Can the Racial Wealth Gap Be Closed Without Speaking of Race?

Race is the age-old tool used by wealthy white capitalists to divide and rule the American poor. Race is the reason why America has never had a working class political party. Race has now blinded the left to this fundamental reality

Any downward redistribution program will inevitably help minorities more than whites. Personally, I like Matt Bruenig's proposal to have the government create a social wealth fund that pays a dividend to all Americans.

None of the solutions suggested by the experts in this article will have any enduring value unless we start teaching all Americans, regardless of race, about money, about how to build wealth. It's been said that to avoid being poor as an adult you need to do three things: finish high school, hold off having children before the age of eighteen, and get married or have a partner for support when you do have children. Only eight percent of people who do all three end up in poverty.

The article states that "Even black people with college degrees are likely to have less wealth than white people who didn’t complete high school." If the racial wealth gap problem is that deep and endemic, it requires analysis at a very fundamental level, rather than any suggestions for cosmetic solutions.

At some point the country needs to move beyond race based politics and focus on the real issue: an increasingly competitive economy, increasing job complexity and the challenge of raising and educating children in a two income home. A significant part of the economic disparity is a function of the relentless focus of wealthier parents on the education and welfare of a generally smaller number of children. Lower income parents just cannot compete, regardless of their race or ethnic background. Personally, I think that public school needs to run to 5pm every day and include study hall and a full set of sports programs in the afternoon. In the absence of that, those with access to tutors, after school sports, etc. will continue to pull further and further ahead - regardless of race. That is a problem that can be solved, and in time end racial bias in the workplace as the level of competence equalizes across the employee population. However, it is always easier to play the race card. The idea that poor white people in Appalachia somehow have a better deal than urban blacks in Los Angeles is one of the reasons that we have Donald Trump in the White House. These people are demagogues, not politicians.

We can all take a hand in this directly. As an engineering manager at Google, I stepped aside from my role leading 25 engineers to teach introductory Computer Science at one of America's largest Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This coupled with weekly interview preparation sessions (I've interviewed over 150 candidates at Google), helped seven of my students land well-paid summer internships at Google. Working at Google has changed my life -- I hope it will do the same for these students. This Fall I will expand my efforts by teaching the interview preparation sessions at two schools. Can I double my impact and generate even more opportunity for Black students? I have to try. Is there something you can do?

This column along with Ms. Goldstein's one in today's NYT address 2 sides of the same issue. Lack of wealth, largely a consequence of discrimination in home ownership, also results in school segregation due to de facto segregation in communities which also contributes to resistance to integration measures such busing. The wealth deficit in Black American families is also a driving force in the reparations issue. While we may want a race/color blind society, our current laws and practices do not allow the favoring of one segment of society over another. A policy that subsidizes home ownership by descendants of slaves could possibly address the issues of wealth, school integration and reparations simultaneously., and the proposal by Sen. Warren is a place to start the conversation. However, the devil is in the details. Race relations in the U.S. is an old, ongoing issue that must be addressed if we, as a society, are to truly become one. While we have always thought of the U.S. as providing the opportunity for social/class mobility not present in European societies, the reality is now that we have less social mobility than is present in much of Europe. The strength of America has always been the presence of a vibrant and growing middle class. The growing disparity of wealth in the U.S. threatens our society and democracy. Unlike many other issues, the solution is solely dependent on what we do and does not require the cooperation of other countries.

Facially neutral programs inevitably help some more than others. But, the same program with explicitly race-based benefit criteria is dead on arrival at the Supreme Court. Race-based criteria create an opportunity for Republicans to run against even worthwhile programs to attract white support. Democrats cannot defend their program by pointing to white beneficiaries. That is the one issue. Another issue is that white people want to believe that they have succeeded on their own and are not the beneficiaries of privilege. So in addition to making programs racially neutral, it is vital that benefit programs provide universal access. Social Security and Medicare are examples. Tea Party demonstrators protesting the ACA carried signs and chanted, "Get Your Federal Hands Off My Medicare". These programs transcend politics in the minds of white beneficiaries because access and benefits are not overtly political. Medicaid is a program with restricted access based upon facially neutral criteria and funded by block grants. It is overtly political and Republicans mount political assaults on the programs and its supporters. In Red states, many eligible voters fail to enroll because of the social and political stigma attached to being identified as beneficiaries and the fear that they will receive substandard care. The ACA is even more overtly political and is being gutted by partisan attacks. The solution is racial neutrality, federal funding and non-partisan administration.

Somewhere in this furor we seem to have lost the idea that the path up from poverty involves work. Sadly, misguided trade practices of the past have absolutely accelerated the gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans. It's tough to improve your lot in life if you don't have a job because it was outsourced to China. You can plot the acceleration of wealth disparity and the growth of imports since the Clinton administration approved "fast tracking" of China into the WTO. Throw in the displacement of entry level manufacturing jobs by robotics and technology and the problem is further exacerbated A national agenda that focusses on creating economic opportunities for all of our citizens through education, investment and policy will go a long way to closing the gap.

In my view Congress should focus on equal opportunity for all. Old laws that discriminated should be fixed rather than making new discriminatory laws. While the intention is admirable, it has lost sight of the principle of equal opportunity for all.

Want to enhance income/wealth of households and families? Bear no children prior to age 25 and securing substantive education/skills to support a child or children. At one time such a proposal was called common sense.

The black vets of WWII mostly did not get any GI benefits, either for education or for home ownership, which is largley what helped the white middle class rise in the 1950s. Why not offer the equivalent to their descendants?

I have a slight issue with our tendency to equate efforts to raise up the poor with efforts to address racism. While much of racism manifests itself by keeping black Americans in poverty, lifting up the poor, or poor blacks, is not the same as addressing racism. As many of the comments in this post demonstrate we have a pretty serious racism problem in this country and it is getting worse and is seemingly become more, not less, misunderstood with each passing year. The article does shift my thinking a bit with it's data on the various ways black Americans, at all socioeconomic levels, have less wealth than t heir white peers so maybe the idea that closing the wealth gap does address racism is not so far off. But the vast and growing number of people who are disenfranchised by poverty, whether it be urban or rural, white, red, brown or black, is a huge problem and cannot be ignored.

It is against the law to discriminate by race. If you want to set up programs that explicitly benefit certain races, then you must first repeal the civil rights act. Somehow I don't think that most progressives would like the outcome of that.

Africans Americans have been denied wealth opportunities for generations. African Americans are more poorer than other Americans even African Americans with college degree have less wealth than whites with no college degree. Use enterprise zones wealth gap programs and other means to help African Americans and other poorer and wealth gap folks.Its not surprising that laws (civic rights) and programs(affirmative action) helps mostly white folks especially white women. I just do not care what you call any program that help african americans just pass it and make it law. African Americans have no problem helping other people also since it helps all Americans. Call it assets wealth gap enterprise zones etc. It does not matter.

Reparation ideas need to be studied. I am not convinced that the methods described in the article are a good idea. It is impossible to correct the wrongs done to black people historically. However, we can still provide reparations. They do not all have to be monetary. We need to educate our children from the perspective of the oppressed. We need to correct the current inequalities. Find a way to redistribute the wealth more equally in future generations. Limit the wealth that can be passed on to future generations. This may correct some of the effects of historical inequality. One thing is clear, the top percent do not want to let go of any power or resources. We do not want to admit that we have a class system. The top percent are letting the rest fight it out among themselves and it serves them to have animosity between black and white and division between groups in general. While we fight for the crumbs they are hoarding. The American Dream is used to control because everyone is selfish. Nothing against the rich privileged or lucky but the level of inequality is just plain inhumane. The top percent will take their spoils and set up somewhere else in the world. People are so worried about who else is going to benefit from whatever program and cringe at the word reparations. However it is done, there needs to be some wealth redistribution. Stop being greedy and selfish.

Reparations for slavery via guaranteed incomes or other payments are untenable for many reasons: 1. Slavery ended in 1865 and most non-black Americans are descended from immigrants who arrived after 1865 and were not slave-holders, and thus do not owe reparations. 2. Many blacks are descended from Africans who came to the US after 1865 and therefore are not owed reparations. 3. Many blacks are of mixed race; will their payments be pro-rated on the percentage of black/slave ancestry? How will such ancestry be measured? DNA? Historic or genealogical records? 4. Will blacks descended from African tribes that captured members of other tribes and sold them into slavery receive reparations? 5. Do all taxpayers have to pay into a reparations fund, or only non-blacks? 6. Will rich blacks (e.g., the Obamas) receive reparations or will there be a cap on recipients' income? 7. Will illegal aliens receive or pay reparations? 8. Will payments to blacks be reduced by the amounts paid for welfare, affirmative action and other benefits they and their ancestors have received since 1865? 9. Will reparations mean the end of affirmative action for blacks? 10. What about reparations for Native Americans, who lost so much land and so many lives? 11. Poor blacks are far outnumbered by poor whites, Hispanics, Native Americans; won't they be eligible for guaranteed incomes? If reparations and guaranteed incomes are planks in the 2020 Democratic platform Trump will be re-elected.

First, the role of the government is to provide economic mobility and perhaps a minimum standard of living. It isn't to make a particular race wealthier. Second, the wrongs of slavery, and red lining will not be undone by another form of race targeting government interference. The racial wealth disparity was actually much less in the 1960s than it is now - despite the numerous government interventions in the ensuing years like Affirmative Action, section 8 housing, etc. While it could be partially attributable to the War on Drugs and an ensuing spike in incarceration for African Americans, the reality is that at least part of the solution must come from the Black community. If racism is the biggest problem facing African Americans today, why is that black children have better outcomes as adults when they go to school in integrated schools with more white children? Why is that when a black person, say Lebron James, becomes wealthy he moves to a white neighborhood? Now racism is real, but being followed by a security guard at Macy's kind of pales compared to dodging crack fiends and hoping you don't get clipped by a random drive by. Wealth is created by education and jobs. Kinds don't learn when they have a chaotic home environment and jobs aren't located in dangerous neighborhoods. Let's fix failing inner city schools and provide job training but let's also encourage better parenting and an end to gang violence. Those are huge obstacles to black prosperity.

There's little or no racial wealth gap with Chinese-Americans or Indian-Americans, whose families are actually richer than the national average. Why is that ?

We've already been pushed to violate the 14th amendment with racial preferences/affirmative action. Now, the left is trying to create a even more activist judiciary that would be able to do direct transfers of wealth. It didnt work it Zimbabwe and it wont work here. A better question to pose is why African-Americans of means (over 100k household income) still do worse on many standardized test than poor Asians and Caucasians. Its sometimes better to look at once own house then to outwardly blame dysfunction on others.

Please let's not have any more racial double standards! I would support a program which helps the poor, but not a program which helps only some of the poor.

For the extreme left to propose raising the wealth of poor blacks without doing so for similarly poor whites, Native Americans and other people of color is ridiculous, not to mention unconstitutional. As stated by Chief Justice Roberts, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” (From the majority opinion in the Seattle School District Case, 28 June 2007.)

It is indisputably true that African-Americans and native Americans have suffered disproportionately from past US policies. But if we want to remedy injustice and help current generations, we need a class-based, race-blind policy that can not only pass muster with the Supreme Court, but win broad enough support to pass Congress. That means targeting class-based characteristics like family wealth and perhaps also educational attainment, long-term benefits enjoyed mostly, but not exclusively by whites. Yes, there are poor, downwardly mobile people of all races and locations, and building a class-based coalition for broad reform that helps ANYONE who is suffering is the most democratic policy, and the most likely to succeed.

Given that the focus of some of these initiatives is determined by race, the Supreme Court would probably strike anything of this nature down as a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Any such action would have to be applied to some other criteria than race, e.g. economic status, tax filing status, geographic status, etc.

I first heard of Baby Bonds when they were proposed by Hilary Clinton more than ten years ago. Hopefully, there's more traction now.

Less than a third of poor households are black. Whatever you do to build assets in poor households that would pass a legal test would get diluted by 70 per cent if racial equity is your target. The better solution is just work on poor households and hope black households get carried along the way.

I'm not against plans of this type. We NEED to do something to reduce poverty. But if we open these payments to arriving immigrants we're going to be sending a pretty loud message to all the folks down in El Salvador who haven't yet made up their minds to chuck it all and come up here.

Equalizing wealth across race or any other demographic is the wrong objective. Build a society where everyone has decent healthcare, a good eduction and a real opportunity to rent or buy good housing. This may require a lot more than race based initiatives, but it is the right way to go. If each individual's needs regardless of race) are being met, it should not matter if some, or a large number, have greater wealth. There are lots of poor whites (and Asians and Hispanics). Programs that identify blacks for special treatment are unfair to all the other poor and pit group against group -- a way to undermine social programs for all.

Providing true equal opportunity for all regardless of the circumstances of your birth would be a good start. Equal opportunity for an equal quality education regardless of the neighborhood for example. What if the facilities and teacher quality was the same for the wealthiest suburban school and the poorest inner city school?

Yes , let us take away all their self respect and force them always to be dependent on subsidies. Stop complaining and be proud of your achievements.

Let's bottom line it in imo, what history, common sense and fairness has taught us. Make sure the guy on the bottom has a decent standard of living and then it is ok for the top guy to make as much as they want. If you do it by ways they can be proven right, do it. However, don't do the extremes ie listen to the far left who wants to put everybody on welfare forever or the far right who wants everybody to fend for themselves and only let the strongest survive.