,000 people has 14 banks. The film explained that by denying people of color loans to live in particular neighborhoods, Black individuals lose trust in financial institutions.
The documentary utilized an immersive filmmaking approach. As part of their filming process, Hoffman and Turner followed Washington’s day-to-day activities for an entire year. This was a divergence from the style of typical documentaries because it eschewed interviews with “talking-head” experts, choosing instead to amplify community voices in a professional studio setting.
“We said … what if we treat those people stylistically from a filmic standpoint as the experts,” Hoffman said. “They are experts in the lived experience of all of the issues … that needed to be part of this film.”
Black bank customers were also interviewed about their definitions of concepts such as justice and ownership in a series of emotional, deeply personal conversations with the filmmakers.
An audience member asked the panelists to define the American Dream, a question posed to community members in the film. Marshall remarked that the American Dream is a reality for only a small set of people.
“For a lot more people, it takes an extremely disproportionate amount of work to see any [or] minimal profits … I think that also just means that we can create any standard of success that we want,” Marshall said. “Who’s to say that the American Dream is the only dream worth striving for? Being beholden to standards that at least feel impossible to reach [is a] sign to maybe look at different things to achieve or at least different ways to go about it.”
Alwishah asked about Washington’s view of capital as the lifeblood of the community and how it informs his holistic approach to his current work at People Trust.
Washington responded that many members of the Black community cannot access loans due to a lack of credit history. People Trust, he says, remedies this by offering small loans and grants to help local Black individuals find housing and become entrepreneurs. He also provides education about financial literacy. Through these channels, Black community members have the opportunity to build credit without facing punitive loans.
Washington also trains people at the Washington Barber College, creating over 1,500 jobs in his community over the last decade alone.
“We want to provide an alternative way of banking for community members … the capillaries of the community helped to circulate the blood … if capital is not circulating in a community, the community declines and it creates concentrated poverty,” Washington said. “Think about [how] financial institutions that are taking deposits from these communities … like sucking the blood out of them but not letting it go back.”
Attendee Evie Burrows White PZ ’26 found the effectiveness of the CDFI program to be a welcome surprise.
“It’s so rare to see something that the government is offering that actually has benefits to people who are marginalized and isn’t just a performative action,” Burrows White said.
Attendee Kebokile Dengu-Zvobgo, the interim vice president for Study Abroad and International Programs at Pitzer, was unsurprised by the mass scale of segregation featured on camera but surprised to learn about the different ways it manifested into economic discrimination.
“I wanted to hear a different story … It’s the story I’ve heard before, almost like a song you’ve heard before,” Dengu-Zvobgo said. “The lyrics are the same, but the melody is different.”
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