Higher Education's Response to Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) from an Equity Framework

Many countries have temporarily shut down many anchor institutions during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The deleterious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is nowhere more apparent than in the higher education sector. The respiratory disease compelled many colleges and universities to cancel in-person classes, close residential halls and food courts, suspend in-person events and athletic competitions, and shift to remote learning and work arrangements mid-way through the spring terms. Campus leaders are grappling everyday with how to properly direct their students, faculty, and staff through such unprecedented times. While many college campuses announced plans to reopen in the fall with social distancing policies in place according to municipal, state, and federal guidelines, other institutions are considering virtual or hybrid (a combination of virtual and in-person) classroom formats.

Below is a list of relevant online resources that will aid provosts, senior administrators, department chairs, faculty, and student affairs professionals during this catastrophic crisis. It is essential that colleges and universities include an equity framework in their COVID-19 response. Our most vulnerable populations--African Americans, Latino/as, senior citizens, and the economically disadvantaged--are at a higher risk of contracting and dying from the disease. Click here to read an overview of federal resources to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Higher Education Guidance, Resources, and News

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Interim Guidance for Administrators of US Institutions of Higher Education
• U.S. Department of Education: COVID-19 ("Coronavirus") Information and Resources for Schools and School Personnel
• American Association of University Professors (AAUP): Coronavirus Resources: Statements, Guidance, Webinars, Chapter Action, and Collaboration with American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
• Midwest Higher Education Council: Coronavirus (an expansive listing of federal, state, and association responses to COVID-19)
• National Conference of State Legislatures: Higher Education Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Inside Higher Ed: Live Updates: Latest News on Coronavirus and Higher Education

COVID-19 and Equity Considerations

• American Medical Association: COVID-19  health equity resources 
• American Public Health Association: COVID-19 and Equity
• Center for Urban and Racial Equity: Equitable Response Community Commons
• The Education Trust: A Higher Education Equity Agenda in Response to COVID-19
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: Coronavirus Equity Considerations
• Inside Higher Ed: The Challenge of Equity in Higher Education Under COVID-19

Review: Toxic Inequality (2017)

Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future (2017), by Thomas Shapiro, is a professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and the Director of the Institute on Assets and Social Policy Brandeis University. He is the leading figure on racial inequality and public policy.

From the book cover:

Since the Great Recession, most Americans' standard of living has stagnated or declined. Economic inequality is at historic highs. But inequality's impact differs by race; African Americans' net wealth is just a tenth that of white Americans, and over recent decades, white families have accumulated wealth at three times the rate of black families. In our increasingly diverse nation, sociologist Thomas M. Shapiro argues, wealth disparities must be understood in tandem with racial inequities--a dangerous combination he terms "toxic inequality."

In Toxic Inequality, Shapiro reveals how these forces combine to trap families in place. Following nearly two hundred families of different races and income levels over a period of twelve years, Shapiro's research vividly documents the recession's toll on parents and children, the ways families use assets to manage crises and create opportunities, and the real reasons some families build wealth while others struggle in poverty. The structure of our neighborhoods, workplaces, and tax code-much more than individual choices-push some forward and hold others back. A lack of assets, far more common in families of color, can often ruin parents' careful plans for themselves and their children.

i an a fan of Shapiro's work, which has generated much discussion on the widening racial wealth gap and economic inequality in the U.S. He uses a sociological lens to examine how years of homeownership, household income, and unemployment created racial disparities in wealth between white families and black families. Although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited housing discrimination on the basis of race, it has not stopped the practice of redlining. Black neighborhoods tend to have lower home equities than white neighborhoods which has huge implications on intergenerational wealth. Black families also tend to live in neighborhoods with higher proportion of blacks (or adjacent to working-class neighborhoods) than white families. For the past fifty years, black families have been playing catch-up to white families but neoliberal policies and the Great Recession eliminated much of black wealth. Overall, I highly recommend the book because it is easy to understand for the general audience to see that black families are NOT on an equal playing field with white families when it comes to wealth accumulation.

I would even further argue that this data supports why affirmative action is still necessary in elite college admissions. With fewer assets, black families are less likely to afford test preparation programs that can boost their child's scores on the SAT (which is poor predictor of college success) and must rely on student loans to finance their children's college educations. As the recent college admissions cheating scandal revealed, these racial inequities create an unfair advantage to already privileged students who do not have to financially struggle to gain admission into elite colleges and universities.

If you have not read Thomas Shapiro's previous books, I highly recommend his other phenomenal books, Black Wealth/White Wealth (2006) and The Hidden Cost of Being African Americans (2005).

Michigan, Harvard partner to solve poverty in Detroit

This is fantastic news for my hometown, Detroit. and Harvard University have formed new partnerships to bring actionable change through research and community engagement. With Harvard's new president, Lawrence Bacow, a native Michigander, supporting the effort, this project will bring immense opportunities for researchers to study and propose effective interventions that help the residents of Detroit.

From the alumni magazine, Michigan Today:

The University of Michigan and Harvard University are forming two new partnerships designed to spur economic mobility and reduce poverty in Detroit, as well as combine resources and expertise in response to the national opioid crisis.

The Equality of Opportunity Project — led by Harvard faculty members Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren and Brown University’s John Friedman — will work with U-M’s Poverty Solutions initiative, led by Luke Shaefer, U-M faculty member and Poverty Solutions director.

The universities will collaborate with the city of Detroit and local partners on an action plan to identify promising, results-based interventions for improving the livelihoods of low-income Detroit residents.

AP study: Blacks largely left out among high-paying jobs

The black unemployment rate is still problematic fifty years after both the release of the Kerner Commission Report and Martin Luther King's assassination. In one of his final speeches, King described the “Other America,” where unemployment and underemployment created a “fatigue of despair” for African-Americans. Today, this "Other America" has extended into the highest paid occupations, notably in the STEM fields, in cities ranging from a history of racial discord (Boston) to high cost-of-living (Silicon Valley).

An Associated Press analysis of government data has found that black workers are chronically underrepresented compared with whites in high-salary jobs in technology, business, life sciences, and architecture and engineering, among other areas. Instead, many black workers find jobs in low-wage, less-prestigious fields where they’re overrepresented, such as food service or preparation, building maintenance and office work, the AP analysis found.

HuffPost: Millenial Generation Faces Scariest Financial Insecurity

Greetings. I know that I have not maintained this blog frequently but I still exist! I wanted to share an interesting by Michael HObbes on the financial insecurity of the millennial generation in the Huffington Post. I agree with the premise of the article that millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression. by Michael HObbes, who claims himself among the older side of millenials at the age of 35, debunks common myths and stereotypes associated with this generation as entitled an lazy.

But the reality is that most young adults under 40 struggle with financial insecurity that their parents and grandparents never encountered in their lifetimes. This population of 70+ million is Saddled with staggering student loan debt, high cost of living (where half your monthly earnings goes to housing expenses), marrying at a later age, and less likely to own a home. We grew up during a time when wages became stagnated, looked for affordability and convenience in the shared economy. The vast majority cannot depend on their parents; almost 20% of adults between the ages of 18 and 34 lives in poverty. Hobbes writes:

What is different about us as individuals compared to previous generations is minor. What is different about the world around us is profound. Salaries have stagnated and entire sectors have cratered. At the same time, the cost of every prerequisite of a secure existence—education, housing and health care—has inflated into the stratosphere. From job security to the social safety net, all the structures that insulate us from ruin are eroding. And the opportunities leading to a middle-class life—the ones that boomers lucked into—are being lifted out of our reach. Add it all up and it’s no surprise that we’re the first generation in modern history to end up poorer than our parents.

In many ways, we graduated from college during a recession that caused the housing bubble and wages have stagnated while the cost of essentials such as housing and healthcare have increased exponentially. Our retirement savings look grim because many work in the low-wage service economy that does not offer retirement benefits. We also look to the shared economy for affordability and convenience. The lost decade for the millennial generation will have long-term implications for the future of the middle class in American society if nothing is done to reverse this trend of financial insecurity.

2017 ‘Ain’t I A Woman’ Black Women March and Black Women's Equal Pay Day

On July 19, 2017, organizers gathered for the "Ain't I a Woman?" Black Women's March in Sacramento, CA. The name comes from a famous speech by African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist, Sojourner Truth (1797-1883). She will debut on the new $10 bill with other leading women suffragists--Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Other prominent African American women heroes who will appear on U.S. currency include Marian Anderson ($5 bill) and Harriet Tubman ($20).

More than 1,500 people gathered on Saturday to participate in a black women’s rights march in Sacramento. he march was organized by Black Women United (BWU), a non-profit organization “dedicated to the education, protection, and advancement of Black women.” BWU, founded in February, came up with the “Ain’t I A Woman” march as a way to include black women more in today’s women’s rights movement. Although the Black Women's Roundtable were among the guest speakers at the January Women's March, many black women felt the event minimized black women's issues. The event was intended to uplift and empower black women while highlighting the multitude of issues affecting them. Organizers created the event to fill a void they felt was left by the Women’s March in January.

Unfortunately, this perception is not uncommon. The mainstream women's movement tends to focus on issues affecting white women--essentially ignoring black women's unique needs and lived experiences. Gender issues often overlook racial disparities that affect black women. The National Domestic Workers Alliance recently released a report, The Status of Black Women in the United States, which stated from its website:

Black women are integral to the well-being of their families, their communities and the nation as a whole. Through their work, entrepreneurship, caregiving, political participation, and more, Black women are creating opportunities for themselves, their loved ones, and improving the our economy and society. They have all the makings of what should be success, yet their contributions are undervalued and under compensated. Black domestic workers are particularly vulnerable because of the ways in which racial disparities, gender discrimination, and immigration status serve to further marginalize and disempower the very people who power our economy and push our democracy to be the best that it can be. Whether one examines Black women’s access to healthcare, earnings, or access to much needed social supports like childcare and eldercare, Black women are getting the short end of the stick, despite having contributed so much to the building of this nation.

In 1619, the first African Americans arrived in the United States on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. Nearly 400 years later, African Americans have made substantial contributions that have shaped this nation culturally, economically, and politically. Most importantly, black women have been a very resilient and spiritual group in times of crises and setbacks. However, federal and state policymakers have undervalued and ignored the unique experiences of black women who are impacted by the double oppression of racism and sexism. Our efforts have been undervalued and underappreciated for too long. It is time for black women to bring to the forefront the barriers they face in child care and eldercare, education, employment, entrepreneurship, health care, housing, and retirement.

July 31st is Black Women's Equal Pay Day. Many Americans do not realize that the pay gap is even worse for black women. This pivotal event the day when black women catch to men in earnings - a staggering 20 months! According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), when black women earn 63 cents to every dollar a white non-Hispanic man earns. In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute recently updated the statistic to 67 cents on the dollar. Learn more information about the gender pay gap in the United States and how you can join the upcoming Twitter campaign at AAUW.

The Atlantic: How to Kill the Middle Class

In the past decade, state politicians have attacked the middle class with the passage of draconian lives that reduced their salaries, fringe benefits, and sick paid leave. If these trends continue, the traditional middle class may cease to exist in America. See The Atlantic article for more details:

Back in 2009, Rick Erickson was happy with his job as a teacher in one of the state’s northernmost school districts on the shores of Lake Superior. He made $35,770 a year teaching chemistry and physics, which wasn’t a lot of money, but then again, he received stellar healthcare and pension benefits, and could talk honestly with administrators about what he needed as a teacher every two years when his union sat down with the school district in collective bargaining sessions.

Then, five years ago, Wisconsin passed Act 10, also known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, which dramatically limited the ability of teachers and other public employees to bargain with employers on wages, benefits, and working conditions. After Act 10,Erickson saw his take-home pay drop dramatically: He now makes $30,650. His wife is a teacher, too, and together they make 11 percent less than they did before Act 10. The local union he once led no longer exists, and so he can’t bargain with the school district for things like prep time and sick days. He pays more for health care and his pension, and he says both he and his wife may now not be able to retire until they are much older than they had planned.

See this related article, Severe Inequality Is Incompatible with the American Dream:

The numbers are sobering: People born in the 1940s had a 92 percent chance of earning more than their parents did at age 30. For people born in the 1980s, by contrast, the chances were just 50-50.

DetNews: Detroit’s chance of netting major retailers improving

Something amazing is happening in Detroit. This could be the sign of a real renaissance. The local newspaper reported that major retailers, who historically shunned the inner city, may expand into the city. Detroit suffers as a food (or major store) desert, an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food. Unsurprisingly, most food deserts are located in predominately black neighborhoods with the most need for access to healthy, nutritious food. Mom and pop stores, which are run predominately by Arab and Asian immigrants, dominate the grocery store market in Detroit. Mom and pop (and dollar) stores have limited selection and more likely to serve unhealthy food. City residents who desire more options must travel to the suburbs to shop at a major retailer with wider selection of goods such as Target or Costco. For city residents who lack a personal vehicle, this poses as a serious limitation. Detroiters deserve the same access and availability of stores as their suburban neighbors. Detroit needs more major retailers -- I welcome this fabulous news!

Detroit may be near the tipping point in getting major retailers like Target and Kroger to open in the greater downtown area.

In most cities, such stores are commonplace. In Detroit, every type of major national retailer – supermarkets, department stores, movie theaters, restaurants – started to vanish from the city limits more than 60 years ago. When residents began to move out of Detroit, big retalers followed them.

Even now, a Home Depot (one store), a Kroger (no stores) or a Starbucks (eight stores) are rare in the 142-square-mile city limits.

But the greater downtown area – the central business district, Midtown, Corktown, Eastern Market – has seen a recent wave of new residents and new specialty stores, including some chains like Whole Foods in Midtown and Nike downtown.

ProPublica: Debt and the Racial Wealth Gap

Income inequality is a top policy issue in America. The middle class are no longer the majority and falling behind financially. Meanwhile, the percentage of affluent families and poor families have increased. The racial wealth gap is an even more pronounced problem in America. According to ProPublica, even small debt has an enormous price on the well-being of black families:

IF you are black, you’re far more likely to see your electricity cut, more likely to be sued over a debt, and more likely to land in jail because of a parking ticket.

It is not unreasonable to attribute these perils to discrimination. But there’s no question that the main reason small financial problems can have such a disproportionate effect on black families is that, for largely historical reasons rooted in racism, they have far smaller financial reserves to fall back on than white families.

The most recent federal survey in 2013 put the difference in net worth between the typical white and black family at $131,000. That’s a big number, but here’s an even more troubling statistic: About one-quarter of African-American families had less than $5 in reserve. Low-income whites had about $375.

Michigan Radio: In fight against Detroit unemployment, study finds "there is no silver bullet"

Detroit suffers from a high unemployment rate for a variety of reasons. I will focus on the distribution of jobs, in which the majority are located in the suburbs. Some suburbs do not have bus routes because a state law allows suburbs to "opt out" of bus service in their community. This creates a haphazard situation for people who rely on public transportation. If there is no bus service in the location of the employer, then the job is not accessible to the person who is most needy for employment. For example, this Detroit man used to walk 21 miles to get to work because he relied on public transportation in the region. This kind of situation is utterly unheard of in other metropolitan areas. But it is not unusual for anyone living in a car-dependent state like Michigan. Unfortunately, there is no regional support for a sustainable regional mass-transit system in Detroit.

From Michigan Radio:

A new study finds there are many challenges to Detroit residents accessing job opportunities.

The report, Detroit’s Untapped Talent: Jobs and On-Ramps Needed, was commissioned by JP Morgan Chase and Company and was compiled by Corporation for a Skilled Workforce.

Jeannine La Prad helped prepare the report.

La Prad says the Detroit unemployment rate is chronically twice that of the statewide unemployment rate. She found that factor has been compounded by an insufficient number of jobs in Detroit, a mismatch between the skills and educational requirements for what jobs are available, and a lack of support structures like childcare and reliable transportation.

Related content:

• Detroit Skills Gap Report (JP Morgan Chase & Company)
• Detroit unemployment remains more than twice level of state, nation (Michigan Chronicle)
• Youth Unemployment in Michigan is At An All-Time High (WDET)

Middle class shrinks to barely half of U.S. adults

The American middle class is shrinking. While Americans in the upper-income and lower-income brackets increased, the middle class represents less than half of Americans (from 61% in 1971 to under 50% in 2015). Househould income has substantially shifted from middle-income to upper-income households. Unfortunately, this study confirms that income inequality (the gap between the rich and poor) is widening. Robert Reich argues that the demise of the middle-class has more to do with the concentration of corporate and financial power shaping the economy to benefit the wealthy.

After more than four decades of serving as the nation’s economic majority, the American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. In early 2015, 120.8 million adults were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined, a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

Click here to read the full Pew Research Center report, The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground.

Click here to read ProPublica report on debt and the racial wealth gap.

The Fight for $15 and Unionization for Working Families

Last month, workers from all kinds of industries came out to protest, support, and express their sentiments on why higher wages and unionization are necessary for working families. Poor working conditions, insufficient pay, lack of benefits, reliance on government assistance, and unpredictable work schedules have psychological and economic costs for working families. The lack of economic security is the reason why workers are voicing out their stories of hardship and seeking economic justice.

From billmoyers.com:

People throughout the US sent a clear message on April 15th that in addition to better wages, people also need better jobs — jobs that provide employees with regular schedules, paid sick leave, dependable hours, benefits and respect.

Several organizations are now stepping forward to act on that message at a national level. On April 29th, the Center for Community Change, Working Families Organization, Jobs With Justice, Center for Popular Democracy, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and dozens of local grassroots partners are coming together to launch Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All. It’s a major economic initiative to reinvest in low-income communities of color and bring jobs — good jobs — to everyone.

Related Content:

• The “Fight for $15″ and the Return of the Vanishing Worker
• At Home and Abroad, the Labor Movement Comes Roaring Back

Robert Reich: How Just In Time Scheduling Is Making Workers' Lives Hell

If you have never heard of this term, just-in-time scheduling is where employers in service industries (think retail and restaurants) can alert low-wage and part-time employees up to half an hour (!) before their scheduled shift to determine whether or not they are needed. Due to technological advances and high-speed internet, employers use "workplace optimization systems" to determine weather, traffic, sales, and nearby event patterns to predict customer demand. While this process may save money for the employer, it is costly for workers who plan their schedules around commuting and child-care needs. To arrive to work only to be sent home because you are not needed places a considerable economic burden on working families, who are disproportionately communities of color. The decline of steady jobs with regular and predictable work schedules has created a system where employees' economic security is at its lowest point. This nation has reverted back to old practices (poor working conditions, insufficient pay, and lack of benefits) that have not been witnessed since the Great Depression. According to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, low-wage and part-time workers, who have no control over their erratic schedules and monthly income, are at the mercy of their employers in the "flexible" labor market.

Robert Reich describes the pitfalls of just-in-scheduling in this way:

These days it’s not unusual for someone on the way to work to receive a text message from her employer saying she’s not needed right then.

Although she’s already found someone to pick up her kid from school and arranged for childcare, the work is no longer available and she won’t be paid for it.

Just-in-time scheduling like this is the latest new thing, designed to make retail outlets, restaurants, hotels, and other customer-driven businesses more nimble and keep costs to a minimum.

Software can now predict up-to-the-minute staffing needs on the basis of information such as traffic patterns, weather, and sales merely hours or possibly minutes before.

This way, employers don’t need to pay anyone to be at work unless they’re really needed. Companies can avoid paying wages to workers who’d otherwise just sit around.

Employers assign workers tentative shifts, and then notify them a half-hour or 10 minutes before the shift is scheduled to begin whether they’re actually needed. Some even require workers to check in by phone, email, or text shortly before the shift starts.

ThinkProgress: Families of Color Likely to Remain in Poverty Even If They Work

According to ThinkProgress, families are color are likely to remain poor even if they work. Almost half of minority working families are poor or low-income. More than a third of African-American and Latino working families make less than $32,000 a year. In contrast, just 13 percent of white and Asian-American families find themselves in that same income bracket.

Some people argue that the poor are poor because they lack a work ethic. But hard work doesn’t mean American families can pay the bills. Nearly a third of the country’s 32.6 million working families, or 10.6 million, were low-income in 2013, or had incomes that fell below 200 percent of the poverty line, according to a new report from The Working Poor Families Project.

And race plays a huge role. Working families headed by people of color are twice as likely to wind up in poverty anyway as compared with white families. The report finds that nearly half, or 47 percent, of working families headed by racial or ethnic minorities are poor or low income, compared to just 23 percent of white families. Breaking it down further, 55 percent of working Latino and nearly half of African-American and Native American families who work are low income, but less than a quarter of white families are.

The Decline of the American Dream in the U.S.

Everyone around the world knows the American Dream. According to The Cheat Sheet, a USA Today content partner, the American Dream is "a concept that doesn't have a strict definition, but is typically explained as the ability to improve one's standing in society through hard work and education, and ultimately share a piece of America's prosperity with a home, property, and other basic necessities." We learn the classic "rags-to-riches" Horatio Alger story in classroom where impoverished boys rise from their humble backgrounds to middle-class security through honesty, determination, and hard work. While most of us take it for granted that anyone can achieve upward social mobility, the American Dream has become less realistic today. Economic mobility has stunted for most Americans due to several factors: stagnant wage growth, increase in low-wage jobs, the rising cost of living and health care, mounting student debt, and the decline of organized labor. The American Dream that we proudly cherish has become more unattainable than ever, particularly among historically disenfranchised communities of color.

That is, the American Dream is now easier to attain for people who live outside of America than those who live in it. Or, another way to put it is that economic mobility has been stunted in the U.S. As far back as 2004 the progressive think tank The Century Foundation argued that "recent evidence shows that there is much less mobility in the United States than most people assume," and that "rags to rags and riches to riches are now the norm in this country to a greater degree than in many other developed nations."

It goes on to say: "Our current education system, anti-discrimination laws, and other public policy tools that aim to give the children of poor parents a fair shot at a high income are not getting the job done. We may all believe in the American Dream, but we have a lot of work to do if we are to make that dream a reality."

Related Content: Why is Social Welfare So Expensive? (Cheat Sheet)

NYTimes: It Is Expensive to be Poor

Everyone knows that the poor struggle to make ends meet. However, not many people realize how more expensive it can be poor than wealthy. Since state and local municipalities often rely on regressive taxes for funding, low-income families must pay a larger share of their income than wealthier people. In sum, low-income families are the hardest hit financially. Regressive taxes and predatory lending practices put low-income families severely at risk in falling back into poverty.

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study that found that most wealthy Americans believed “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

This is an infuriatingly obtuse view of what it means to be poor in this country — the soul-rending omnipresence of worry and fear, of weariness and fatigue. This can be the view only of those who have not known — or have long forgotten — what poverty truly means.

“Easy” is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard — the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. “Easy” is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

Allow me to explain, as James Baldwin put it, a few illustrations of “how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

First, many poor people work, but they just don’t make enough to move out of poverty — an estimated 11 million Americans fall into this category.

So, as the Pew report pointed out, “more than half of the least secure group reports receiving at least one type of means-tested government benefit.”

Related links:

• Study Finds Local Taxes Hit Lower Wage Earners Harder (New York Times)
• 2014′s Most & Least Fair State Tax Systems (Wallet Hub)
• Income Inequality Weighs On State Tax Revenues (Standard & Poor)
• Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa (Washington Post)
• Reducing Our Obscene Level of Child Poverty (New York Times)

Salon: “It embarrasses them, they feel ashamed”: Why America still can’t talk about race

The progressive organization, PolicyLink, recently released a research brief ("The Equity Solution: Racial Inclusion Is Key to Growing a Strong New Economy") on economic and racial inequality in the so-called, post-racial America. People of color are still more likely to live in segregated, resource-poor, and impoverished neighborhoods than their affluent peers.

An excerpt from Salon interview with PolicyLink founder and CEO, Angela Blackwell:

Salon: Linking racial equality and economic equality makes sense, but it’s not something you often hear being promoted in more mainstream or establishment-friendly places. How do you respond to people if and when you come up against resistance or skepticism — or simple confusion, since making the link is not especially common?

Angela: One of the things I often say is that if people of color don’t become the middle class there will be no middle class in this nation. Not only are we becoming a nation in which the majority will be people of color, but the majority of young people will be people of color. Right now, 46.5 percent of all children under 18 are children of color, but 80 percent of all those over 65 are white. The median age among white people is 42; the median age among Latinos, the fastest-growing population, is 27.

We have to understand that as we become a nation of mostly people of color, that we have mostly people who would be the parents, the young earners, the young entrepreneurs. Those are the people of color who we have to make sure can be the middle class. When we think about some of the work of Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez, who are looking at social mobility in this country, they’ve pointed out that social mobility is very much tied to class and geography. If you’re born into a family that’s low-income you’re very likely to stay there, and if you’re born in certain areas of the country — particularly the South — you’re very likely to not have much social mobility.

Those things can also be talked about in racial terms. In the South, what we see is our inability as a nation to deal with race, and so segregated communities and disadvantaged people of color disadvantages everyone. We have to get over this holding some people back because what it means is that we’re holding everybody back. We’re not investing in a robust public education system, not invested in a robust infrastructure that could connect regions to the global economy.

This notion of being born into a certain area — we know that people who are Latino and African-American are disproportionately poor and low-income, so we have to create more pathways out of poverty, not just in terms of people who are poor having pathways out of poverty but people who are poor because of the way we have racialized opportunity in America. We cannot separate the nation’s dire need to have a strategy for a vast and stable middle class from the nation’s dire need to finally have strategies that deal with the legacy of racism and the continuing impact of racism in America.

ThinkProgress: Getting A College Degree Won’t Protect Black Workers From The Economy’s Racial Barriers

Blacks on average face higher underemployment and unemployment rates than their White counterparts. Racial and gender discrimination in hiring is partly to blame. Read the rest of the article on ThinkProgress.

"The economy is heavily tilted against black people. In a study of entry-level job openings, equally qualified black job applicants were half as likely as white ones to get a call back or an offer. Jobs that drug test are more likely to hire black workers because without the tests, they assume black applicants use drugs. While black workers make up 32 percent of the workforce, they make up 42 percent of minimum wage workers.

Black women have been particularly dogged in recent years in graduating college: they made up two-thirds of all black students who finished a Bachelor’s Degree in 2010 and 71 percent with a Master’s. But they still struggle in other ways: when they’re working full-time, year-round, they make 64 percent of what white men make and less than both white women and black men."

In another study, researchers found that in online sales Americans would rather do business with Whites than Blacks.

Check out more ThinkProgress articles below!

• How Retailers Could Narrow The Gender Pay Gap And Lift Women Out Of Poverty
• The Economic Inequality Lurking Among The 99 Percent
• College Graduates Can’t Buy Houses Because They’re Buried In Debt
• The Neediest Americans Are Getting The Least Government Assistance

NYTimes: American Middle Class No Longer World's Most Affluent

According to the New York Times, the American middle class is no longer the most affluent in the world.

While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.

AP: More Americans See Middle Class Status Slipping

This is depressing news. According to a Gallup poll, the percentage of Americans who say they were middle- or upper-middle class dropped after the Great Recession of 2007-2009. This provides further evidence that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Has the American Dream become a myth? Decent-paying jobs are disappearing. Educational attainment is also no longer a stable path to upward mobility. Income inequality must become a national priority.

A sense of belonging to the middle class occupies a cherished place in America. It conjures images of self-sufficient people with stable jobs and pleasant homes working toward prosperity.

Yet nearly five years after the Great Recession ended, more people are coming to the painful realization that they're no longer part of it.

They are former professionals now stocking shelves at grocery stores, retirees struggling with rising costs and people working part-time jobs but desperate for full-time pay. Such setbacks have emerged in economic statistics for several years. Now they're affecting how Americans think of themselves.

Since 2008, the number of people who call themselves middle class has fallen by nearly a fifth, according to a survey in January by the Pew Research Center, from 53 percent to 44 percent. Forty percent now identify as either lower-middle or lower class compared with just 25 percent in February 2008.

According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who say they're middle or upper-middle class fell 8 points between 2008 and 2012, to 55 percent.