(That notion of racial economic equity, namely that the proportion of persons with wealth above a stipulated amount is the same in both groups, was established by the first and only Black Nobel laureate in economics, W. Racial justice would mean that White and Black households are seen in equal measure throughout the wealth distribution-with Blacks accounting for 13% of the bottom, the middle, and the top, the same share we represent in the population as a whole. But alas, that would still leave unaddressed our unjust and reprehensible racial wealth gap. The way to break up the concentration of wealth and power in the plutocracy is with a substantive redistributive wealth and/or estate tax. Yet, a capitalist class of energy tycoons that stands to lose some of its short-term profits if we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels is able to fund aggressive lobbying that impedes democratic action. For instance, a large majority of Americans want action on climate change. Our attempts at progress even for those things on which we agree are consistently thwarted. Wealth concentration is wreaking havoc on our democracy and our capacity to collectively envision and establish a just American society. the ability to translate all that economic might into political power) since the Great Depression, and it is being driven by a class of White billionaires. We haven’t seen this obscene a concentration of wealth and its accompanying plutocracy (i.e. More specifically, the top one-tenth of 1% of households, those with over $20.6 million in wealth, own about as much of the nation’s wealth as the entire bottom 90%. According to one study, the top 10% of American households owns nearly 80% of the nation’s wealth. Instead, mean wealth is driven by a skewed distribution where the wealthy own just about everything. What’s more, the mean or average wealth of a White family, $933,700, is nearly seven times that of Black family wealth at $138,200.īut clearly, the “typical” White family are not millionaires and have nowhere near $933,700 in wealth. The median wealth for a Black family, $17,600 (inclusive of home equity), is only about one-tenth of the $171,000 median wealth for a White family. Wealth disparity and the racial wealth gap in America are dramatic.
Below are three complementary policies that can make meaningful progress toward undoing centuries of systemic inequities, while prospectively ensuring capital access going forward: (1) Reparations through which the nation acknowledges and redresses its exploitation and extraction of Black resources and personhood (2) Baby Bonds (publicly funded trust accounts) to establish a birthright to capital and (3) a wealth tax to break up the concentration of wealth among the capitalist elite and diffuse the political power that goes along with such concentration.
These racial and economic injustices, while entrenched, can be addressed. The ensuing history of the United States is built on both racial and economic injustice, two related but distinct problems. In a nutshell, our racial dilemma is grounded in a political, economic, and identity-based devaluing of Black lives that has persisted ever since the first enslaved African arrived in Jamestown in 1619. Black lives are devalued in our economy and our fiscal policies reflect that. Moreover, the overall public response to the pandemic and to broader economic insecurity has been highly racialized. Their diminished political position is evidenced by their exposure to unjust police violence, and their economic vulnerability is made most vivid by the persistent and unjust racial wealth gap that leaves Black families with few resources to address a shock like the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that a Black man can be killed by a law enforcement officer over an approximately 10-minute period with a knee on his neck in broad daylight while repeatedly screaming for mercy, and that he can’t breathe, speaks to a larger political economy that devalues people’s lives based on their race or ethnicity.īlack Americans, because of racialized stigma and their economic and political position, are not only more vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence, but to a global pandemic as well. The protests in every city rallying against police killings and racialized violence directed at Black bodies are inseparable from the economic conditions that Black communities are facing.
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