I enjoyed watching the footage of Shapiro speaking at the symposium at Brown, and I think he brought up some interesting points that complemented his text we were assigned. One thing that stuck with me as I continued watching, were his opening words on how the issue of the wealth gap is really something that only recently has been on the minds of the general public. He speaks with optimism as he points out that he’s been working more and more with “not just researchers and academics” but “community organizers and advocates and locally based community organizations across the country” as well. He also mentions how even up to two years ago, no one was speaking about this issue at all and now there’s a whole symposium. He credits some of this general awareness of the problem to President Obama speaking at the the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and saying, “we’ve made great economic progress between the races but the racial wealth gap is still growing” because these words helped steer public conversation and give the movement legitimacy.

My concern however, is how are we going to address the general cultural view on wealth and this gap? Even now that there’s this symposium and a whole body of academic work on the wealth gap, wealth/income/money are all topics that tend to bring out the defensive worst in all of us. I fear that real change cannot be achieved unless there’s a fundamental shift towards transparency and openness in discussing wealth. With the fizzle out of the anti 1% protesters and the political determination to not alienate those with these campaign donation funds, I’m not very optimistic about the future of this conversation moving forward.