Economic injustice thriving five decades later
For as much attention as civil rights leader Martin Luther King jnr receives for fighting against racial injustice, he spent much of his life speaking out against economic inequality — an issue that is still at the centre of many of today’s political conversations.
Yet 50 years after the Kerner Commission delivered a report to President Lyndon B Johnson on the unrest in AfricanAmerican communities, recent data show much of what King fought to dismantle remains in place. An Economic Policy Institute report released in February found:
“With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades. In these areas, their situation has either failed to improve relative to whites or has worsened.
“In 2017 the black unemployment rate was 7.5 per cent, up from 6.7 per cent in 1968, and is still roughly twice the white unemployment rate. In 2015, the black homeownership rate was just over 40 per cent, virtually unchanged since 1968, and trailing a full 30 points behind the white homeownership rate, which saw modest gains over the same period. And the share of African Americans in prison or jail almost tripled between 1968 and 2016 and is currently more than six times the white incarceration rate.”
Another report from the EPI showed the wage gap between blacks and whites is the worst it has been in nearly four decades.
“Changes in unobservable factors — such as racial wage discrimination, racial differences in unobserved or unmeasured skills, or racial differences in labour force attachment of less-skilled men due to incarceration — along with weakened support to fight labour market discrimination continue to be the leading factors for explaining past and now the recent deterioration in the economic position of many African Americans.”
Much attention was paid to the economic anxieties of Donald Trump supporters during the 2016 election, especially the white working-class. Most black voters who come from a working-class backgrounds were drawn to Hillary Clinton’s economic message.
The economy continues to be a major concern for black Americans. African Americans have the highest poverty rate — 27 per cent — while only about 12 per cent of the population, according to the State of Working America report. The poverty rate of white Americans is less than 10 per cent.
The question many are asking now is whether lawmakers will move forward in King’s dream of economic equality for working class people of colour.