People of color have often been excluded—explicitly or implicitly—from the paths to economic prosperity in our country. These systemic disparities are also a factor in why people of color disproportionately live in poverty, when compared to white Americans.
Police violence against people of color in the U.S. has become a visible and widely understood problem. Social media and cell phone cameras have made it hard to ignore the institutional racism long present in U.S. policing.
Yet people of color also face more insidious discrimination and harm, less easy to capture on video. The graphs, charts, and Census data that illustrate our country’s racial economic gap don’t always elicit strong emotions. Yet each data point is the story of a life lived under the shadow of inequality.
People of color have often been excluded—explicitly or implicitly—from the paths to economic prosperity in our country. These systemic disparities are also a factor in why people of color disproportionately live in poverty, when compared to white Americans. The lack of economic opportunity and stability for families of color is its own form of violence, denying people the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
Here are three of the many factors that contribute to these disparities.
Inequalities in home ownership. Buying a home is a common way for families to build up assets for the future. Yet home ownership rates for African-American and Hispanic families lag behind those of white families, in part due to a discriminatory practice called “red-lining.” Under this system, put forward by the Federal Housing Authority in the 1930s, entire inner-city neighborhoods were deemed too risky for lenders. The residents, primarily people of color, were automatically rejected for loans. This practice led to segregated, underinvested city neighborhoods and low rates of home ownership among the people who lived there. Red-lining has been illegal since the 1970s, yet even today, lenders frequently offer less desirable or more risky loans to African-American and Hispanic families.
Inequalities in education. Education is a pathway to economic and social mobility. For people of color in the United States, this opportunity has often been deliberately limited. Following the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, some states shut down public schools rather than integrate them, diverting money to pay private school tuition for white students. While segregated schools are illegal, in practice minority students living in poor neighborhoods often attend the most poorly resourced schools. In today’s economy, as manufacturing jobs disappear and high-skilled jobs are in demand, quality education is more important than ever, yet for many students it remains out of reach.
Inequalities in the criminal justice system. African Americans are six times more likely than whites to be incarcerated in their lifetime. Incarceration has enormous economic repercussions for individuals, families, and communities. A prison sentence takes away the earning power of the person incarcerated, preventing them from contributing to their family’s income. Returning citizens leaving prison often have trouble finding a job, yet are denied access to assistance programs that could help them get back on their feet.
