Presented to the Congressional Forum on "Economic Challenges in the African American Community," July 23, 2015:
The most extreme challenge facing the black community is the threat associated with the persistent devaluation of black lives in America.
The scope of devaluation is represented by the initial enslavement of coerced immigrants from the African continent, the use of blacks as involuntary subjects of medical experimentation, the disproportionate subjection of blacks to involuntary sterilization under the aegis of state level eugenics programs, the repeated destruction of prosperous black by white rioters (e.g. Wilmington NC in 1898, Tulsa OK in 1921) and the persistent denigration of black cognitive and their intellectual capability. All of this is compounded by the extra-legal executions of blacks -- lynchings -- conducted for many years in public sites for white entertainment or in secret by bands of white terrorists and now conducted openly by America's police forces. Indeed, each and every black urban uprising has been precipitated by police atrocities, including the recent uprising in Baltimore.
The devaluation of black lives is represented further by the tendency to portray the victims of extra-legal executions as unsavory human beings -- as if being an unsavory human being justifies homicidal violence directed against unarmed persons. Moreover, these negative portrayals cannot be mobilized in all cases, particularly in the recent Charleston massacre by a contemporary white terrorist. The victims were engaged in passive acts of prayer and invited the killer into their midst to share sanctuary with them.
Unfortunately, the current President's own rhetoric has bolstered the process of devaluation by suggesting time and again that black folks' own behavior is a major source of the disparities they encounter in America today. My Brother's Keeper (MBK) initiative is illustrative. Apart from virtually ignoring the circumstances faced by young black women, MBK is predicated on the view that young black males are uniquely dysfunctional and in need of special and more intense guidance and assistance. MBK does not prioritize altering the adverse conditions that confront these young men daily, whether it is the magnified danger associated with any encounter with the police, the low expectations held about their ability by many school teachers, or the high risk of exposure to unemployment and job discrimination. MBK says change the young men rather than change a racist social structure.
The #BlackLivesMatter movement is wholly admirable as the fulcrum of resistance to the devaluation of black lives. In my remarks today I would like to reinforce that resistance by addressing the ideological foundation for treating a black life as if it is worth less than a white life -- the ideology that professes that black dysfunctionality is a major cause of racial economic inequality. I submit that it is not a cause at all, that blacks display no greater dysfunctionality than any other social group, particularly under the circumstances in which they are enmeshed. In fact, there is evidence that blacks actually display higher levels of performance and motivation in a number of arenas. But the rewards they receive for their efforts are insufficient to close racial economic gaps.
For example, separate studies by Patrick Mason, Dalton Conley and William Mangino demonstrate that for given family socioeconomic status (parental income, education, and/or occupational status) blacks get more years of schooling and earn more credentials than whites. In this case the gap, after adjustment for family status, actually favors blacks. If wealth were taken into account the magnitude of the gap in favor of blacks would widen even more. Furthermore, a new study prepared by Yunju Nam, Darrick Hamilton, Anne Price, and myself that is being completed out of our National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color project using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicates that the black parents are more likely to provide some assistance to their children for higher education one0-fourth of the median income of white parents who choose not to do so. In fact, a unique black oppositionality to educational attainment truly is a myth.
Doing the "right thing" does not close racial gaps. For instance, the black-white unemployment ratio consistently is two to one at all levels of education. Bureau of Labor Statistics data routinely show that blacks with some college education or an associate's degree have a higher unemployment rate than whites without a high school diploma. The racial unemployment rate thus functions as a powerful index of the degree of discrimination in American labor markets.
The nation's record on racial wealth inequality may be even more disturbing. Differences in wealth accumulation are important to examine because wealth, unlike income, provides longer term security, particularly "insurance" against the expenses of a medical or legal emergency or against job loss. It enables families to purchase high quality schooling for their children, whether in a private school or via their ability to purchase a home in a neighborhood with a high cachet public school. Wealth facilitates influential participation in the American political process. Wealth – whether invested in a debt-free education, small business creation, housing or retirement savings – generates opportunity and improves well-being. In addition, wealth provides the freedom to innovate. Starting a business, inventing a new product, making land productive, attending vocational training, and making investments all beget greater wealth – but they require an initial endowment of wealth to get started. In sum, wealth provides people with the start-up capital to purchase an appreciating asset, which in turn, iteratively generates more wealth. Accumulated wealth can also be passed on to children, yielding still more wealth and opportunity intergenerationally.
Racial disparities in wealth are better explained by the markedly greater ability of whites to transfer resources to the next generation via inheritances and gifts that by racial differences in savings behavior. The best available evidence indicates there is no significant difference in savings rates nor appreciation on assets held between blacks and whites once, again, after socioeconomic status has been taken into account.
Racial disparities in wealth are staggering. In 2011 the racial wealth gap exceeded $100,000. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation indicate that during that year median white family wealth was $111,740 while median black wealth was a mere $7113. Thus, median white family net worth was 15 times that of the median black family in 2011. It would take the average black family at least three years of consuming none of their income to close the gap by depending on acts of personal saving.
And, again, when blacks do "the right thing" it has an imperceptible effect on racial wealth inequality. For example, there are huge racial gaps in wealth at each level of employment, income, and education. Blacks who were unemployed in 2011 had zero family net worth; whites who were unemployed had a net worth of $21,892, nearly twice as high as the family net worth for blacks working full time. In each quintile of the income distribution, there are enormous gaps in wealth. In the highest quintile (families with incomes greater than $93,000), black median net worth ($138,200) was 40 percent of white median net worth ($320,400) in 2011. The proportion falls as we move down the quintiles. In the lowest quintile (families with incomes less than $18,400), white median net worth was $15,000 while it was zero for blacks. With respect to education, the most striking statistic is the fact that blacks with a college degree have $10,000 less in median wealth ($23,400) than whites who did not finish high school ($34,700).
Patently these huge gaps are not attributable to black cultural deficits or self-defeating behaviors. These gaps are due to structural conditions that enable white racial advantage to be passed successively from one generation to the next. There are three policies that would enable the nation to address the economic challenges imposed upon black America. First is a program of reparations that would provide compensation not only for slavery but, perhaps more important, 100 years of Jim Crow practices and ongoing racism and discrimination. Second is a program that would guarantee employment for all Americans parallel with the Works Progress Administration (WPAP and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Depression. The program I envision, unlike the WPA and the CCC, would be permanent and universally available to any adult American who wants to take the public employment option. Third is a program that would provide each newborn infant a government trust fund or endowment with the amount depending upon the wealth position of their family.
These programs are described in greater detail in the article linked below:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/from-a-tangle-of-pathology-to-a-race-fair-america
Deep structural inequalities require bold structural policies to achieve transformational change.
