(A post I had drafted but realized I never posted)

I think Shapiro’s book was really valuable. I really enjoyed that he explored the wealth gap. Back in Week 3 I spoke about how I was scared that Blacks would never truly be able to reduce this wealth gap. So to be able to look at all the different reasons why there is wealth gap between Blacks and Whites was nice. I especially liked how when he talked about inheritance he expanded besides just receiving monetary funds and possessions after one’s parents die to being offered financial help in any way shape or form. I think the example comparing Kathryn to Vivian was very helpful in conceptualizing that. I think all the interviews her performed were very helpful. I liked how he used all different forms of research to support his claims. I do wonder what effects fixing the wealth gap will have on the rest of the Black community. What I mean by this is what tangible effects can we see after the wealth gap is reduced. One thing I can see happening is more upward mobility for Blacks because there will be more wealth and help to get them there. But will closing the wealth only really help Blacks in the middle or upper classes. If it does help poor Blacks, in what ways will it truly help them? I definitely think this wealth gap needs to go but I wonder how effective will ending the wealth gap be.

Again–had drafted this post and never posted! Published here without changes:

I think one piece we all enjoyed about Shapiro’s work were his ideas for policy change and reform aimed at bettering the racial wealth disparity between blacks and whites. He mentions a number of different ideas, from reforming the estate tax and increasing tax on higher income families, to addressing discrimination in real estate markets and homeownership, creating home mortgage interest reduction credits, and addressing educational equity. However, how are these policies to become law while most Americans don’t know, understand, or believe in this racial wealth disparity? As many of the posts have mentioned, most white Americans are completely unaware of this issue–and not just unaware, but actively against the concept at all. The individualist mantra that is so pervasive in American culture and society makes it hard for white individuals to believe or accept that they haven’t necessarily earned all they have. When this is the case, how and when will they be willing to make change to help others, and to reduce their own privilege? In class I mentioned simple changes–switching the title of the book from the “hidden cost of being African American” to the “hidden benefit from being white”–but things like this are obviously not enough. It will take someone in power to be willing to make the unpopular statement that the disparity exists–and then be willing to change it. Sadly, I feel that it is most likely that this person will have to be white, in order for their words to be respected by mainstream white Americans. Even then, only a few will believe it. It is clear that for these policies to succeed, they will have to be presented in a “color-blind” light. However–is it fair to do this to create change–or does this ignore the importance of discussing race itself as a causal factor in this problem?

As Shapiro pointed out, and as we have frequently touched upon during our conversations in class, most accounts of racial inequality focus largely on factors that are at least nominally related to merit – education, occupation, and crime, to name a few. The slant of this discussion opens the door to conservative commentators who attribute inequality to individual choices and cultural shortcomings, rather than structural factors. Wilson rightly points out that liberals struggle to respond to these claims, and often choose to disregard behaviors of the disadvantaged or attribute them to circumstance. In doing so, they implicitly posit these individual and cultural factors as significant forces in perpetuating inequality, even if they are only intermediary.

However, Shapiro’s incisive findings reframe the discourse about inequality, helping us to understand it as largely inherited, and not as a product of merit. Especially when considering similar savings rates among white and black Americans, there is no intellectually honest way to understand the inheritance of white families, or the asset poverty of black families, through the lens of meritocracy. The next step in shifting the conversation is to demonstrate to the mainstream that our notion of deserving is misguided.

One aspect of Tom Shapiro’s The Hidden Cost of Being African American that I found particularly interesting and brought up in last week’s discussion was his analysis of why white parents avoid schools that are predominantly black. Shapiro demonstrates that in their quest for “good schools”, white parents are actually seeking schools where the majority of students look like their children. As Shapiro writes, “Many white parents, as well as some black ones, determine school quality not by academic excellence, teacher skills, or classroom curriculum but by who sits next to and who will associate with their child.” (172) Many white parents assume that schools whose student bodies are mostly students of color are bad schools without actually visiting them or talking to their teachers and administrators. This made me think about my own community, and the Huffington Post article that I brought up in class, which was written by Abby Norman, a white Atlanta parent who decided to send her daughter to her local neighborhood school, despite the fact that she was one of the only white students.

One of the most important consequences of wealth, as Shapiro describes, is the ability to move to an area whose local schools are considered “good”. Schools play such a big role in where people decide to live that, as Norman writes, real estate agents will advise potential buyers against certain areas solely because of the perceived quality of the schools. But for the white families who do decide to live in relatively integrated neighborhoods with significant black populations—which is increasingly happening in many neighborhoods in Atlanta—they refuse to send their children to the local neighborhood schools almost as a rule. Many white parents in my neighborhood sent their children to the local elementary school, which was almost all white, and many sent their children to the middle school, which was about half white and half black. But by the time their children got to high school, many parents removed them from the public school system or moved away to avoid sending them to my high school, which was two-thirds black. Going to a school where I was in the minority by no means hurt my education—in fact, as I wrote last week, I think it helped—but some white parents’ perceptions of my high school’s quality, which I can only assume was based on its demographics, convinced them that it was not good enough (read: white enough) for their children. Until we can rid ourselves of the notion that black students hurt the quality of a school, school integration will be impossible.

Reflecting on Tuesday’s discussion on race-based wealth inequalities, I’m thinking about how automated financial guidance may help to reduce the black-white wealth gap. We learned that centuries of government policy have undermined blacks’ ability to accumulate assets. Most shocking to me was Ira Katznelson’s point that, “Between 1945 and 1955, the federal government transferred more than $100 billion to support retirement programs and fashion opportunities for job skills, education, homeownership and small-business formation” that primarily benefitted whites (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700484.html). Still, I wonder whether automated guidance has the potential to help blacks better manage the wealth they do accumulate.

I first learned about roboplanners while working at a consulting firm this summer studying the future of automation across six industrial applications ranging from emergency rooms to retail stores. An innovation of the last five years, these algorithm-based services often come at a fraction of the cost of human planners. Though existing technologies do not offer retirement or estate planning assistance, they still help consumers make decisions on how and where to invest their money.

Also, while roboplanning may make guidance more accessible to the black community, a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Daisy Maxey documents how some African-Americans feel that they don’t need financial advice at all (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324634304578539110358585512). I question the writer’s assumption that this is a pervasive attitude amongst middle-income blacks, and would like to more about structural barriers preventing blacks from accessing this guidance. Moreover, regardless of the distinction between structural and cultural arguments, 19% of black Americans have financial advisors, compared to 30% of the overall population. Perhaps culturally-targeted marketing of new automated tools could yield new black consumers and begin to close this gap, underscoring that even those earning “a good income” and “build[ing] wealth” should still seek advisory services to further their financial gains.

As data has recently been collected about the quality of schools across the country, the stark difference between the educations that children receive has risen to the forefront of conversation. For some parents, the lack of quality public education in their communities is a pressing issue. The distinction that wealth creates occurs in whether or not these parents are able to offer other alternatives for their children. For financially secure, and often, white families, this may mean sending their children to private schools or to better school districts. For less well-off, and often black, families the presence of subpar education may create a problem without any tangible solutions. As a result, as white parents move their children out of poorer districts and abandon the issues of the public schools, these schools often fall farther behind in terms of educational achievement, furthering the effects of wealth on educational attainment. This wealth difference can impact more than just where a child attends primary or secondary school, as in this case. Centuries of disadvantage have left black families far behind their white counterparts, with various institutional and systematic factors hindering their progress.

Considering the importance of education in combating income inequality, I found this idea very interesting. This novel helped explain how the same families affected by lower incomes also were unable to build wealth and therefore unable to offer their children the same educational opportunities as other families, further widening the income gap. Shapiro, through this book, does a good job of explaining the perpetuity of the wealth gap, and how the presence of assets can alter the life course of families and subsequent generations.

I really enjoyed this week’s readings and discussion. Perhaps more than any other unit from the semester, the findings of The Hidden Cost of Being African American articulated a very different, novel argument. Speaking about wealth inequality opens a powerful narrative about opportunity and access, and even beginning this discussion reveals privileges in experiences that might have been difficult to see otherwise.

Shapiro’s talk at Brown in how education reform, eliminating income disparities and enabling home ownership was compelling. It resonated with the discussion of the origins of the wealth gap in class, where Professor Bobo pointed out the racialization of state policy, economic discrimination and categorical exclusions that created inequalities in wealth. Shapiro’s talk very clearly attempts to suggest measures that would reverse the impact of these structural forces. Given the resistance in testimonies in Shapiro’s book, though, and the difficulties of recognizing privilege, it seems that even with quantifiable evidence, the narrative of wealth inequality still has yet to become comfortably accepted by mainstream perspectives. To make real impact on the policies that perpetuate wealth inequality, we need to push for more conversations and make the realities of wealth inequality widely-accepted.

Tom Shapiro’s talk at the “Race Today: A Symposium on Race in America” at Brown university. The symposium “brought a group of the nation’s most respected intellectuals on race, racial theory and racial inequality together to consider the troubling state of black life in America today. What are the broader structural factors that shape race today? How do these factors work on the ground and institutionally and what are the consequences? What are the ideas about race, and racial identities that enable the normalcy of stark racial differences today? In particular, what role do key ideas such as “colorblindness” and “post race” play in shaping perception and outcomes? What can be done to challenge ideological and structural impediments to a racially egalitarian society?”

Also, the article Quinn raised in class:

Why White Parents Won’t Choose Black Schools

As is to be expected, parsing through the comments section (if you like to torture yourself) there is a lot of defensiveness and denial  about the author’s argument,  which reveals much of what Shapiro discusses in terms of the mechanisms of denial which insulate whites from their privilege.