Reflections on Black History Month
By Albert B. Kelly
As Black History Month comes upon us, it’s a moment that
calls for some reflection on our collective history as a nation. I say that
because in so many ways, the decisions that were made, or in some cases not
made way back when, are ones that still cast a long shadow on our lives today. These
decisions may not seem that obvious now, but they became the business end of
multi-tipped spear. This thought occurred to me while reading some of the
articles and writings of Professor Ira Katznelson from Columbia University who
has written extensively about affirmative action.
To understand the context, it’s important to go back to the
“New Deal” which was President Franklin Roosevelt’s answer to the Great
Depression. In the 1930’s, when the Social Security program was being hammered
out, the legislation excluded maids (i.e. domestic help) and farmworkers- jobs
primarily filled by black and Latino workers. This decision denied benefits to
roughly 65% of African-Americans nationwide.
During that same period in the 1930’s, other laws that
expanded union membership and created labor standards such as a minimum wage
and a 40-hour workweek, also excluded these same job categories of domestic
help and farm labor again impacting a majority of African-American families in
the country.
A decade later in the 1940’s, as the Second World War was
winding down and thoughts centered on helping veterans returning from the war,
it was the G.I Bill that became the main vehicle for providing help. The G.I
Bill helped veterans get job training, buy houses, and go to college among
other things. The problem was in how the programs were run. Congress in its
infinite wisdom, left it up to local officials as to how to administer benefits
and African-Americans, along with Latinos, only got a few table scraps in terms
of job training, education, and housing.
The decisions that were made back in the day matter in 2018 because
these programs and policies were the main vehicles over several decades for
building generational wealth and prosperity- the type of stuff that gets passed
down from parents to children unto the third and fourth generations and beyond.
Of course the flip side of that coin is poverty and how it also gets passed on
to future generations.
To lend some perspective, today, according to figures from
the Economic Policy Institute cited by Professor Katznelson, the average amount
of household wealth for white families- which mostly comes from the equity in
housing- is roughly $134,000. For African-American families, that number is
$11,000.
Similar comparisons can be made for wages and salaries-
which gets determined by what type of education one gets-which itself is
determined by one’s credit and ability to secure financing, which gets
determined by one’s collateral and earning power, which traces back to the job
you have, which is largely determined by the education you get…and on and on it
goes.
The good news has always been that policy can be changed and
past injustices corrected, whether through fair housing policies, enforcement
of civil rights provisions, voting rights, affirmative action, or whatever else
might ensure that families on the margins might build and pass along a little wealth
and prosperity unto to the third and fourth generations.
I have no doubt that things would be a lot different today
if the decisions that were made back in the 1930’s and 1940’s for these
programs had been focused on inclusion rather than exclusion. We can’t go back
and change history. What we can do now though, is set aside the idea of placing
blame and make certain that as a society, we don’t go backwards by stripping
away existing laws and statutes designed to correct these past injustices.
More importantly, we can focus on crafting new vehicles and
mechanisms, matched to the challenges of the 21st century, that
allows all families an equal shot at building some prosperity to pass on to
future generations. And this need not be a zero-sum game where one group’s gain
is seen as coming at the expense of some other group.
Whatever meaning Black History Month might hold for those
who care to consider it, for me it is a space filled with hope- a hope that all
people of good will, regardless of race or ethnicity, might draw out of our
past lessons some conclusions that will help inform the future because quite
frankly, the future is the only thing we can change.