June 26, 2019
Page 9
O
PINION
Closing Racial Wealth Divide Requires Bold Thinking
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But so did
ending slavery
J essiCah p ierre
One day in late
June, 1865, Union
soldiers arrived in
Galveston, Texas.
They carried some
historic news: Le-
gal slavery had
ended some two and a half years
ago with President Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation. And
so some of the last enslaved peo-
ple left in America were freed.
The day became known as
“Juneteenth,” a holiday still cele-
brated today in black communities
across the United States.
Yet more than 150 years after
slavery, black wealth still lags
centuries behind white wealth. A
report by the Institute for Policy
Studies found that it would take
228 years for black families to
amass the amount of wealth white
families already own today.
In fact, the racial wealth divide
is greater today than it was de-
cades ago and still widening. That
divide won’t close without bold,
structural reform to match the
by
structural injustices that created it
— from slavery itself to Jim Crow,
red lining, and mass incarceration.
A more recent report by the in-
stitute offered a number of
promising solutions to close
this gap. Some ideas include:
1. Baby Bonds: Baby
bonds are federally managed
accounts that could be set up
at birth for all kids and grow
over time. When a child
reaches adulthood, they could use
these federally seeded funds for
education, to buy a house, or start
a business.
2. Guaranteed Employment
and a Living Wage: Bridging the
racial wealth means creating good
jobs that pay a living wage for ev-
eryone who can work. A federal jobs
guarantee would provide universal
job coverage and eliminate involun-
tary unemployment. A much higher
minimum wage would ensure all
jobs actually support families.
3. Affordable Housing: Secure
housing remains out of reach for
millions of families, and homes
are the biggest source of middle
class wealth. We need big invest-
ments in public housing, rent con-
trol, and down payment assistance
for first-time buyers from margin-
alized backgrounds to ameliorate
historical injustices and address
the current crisis.
4. Medicare for All: People
of color accounted for more than
half of the 32 million non-elderly
uninsured people in 2016, putting
them at serious medical and finan-
cial risk. Medicare for All would
drastically reduce bankruptcies
from health care, the single largest
source for all Americans.
5. Postal Banking: People of
color are particularly vulnerable
to being unbanked, along with
rural people and the elderly. The
Postal Service could offer short
term, low-interest loans to these
populations to protect them from
predatory payday lenders.
6. Higher Taxes on the Ul-
tra-Wealthy: Significantly rais-
ing taxes on the extremely rich
would reduce the corrupting in-
fluence of wealth on our politics
while producing significant rev-
enue to create opportunities for
those who’ve been blocked from
generating wealth.
7. Fixing the Tax Code: We
spend $600 billion per year on tax
subsidies that ensure the wealthy
are able to become wealthier.
Shifting these expenditures to-
ward low-wealth people would
have a monumental impact.
8. Reparations: A bill called
HR 40, championed currently by
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-
18), would create a commission to
study the issue of reparations and
grapple with what they could really
look like. That’s a welcome step.
9. Better Data Collection: It’s
difficult to understand the scope
of the racial wealth divide with-
out good information on the full
range of racial diversity in the
United States. Localized data on
household assets and debt by race
would provide better insight for
policy making.
10. A Racial Wealth Audit: All
laws and policies can have unin-
tended consequences. So we need
a framework to assess the impact
of new ideas on the wealth divide.
All of these are bold ideas. But
none are so bold as the news that
greeted Galveston in 1865: Slav-
ery was over. This Juneteenth,
let’s keep thinking radically about
how to take on this incredibly im-
portant challenge.
Jessicah Pierre is the inequali-
ty media specialist at the Institute
for Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
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