CommonBondz FAQs

Do you have questions about racism but feel uncomfortable asking them in a small group setting or one-on-one with a partner/mentor? If so, you can ask your questions confidentially and we will provide an answer to you. Our goal is to educate as many people as possible through any communication channel they are comfortable with. You can ask a question here.

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Black Lives Matter Movement

White Privilege

Health and Healthcare

Education

Employment

Wealth

Housing

Q: I am unsure of what terminology to use: Black, African American, or People of Color. Is there one term more appropriate than another?

A: “Black” refers to dark-skinned people of African descent, no matter their nationality. “African American” refers to people who were born in the United States and have African ancestry. Many people use the terms interchangeably.

Young black activists in the United States started using “Black” in the 1960s when referring to descendants of slaves as a way to leave the term “Negro” and the Jim Crow era behind, says Keith Mayes, associate professor of African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota.

“African American” caught on in the US in the 1980s as a more “particular and historical” term than the generic “Black,” Mayes says. “People of color” was originally meant to be a synonym of “Black,” but its meaning has expanded to accommodate Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and other non-white groups, says Efrén Pérez, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of California Los Angeles. To say you are a person of color is more celebratory and positive than to say you are part of a “minority,” he says. All three terms are acceptable. Which you prefer comes down to personal choice, the situation you’re in and how invested you are in your racial identity, Perez says.

CommonBondz has chosen to use the terminology of African American. Our view is that the history of African ancestry is important in understanding the history of racism in the United States, starting with slavery in the early 1600s. The meanings of words and phrases can change over time. For example, the words “colored” and “Negro” are now considered dated and offensive – but they weren’t when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Negro College Fund were created in the early 20th century. Those organizations haven’t changed their names, but “by no means they are trying to perpetuate a name that is offensive to Black people,” Mayes says. “Their very history, it’s about advancing the Black cause.” There are other terms you may hear in referencing how to refer to Blacks, African Americans, and people of Color. You should assume that these terms are offensive and inappropriate, and should not be used.

Q: I’m a white person who wants to learn more about racism. How can I do that, and how can I get involved in helping eliminate it?

Our advice is to be open to learning, listening, getting to know friends who are African American on a more personal basis, and getting involved in your community. 

Educate yourself and listen. This step is often overlooked but is crucial in understanding issues of race. Turn to books, articles, movies and other resources to deepen your understanding of the various forms of racism. Be open to listening to the personal experiences of African Americans about how they have had to live with racism within our society. In many cases, whites have no idea the embedded systematic racism and implicit bias that is built into our day-to-day lives. Our CommonBondz resource library is a great way to learn about specific areas of racism, and our community forums are another great way to learn from others. 

Start conversations. Initiate discussions about racism with your partner, family members, friends, children and coworkers. If you have a friend that is African American, ask them if they are comfortable with having conversations with you to help your understanding. Be open to sharing how you feel, what you are concerned about, as well as what you don't understand. Look for examples of how racism plays out in your communities and what you can do about it. And if you witness someone saying or doing something racist, speak up. If you are looking to develop personal relationships and don’t know where to start, sign up for our CommonBondz partnership program on our website. 

Get involved and take action (don't be silent): In many cases, whites are hesitant to be involved due to the fear of saying or doing something wrong, and having a fear of being deemed "racist.” Due to this, they remain silent on learning and discussing the issues. Silence is accepting the status quo, and pretending nothing is wrong. Silence doesn't allow action, and action, especially from whites, needs to occur to understand the issues and make progress. Get involved in community groups that are discussing racial issues and actions. Understand the history curriculum that your children are learning at school to ensure it talks about the history of African American oppression. Get involved with affinity groups at your employer that educate you on different races, cultures, and beliefs. Find out what it takes to end structural & institutional racism and act: vote and where you have influence, change practices. However you can, help level the playing field. If you’re nervous about what to say or how to start, go to the Ask a Question link on our CommonBondz website and we will get you answers to make you more comfortable.

Q: Why don’t Black Lives Matter protesters also address Black on Black crime?

A: This may seem like an innocent question, but to many people it sounds loaded. If the only time someone asks this is when African Americans protest police violence, it sounds like a “dog whistle” — a coded message among bigots ignoring that white-on-white crime also takes an enormous toll on law enforcement. It’s common for victims and perpetrators of violence to share a race. The 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, which tabulates numerous crimes, including assault, burglary and rape (but not murder), found that in crimes where whites were victims, the offender was white 62.1% of the time. When Blacks were victims, the offender was Black 70.3% of the time.

The FBI’s 2018 numbers for homicides with a single killer and a single victim, which are not comprehensive, show a similar breakdown. Roughly 81% of white homicide victims that year were killed by another white person, while with almost 89% of Black victims the killer was Black.

Also,  Black Lives Matter has protested Black-on-Black violence and community groups across the US have addressed it for decades. For example, this summer in Chicago alone civic groups have led peace walks, held neighborhood vigils and mentored Black youth about avoiding crime. BLM and other activist groups actually consider the systemic racism that lands so many African Americans in poor, crime-riddled neighborhoods a form of structural violence.

Among its tools for addressing conflict, BLM directly addresses community violence and warns that some neighborhoods are complicit in “ignoring, minimizing or encouraging violence.” It asks residents of crime-plagued communities to educate themselves and “support social norms and conditions that prevent violence from happening.” The group counts “combating and countering acts of violence” as one of its primary missions, along with advocating for the LGBT community.

You may be asking: Where are those headlines? Well, it’s important to remember that, especially in the mainstream media, certain types of protests and actions tend to get more coverage.

Johnetta Elzie of Campaign Zero, a police reform organization, was one of BLM’s top leaders when media outlets descended on Ferguson, Missouri, to cover the weeks of unrest that followed the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown.

But that is just what you saw on TV and in newspapers. She and other Ferguson demonstrators were in the city for 400 straight days, long after the media went home, advocating for all manner of change in the city and region. Unfortunately, the media moved onto other topics and didn't come back to covering the additional efforts being done in the city. 

A critical point to reflect on is why is this question a typical question by people (especially whites) when discussing Black Lives Matter. The implicit bias built into this is when African Americans protest police violence, it sounds like a “dog whistle” — a coded message among bigots ignoring that White-on-White crime also takes an enormous toll on law enforcement.  It's an area we will focus more on when we address Individual Racism and Implicit Bias, along with Law Enforcement. 

Another key reflection point is more often than not, when there is black-on-black crime, black people are held accountable. They are arrested, tried, and sent to jail. When whites/police commit crimes against black people, more often than not, no one is held accountable. 

Q: What’s wrong with saying, “All Lives Matter?”

A: We believe that All Lives Matter. That said, the reality is until Black Lives Matter, there's no truth to the statement, "All Lives Matter.”  Black Lives Matter doesn't mean everyone's life isn't important, it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within our white-dominated society, is what we need to focus on in order to get to a place where All Lives Matter. Being open to becoming educated on the data and facts around institutional and systematic racism will open your eyes to the reason why we need to acknowledge Black Lives Matter as a separate movement, and all work together to get to a place of equality, where all live truly matter equally. 

Here is a short video that explains it as well.

Q: What is the difference between racism and racial bias?

A: Racism is defined as a power structure that allows one group to put a system in place where they use their race to direct discrimination against people of different race based on the belief that their own race is superior. Racism can only exist when one group has power and influence over another. (From the article “Can Black People Be Racist?” by James Woods)

Implicit bias, or racial bias, refers to unconscious biases we have about people of other races that affect our decisions and actions. Implicit/Racial bias can range from clutching your purse when passing a Black man on the street to assuming Black boys are older and less innocent than comparable white ones. They are the smaller ways in which everybody contributes to racism every day.

“The implicit associations we harbor in our subconscious cause us to have feelings and attitudes about other people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, and appearance,” says Ohio State’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. “These associations develop over the course of a lifetime beginning at a very early age through exposure to direct and indirect messages.”

When it comes to race, these implicit biases can be pervasive – and dangerous. Take the 2014 case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was playing outside with a toy gun when he was fatally shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio. Authorities said Rice was big for his age and that the white police officer who shot him may have thought he was older – and that the gun was real.

CommonBondz focus for the month of October has been on Individual Racism, including Implicit Bias and why the idea of “colorblindness” is no longer appropriate. Visit our Resources page to learn more about these topics and others.

Q: What is White Privilege?

White privilege refers to the individual and systemic advantages afforded to white people by virtue of them belonging to the dominant ethnic group in society.

White privilege is seeing mostly people who look like you on TV and in movies. It’s having the history of people who look like you taught in textbooks. It’s not needing to worry about whether the negative actions of another White person will reflect badly on you.

It’s applying for a loan or opening a bank account without your race possibly working against you. It’s being pulled over by a police officer without having to fear for your life.

Scholar and activist Peggy McIntosh articulated the concept in a 1988 paper, describing the term as an “invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.”

In other words, white privilege is subtle things that often go unnoticed – unless you’re not white. A common argument against the existence of white privilege is that it doesn’t reflect the experiences of white people who grew up poor, or who faced obstacles because of other facets of their identity, such as their gender, religion or sexual orientation.

Certainly, there are white people who experience stark poverty, and there are people of color who are extremely wealthy.

But acknowledging the existence of white privilege isn’t to say that all white people have had everything handed to them, or that they haven’t overcome significant challenges in life. It’s that with all other things being equal, a white person will still have an advantage because their race won’t be one of the things working against them.

White privilege has nothing to do with who you are as a person. It has everything to do with the systematic realities of the world we live in. It is one which generation after generation oppresses people who are black and benefits people who are white at all levels of society. When white people dismiss the idea of privilege with statements like, ‘But I had it hard too," it’s irrelevant. Because no matter how poor you were, no matter what neighborhood you grew up in, no matter what struggle you identify with, you were still white while experiencing it; which means compared to any black person living a paralleled experience, you were indeed reaping the benefits of societal preference towards white skin. Realize that no matter ‘how good’ black people are, no matter how well spoken, how successful, how wealthy, or how educated we bring ourselves to be, racism and unfair treatment due to skin color remains a constant.

White privilege isn’t a stab at your character, it’s a reminder of the world we live in. Acknowledging it promotes a shift in our culture. Dismissing it twists the knife in our country’s already wounded system.” At CommonBondz, we are working to help white people listen and learn about what white privilege is, and how we can effectively work and lead in driving a culture and society where, as our founding fathers stated, "all men are created equal.”

Q: Are all white people racist?

Most white people define being a racist as someone who blatantly and openly holds and demonstrates conscious dislike and prejudice against or is antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. The actual definition does not include the items above in bold. So while white people have one perception of what a racist is, and may not intentionally exhibit racist behavior based on their definition, most white people fall under the true definition of being racist based on their unconscious biases and beliefs, and all white people have benefited from structural and systematic racism that has been established in our country over the past 400 years.

Why? The reason is simple. Racism is so ingrained in the US – its history, institutions, and even pop culture – that it’s almost impossible for a white person to not absorb racism.

“You start off with the assumption that you are, because everybody living in the United States has internalized stereotypes about Black people,” says Mark Naison, a professor of African American Studies at Fordham University.

So, what can white people do about this? First, put aside your defensive response to being perceived a racist, and focus on how you can listen, learn and lead in helping overcome racism. Honesty is a great start, because denial perpetuates racism. A willingness to become educated is another key acceptance that helps in truly understanding how racism permeates our society on a daily basis. Scholars also say an indispensable key to overcoming racism is forming sustained personal relationships with people of color.

The unique multi-channel approach of CommonBondz helps white people understand more about racism and how they can become a key ally and leader in working to eliminate it . Our robust resource library, speaker series and FAQs are a great resource for people to become educated and knowledgeable on different topics of racism in a direct, honest and respectful way. Our partnership program allows African Americans and whites to establish personal relationships which provide a great avenue to learn more about someone's life experiences and help educate each person on perceptions and facts that drive racism. Our goal is to not only educate our followers on racism, but also what each and every one of them can do, regardless of their race, the eliminate racism and drive equity for everyone.

Q: What are the reasons that African Americans have more significant health issues than other races?

Health issues specific to race are driven by Health inequities. Health inequities are systematic differences in the opportunities groups have to achieve optimal health, leading to unfair and avoidable differences in health outcomes. Over time, policies have been developed and implemented across multiple societal levels and driven structure in equality. The social, environmental, economic and cultural determinants of health are what drive these inequities. These determinants are defined by the conditions in which people live, including access to quality food, water and housing, the quality of schools, workplaces and neighborhoods, and the make up of social networks and social relationships.

Examples are policies and practices is the “sorting” of people into resource-rich or resource-poor neighborhoods and K–12 schools (education itself being a key determinant of health largely on the basis of race and socioeconomic status. Because the quality of neighborhoods and schools significantly shapes the life trajectory and the health of the adults and children, race- and class-differentiated access to clean, safe, resource-rich neighborhoods and schools is an important factor in producing health inequity. Such structural inequities give rise to large and preventable differences in health metrics such as life expectancy, and higher percentages or health issues such as high blood pressure and obesity.

The impact of structural inequities start from birth throughout an African Americans life. One terminology refers to this as  “from womb to tomb.” For example, African American women are more likely to give birth to low-birthweight infants, and their newborns experience higher infant death rates that are not associated with any biological differences, even after accounting for socioeconomic factors.   The chronic stress associated with being treated differently by society is responsible for these persistent differential birth outcomes.  In elementary school there are persistent differences across racial and ethnic divisions in rates of discipline and levels of reading attainment, rates that are not associated with any differences in intelligence metrics. There also are race and class differences in adverse childhood experiences and chronic stress and trauma, which are known to affect learning ability and school performance, as well as structural inequities in environmental exposures, such as lead, which ultimately can lead to significant health issues. One of the strongest predictors of life expectancy is high school graduation, which varies dramatically along class and race and ethnicity divisions, as do the rates of college and vocational school participation—all of which shape employment, income, and individual and intergenerational wealth. These challenges limit the quality employment and wage opportunities and limit the amount the diversity required in key medical fields such as doctors and hospital administrators. Implicit biases create differential health care service offerings and delivery and affect the effectiveness of care provided, including a lack of cultural understanding of the health challenges African Americans face. Lending policies continue to create differences in home ownership, small business development, and other asset development. With most African Americans living in urban environments with minimal access to open space, grocery stores with fresh food and dietary options, and near locations that were formally toxic waste plants with heavy pollution, African Americans experience a much higher occurrance of hypertension (high blood pressure) and obesity. 

Addressing the specific needs from a health perspective, coupled with the societal needs of education, employment and housing, are all inclusive steps that need to be taken to reduce the inequity in health that African Americans experience today. 

Q: Why are African Americans and other minorities groups impacted more significantly by the COVID 19 Pandemic?

Sherita Golden, M.D., M.H.S., a specialist in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, and chief diversity officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine, provides insight into this complex issue.

Living in crowded housing conditions. “Crowded living conditions are a difficult challenge that is the result of longstanding racial residential segregation and prior redlining policies,” Golden says. “It is difficult for 10 individuals living in a three-room apartment to appropriately physical distance.” She says advocacy on these broader policy issues could help prevent future disparities in disease outcomes.

Working in essential fields. Golden notes that people working in environmental services, food services, the transportation sector and home health care cannot work from home. These positions put workers in close contact with others.

Inconsistent access to health care due to lack of insurance or underinsurance. Being able to afford doctors’ visits, medications and equipment to manage chronic disease is essential to lowering the risk of death from COVID-19 and other conditions. For instance, a patient with badly controlled diabetes or asthma due to inconsistent treatment is more at risk for severe, even deadly, coronavirus infection.

Chronic health conditions. Golden points out that people of color have a higher burden of chronic health conditions associated with a poor outcome from COVID-19, including diabetes, heart disease and lung disease. In a study cited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 90% of those hospitalized with severe COVID-19 had at least one of these underlying medical conditions.

Stress and immunity. Studies have proved that stress has a physiological effect on the body’s ability to defend itself against disease. Income inequality, discrimination, violence and institutional racism contribute to chronic stress in people of color that can wear down immunity, making them more vulnerable to infectious disease. 

Q: Why are many African Americans and Latinos hesitant to get the COVID-19 Vaccine?

A recent report from UnidosUS, the NAACP, and COVID Collaborative revealed that just 14 percent of Black Americans and 34 percent of Latinx Americans say they have trust in the safety of a new COVID-19 vaccine. 

The study also found that 18 percent of Black and 40 percent of Latinx respondents say they trust COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.

Additionally, 28 percent of Black participants said they have trust in “culturally specific testing and safety” practices. The number among Latinx people was higher, at 47 percent.

Why are these numbers relatively low? Just looking at the recent 20th century past offers some reasons why. 

The realities of how Black and brown people have been treated by the U.S. medical establishment is one that is, at many times, bleak. 

One of the main examples often pointed to is the Tuskegee experiments, which ran for 40 years, from 1932 to 1972.

The goal was to track the natural progression of syphilis. Researchers initially recruited 600 Black men — 399 with the disease, 201 without it — and conducted the study without the informed consent of these participants. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source, researchers justified the study by telling these men they were being treated for “bad blood,” which referred to conditions like anemia and fatigue as well as syphilis. 

What happened? The men never received treatment to cure syphilis.

This example of using Black patients as medical guinea pigs, if you will, putting their bodies and health on the line, is just one of the reasons why members of these communities might be apprehensive about new vaccines, said Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, PhD, an associate professor in the department of behavioral and social sciences and the department of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island.

“If you think historically for African Americans in the U.S. in terms of what the history has been with respect to their interaction with the healthcare system, of course we know the Tuskegee study. Tuskegee was not that long ago. The last surviving member died in 2004. It’s not something that is far removed. It’s still in people’s memory,” Grigsby-Toussaint told Healthline.

She also cited “the eugenics movement” that “saw African Americans sterilized in places across the country,” as well as birth control pill trials in Puerto Rico that were “not performed in a way that would stand up to the standards we have today in respect to clinical trials.” 

In the case of the latter example, she said side effects exhibited in women studied weren’t properly monitored, leading to actual deaths of some participants. 

Grigsby-Toussaint added that all these examples point to a dehumanization and commodification of people who were essentially used and discarded by medical officials. 

Rather than having value placed on their lives, the emphasis was on expedience, data, and experimentation, not human life.

Q: What are some of the major historical drivers of education inequity for African Americans?

During the early 18th century in most states, African-American students were barred from attending schools with white students. This was due to the effects of the court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) where it was decided that educational facilities were allowed to segregate white students from students of color as long as the educational facilities were considered equal. Educational facilities did not follow the federal mandate, in a study taken from 1890 to 1950 of the Southern States per-pupil expenditures (1950s dollars) on instruction varied from whites to Blacks. On average white students received 17–70 percent more educational expenditures than their Black counterparts. The first Federal legal challenge of these unequal segregated educational systems would occur in California Mendez v. Westminster in 1947 followed by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The decision of Brown v. Board of Education would lead to the desegregation of schools by federal law, but the years of lower education, segregation of household salaries between whites and people of color, and racial wealth gaps would leave people of color at a disadvantage to seek proper equal education for generations to come.

Q: Why do these inequalities continue today, especially in African-American communities and the inner city?

Inner-city students in the United States are under-performing academically compared to their suburban peers. Factors that influence this under-performance include funding, classroom environment, and the lessons taught. Low achievement rates can also be attributed, in part, to the schools themselves. Inner-city schools are more likely to be located in areas where there are low-income households and students attend schools with fewer resources compared to suburban students.

Teacher-student interactions, the lessons taught, and knowledge about the surrounding community have shown to be important factors in helping offset the deficits faced in inner-city and suburban schools. Lower teacher pay in inner-city school districts creates a challenge in hiring and retaining talented teachers, as well as the number of minority students who are interested in becoming teachers. Drop-out rates are still high, as a more substantial number of minority students, who often live in these areas, drop-out of high school.

Q: Why do inner-city schools lack the resources to provide an equitable education to their students, who are predominantly African American?

Urban inner-city areas have been decentralizing since the 1950s, losing their human capital. This flight of human capital leaves only the poor and disadvantaged behind to contribute to school funding resulting in school systems that have very limited resources and financial difficulty.

The public school system in the US is one in which the amount of wealth in a school district shapes the quality of the school because schools are primarily funded by local property taxes. As the school system's funding decreases, they are forced to do more with less. This frequently results in decreased student faculty ratios and increased class sizes. Many schools are also forced to cut funding for the arts and enrichment programs which may be vital to academic success. Additionally, with decreased budgets, access to specialty and advanced classes for students who show high potential frequently decreases.

More well off suburban families can afford to spend money on their children's education in forms such as private schools, private tutoring, home lessons, and increased access to educational materials such as computers, books, educational toys, shows, and literature.

Suburban families are also frequently able to provide larger amounts of social experiences to their kids, such as recreation and travel sports teams, exposure to plays and museums and familiarity with music, dance, and other such programs.

Q: What are the impacts of the lack of investment in our inner-city schools?

Unfortunately, In our current education system, resources are not equitably distributed among students, schools and communities, with school in low-income communities receiving far less. US school districts serving the largest populations of Black, Latinx or Native students receive roughly $1,800 less per student in state and local funding than those serving the fewest students of color. Every year, 1.3 million students drop out of high school in the United States. More than half of those students are students of color and most are low income. Although these students are born with just as much potential as their more affluent peers, students growing up in low-income communities are 2.5 times less likely to be college ready.

Q: What are some actions we can take today to drive greater equity in education?

Federal, State and Local Governments can focus their budgets on more equitable investment in educational resources, in particular the allocation of school funding, teachers, supplies, facilities, and more. They also need to focus efforts and funding on less quantifiable but equally important resources, including exposure to a more challenging school curriculum that tests grade-level mastery, culture relevant understanding, college-access resources, opportunity for family engagement, and teachers and school leaders who hold high expectations and learning standards for all of their students. There is also a tremendous opportunity to encourage inner city youth to become teachers in the future, as they would best understand the day to day challenges that the inner city student faces, both inside and outside of school.

These changes will help, but there are many other issues that drive the lack of opportunities that African American students have today. Low-income children and children of color--and their families--are disproportionately affected by many societal problems, including economic inequality, food insecurity, high rates of incarceration, lack of access to health care and affordable housing, fewer jobs that provide a living wage, and the rapidly shrinking path to the middle class.

Educational inequity sits at the intersection of so many of those issues, but fixing educational inequity alone is not enough. Solving educational inequity will not in and of itself provide all children with the opportunities they need to succeed. These problems have consequences that deeply affect a child’s ability to be successful inside and outside the classroom and that prevent the sort of social mobility needed to break generational cycles of poverty.

On the other hand, we cannot solve so many of these other issues—including providing that mobility for students from historically marginalized communities—without improving our current education system, because an excellent education is key to college attainment, competitive career options, and greater opportunities later in life. And the students in our classrooms today can’t wait.

Although an excellent education alone cannot solve all these injustices, it’s clear that in order to create a fair system that gives all students the chance to succeed and thrive, we have to pursue educational equity and work toward ending poverty.

Q: Why do we have discrimination in employment today? What are the historical drivers that have caused this to happen?

The U.S. economy was built on the exploitation and occupational segregation of people of color. While many government policies and institutional practices helped create this system, the biggest historical drivers are slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and the New Deal (established in the 1930s during the Great Depression). These policy decisions forced the concentration of workers of color in undervalued occupations, driving disparities in wages and benefits, and enhancing employment discrimination. These factors not only have driven racial disparities in employment, but across every other measurement of economic well being for minority groups, in particular African Americans.

Q: How have historical events such as slavery and Jim Crow Laws negatively affected African Americans and persons of color related to employment?

The centuries long occurrences of slavery forced African Americans to work in brutal conditions as agricultural, domestic, and service workers. When enslaved Black people attempted to flee, federal laws such as the 1793 and 1850 Fugitive Slave Acts helped ensure their recapture by fining officials who did not arrest alleged runaways and imprisoning anyone who aided in their escape.

The United States abolished slavery in 1863, but this action did not coincide with the opening of all occupations to liberated Black workers. As an example, federal officials within the Freedmen’s Bureau—established by the federal government in part to help formerly enslaved people transition to freedom—encouraged Black people to stay in the South and enter into contracts doing the same work for the families that previously enslaved them. After Reconstruction, state and local governments doubled down on these efforts by enacting Jim Crow laws, which codified the role of Black people in the Southern economy and society. States such as South Carolina enacted strict “Black Codes” that fined Black people if they worked in any occupation other than farming or domestic servitude. If they broke these laws or abandoned their jobs after signing a labor contract, they could be arrested and, thanks to a loophole in the 13th Amendment, forced back into unpaid labor on white plantations. Lawmakers also sought to prevent Black people from migrating in search of safety and economic opportunity. They enacted emigrant-agent laws restricting interstate labor recruiters from encouraging or financing the relocation of Black workers or from posting advertisements in predominantly Black communities for distant job openings.

During the mid-20th century, technological advancements reduced the demand for farm labor and domestic work in the South. These changes, combined with discriminatory U.S. Department of Agriculture policies, led thousands of Black households in the South to flee north. As a result, the United States experienced a rapid decline in the number of Black farm operators and farm and domestic workers. However, Black workers remained overrepresented in low-wage service jobs. Meanwhile, the continued devaluation of domestic and agricultural vocations and the accompanying search for lower-wage laborers of color soon caused many Black farm operators to move into these professions. This remains the case today.

Q: What is the current employment impact on the history of Slavery and Jim Crow laws on African Americans?

Occupational segregation and the persistent devaluation of workers of color are a direct result of intentional government policy. To this day, people of color remain overrepresented in the lowest-paid agricultural, domestic, and service vocations. (see Figure 1) While Black or African American, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino people comprise 36 percent of the overall U.S. workforce, they constitute 58 percent of miscellaneous agricultural workers; 70 percent of maids and housekeeping cleaners; and 74 percent of baggage porters, bellhops, and concierges. Slavery and Jim Crow devalued these types of work, and the legacy of these institutions continues to inform the American economic system and its outcomes.

Q: What was the New Deal, and how did it adversely affect employment opportunities for African Americans?

During the Great Depression, the United States enacted a series of policies to assist struggling families and expand access to economic mobility. This was called the New Deal. These policies included, but were not limited to, strengthened labor standards for wages and working conditions and increased protections for collective bargaining. The New Deal helped millions of families find work, increase their wages, and secure employment benefits, but lawmakers reserved most of these benefits for white workers while restricting and excluding people of color. These actions helped institutionalize and validate racial disparities in economic well-being, and the effects are felt to this day.

The New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) introduced a 40-hour work week, banned child labor, and established a federal minimum wage and overtime requirements. While the FLSA boosted wages and improved working conditions for thousands of white workers, it largely excluded African American workers from receiving these benefits by exempting many domestic, agricultural, and service occupations. This policy decision trapped families in poverty and implicitly endorsed the continued exploitation of workers of color. Lawmakers amended the FLSA to include some of these occupations in subsequent decades, but agricultural and domestic workers, who are predominantly persons of color, remain some of the least protected employees in the United States. Many agricultural workers are still denied access to overtime and minimum wage protections. For example, live-in domestic service workers, babysitters, and companions for the elderly—all occupations in which people of color are disproportionately represented—also remain excluded from many FLSA protections.

Q: I thought that the various Civil Rights and Employment protection laws that were passed in the 1960s and 1970s intended to address the discrimination and inequity issues. Why do they still exist today?

In the 1960s, Black activists secured landmark civil rights legislation that created new federal agencies charged with holding people and institutions accountable for engaging in discrimination. Federal laws were followed by dozens of state statutes designed to protect people of color from discrimination in the workplace. These new laws marked a symbolic turning point in American race relations and finally promised to expand access to opportunity to all people. However, lawmakers never fully funded these agencies and even provided exemptions, allowing many employers to continue to discriminate with little culpability, so long as they did not have many employees. As a result, millions of workers of color continue to experience racial discrimination in employment and wages.

Created in 1965, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is charged with enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against job applicants and employees based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information. Every year, the EEOC receives hundreds of thousands of calls and inquiries, but it lacks the funding and staff necessary to fully ensure that bad actors are held accountable.

From 1980 through mid-2018, the U.S. population grew by 44 percent—from 227 million to 327 million. Today, more than 5.6 million employers employ more than 125 million workers. Despite this growth, Congress has refused to significantly increase the agency’s inflation-adjusted budget over this period and has actually reduced the number of employees charged with carrying out the agency’s mission. (see Figure 3) In 2018, the EEOC secured $505 million for victims of discrimination, but the agency’s lack of resources has created a substantial and persistent backlog of nearly 50,000 charges.

While Congress should dramatically expand the EEOC’s budget, the federal government should not be alone in the fight against employment discrimination. States possess the resources and expertise necessary to enact and fully enforce their own civil rights statutes to protect workers of color. Unfortunately, few states provide their anti-discrimination agencies with sufficient resources to tackle this systemic problem, and some states lack enforcement agencies altogether. State anti-discrimination agencies often have large mandates with multiple covered populations and the responsibility to tackle discrimination in both employment and housing. However, none of the 10 states with the highest percentage of Black residents provide these agencies with annual funding of more than 70 cents per resident per year. (see Figure 4) By comparison, in 2015, each of these 10 states had state and local policing expenditures of more than $230 per resident per year—at least 328 times more than what each state spends on enforcing anti-discrimination laws. In some states, such as Louisiana, more taxpayer dollars are spent on the governor’s salary than on protecting millions of residents from employment discrimination.

Lawmakers have also limited the scope of anti-discrimination enforcement by establishing a minimum employee threshold for covered companies. For instance, only companies with 15 or more employees are covered by the EEOC’s racial discrimination laws. More than two-thirds of states, including those with the highest percentages of Black residents, also have minimum employee thresholds for employment discrimination laws to take effect. These thresholds jeopardize the economic well-being of people of color who work for smaller employers, such as domestic workers, service workers, and some agricultural workers.

Q: What does Affirmative Action mean?

Affirmative Action is defined as an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women. It's important to note that the intent of Affirmative Action is not limited to only race and gender. It incorporates other areas such as age, disability and sexual orientation (to name a few). The purpose of Affirmative Action related to employment and education is to establish fair access to opportunities to create a workforce and education system that is an accurate reflection of the demographic of the qualified available workforce in a relative job market or school application process. Its goal is to remedy past practices of discrimination.

Q: Are there Affirmative Action laws?

Affirmative Action is a set of procedures and guidelines designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future. There are specific federal and state guidelines that employers have to follow that enforce that Affirmative Action in selection decisions is occuring. Employers who contract with the government or otherwise receive federal funds are required to document their affirmative action practices and metrics. Affirmative action is also a remedy if a court finds an employer has violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces various employment anti discrimination laws, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights act of 1964, Age Discrimination in Employment act of 1967, Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Titles I and V of the American with Disablities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. In relation to Education, recipients of Federal Funds are required to document their affirmative action practices and metrics as well.

Q: I have heard that a number of states have banned Affirmative Action? Why?

There are many thoughts related to the Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action.

The arguments FOR Affirmative Action are as follows:

• Affirmative Action is a way to ensure that diversity is obtained and maintained in schools and in the workplace. It helps create tolerant communities because it exposes people to a variety of cultures and ideas that are different from their own (Diversity of Thought)

• It helps disadvantaged people who come from areas of the country and inner cities where there are not very many opportunities to advance. Its provides an equal playing field

• Affirmative Action is a way to help compensate for the fact that, due to many years of oppression driven primarily by government policies and practices, disadvantaged and marginalized individuals, the majority being minorities, have not had similar opportunities as others. Another example of helping level the playing field.

The Arguments AGAINST Affirmative Action:

• Some people feel it causes reverse discrimination, and that past discrimination does not justify present discrimination against non-minorities.

• It destroys the idea of meritocracy and puts race as the dominant factor in admission and hiring procedures

• Perception that it places non qualified people in positions they are not ready for, which reinforces stereotypes and racism.

NOTE: CommonBondz position is that Affirmative Action is necessary, based on the facts and data that show in-equity in employment not only for African Americans, but for all minority groups and females. Affirmative Action will be necessary until such time where the laws and policies of the government are put in place to truly reflect equal opportunity to our entire society. The purpose of Affirmative Action related to employment and education is to establish fair access to opportunities to create a workforce and education system that is an accurate reflection of the demographic of the qualified available workforce in a relative job market or school application process. Its goal is to remedy past practices of discrimination. Facts and Data show that is currently not the case.

Q: How do the actions of employers affect employment discrimination and inequity?

While legislation alone cannot prevent bias, the persistent underfunding of enforcement agencies and exemptions for small companies result in limited accountability for employers that abuse and exploit their workers based on race. Ample evidence demonstrates that racial discrimination in employment and wages remains rampant more than 50 years after the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. In fact, studies show that hiring discrimination against Black people has not declined in decades. White applicants are far more likely to be offered interviews than Black and Latinx applicants, regardless of educational attainment, gender, or labor market conditions. Full names often attributed to white Americans are estimated to provide the equivalent advantage of eight years of experience. Surveys show that more than half of African Americans report experiencing racial discrimination in hiring, compensation, and promotion considerations.

Employment discrimination perpetuates inequality in economic well-being, especially for Black people. Over the past 40 years, Black workers have consistently endured an unemployment rate approximately twice that of their white counterparts. Black households have also experienced 25 percent to 45 percent lower median incomes than their white counterparts, and these disparities persist regardless of educational attainment and household structure. In 2017 alone, the median income for Black and Latinx households was $40,258, compared with $68,145 for white households. In fact, in 99 percent of U.S. counties, Black boys will go on to make less in adulthood than their white neighbors with comparable backgrounds.

Q: What can we do as a society, and individuals, to move toward providing more equitable employment opportunities for African Americans, along with other persons of color (BIPOCs), and other marginalized groups?

We need to push our lawmakers to repeal “right-to-work” laws while eliminating all exclusions from federal labor protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. We must also increase employment protections by eliminating all employer exemptions for anti-discrimination laws; expanding EEOC resources and regularly increasing appropriations to keep pace with workplace population growth; and matching per capita state spending on employment discrimination to EEOC spending. While these actions will help, we also need to recognize that more aggressive actions are needed to close the gap that has been created over centuries. One of the key areas of focus needs to be establishing educational, training and development programs (both governmental and employer programs) that are designed to help workers of color enter historically exclusionary industries.

Q: Is there really a wealth gap between white and African American families?

Yes, and it's a considerable gap. In 2016, the net worth of a typical white family ($171,150) was nearly ten times greater than that of an African American family ($17,150).

Q: How did the wealth gap get this way?

The gaps in African American and white household wealth is a result of many years of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity traced back to our countries inception. The wealth gap is a prime example of a society that has not afforded the same opportunities to African Americans as it has to whites.

Some historical examples of what has driven us to this point are the history of slavery, the Congressional mismanagement of the Freedman's Savings Bank (which was established to collect deposits from newly emancipated communities in 1865, but was closed in 1874, leaving over 61,000 depositors with losses of nearly $3 million dollars and the violent massacre which decimated the Tulsa Greenwood District in 1921. Additional acts in the 20th century were Jim Crow Era "Black Codes", which strictly limited opportunity for African Americans in many southern states, the GI Bill (which did not include African Americans) and the 1930s New Deal Fair Labor Standards Act exemption of domestic agricultural and service occupations, which were primarily African American workers. The New Deal also drove significant government lending for home ownership, but many heavily populated African American communities were left out of these lending opportunities due to the practice of "redlining" (identifying on a map certain areas to be deemed a poor financial risk).

Q: Why do these actions so long ago impact what the wealth gap looks like today?

The history is significant because its legacy is passed down from generation to generation through unequal monetary inheritances which make up a great deal of current wealth. In 2020 Americans were projected to inherit about $765 Billion in gifts and requests, excluding wealth transfers to spouses and minor children. Inheritances account for about 4% of annual household income, much of which goes untaxed by the US Government.

Q: How large are the racial wealth gaps in our country? How long have the gaps continued?

The chart below gives a great illustration of the significant and ongoing gaps in income inequality broken down by racial lines. Median net worth for white households has far exceeded that of African American households through recessions and booms over the past 30 years. During the most recent economic downturn, median net worth declined by more for African American families (44.3% decline from 2007-2013) than for white families (26.1 percent decline). The ratio of white family wealth to African American family wealth is higher today than the start of the century.

Q: There are examples today of high and middle income white and African American families having the same income, but white families being much wealthier. Why?

White families received much larger inheritances on average than African American families. The current income levels also don't capture lifetime income levels, which are impacted by a longer trajectory to reach the current income level, and the lack of wealth being passed from generation to generation. 

Q: How has the pandemic impacted the inequity in wealth? Has it stayed the same or gotten worse?

The pandemic has made the wealth in-equity greater than it was pre-pandemic. This is driven by a higher impact of job loss by African Americans and minorities (due to a greater percentage working in lower paying and service oriented jobs) and the lack of wealth causing minimal stock market investment and home ownership. 

Q: How do we close the gap on wealth inequity between whites and African Americans?

As we have discussed in each of our monthly CommonBondz topics, there are a number of things that need to be done. Tax reform, while not popular, is key to helping fund our marginalized communities, particularly related to capital gains and inheritance, as well as in health. Small increases would not significantly impact those with wealth, but would benefit those without it, by  investing the money in these communities.  Improving the secondary educational system in our inner cities, and giving our younger generation an opportunity to be successful in the future,  is critical. Making college more affordable for lower income families, in particular toward degrees in higher earning professions, is key. Employers investing in professional level and better paying jobs and locations in lower income communities is important. Investing in housing improvements and home ownership opportunities in communities is critical to building wealth. 

Q: What is housing inequality and segregation?

Housing Inequality is a disparity in the quality of housing in a society which is a form of economic inequality. Housing inequality is directly related to racial, social, income and wealth inequality. It is predominantly the result of market forces, discrimination and segregation. It is also a cause and an effect of poverty.

Q: How did housing inequality and segregation start?

Housing Inequality is in large part driven by government policies that were instituted in the 1930s-1960s , up until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1969.

Q: When did Housing inequality and segregation start?

In the early 1930s, many urban neighborhoods in the United States were populated by both white (largely immigrant) and black working-class families. At the time, factories were typically located downtown, and their employees generally lived nearby and walked to work. Because of the diversity of men employed by the factories, these neighborhoods tended to be integrated. At the heart of many of these same cities and towns was a railroad station. Since railroads hired many African Americans as baggage handlers or porters, these men and their families also lived in downtown neighborhoods. For example, West Oakland, California, a mostly white neighborhood with a small African American population, was integrated because the Pullman Company employed only African Americans as sleeping car porters, and those porters needed to live near the Oakland station, the end of line for westbound cross-country trains.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, beginning in 1933, segregated some of these previously integrated urban neighborhoods. Although other factors contributed to this change,  there were a number of government policies that ensured that African Americans and whites would not reside amongst each other, and that these policies were consistent and self-reinforcing on the federal, state, and local levels. Two such New Deal era federal policies were the starting points of segregation: Public housing and Federal Housing Administration subsidies for suburban development.

Q: What are some details on Public Housing creation and impact to segregation and inequality?

While public housing may bring to mind an image of concentrated poverty, this is not how public housing began in the United States. The first civilian public housing in the United States was constructed as part of the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal at the start of the Great Depression. This housing was not for the 25 percent of the population that was unemployed at the time. Rather, this public housing was built for working-class families with employment who could not find housing during the Great Depression. The Public Works Administration was the first federal agency to address the housing shortage, while also providing construction jobs for those who were out of work. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, who directed the government’s housing efforts, was committed to providing housing not only for white families, but also for African Americans. Indeed, one-third of the new public housing units were occupied by African Americans; however all of the projects were segregated, either by project or by building. Ickes proposed a rule whereby federal housing projects would reflect the racial composition of the neighborhoods in which they were built, so that only neighborhoods that were already integrated could host projects housing both whites and blacks. However, this principle of respecting neighborhoods’ prior racial makeup was not always followed. In many cases, the new projects segregated neighborhoods that had previously been integrated, demolishing the previous housing stock to erect segregated housing projects. In these communities, the public housing created a pattern of residential segregation that would not otherwise have existed. For example, even Atlanta, Georgia, despite its segregated schools, water fountains, buses, and lunch counters, had an integrated downtown neighborhood, called the Flats, which was about half black and half white. The Public Works Administration demolished housing in that neighborhood and built a whites-only project, displacing African Americans who then had to double up with relatives, or find less adequate housing elsewhere.

Q: How did World War II facilitate an increase in segregation and inequality?

The government’s creation of segregated housing only increased during World War II, with the flow of workers into cities for the many new war industry jobs that were created. In many cases, the flood of workers was much greater than the pre-existing population, and certainly much greater than the available housing stock could accommodate. To ensure that the war work could be completed, the federal government had to provide housing.

For example, during the war, the small city of Richmond, California, became home to the largest U.S. shipyard on the west coast, bringing 100,000 workers and their families into the white community of about 20,000. Government housing for white workers was built in the residential areas of the city, where white families already lived. African American workers, however, were housed in temporary buildings along the railroad tracks and in the industrial area. The projects extended south into Berkeley, accompanied by local officials’ pronouncements that the black workers would have to leave the area after the war once the jobs disappeared. This pattern was repeated in many areas of the country.

After World War II ended, the country faced a serious housing shortage. In order to house the millions of returning veterans, President Harry Truman proposed a new public housing effort. Conservatives in Congress, believing that the government should not be in the business of providing housing, sought to block this legislation. In order to do this, they employed a “poison pill” strategy, attaching an amendment to the bill that they expected would have majority support, but that would then cause the bill as a whole to fail. Thus, conservatives proposed an amendment to the 1949 Housing Act requiring that all future public housing be operated on a non-discriminatory basis. Their expectation was that northern liberals would join them in voting for this amendment, creating a sufficient majority to attach the amendment to the bill, but when the final bill proposing a desegregated public housing program came up for a vote, the conservatives would join with southern Democrats to defeat the bill. Instead, northern liberals, reasoning that segregated public housing was better than no public housing, voted against the integration amendment to save the bill. As a result, the 1949 Housing Act, which funded the creation of large high-rise public housing projects across the country, did so with explicit permission for the government to continue to segregate their occupants. For example, the Pruitt–Igoe project in Saint Louis consisted of one development for African Americans, and a separate development for whites.  None of this he hearsay, but fact; the congressional debate had been public, and the resulting public housing projects were clearly designated by race.IRP | focus vol. 34 no. 4 | 3.2019

Only a few years after the 1949 Housing Act was passed, local housing authorities opened all the projects, even those previously designated for whites only, to black families. This was in response to the emergence of large numbers of vacancies in the white projects, while there were long waiting lists for the black projects. As more and more whites left, public housing came to be occupied overwhelmingly by African Americans. Meanwhile, industry left the central cities as highways were constructed that allowed manufacturers to receive parts and ship final products by truck, rather than relying on nearby deep water ports or railroad terminals. As industry left, so did the better jobs, leaving the increasingly black population of urban housing projects with few options for well-paid employment. With tenants no longer having sufficient income for the full rental cost, public housing came to be subsidized, maintenance declined, and projects became the settings of concentrated poverty and disarray that we subsequently came to associate with public housing. 

Q: How did the Federal Housing Administration's Policies impact segregation and housing inequality? 

The Federal Housing Administration, established in 1934, the year after the establishment of the Public Works Administration, is the second major New Deal program whose policies created government-mandated residential segregation. The high vacancy rates of white public housing units were the result, at least in part, of opportunities provided exclusively to white families by the Federal Housing Administration, which enabled them to move to single-family homes in all-white suburban neighborhoods. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing through the 1950s and into the 1960s, this agency undertook a program to move the white working-class population into single-family homes in all-white suburban neighborhoods.

Levittown, east of New York City, is a prominent example of these developments; it comprised 17,000 homes.  The only way that William Levitt and other developers could come up with the capital needed for such large projects was to apply to the Federal Housing Administration for guarantees of bank loans for land acquisition and construction. This required submitting plans for approval, including specifying construction materials to be used, architectural designs, and street layouts, and making an explicit agreement that no homes would be sold to African Americans. The Federal Housing Administration also required that deeds to the homes include a prohibition against reselling or renting to African Americans. The underwriting manual prepared by the Federal Housing Administration and distributed to appraisers across the country even prohibited approval of white developments in the proximity of African American neighborhoods. This policy left black residents stranded in pockets of poverty far from neighborhoods with greater economic opportunity.

Although these federal prohibitions no longer exist and racial clauses in home deeds are no longer enforceable, the consequences of this policy remain with us to this day. The homes that were built in the mid-twentieth century and sold, by federal decree, only to white families, cost approximately $8,000 to $10,000 at the time, equivalent to about $100,000 in current dollars. However, these same homes now sell for up to half a million dollars. When these developments were built, a white working-class family could move out of public housing and into a suburban home (with a mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Administration or guaranteed by the Veterans Administration) for a monthly cost that was often less than the rent that the family had been paying in public housing. Because they owned these homes, and the homes’ values appreciated, these white families gained equity in their homes and wealth that could be used to send their children to college, help with  temporary income shocks such as unemployment or unexpected medical costs, and provide money to their children and grandchildren that allowed them to make down payments on their own homes. African Americans, in contrast, were excluded by federal policy from participating in the move to suburban homeownership, and thus continued to rent in areas with diminishing job prospects, and gained none of the wealth accumulated by white homeowners. 

Q: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were passed to outlaw this type of discrimination. Are the impacts of these policies still felt today? 

The impacts of these policies are very much still felt in our society today. The median family income for African Americans is about 60 percent of that for whites, but the median net worth of black households is only 10 percent of that for white households.  The huge disparity between a 60 percent income ratio and a 10 percent wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy that was practiced in the mid-twentieth century and has never been remedied.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was intended to address this disparity, but enforcement mechanisms were not added until 1988. Further, while the act took away the restrictions on African Americans purchasing homes in suburban developments like Levittown, the suburbs were rapidly becoming unaffordable to working class families, as home prices rose precipitously during the intervening years. In the 1950s and 1960s, when many of these suburban white neighborhoods were built, the homes’ $100,000 cost was approximately twice the national median income, putting them within reach of working-class families. Today these same homes sell six to seven times the median income (or more), effectively pricing out working-class families of either race unless they have family wealth to help them. An example of this is the racial makeup of Levittown today. While the broader area around the development is 15 to 20 percent African American, the population of Levittown is only about 2 percent African American.

Q: What does Redlining mean? How did it cause Housing inequality and segregation?

Redlining is the illegal practice of refusing to offer credit or insurance in a particular community on a discriminatory basis (as because of the race or ethnicity of its residence). The term "Redlining" came from the practice of outlining these communities on a map in red ink/market to indicate risky areas to lend to (or not to lend in those areas at all). 

Q: What is an example of Redlining? 

A prime example of redlining occurred in Detroit, Michigan following World War II. Maps of Detroit during this time period clearly show that black neighborhoods were segregated from other white or wealthier communities through the process of labelling neighborhoods with any black residents as “hazardous” to lenders.

Q: Does Redlining still happen today? 

While various Federal Laws were passed to prohibit home lending discrimination, notably the 1968 Fair Housing Act and the 1977 Community Investment Act (CRA), there are still examples where the concept of redlining (denying people access to credit based on thier race) exist. Recent examples show banks still having risk management practices that redlined Black and Latino communities (Liberty Bank in New Haven and Hartford Ct.). Also, recent studies have shown that Black, Latino and Asian applicants are turned away for loans at a higher rate than whites in many U.S. cities 

Another challenge is reverse redlining where banks engage in predatory lending in the same neighborhoods that were once marked as off limits to borrowers. In the years leading up to the 2008 housing crash, mortgage lenders peddled hundreds of thousands of risky subprime loans, including "no-doc" and balloon payment loans on low income borrowers. This caused massive foreclosures in many communities, like Detroit and Newark for example, that have yet to recover. 

Q: How does historical segregation and inequality in Housing impact other social and economic challenges for African Americans such as Education and Health? 

The government-mandated racial segregation of neighborhoods underlies the most serious social problems we face in this country today. It underlies the persistence of multi-generational poverty, as young African Americans live in segregated neighborhoods with little access to the formal economy, and little hope for improvement. Research has shown that African Americans who grow up in segregated neighborhoods are less likely to have middle-class incomes as adults than equally poor African American children who grow up in less segregated neighborhoods. Segregated neighborhoods predict differences in life expectancy and health between African Americans and whites. Segregation also underlies the high incarceration rate among African American men, and the conflicts between police and young men in black neighborhoods.

Many of these inequalities are also tied to educational outcomes, and the achievement gap between African American and white children is caused primarily by the child’s social and economic conditions. These conditions, including racial segregation, predict average achievement levels irrespective of teachers’ expectations, school accountability, or the quality of instruction. For example, African American children in urban areas have asthma at four times the rate of white middle-class children, because of poor environmental conditions in the housing and in the broader low- income neighborhoods in which they live. Children with asthma are more likely to come to school sleepless or drowsy, from having awakened at night, wheezing. Asthma is the most common cause of chronic school absenteeism in the United States. Considering two groups of children who are equal in every respect except that one group has a higher rate of asthma than the other, it stands to reason that the group with asthma will have lower average school achievement, simply because they attend school less alert and less often. The same story can be told regarding other conditions, such as exposure to lead, stress from parental economic insecurity, and homelessness.  If almost every child in a school has one (or more) of these disadvantages, it is inconceivable that the school could produce the same average level of achievement as a school attended by children without these disadvantages. He notes that schools where every child has such disadvantages are called “segregated schools”; the schools are segregated because the neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated. In fact, schools are more segregated today than they have been at any time in the last 45 years, and this is due to neighborhood segregation.

Q: Are the policy decisions in the past and present the only driver of Housing Inequality? 

While policy decisions are a key factor driving the current inequality in housing, individuals' implicit biases and behavior are also a factor in the continued challenge. Some examples are Real Estate agents who may not advertise or promote certain neighborhoods and areas to African Americans and other Persons of Color, to Gentrification housing initiatives which push up the cost of homes where current residents can no longer afford to live there and have to move to more segregated neighborhoods. While these actions are not regulated or officially illegal, they are ingrained biases in our society that continue to promulgate housing inequality.  

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Q: What changes and initiatives are in place to confront housing inequality and reduce the amount of housing in-equity we have in our country? 

While implicit bias and racism are key drivers of inequity in our society, government policy bears significant responsibility for residential segregation and we thus have an obligation to address it, as there are indeed policy intervention opportunities that could help to desegregate neighborhoods. Two of the three current major federal housing programs, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and the Housing Choice Voucher Program (commonly referred to as Section 8), are designed to support housing for low-income families, and both could potentially be modified to reduce residential segregation. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit is a federal subsidy given to developers of low-income housing. Low-income housing tax credit developments are predominantly placed in already low-income, segregated neighborhoods, intensifying their segregation. The incentive structure for these credits could be changed to persuade developers to build in higher-opportunity neighborhoods, thus helping to integrate those neighborhoods. The Section 8 voucher program that subsidizes the rents of low-income families also contributes to segregation, since a family with a low-income housing voucher is more likely to need housing in a segregated neighborhood. Again, the federal rules governing local housing authorities could be changed to encourage tenants to use their vouchers in integrated, low- poverty neighborhoods, and to require landlords in those neighborhoods to accept vouchers when presented.

The largest federal housing program, however, is the mortgage interest deduction. While the provisions of this deduction were changed in 2017, this program continues to offer a subsidy to single-family homeowners in predominantly middle-class communities.  While the political will to leverage this deduction to promote desegregation does not currently exist, it would potentially be possible to withhold the mortgage interest deduction from families living in suburbs that refuse to take steps toward racial and economic integration by, for example, repealing zoning ordinances that prohibit the construction of townhouses, or low- rise apartments, or even single-family homes on smaller lot sizes. These ordinances prevent lower- and middle-income families from living in an affluent suburban neighborhood. Though such reforms are not currently feasible on a national level, some progress could be made through state and local efforts.  As we are seeing with the current Presidential administration, changing public policy to address segregation is achievable, and it is incumbent on Americans to demand that these changes be made.