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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (April 24, 2019)
Page 12 April 24, 2019 O PINION Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Insist on Harriet Tubman for $20 Bill Currency should reflect on all of us M arian W right e delMan Every day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tub- man and the Underground Rail- road. She and the indomitable and eloquent Sojourner Truth represent countless anon- ymous slave women whose bodies and minds were abused and whose voices were muted by slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and sexism throughout our nation’s history. Although Harriet Tubman could not read books, she could read the stars to find her way north to freedom. And she freed not only herself from slavery but returned to slave country again and again across for- ests, streams and mountains to lead other slaves to freedom at great personal danger. She was tough. She was determined. She was fearless. She was shrewd and she trust- ed God completely to deliver her and other fleeing slaves from pursuing captors who had placed a bounty on her life. In April 2016, the Obama Administra- tion Treasury Department under then-Sec- retary Jacob Lew announced that Harriet Tubman’s face would grace the front of the redesigned $20 bill, making her the first woman in more than a century and first African American ever to be repre- sented on the face of an American paper note. But President Trump said he was op- posed to the idea of honoring Harriet Tub- man that way before he even took office, and three years after the initial announce- ment, current Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has since said that under the by Trump Administration the Treasury De- partment is unsure when or whether that change will still happen. Now a bipartisan pair of House mem- bers, Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and John Katko, R-N.Y., has re- introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act of 2019 (H.R. 1083) to require the Treasury Department to put Tubman on the $20 bill. We must follow through and in- sist that as our nation prepares to ice Paul, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott would be featured on the back of the $10 bill. It also said great contralto and opera singer Marian Anderson, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would be featured on the back of the $5 bill, honoring Marian Anderson’s concert and Dr. King’s March on Wash- ington as groundbreaking events at the Lincoln Memorial that helped shape our democracy. It was 80 years ago on Easter Sunday President Trump said he was opposed to the idea of honoring Harriet Tubman that way before he even took office, and three years after the initial announcement, current Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has since said that under the Trump Administration the Treasury Department is unsure when or whether that change will still happen. celebrate the 100th anniversary of wom- en’s suffrage in 2020 we will be able to celebrate with redesigned American cur- rency that reflects all of us. When Secretary Lew originally an- nounced this bill honoring Harriet Tub- man I celebrated with deep joy and noted that she would not be alone. The Treasury Department also announced that Sojourn- er Truth and women suffragette activists and leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Al- 1939 that Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Marian Anderson, for whom I am named and about whom great conductor Arturo Toscanini said “yours is a voice such as one hears once in a hundred years,” to perform at the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her sing at Constitution Hall because she was black. These additions would round out the inspiring group of determined moral warriors who expanded the civil and hu- man rights of women, people of color and all of us, and would now be featured on the bills we use every day. Former Secretary Lew said he had an ‘aha’ moment about how important these changes were after recognizing the groundswell of public response to his an- nouncement that the Treasury Department was considering changing the design of the currency. To so many people these new bills will be much more than pieces of paper. For too long and for too many money has been the most powerful sym- bol of what we value as a nation. Making these leaders and s/heroes among the fac- es of America by placing them on our cur- rency will send powerful messages about what—and who—we Americans are, val- ue, and strive to become. The new bills also will teach our chil- dren and grandchildren and remind all Americans that Black history and wom- en’s history are American history. It is so important to make sure all of our children can see themselves and their ancestors pictured on something as basic as the money used every day by millions and this will deepen the meaning of how we define success in America. Now it’s time for the Treasury Depart- ment to finish the job of paying tribute and public homage to Harriet Tubman and honoring these other great women and Dr. King who died seeking to redeem the soul of America. They never stopped demand- ing that we live up to our declared creeds of freedom, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and equality for all. Please tell your Members of Congress today that you support the bipartisan efforts to insist that this change happens right now! Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president emerita of the Children’s De- fense Fund. A Revolutionary Idea to Close the Wealth Divide Investing in baby bonds for the future J essiCah P ierre The gap be- tween America’s ul- tra-wealthy and the rest of us is grow- ing dramatically as wealth continues to concentrate at the top at the ex- pense of the rest of us. One major symptom of this economic rift is the racial wealth divide, which is greater today than it was nearly four decades ago. The median Black family to- day owns $3,600 — just 2 per- cent of the $147,000 of wealth by the median white family owns. At the extreme top, the Forbes 400 richest Americans own more wealth than all Black households, plus a quarter of Latinx house- holds, combined. When analyzing the ra- cial wealth divide, it’s im- portant to note that this is a systemic issue — a result of policies, not individual behavior. Darrick Hamilton, the executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State, emphasizes that the key ingredient of how successful you’ll be in America isn’t how hard you work individually — it’s how wealthy your family is. For instance, the racial wealth gap continues to grow despite rising rates of Black employ- ment and education. These other things simply can’t make up for enormous, systemic disparities in family wealth. Hamilton’s proposed solution? “Baby bonds.” Baby bonds are federally man- aged accounts set up at birth for children and endowed by the government with assets that will grow over time. Neither the child nor their parents would be able to access these funds until the child reaches adulthood, at which point they could use the money to get an education, purchase a home, or start a business. Baby bonds could play an es- sential role in balancing the his- torical injustices that created the racial wealth divide. One recent study shows a baby bond program has the potential to reduce the current black-white wealth divide more than tenfold. Another shows that had a baby bond program been initiated 40 years ago, the Latinx-white wealth divide would be closed by now — and the black-white wealth divide would have shrunk by 82 percent. Baby bonds are an essential, universal, race-conscious pro- gram to provide everyone with an opportunity to start life off secure, irrespective of their race and the financial position in which they’re born. And they’re just one of 10 bold solutions offered in a new Insti- tute for Policy Studies report on closing the racial wealth divide, which counts Hamilton among its coauthors. “Large scale policy change,” it concludes, “is the most prom- ising path to addressing the ra- cial wealth divide and many asset poor whites as well.” The report also recommends solu- tions ranging from Medicare for All and higher taxes on the wealthy to setting up a congres- sional committee to study repa- rations. Just like all other issues of in- equality in America, the racial wealth divide is a structural prob- lem that requires structural solu- tions. In order to create economic prosperity for every American, we must start with taking bold action to close the racial wealth divide once and for all. Jessicah Pierre is the inequali- ty media specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies.
