Obama ties economic, racial inequality

Washington Post

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has only occasionally used his bully pulpit to confront racial inequality in America, even if race inherently has been a backdrop of his tenure as the first black president.

He has, however, made fighting economic inequality a central goal of his presidency, delivering forceful speeches and advocating policies aimed at shrinking the income gap and increasing social mobility.

When he speaks Wednesday at a program marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Obama will be at the confluence of efforts to reduce racial and economic divisions.

As the president addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, current and former advisers say, he will want to impress upon listeners how progress toward racial equality will require progress toward economic equality.

Obama, who keeps a framed program from the “March on Washington” in the Oval Office, has said he has often reminded people that the march was as much about what he called economic justice as a demonstration for civil rights.

“He wants to create opportunity and to make sure the level playing field is ready for everybody,” said Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s senior advisers. “If you look at poverty or unemployment, they dis- proportionately affect people of color. People who don’t have health insurance are disproportionately of color. There is inevitably an overlap in addressing racial equality at the same time you’re trying to create economic empowerment.”

Advisers say Obama sees his message as building on the themes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders a half-century ago. He is likely to discuss the progress that has

been made since 1963, they say, as well as the barriers that remain.

Many of the most overt forms of racial discrimination and bias have faded, but yawning economic gaps have persisted since 1963, and there has been essentially no narrowing of the unemployment gap between black and white Americans. The financial crisis and recession scarred minorities more than anyone else.

Fifty years ago, the unemployment rate was 5 percent for whites and 10.9 percent for blacks, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Today, it is 6.6 percent for whites and 12.6 percent for blacks. Over the past 30 years, the average white family has gone from having five times as much wealth as the average black family to having 6½ times as much, according to the Urban Institute.

“If you look at 50 years after the 1960s civil rights movement, the most stubborn and persistent challenge when it comes to the nation’s racial challenge remains in the areas of economics and wealth,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League.

Obama’s advisers say it is more important to look at the policies he has embraced — from the renewals of tax credits that help the poor to the expansion of Pell Grants and proposals to target the most needy communities for federal aid — than the number of speeches he has given on racial issues.

But critics in the black community have argued that Obama has failed to be forceful in pursuing policies that would lift the economic fortunes of AfricanAmericans and other racial minorities.

“The president has not been robust enough,” said Peniel Joseph, a black-studies scholar at Tufts University. “Just because he’s black and he is in his own way limited about what he can say about race doesn’t mean the entire black community should have to suffer because of that.”

Many civil rights leaders say, however, that the president has been right to carefully calibrate his public statements on race.

“Those critics of Obama who want him to lead the movement are not studying history,” said Al Sharpton, the civil rights ac- tivist. He said that Obama, like Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson did in the 1960s, must lend support to a movement run at the grass roots.

Still, Sharpton said, Obama is acutely aware of the impact of his policies on African-Americans: “When he meets with constituent groups, someone will say they want him to do more for the black agenda. And he’ll say, ‘Look at the Affordable Care Act, for example. It has a disproportionate impact on our community.’”

Twenty-one percent of blacks lack health insurance, compared with 13 percent of whites, according to the Kaiser Health Foundation.

Since he was a young community organizer in Chicago, Obama has wrestled with the extent to which racial inequality and economic inequality help explain why an outsize number of African-Americans have struggled.

As Obama recounts in his book “Dreams From My Father,” he saw the early impact of globalization and technological advancement on Chicago’s South Side, where steel mills that had once offered a path to middle-class life for many African-Americans stood shuttered, and he wondered if “class divisions” mattered more than was recognized.

“This is something he’s been thinking about for a long time,” said Thomas Sugrue, a University of Pennsylvania historian who has written a book about Obama and race. Sugrue noted that as time passed, Obama became more confident in the need for “interracial coalitions” that would work to advance economic opportunity — job training or income support — in the name of broader equality.

As a presidential candidate in 2007, he told civil rights leaders gathered in Selma, Ala., that he was part of a new generation of black leaders whose charge was to shrink the economic gaps that persisted even after the most pernicious forms of racism had faded.

“What are we, the Joshua generation, doing to close those gaps?” he asked, saying that government must do more to fund early-childhood education, raise the minimum wage, retrain workers with new skills and make sure people have health insurance and retirement security.

This summer, Obama is still promoting those policies, not un- der the framework of what black leaders must do for black Americans, but what the nation’s leaders must do for all Americans.

Obama told The New York Times last month that “when you think about the coalition that brought about civil rights, it wasn’t just folks who believed in racial equality; it was people who believed in working folks having a fair shot.”

While Obama discusses his efforts to help Americans navigate the forces driving economic inequality in broad terms, the implications are greatest for African-Americans, according to Harvard University professor William Julius Wilson.

“If you don’t have skills or a decent education in this global economy, your chances for mobility are limited,” he said. “The problem is especially acute for low-skilled black males, and many turn to crime and end up in prison, which further marginalizes them and decreases their employment opportunities.”

“It would be great,” Wilson said, “if the president raised such issues when he comments on the March on Washington because I strongly believe he is fully aware of them.”