President-elect Donald Trump appealed to African-American voters during the recent campaign with promises to expand school choice, put more police officers on the streets to combat violence, and reduce unemployment among blacks by creating more jobs for everyone.
In the coming months, we will see how the Trump administration plans to implement those policies. But for those of us who work every day to reduce inequity and improve the lives of people with low incomes, those proposals are strikingly disconnected from the realities of black Americans and other communities of color across the nation.
This is especially true here in the District of Columbia — one of the most inequitable cities in the United States. According to a recent report from the Urban Institute, white households in D.C. have an average net worth (assets minus debt) of $284,000 — an astonishing 81 times greater than the average net worth of African-American households in the city, which is $3,500. This gap is larger now than before the Great Recession.
Recognizing this growing inequity, earlier this year our organizations — the Consumer Health Foundation and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation — contracted with Urban to analyze equity in D.C. by race and place. Our goal was to go beyond earlier studies documenting racial disparities at the city level to envision what equity would look like — and to figure out where to invest and how we can get there.
The Urban Institute has released this analysis as an interactive digital feature, “A Vision for an Equitable D.C.” The underlying data, drawn from widely available public sources, revealed stark differences by race and ethnicity in the areas of income and assets, employment, education, housing, and health. For example, more than 38 percent of black children and 22 percent of Hispanic children in DC live in poverty, while the number of white children living in poverty is statistically zero. The unemployment rate for black D.C. residents is more than 5.5 times that of whites and double that of Hispanics.
Eliminating these inequities in a city of more than 650,000 residents, a majority of whom are people of color, will be a steep climb. In an equitable D.C.:
- 33,000 more black residents and 12,000 more Hispanic residents would have high-school degrees, and almost 98,000 more black residents would have some college.
- 24,000 more black residents and 2,200 more Hispanic residents would be employed, including 17,000 in just three of the city’s eight wards.
- 35,000 more black families and 5,200 more Latino families would earn a living wage (which in DC is more than $38 an hour for one adult and two children).
- 14,000 more black households (more than half in just one ward) and 3,900 more Latino households would own homes.
- No child would live in poverty.
More Efforts Required
Achieving real equity — one element of which is to bring education levels, employment rates, income levels, and housing choices for people of color in line with those of white residents — will require significant change over many years.
This makes sense, because current inequities are the result of hundreds of years of intentional policies that have benefited white Americans and disadvantaged black Americans and other people of color. Restrictive covenants that prohibited the sale of properties to African-Americans and other groups, displacement due to “revitalization,” and limited health-care access for black families living east of the Anacostia River are among the historical and contemporary contributors to these inequities.
These policies are not some relic of a distant past, and their legacy persists today in the Greater Washington region and in most other urban areas throughout the country.
Like many other philanthropies focused on urban poverty, our foundations are already supporting an array of direct-service and advocacy organizations working to address the legacy of systemic racism. Job-training programs, education and support for homebuyers, improved early care and early-childhood education, and advocacy to increase the minimum wage and expand worker benefits are all important and can play a role in building equity.
But they are not enough. Another recent study, from the Corporation for Enterprise Development and the Institute for Policy Studies, suggested that it would take 228 years for black families in the United States to amass the amount of wealth that white families have today.
Our current strategies are not producing the results we need at the scale needed to achieve equity within decades, rather than centuries. We believe it’s time for a new approach, one that:
- Acknowledges and builds on the considerable strengths and assets within communities of color
- Engages communities of color in developing policy solutions that directly address their needs
- Advances policy solutions designed specifically to benefit communities of color and to break down the barriers erected by decades (and even centuries) of discriminatory and racist policies
Everyone Would Benefit
Such an approach would stand in contrast to the solutions proposed by President-elect Trump’s campaign. School choice, while producing better outcomes for some students, has failed to close the achievement gap for DC’s students of color. Crime and violence are the symptoms of inequity, not the cause. And a rising tide of employment growth does not raise all boats equally. Even in the best economic times, the unemployment rate for African-Americans in DC has never been less than four times the average for white residents.
Our city, and others throughout the country, must do better — and we believe we have the resources, the brainpower, and the policy tools to dismantle the legacy of systemic racism.
We must do this because it’s the right thing to do. But if morality is not sufficiently motivating, consider this: Data from the National Equity Atlas suggests that the D.C. economy alone would have been more than $65 billion larger in 2012 if there were no racial gaps in income and employment. Nationally, eliminating inequity would increase GDP by $2.1 trillion (or 14 percent), and the economies of the 150 largest metro areas would grow by 24 percent. Closing these gaps would make our country stronger and more prosperous for everyone who lives here.
With that in mind, philanthropy needs to work with increased urgency to advance equity around solutions developed with community participation, rather than watch these gaps widen while we wait for solutions from national political leaders. We are moving forward to do this in our region, and we hope that others will join us.
Yanique Redwood is president and CEO of the Consumer Health Foundation, and Nicky Goren is president and CEO of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation. Both foundations are based in Washington, D.C., and are focused on creating a more equitable D.C. region in which everyone can thrive.
