In an article in Dissent magazine, four authors argue that the notion of America as a “post-racial” society is wrong. The public and politicians tend to blame blacks for the conditions in which they live, as though racism were a thing of the past and the doors of opportunity are wide open for all. Even the election of a black President has not wiped out historic disadvantages that a significant proportion of black Americans are born into.
Alan Aja, Daniel Bustillo, William Darity, Jr., and Darrick Hamilton lay out the facts of continuing racial disparity in employment, wealth, and self-employment to demonstrate that blacks continue to be severely disadvantaged.
The authors off two proposals to provide economic security to all Americans. One is a universal trust account, which would be larger for those who are needy. The other is a guaranteed federal job. Both are expensive yet considerably less than the cost of the economic stimulus plan, which saved the nation’s banks. Imagine: saving our society.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
good to see this
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I honestly don’t believe that some of those with the purse strings care one bit about saving society, or education, or equity, or resources for anyone other than their own demographic. Whether it be religious, ethnic, racial, political, educational, class or any other “division”, there are those who cannot “live and let live”, IMO, the only way to bring all peoples together is through education and understanding in public schools. Privatization of education will only serve to divide us further into camps of “I am right,” “I am better,” “I am smarter,” “I am in charge,” etc. . This isn’t my American Dream.
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This just showed up on Facebook. It is poignact. I hope you read it.
http://manicpixiedreammama.com/a-mothers-white-privilege/
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Not only has Obama’s election and re-election “not wiped out historic disadvantages that a significant portion of black Americans are born into,” but his presidency has maintained policies that have resulted in a marked decline in living standards for African Americans, while the the man himself seemingly cannot address a Black audience without himself voicing racist stereotypes (“Stop throwing your garbage out of your car windows…”) or condescending even to the most elite among them (www.theroot.com/…/obamas_2013_morehouse_speech_whats_his_personal).
This man, 2008’s Marketer of the Year according to Advertising Age magazine, is little but a cleverly marketed brand, and was carefully vetted before receiving the anointment of the country’s Overclass – recall that he received far more funding from Wall Street than John McCain in 2008 – because they saw that he was the ideal political chameleon needed to implement the misdirection and undermining of any meaningful reform of Wall Street or anything else in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The only thing honest about him is his ambition, though it has always primarily served his neoliberal patrons.
In 2008, the Overclass imperative was to make sure that we did not have an “FDR moment,” and was hired on to provide it. That he seems unable to to feel show much more than contempt or condescension for his fellow blacks must be icing on the gravy in their minds.
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I don’t know if this paper is an abstract or abbreviated version of a much deeper analysis, but in any event, I’d like to see the backup for the authors’ statement that “we estimate that the average cost per job directly created by the employment corps—including salary, benefits, training, and equipment—would be $50,000.” Equipment? What equipment? For that matter, what kinds of jobs?
The “baby bonds” concept is very interesting, though. My first reaction is, I like it.
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A federal job guarantee! Doing what? Digging and filling holes? Producing buggy whips? The government is a poor determiner of what people want. That’s why the Soviet Union was such a failure (and still is). Let God be god. Make your own voluntary anti-poverty contributions.
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Monte,
We have immense needs to upgrade infrastructure: roads, tunnels, bridges, billions of dollars of unmet needs across the nation. There coud be jobs for all if our society had a domestic agenda.
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I imagine the authors are proposing something along the lines of the WPA, which created an immense inventory of high-quality infrastructure, much of which is still useful today (and is aesthetically pleasing to boot). I do share your skepticism that such jobs will ultimately reach the people that they are intended to help, however, although I think such programs could be effective in places like the Mississippi Delta or eastern Kentucky.
I strongly support the idea of the baby bonds, regardless of whether it helps with racial inequality. At one point in the 20th century, our nation’s treatment of its senior citizens was shameful. Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and it’s children who are getting the raw deal. Unlike children, seniors can vote, and politicians pander to their interests. A baby bond would help to offset that inequity.
Contrary to what the authors of the Dissent piece claim, most of the black-white wealth gap is tied up in housing, and much of the white wealth held in housing is propped up by our failure to enforce fair housing laws; our tolerance of racial steering and illegal and unethical behavior by the real estate and banking industries; preposterously anti-capitalist zoning laws that artificially limit supply and thwart the construction of affordable housing; and ongoing discrimination and intimidation by private citizens and law enforcement.
As long as blacks are confined to a relatively small number of concentrated hypersegregated areas in our nation’s metropolitan areas, I don’t know that meaningful headway can be made on inequality. Creating a segregation tax on municipalities with low rates of minorities in “integrated” metropolitan areas might provide an incentive for such towns to recruit and retain minority families, e.g.
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The only way to arrive at racial and demographic equality in America is to end at-large elections. The at-large election process — the process in which you are to “vote for two (or three or…) of the above candidates” — masquerades as a representative election and fools voters who don’t really know what the process allows: It allows small cadres of voters who are not part of a representative area to elect the representatives of multiple other areas by outvoting the people who actually live in those areas. On city councils and school boards across the nation, at-large elections are how the white Old Guard stays in power even though the demographics of their cities and school districts have changed to non-white majorities. Until at-large elections are ruled for what they are — a mockery of democracy — our nation will continue to suffer because political power will remain out of the reach of non-whites, even when they comprise the majority citizens.
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It is unfortunate that many people regardless of race, have to deal with being poor. Around the world, this is a definite problem that I wish we humans could fix. Hopefully, it will happen sometime in the future.
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There has been remarkable progress in reducing world poverty in the last 20 years. Here is a good short article about it: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim
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