Race & Identity

The Insight Center for Community Economic Development brought together experts from a wide array of policy and politics backgrounds to discuss issues of wealth inequality and racial disparities at an event this week titled “Race and Wealth Inequality in the Post-Election Political Environment.” By exploring issues of wealth and income from the perspectives of various racial groups, the commentators were able to shed light on the post-election prospects of important policy areas that were not explicitly raised by either candidate during the campaign season. Yet despite the conspicuous lack of electoral attention to vast racialized wealth disparities, all of the commentators expressed optimism about the possibilities for successful policy initiatives in the post-election landscape.

Today, the only way some Americans get insight into what life is like for a black family is by watching snippets of the Obamas on the nightly news. No English-language network program centers around a black family — or an Asian or Hispanic family either — except Fox’s “The Cleveland Show.” And that’s animated.

Here we go again. The Census Bureau has released yet one more milestone data point that supposedly reveals the profundity of America’s ongoing demographic change. This time, it’s news that, as The New York Times put it last week, “Whites account for less than half of births in the U.S.”

It’s one of those front-page headlines that give you pause. You know it means something significant—why else would it be on the front page?!—but you can’t quite put your finger on it.

Gregory Rodriguez speaks with Andrés Martinez about immigration, social cohesion, and being a 4th-generation Californian.

The Asset Report 2012’s new data on retirement reveals just how difficult it is becoming for Americans to save enough money to support themselves once they have stopped working, particularly in the wake of the recession. To start, fewer employers are offering retirement plans and fewer workers are participating in them; in fact, the level of participation in employer-sponsored plans is at its lowest level in thirty years. Additionally, the majority of workers who benefit from retirement plans are in higher-income jobs. Likewise, because virtually all of the funds the federal government allocates for retirement are in the form of regressive tax subsidies, workers in higher income brackets disproportionately benefit.  This policy in turn has a disparate impact on women and people of color, who are more likely to hold low-wage jobs without benefits.

The Asset Building Program’s analysis of the President’s FY 2013 budget reveals two key trends about the accessibility of homeownership and its relationship to overall wealth over the past few years. First, the benefits of the2013 federal budget’s investment in homeownership, which are delivered primarily through tax deductions, accrue chiefly to those who already have high incomes and substantial assets. Second, the housing crisis disproportionately affected black and Hispanic families, significantly widening the racial wealth gap and creating further barriers to savings and economic mobility.