Racial gaps persist after King’s gains

Communities across Ohio on Monday will celebrate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s work to bring dignity and equal rights to all Americans. But now, half a century since King was assassinated, blacks in Ohio are, in many fundamental ways, lagging far behind. Consider:

■ Median household income for black Ohioans increased 14 percent between 2010 and 2016, to $31,035.

But as a percentage of white household income, it dipped, from 56 percent to 55 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

■ With a life expectancy of 74 years in 2014, the average black Ohioan could expect to die four years sooner than a white counterpart, according to data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

■ Ohio ranked next to last among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in infant mortality among blacks from 2013 to 2015. The rate was more than double that for white babies, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

■ In 2014, the incarceration rate among blacks in Ohio was 5.6 times that of whites.

■ The percentage of black Ohioans living in poverty dropped just 2 percentage points — from 33 percent to 31 percent — between 2010 and 2016.

King is perhaps best known for advocating desegregation, voting rights and equal legal protection for all Americans. But an integral, if lesserknown, part of his struggle was for economic equality.

The official name of the peaceful 1963 gathering of 200,000 in Washington, D.C., was The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. And in 1967, King launched a Poor People’s Campaign, making economic rights an even

more explicit aim of the movement.

Yet in 2018, the economic prospects for black Ohioans appear bleak.

“We were on the right track, and then we got off the track and started going backward some kind of way,” said King’s cousin, the Rev. Joel L. King Jr., after an MLK memorial service Downtown on Thursday. “The whole nation is.”

Some of the backsliding can be attributed to the Great Recession. Economic research has shown that wealthy stockholders and better-educated workers quickly recovered, but many lesser-paid and skilled workers have been stuck in place or even losing ground.

And because they were more likely to have had their wealth tied up in risky mortgages and to be steered to predatory lenders, lowincome families of color are even more likely to bear scars from the 2007-2009 recession than other poor Americans.

“Do I think the recovery happened for everyone?” said state Sen. Charleta Tavares, D-Columbus. “Absolutely not.”

She said that one of the things holding back so many in the black community is that they are still isolated in poor communities, where children attend schools in which all the students are poor.

State Rep. Emilia Strong Sykes, D-Akron, said the resources the state provides those schools are woefully inadequate, making the

problem worse. She said that blacks also have less access to health care than whites and have much higher rates of incarceration — all adding to their economic challenges.

“Not everyone is starting in the same place or on a level playing field,” Sykes said. Then there is racism. Sykes cited research indicating that all other things being equal, blacks are less likely to be offered jobs, and that just by living under the burden of racism, their lives are cut short.

She acknowledged the difficulty that people have discussing such a painful subject.

“People don’t like to hear it,” Sykes said. “I get it that it makes people uncomfortable. But I don’t get to take off my black skin.”

Tavares said the legislature and the state government have not made the challenges confronting Ohio blacks a sufficient priority. The Ohio Legislative Black Caucus focuses on the issue, she said, but it has no members among the Republicans who control state government, which Tavares says is a problem.

She urged her colleagues to use the holiday to redouble efforts to realize the dream King set forth more than five decades ago.

“It’s a moment in time as we reflect on Dr. King and his legacy,” Tavares said. “We all have more to do.”