CLOSING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP

WATCH: Van Jones: Race, Politics, and the Progressive Movement

Watch Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative Manager Ludovic Blain talk about the white liberals' response to Van Jones' resignation on GritTV.

 

http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/...

The muted response to Van Jones’ resignation says volumes about where progressives stand in the Obama administration and whether so-called outsiders have a role to play in shaping the administration’s policies. Judging by just how quickly the administration surrendered to Glenn Beck’s assault, Jones wasn’t really worth defending. What does that say about his ideas?

A recent story in AlterNet explores some of the ties between Astroturf groups and the FOX news campaign. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake offers her take on why liberal institutions have distanced themselves from the whole affair. So what’s really at stake? And what does the Van Jones story reveal about American politics?

Ludovic Blain, Project Manager of Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative, Rory O’Connor, co-founder of Globalvision and the author of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio: America?s Ten Worst Hate Talkers and the Progressive Alternatives, Tim Wise, the author of Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, and Jane Hamsher, the founder of Firedoglake discuss the recent developments and what their impact might be.

via current.com

Foreclosure Crisis Built on Racial Injustice

Our friend Seth Wessler from ARC wrote this week about how the foreclosure crisis is built on the back of racial injustice and public policies that continue to discriminate against people of color and hampers their ability to build wealth.

As Seth notes: "As long as we fail to address the struggles of working people and ignore the structures of racial inequity that helped push us all into recession, we will find that a return to normal will mean very little."

Read the full article

Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative Briefs Members of the ABFE

Last week, we hosted a webinar on the racial wealth gap for members of the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) featuring Experts of Color Network members. You can find the webinar recording and PowerPoint slides here.

Experts of color discussed how communities of color, particularly Blacks, have been affected by today's economic crisis, predatory lending and foreclosures. They presented state options to encourage asset-building, and discussed how to ensure that the Recovery Act is racially inclusive. Policy recommendations that can help close the racial wealth gap are made throughout the presentation.

Speakers included: Kilolo Kijakazi, Ph.D., Program Officer, Ford Foundation; Michael Roberts, President, First Nations Development Institute; Avis Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D. Director of the Research, Public Policy and Information Center for African American Women at the National Council of Negro Women; Jim Carr, Chief Operating Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition; Maya Wiley, Founder & Director, The Center for Social Inclusion; and Wilhelmina Leigh, Ph.D., Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

U.S. Unemployment Rates on Google

The Department of Labor recently made unemployment rates (national, state, and county) available on Google with an easy to use chart/data interface, check it out.

READ: Banks Bomb on Stress Tests for Minority Lending

In his column @ The Daily Voice, Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes:

"Wells Fargo charged African-Americans more than twice as much as whites for home loans. JP Morgan charged African Americans and Latinos more than twice that of whites. Citigroup, US Bancorp and Wachovia charged minorities one and half times more. Blacks and Latinos were more than one and half times more likely than whites to be denied a loan by the top banks that received taxpayer bail out cash. Income had little to do with who the lenders pitched their sub prime loans to. Race and the neighborhoods they lived in were the prime determinants. A HUD study found that upper income blacks were one-and-a-half times as likely to have a sub prime loan as persons that lived in low-income white neighborhoods." Continue reading...

WATCH: Maya Rockeymoore on C-SPAN

Watch on C-SPAN

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, CEO of Global Policy Solutions, LLC, Director of Leadership for Healthy Communities, and an Insight Expert of Color discusses the nation's obesity epidemic which over the past four decades have soared among all age groups, increasing more than four times among children ages 6 to 11, and costs our nation $117 billion annually in direct medical expenses and indirect costs, including lost productivity and absenteeism.

READ: Kirwan Institute Report "Stimulus Plan in Communities of Color"

In late February, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, headed by Insight Expert of Color john a. powell, published their preliminary report on the impact of the economic stimulus plan on communities of color. While the authors applaud some aspects of the stimulus, they remind us that the "universal" policies being implemented "can lead to greater inequities."

 Instead, they "advocate a 'targeted universal' approach in which the needs of the particular are uplifted while recognizing that we are all part of the same social fabric. Targeted universal policies are inclusive, yet they are sensitive to the reality that the labor market and other aspects of our lives are unevenly segmented. A targeted approach takes everyone’s situated unevenness into consideration, as well as the condition of the most marginalized."

Unemployment Rate: College educated Black Americans

College educated blacks are almost twice as likely to be unemployed than whites with a college education, ,and have the highest rate of all people of color, reports Algernon Austin from the Economic Policy Insitute and an Insight Center "Expert of Color," on American Public Media's "Marketplace."

WATCH: Meizhu Lui on C-SPAN

Initiative Director Meizhu Lui discusses the racial wealth gap on C-SPAN.

WATCH: Racial Wealth Gap @ Spotlight on Poverty

Watch NCRC's Jim Carr and National CAPACD's Lisa Hasegawa talk about the racial wealth gap @ Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity.

LISTEN: Meizhu Lui on PRI and WNYC's "The Takeaway" on the racial wealth gap

Click here to listen to Meizhu Lui discuss the racial wealth gap on "The Takeaway"

WATCH: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) submits Insight Center report into Congressional Record

On March 24, 2009, in a hearing on the "Importance of Diversity in Financial Stability and Recovery," Congresswoman Waters (D-CA) submitted the Executive Summary of the report "Laying the Foundation for National Prosperity: The Imperative of Closing the Racial Wealth Gap" into the Congressional Record.

The full report, written by Meizhu Lui, Director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative, provides an overview of the racial wealth gap, and policy recommendations to close it.

LISTEN: Check out the racial wealth gap on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show

Our colleagues Thomas Shapiro, professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University, and Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity and the Economy Program at the Economic Policy Institute, discuss the widening wealth gap between African Americans and whites on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show.

WATCH: The Insight Center's Meizhu Lui on CNN's AC360

Watch Meizhu Lui, Director of the Insight Center's Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative, discuss our work, the racial wealth gap, and our Color of Wealth Summit last month.