We Should Use 'The Race Card'
Go ahead and use this one: It can become a valuable resource tool for all Americans.
Mike Green | Guest Contributor
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One of the great challenges in K-12 and higher education is providing an essential education students need to understand the inextricable ties between racial relations and economic system dynamics in America. Unfortunately, no widespread curricula exists across grade levels to effectively teach students how and why virtually every aspect of life in the United States, particularly economics, is rooted in a belief in racial hierarchy: the valuing and devaluing of humans based upon a false ideology of skin color or bloodline, i.e. race.
Missing Knowledge, Misinformation & Misunderstanding
The outcome of a set of missing common curricula on race (racial hierarchy) in our public education system is that generations of young people and adults are ill-informed and ill-equipped to effectively engage in productive discourse about race in America. This void of common knowledge across America leads to common misunderstanding across racial divides.
Unfortunately, in addition to a lack of common knowledge taught from early stages in life, there is also misinformation about race, both intentional and inadvertent, that often fills the void and pollutes the minds of children and adults. Such mental pollution is typically passed down from one generation to the next through families, friends, religious and political groups, and piled on with more trash tossed daily through media.
The media industry, comprised of a workforce that’s 80 percent white, is a broad array of mostly privately owned companies that collectively are responsible for safeguarding our democratic society by keeping the masses well-informed about the machinations of power in both government and the private sector. The K-12 public school system, with an even greater responsibility for educating the public, also has a teacher population that is 80 percent white.
We seldom think about the fact that we receive the bulk of our knowledge about American society through a lens managed mostly by White Americans with huge racial blind spots.
In a multicultural society, wherein the majority of the national population will be non-White in the next 20 years, and the 51 million students currently enrolled in public schools are already 52 percent non-White, both media and schools are at a disadvantage to be effective in their jobs. White educators and journalists were all educated and trained in systems established on a bedrock foundation of 20th century segregationist policies and practices. Personal experiences aside, without conscientious knowledgeable guides to establish a high level of awareness, societal influencers are left to make daily decisions on which information reaches the masses (and which does not) based upon their limited individual perspectives, ideologies and levels of awareness.
Teachers, reports, editors and producers simply cannot know what they do not know. And when widespread policies and practices governed by elected and appointed leaders have broad-based impact on generations of peoples’ lives, we cannot afford to continue the status quo of ignoring or downplaying critical race-related issues.
The Race Card
“The Race Card” offers 11 measures of life in America across the Black-White racial divide.
The purpose of this card is to provide a snapshot of life in every city, every region and state wherein a significant population of Black Americans reside. I created The Race Card as a resource tool to help frame a national narrative and expand the discourse on race away beyond individual experiences, anecdotes and misconceptions about racial stereotypes.
The Race Card addresses institutionalized policies and practices that contain ingrained biases and produce racial disparities with measurable impact across America. The information offers eye-opening conversation-starting insights derived from credible publicly available resources.
White Supremacy & Racial Hierarchy
When we speak of race in America, we are often unknowingly engaging in discourse about white supremacy, which is rooted in a belief in the societal construct of racial hierarchy. The shorthand we use is “race,” which is often confused for individual racial attitudes versus systemic institutionalized segregationist policies and practices. These ubiquitous systems influence our attitudes and shape our perspectives toward one another around a false ideology of racial hierarchy that values whiteness and devalues others based on a descending ladder of racial identity with black at the bottom.
White men established our current capitalist system of policies and practices rooted in a belief in racial hierarchy, which stems back to Reconstruction and the efforts by white “radicals” to redesign, reform, and reconstruct a formerly whites-only nation into an equitable multicultural Inclusive America that empowered Black people to reach our productive capabilities in a capitalist society. That effort failed. And the results of that failure are measurable today and through every decade dating back to Reconstruction.
In order to effectively take steps toward addressing current disparities, The Race Card can be used as a helpful resource tool in every educational, economic and political discourse and debate.
Race Card Categories
Although there are myriad other critical aspects of American life not featured in The Race Card, these 11 categories are helpful in establishing a foundation upon which other categories may be added.
Ideally, the discussion around each category will dive into the historical trends of the data. Studying data trends is an exercise that offers a distinct insight and often a paradigm shift in understanding about where society is today along a historical timeline relative to our predecessors. Data trends can elevate awareness to our current role in the continuum of history as an ongoing story-line that we are now responsible for sustaining or disrupting.
Education
There are 51 million students in public schools today, taught by 3.2 million teachers. The student population, which is 52 percent “minority” groups, still reflects failed efforts to desegregate the schools.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education, that all public schools must be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about the failure of this ruling in his 1964 book, “Why We Can’t Wait.”
Following the landmark ruling, the Court also gave power to local leaders over the pace of desegregation in upholding the “Pupil Placement Law.” This PPL nullified the Court’s landmark ruling, which remains ingrained in history books today as a huge structural change. Yet, the presumed end to “Jim Crow” segregation never happened. It simply took on a new form in policy … as data in The Race Card clearly reveals.
Unemployment
The misconception about the “lowest unemployment rate in history” is that it is a misunderstood political bragging point. The truth is the unemployment rate for Black people leaving the plantations following the Civil War was obviously much higher than White unemployment. This has remained true ever since Black American descendants of slaves became Black “Americans” with citizenship via the 14th amendment in 1868.
From 1868 to 1968, unemployment among Black Americans has always followed the trend of unemployment of White Americans, yet remained double the rate.
In the 52 years since the assassination of MLK, this trend has not changed. I’m not sure that’s worth bragging about.
White America today would never tolerate a rate as high as Black America is experiencing. The danger of a “Goldilocks Economy,” wherein the economy is growing at a steady rate and unemployment for White Americans is at a historic low, is the incentive to lower the rate of unemployment for the most vulnerable populations disappears, if it existed at all. The past priority on lowering only white unemployment will require a paradigm shift as the nation’s demographics continue to shift and require an expanded lens by policymakers and economists.
Income
Household income (HHI) is a standard data point that is also rooted in history. Black Americans living in a society built for the benefit of White Americans have complained consistently about systemic mistreatment since becoming Americans in 1868. Generation after generation, wages for Black workers were lower than wages for White workers, even when performing the same jobs. And in many cases, Black workers are paid less than their White counterparts while outperforming them and carrying greater responsibility.
This trend is would-be plain-sight evidence were it not hidden behind the veil of secret salary allocation today. Whites own the vast majority of private sector employer firms, and therefore set and manage the policies and practices of payment to the workforce.
When we think of white supremacy, seldom do we think of the CEOs of corporations and businesses, large and small. But, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, during which Dr. King gave his most iconic speech, brought into undeniable view the fact that Black Americans were not offered many opportunities to make a living wage.
In 1967, the gap between black and white incomes was $20,000. Black HHI was $24,700 vs. White $44,700, according to Pew Research. Today, the gap is $29,000.
Net Worth
The median net worth is the point in which half the households have more net worth and half have less. Twenty-five percent of Black households have zero or less than zero net worth. Only 10 percent of White households are that poor.
In Boston, the net worth of the average Black family is $8. Not $800. Not $80. Eight dollars.
Consider the fact that Boston is the second most active and prosperous innovation ecosystem in the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet. Within Boston resides the oldest institution of higher education, Harvard ($41B endowment), along with a number of other highly revered universities, such as MIT ($17B endowment) and Boston College ($2.5B endowment), et al.
Moreover, The Boston Foundation is a billion-dollar treasure within a host of institutional treasures. Yet, history reveals that Boston was, and remains still, a harshly racially divided city wherein the haves have a lot and the have nots are mostly Black families. Given this is the case in one of America’s most prosperous cities in the 21st century, data clearly show that all previous efforts to disrupt this extreme gap have failed. Yet, there is no sense of urgency, alarm or overtly noticeable concern about the lives of so many Bostonians. The same is true in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Detroit et al. What does it mean that this isn’t a prominent national discussion in every election?
Average Wealth
The accumulation of transferable assets over time is a strong indicator of progress in a capitalist society. The wealth of households in America is monitored by a number of institutions, including the Federal Reserve, which finds the paltry pace at which black Americans accumulate wealth alarming. According to the Fed:
The fact that blacks, on average, have considerably less wealth than whites is troubling, not just because it is an inequality of outcomes, but also because it strongly suggests inequality of opportunity. The economic opportunities provided by wealth range from insuring consumption against disruptions to a household’s disposable income (such as surprise medical expenditures or unemployment spells) to enabling access to housing, good public schools, and post-secondary education.
The current racial wealth gap is the consequence of many decades of racial inequality that imposed barriers to wealth accumulation either through explicit prohibition during slavery or unequal treatment after emancipation. Examples of post-emancipation barriers include legally mandated segregation in schools and housing, discrimination in the labor market, and redlining, which reduced access to capital in black neighborhoods.
And while the existence of a racial wealth gap may not be altogether surprising, it may be surprising how little the racial wealth gap has changed over the past half century, even after the passage of civil rights legislation. In fact, the 2016 wealth gap is roughly the same as it was in 1962, two years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Home Ownership
Myriad actors are related to the capacity for Americans to acquire ownership of homes, which is regarded as one of the key first steps in accumulating transferable wealth in America: education, income, credit score, access to capital (i.e. loans), assets, liabilities, etc. But, we can clearly see the racial component ingrained in the system by looking at the gaps that persist over time and the behavior of the banking industry in cahoots with policymakers.
For example, in just the past 10 years, banks have been fined $243B for racial discriminatory behavior in the housing industry. In 1963, Dr. King wrote about this practice in the first chapter of his book, “Why We Can’t Wait.” The chapter is titled, “the Negro Revolution: Why 1963?”
It speaks of a nonviolent uprising in nearly 1,000 cities due to the three factors …
Continued school segregation
Housing discrimination
Banking discrimination
Today, how many Americans know about the “Negro American Revolution?” The Department of Labor called it “…. the most important domestic event in the postwar period of the United States.”
Moreover, how many Americans know that the banking industry continues to practice the same business model that MLK decried 60 years ago?
Today, the average gap in the homeownership rate is 33 percent between Black and White families, with the current rate for Black homeowners at the lowest level since 1950. Why isn’t this systemic issue a major talking point in every election at every level?
Business Ownership
The key to building prosperity and wealth in any capitalist system is through ownership. Looking through the lens of history again, we see Black Americans entering into a hostile White America prohibited from competing in the markets except in instances where allowed by White power brokers.
So, it is startling to see that since 1868, Whites have maintained nearly complete control of the entire business sector despite significant growth of populations of minority groups and steady growth rates in starting businesses.
In America, entrepreneurship and the startup, development and growth of a thriving business is a key factor in equitable ownership of a share of the American Dream. It is a top priority for many immigrants. Today, Latinx far exceed the rate of entrepreneurship by any group (51 percent), including Asians (33 percent). But it may come as a surprise to many that the rate of entrepreneurship among Black Americans has tracked White entrepreneurship over the past decade. In 2000, the rates were 23 percent and 28 percent respectively. In 2018, the rate of black entrepreneurship was 24 percent, for whites 29 percent. In 2017, Black entrepreneurship saw a spike, equaling White entrepreneurship at 30 percent. Both fell the following year, with the Black rate plummeting.
Business Productivity
The U.S. ranks second in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, which ranks 130 national economies around the world. The key to economic competitiveness is business productivity, the vast majority of which is produced by America’s White-owned businesses. The challenge facing the nation, however, is the stagnation of the growth in White population coupled with the explosive growth in minority populations, led by Latinx, requires a fundamental shift in where the nation invests in scaling up business productivity over the next several decades, starting with this one.
America cannot sustain its global competitiveness with so much of its minority population producing so little. The high degree of activity isn’t translating into growth in productivity. This is due to a variety of addressable factors. But if ignored, this is the quintessential data point that could weigh heavily on the capacity for economic growth in America in the near future.
Patent Ownership
One of the key security measures for inventors and entrepreneurial innovators is trademarks and patents to protect intellectual property and inventions. The steep cost of securing a patent singularly prohibits the vast majority of black entrepreneurs and inventors from pursuing such protection. The lack thereof negatively impacts an entrepreneur’s chances of securing equity funding in a startup or other sources of funding.
While there is no shortage of innovative talent among Black Americans, the stumbling blocks of poor quality schools, lack of safe permanent housing, low wages, no generational or accumulated wealth, and all the systemic daily challenges of struggling to overcome poverty undermine any hope of transferring their innovative talent into a profitable solution to a market need.
Moreover, data analysis reveal that the determining factor in securing patents isn’t in the strength of math scores, as previously believed. Students with the lowest math scores in families earning the highest incomes have the same number of patents as students with the highest math scores in families in the lowest earnings strata.
Land Ownership
The ladder to economic prosperity is through ownership (land, homes, businesses and investments that yield positive returns). Owning an equitable share of the American Dream of prosperity and establishing a higher standard of living starts with ownership. For most Americans, this first level step of asset ownership is real estate.
The ability for families to pass down generational assets that would ensure the next generation doesn’t start over with nothing or less than nothing by inheriting generational debt and poverty, starts with ownership of real property, business or investments. The entry door to ownership is income. The entry to income is education. Entrepreneurship accelerates the pace to ownership.
Using the Race Card
The Race Card can be useful in guiding racial discourse.
But it is made most powerful when used to journey back through the course of history, which today remains a landscape filled with propaganda and narratives told by history books and media that lack context and understanding.