my name is Karen Maloney and I'm the executive publisher for economics books at Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is a part of Cambridge University in England and the press has been around since 1584 and our mission is to help the university in its mission of course to disseminate knowledge and to strive for high levels of excellence in scholarship in academia and influencing the public policy debates around the world so I feel very fortunate to work with Sandy daredi on his series on stratification economics and so thrilled to be here because this is the launch with there the new book of our this new series so the hidden rules of race barriers to an inclusive economy by andrea flynn susan Homburg dorian welleran and felicia wong this afternoon's panels will be on two of the chapters in that book one on health and one unwell very interesting and important topics and as I said before we look forward to lots of interesting debate I'm going to turn the mic over to Sandy who's going to introduce the next panel so thank you all for coming good afternoon good afternoon so this is a actually a very very special moment for me as the series editor for the stratification economics project for the Cambridge University Press because this is the first volume that we are bringing out under the auspices of that particular project so so I want to say a special thank you to the authors from the Roosevelt Institute who are on this panel two of them for sharing this their their manuscript with us and allowing us to make it the first book in the series and this particular panel is going to be focused on the dimensions of wealth inequality that are explored in the hidden rules of race so we're going to have conversation about the the two panelists who are from the Roosevelt Institute or Dorian Warren who is a fellow with the Institute and also serves as president of CCC a so the Center for Community Change action yes okay I got it thank you very very good and is also you know had in a previous life was a public intellectual appeared on MSNBC on a regular basis with the show that was called nerding out the other author who is on the panel is Felicia Wong who is on my far right and Felicia is not politically on my far right but just this I don't know we haven't actually done the full comparative but Felicia is the president of the Roosevelt Institute a gifted scholar in her own right and the person who actually ultimately made the commitment for the manuscript to become part of our series so thank you for that Felicia and then on Dorian's right is Marian Johnson who is a local community activist she is with well I guess at least two organizations I work at the North Carolina Justice Center yes and I'm also on the board of the Durham People's Alliance thank you yeah and and then the other secret of this is that a few years ago Marian was a graduate student in the master's of Public Policy program at the Sanford School and I think she actually subjected herself to having a class with and then the last person I'd like to introduce on the panel is my longtime collaborator Derek Hamilton who I think is perhaps the foremost expert on racial wealth inequality in America and I guess recently he's he's been branching out a bit to look at the relationship between wealth and health outcomes and he also has an op-ed that I think is forthcoming in yes which is actually going to be a commentary on dream hoarders yes so so we've got a panel that's very very able to try to make the bridge between the two books for us today but especially to talk about the issues that are associated with racial wealth disparities so I'd like to open by asking Felicia and dorian to comment on the genesis of their book the hidden rules of race what what brought you to producing this book well thank you and thanks so much sandy and the whole team at Duke for really helping us bring together a wonderful day a really a wonderful day and a half you know sandy when I called you for us to say you know we're so proud to be the first book in the stratification economics series and maybe you would agree to host like a small reading you know in in a book store or you know maybe someone's home I don't have you think turned into a multi-day conference with people flying in but anyway here we are I suspect Cindy that that's sort of how you do things just a few things about this book both to of origin stories there are actually more than there is actually more than one origin story for this book and then sort of a little bit about the process really two things happened in 2015-2016 that really said to me that the Roosevelt Institute should write this book the first is that you know as we all know the question racial opera sorry economic opportunity economic inequality was front and center in the 2016 election I am very proud to say that Roosevelt played a small part in that by really promoting a fairly aggressive quote populist economic argument that was picked up by a number of candidates we were really arguing that you know what was happening at the top of our economy what was happening with the financial sector what was happening with corporate concentration with concentrations of both power and wealth was having terrible effects on the middle and working class and that was something that had to be part of the election and obviously it was part of the Civic debate but we also began to recognize as we heard the responses from mostly white progressives many very prominent many of them were you know leading candidates that the race that race a race lens a racial analysis was basically left out and even when candidates who shall remain nameless but I'm sure you can imagine who they are we're asked directly about race they would sort of say well as all we need to do is like you know rip the banks up and like throw them away and then we'll all be better and you know that just seemed to me and to all of us at Roosevelt to be incomplete and so we thought we should we wrote a book on the rules of the economy we should also write a book that actually were supposed to be a twenty page lit review but anyway about the rules of race so that was the first thing but then the second thing Dorian and I had lunch right near the MSNBC studios one day and you know tallahassee coats had written you know many of his many of his essays in the atlantic but in particular had you know we were commenting on the case for reparations and i said dorian that is such an amazing and lyrical piece and you maybe we should write something that has kind of all the data like the analysis you know we should we should write something that kind of backs it all up Tana Hussey of course tells mostly a housing story but we should really look at the racial rules across all of the sectors of the economy so we thought that that would be a helpful addition to the to the literature maybe not as lyrical as Tallahassee's but hopefully useful to students and you know people who just wanted to learn so those are the two origin stories last thing I'll say before I then turn it back to you is that a little bit about our process the way we met Derrick and Sandy and many others is that once we had this idea that this book had to be written we actually knew what Roosevelt we're a small think-tank Policy Institute in New York and we have some great scholars including Andrea Flynn and Rakim Abood whom you'll hear from later and Dorian who no one has a lock on this stuff right so we called everybody we knew we called we were fortunate enough to be able to call Derek and Sandy and to call dozens of other scholars and dozens of other activists and advocates and political strategists to say help us basically if we wrote this book what would you want to see in it what would you find most useful what perspective should we take what perspective should we avoid and we had multiple convenings and many many many multi our conversations and so in the course of that you know I feel like this is a little bit our book but it's a lot a lot of people's book and I am very very pleased that sandy and Derek and many of their other colleagues have been so helpful to us along this journey so Dorian I'd like to ask if you could reflect on the fact that initially I think the Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz had a book that was called rewriting the rules of the American economy which was a product of the Roosevelt Institute and his involvement and engagement with the Institute and then subsequently you you collectively had a report that was called rewrite the racial rules that I think came out in 2016 and so now the new book is called the hidden rules of race so would you reflect on what you all mean about the rules and and and what that implies about race and particularly sandy that wasn't in the script by the way on the process we did invite and ask a lot of academics and advocates for advice we ignored some people but what we didn't do was to ever ignore Derrick or sandy so thank you very much thank you for that so we thought it would be useful because what Felicia said is partly this came out of what you might think of as a movement moment as well so there was a political campaign happening but there was also the movement for black lives so there was a lot of discussion about race and especially police violence that was happening around the country and we observed that much of that discussion not all of it because a lot of it was focused on structural reforms to policing and police departments well often when we talk about race in this country it's about individuals it's about individual races it's about what's in people's hearts it's at the micro individual level and we want it to elevate the conversation to a different plane so to speak and really focus on structures and rules and so when we talk about rules we mean policies by governments whether federal policy state policy local policy we mean a system of practices so how do employers engage in employment practices whether in terms of hiring or promotions that dis personally affect people of color and women and especially women of color so by rules we want to put that on the table because I don't care personally what you believe I do care how you treat me so we have to distinguish what people believe in their attitudes it's kind of called in social science to add the attitudinal fallacy so we focus a lot on attitudes in public opinion versus behavior and attitudes don't always match with behavior because you could actually hate me but under law have to treat me with respect and with equal rights right so we thought that was the place to focus so it was both in some ways now to be honest since the book is out yes was it an intervention into say the social science literature on racing the economy absolutely it was also political intervention to be honest into the conversation to focus on the rules because when we focus on the rules that structure behavior and then outcomes it also means for me at least and for Felicia and Andrea that we have a leverage on how to change the rules well I know I can spend a strategy of changing the rules around employment or lending or a range of other areas health schools I'm more confident in that than I can if I'm going to convince you not to be racist just honestly so part of this was a political intervention it's also we do think in terms of the causal impact the causal impact on disparate racial outcomes on inequality we actually think the rules have more causal weight and they actually really matter in almost every realm of life health wealth income education criminal justice I mean in democracy great if democracy is nothing else it's a set of rules of who belongs and who doesn't belong who gets participate who doesn't get to participate so we we thought for a number of reasons the rules and it's part of the Roosevelt Institute's legacy the last few years as you pointed out sandy in terms of the report and book by Joe Stiglitz no one had quite married this idea of the racial rules in terms of the autonomy that we saw in a compelling way or at least people have done it before but it needed to be updated so that's you know that's that's that's the other part of the origin story of this so let me push a little bit off script again which is to ask what is your perception of the relationship between talking about the rules and what we sometimes refer to as structural explanations for inequality I think it's a level down so when we talk about structural racism we mean the entire system right of throw another term that you have racial capitalism in America in every institution and I think so that's like the everything right in terms of structural racism people often use that metaphor if it's baked into the country it's baked into the strace ISM is baked into the structure of the country that's I believe it it's true I could offer you empirical evidence it leaves you a little paralyzed so then what do you do about that if it's baked in if it affects every single institution in society you can feel a little powerless to do something about it so if you go a level down to in specific institutions and the rules which govern specific institutions we're in North Carolina there is a rule called SB five eight nine I believe was the voter suppression law here I can wrap my head around that and I can actually create a strategy to change it right I can understand the history of voting rights in this country and in this state as a set of rules that structure the participation especially of black people and people of color and that lead in various moments over time to disparate outcomes that seems not only tangible but conceptually it seems the right place to focus to have people understand how the racial rules affect their daily lives but then also what they can do to change them so in the book there are two theoretical frameworks that inform the content of the data and the interpretation of the data that you present one of these is stratification economics which is why I immediately thought that the book was a natural for the Cambridge University for a series and the other is something called targeted universalism which we attribute to John Powell at the Haas Institute so Derek I'd like to ask you to comment on the relationship between stratification economics and targeted universalism if any and what is the content those two approaches that appears to inform what's happening in the in the whole book good question um so uh that one's on script my little technology I'm trying to switch to get rid of notes and I'm struggling to find where I prepared I guess I'd say that targeted universalism may even predate John Powell you can talk about people like William Julius Wilson and probably predates him as well the idea formed in part because of political constraints the argument was that targeted policies are not durable politically that more Universal policies might be more durable but you know I someone said it and I can't remember virtually no policy is not targeted in some way usually Social Security has given as the example of something that's universal but that's clearly targeted it's not an untargeted program but nonetheless the idea that programs that a more Universal would have more buy-in William William Julius Wilson when he talked about it he also discussed it in terms of race that if you're talking about race specific policies they really are not durable that we'd be better off with class specific policies than race for the political viability that said john powell seems to my interpretation is that he talks about a new frame of policy where we think about a universal goal so say everybody will I think one example he's given is have reached eighth grade proficiency in math by eighth grade let's say that's to go but some groups may be more disparate in terms of reaching that level so he's talking about targeted approaches to get everybody to reach some Universal goal okay so my read of that is that's kind of kind of an implementation approach I'm not so I'm not even sure that targeted universal is per se a policy approach and there's a certain irony in that the political constraint that leads you to say not not to use targeted programs because of the political viability well if you're using an approach of targeted universalism eventually if you're enriching one group that is subpar and reaching a universal standard in some ways ironically isn't that also in the realm of a political approach where you're targeting a group and I think so but I'm not sure but nonetheless I think that it fits very well within the notion of we need to have some universal standards irrespective of one's identity group that they come from I think that the current policy frame did we use is pretty much with Joe sauce Richard fording and Sanford SRAM call neoliberal paternalism where we use the approach of lays a fair markets for everyone except the poor for poor individuals we the reason they're doing subpar and I'm going to get the stratification economics the reason the reason they're doing so poor is because they're engaged in some behavior norm attitude that is not being rewarded in the marketplace and that behavior normal attitude needs to be corrected and the way it's corrected is through sanction punitive tactics that sanction them and in their book they describe race as the political fodder to implement harsh punitive controls on the poor and we can name them social experimentation moving opportunity experiment that would be an example of a neoliberal paternalism policy not trying to eliminate poverty but income maintenance those that would be a neoliberal policy I probably could go on and name a bunch more fertility control all these things aimed at trying to sanction seemingly bad behavior for poor people would fit in that realm of neoliberal paternalism a stratification economics approach and one that I I'm pretty sure did roosevelt institute is on board with if you just read their book is one where we try to enable people we try to enable people so that they can be self defining and what it is they want to attain and have the resources in order to achieve it so for example sandy and I have been working very hard on a federal job guarantee program as well as baby bonds approach Richard Richard Reeves was here earlier him in Elizabeth Sawhill called coin the term that we have a great affinity to which is called tart wouldn't not targeted I'm quoting that language what is it not just race-conscious and we can even expand it gender conscious Universal policies so my idea of thinking about this is our idea of thinking about this is their huge disparities in many dimensions in society employment they're huge racial disparities wealth they're huge wealth racial disparity disparities well why don't we have a universal type program and the domain where we have huge disparities and unlike what we did during the New Deal FDR moment where we structured it in a way that the implementation wasn't equal and even through the policy it wasn't equal now we are vigilant to make sure that it's not unequal in the distribution but if it's universal directed at a domain where there's gross inequities well we are now addressing the problems in enabling people so that they can have the resources to make choice so we want everybody to have ability to make choice the issue is resource rather than behavior norms and it also fits in with an economic Bill of Rights and I'll stop here but we could talk about several economic Bill of Rights which would elevate all people to have access to to the things that right now Richard Reeves talks about it's hardly at the top 20 percent well okay so I definitely want to turn to Miriam and I would like to ask you the theme of this panel is is is wealth inequality by race I'd like you to reflect on please what why it matters for us to focus on wealth instead of income and what some of the implications and ramifications might be in the work that you've been doing locally yeah and thank you very much and like I said I work at the NC Justice Center and I specifically work in a project called the budget and tax I'm the policy advocate which means that I do our outreach and engagement work so I don't get down and dirty with the numbers every day I'm usually translating the things that my analysts are writing so that people can understand them so just keep in mind that I'm not gonna be talking about a lot of numbers I will say some but that's really not my area of expertise so I think people do talk a lot about income inequality because it's very easy to see we can talk about the wage gap very easily and say things like you know white men are making for every dollar that a white man makes a woman makes allegedly 77 cents to that dollar a black woman makes 64 cents and Latina woman will make about 58 cents and so it's easy to see that and say okay well there's an obvious inequality there it's a little bit harder to think about how that income gap for instance will actually build over generations and how we just sort of see a further and further stratification of communities of color falling behind or in fact being held back from where their white peers are going I think one really visible way to see wealth inequalities in Durham is Durham housing and so I'm gonna do something a little bit weird and give you guys permissions to take out your phones because I need total Google something cuz I don't have a slide for this so if you can Google W USD Durham redlining map so WNC redlining map and you'll just scroll down a little bit and see there's a map of Durham that was color-coded by the homeowners Loan Corporation in 1937 and so they color-coded it in that the green areas and the blue areas were sort of the more desirable read majority white neighborhoods the red areas were less desirable majority black and so they specifically would not offer new home loans to anyone living in the red areas and so you can see if you're looking at the map that Hayti is very prominent there that's the sort of like triangular you see south of these sort of freeway is the triangular sort of shape so Haiti is a large flat neighborhood and anybody who was living there was not going to get a loan for a new home so the red areas were called hazardous race great yeah it's you know it's it's almost cute it's almost cute how does explicitly racist they were so white homeownership was flourishing in the areas that you see in green and blue and black neighborhoods were just disinvested in they were over policed and there was no there's no encouragement of new homeownership in black neighborhoods so then we cut to 2012 and Durham's housing market is just sort of booming and I'm actually going to cite my friend Mel Norton's research he's been doing this for a long time but so you see the average cost of a 1500 square foot home in 2005 was $40,000 in this one specific neighborhood called Cleveland Holloway which is now very desirable in 2015 the average cost is two hundred thirty six thousand dollars so as the City Center in Durham is sort of building up in developing and developing houses are getting more expensive and so developers are coming into these black neighborhoods and buying houses for super cheap flipping the houses and then selling them at a huge profit in the white neighborhoods in the green and blue areas white people have been owning their homes for generations and so they can sell their homes at a huge profit so the money that's coming pouring into Durham right now is going to white families it is not going to any of the black family so if a home gets sold at that huge market that I mentioned from forty thousand to two hundred thirty six thousand black low means aren't getting that money and so that's sort of you see intergenerational wealth in white Durham you see intergenerational debt and poverty in black Durham and so that's one really visible way I mean I don't own a home because I got student loan debt which is also a thing that we can talk about so that's I think a really visible way and so that was really important because you can't fix that wealth gap just by saying okay well let's close the income gap like there's generational disparities and barriers that we're also up against so on the ground what's the consequence of this wealth gap what what does it mean in terms of in terms of people's day-to-day lives and I can I will talk about student loan debt because it's on my mind constantly almost like on a monthly basis I'm paying so a lot of times you see when your kids going off to college you see a lot of white families taking out a second mortgage on their home so they can pay their child's tuition if they own a home in communities of color you see a lot less homeownership so you don't have that option and so you're more likely to take out a punitive like a loan at a punitive interest rate in order to pay for your child's tuition that means that your child is going to graduate with a greater amount of debt than his or her white peers and so in North Carolina you're also seeing the state government underfunding public universities at a drastic rate I mean state funding has been dropping since 2008 so tuitions going up so the burden of funding is now falling on tuition paying students so students of color are taking out more student loan debt in order to cover their tuition and their debt is multiplying almost exponentially once they graduates at a rate much faster than their white peers and so that's one thing in the day to day we're like the fact that your family did not own a home is also hurting your future because you are now in more debt than your white peers you went to college so that you could get a better jobs you could get more income but now you have this additional burden that like I said like closing the income gap or raising than wage is only gonna address part of that and so that's another just sort of day-to-day burden that you're faced with it has nothing to do with you and what you've done but everything to do with the circumstances that have been specifically created so that you'll be held back so let's let's go back to the national level for a moment and I'd like to ask I'd like to ask for some reflections on the reasons for the racial wealth gap and it might be helpful if that's preceded by some very brief description of what the magnitude of the racial wealth gap is but but what's the explanation I mean Marian suggested that it has a lot to do with patterns of homeownership urban renewal and gentrification but is that the whole story what what is the whole story maybe maybe Felicia you could start on this one well I will start and I'll also call on everybody on the panel especially Derrick who I know thinks a lot about racial wealth in particular I've been actually trying to think about a way to avoid the term gap because I sometimes think of the term gap is it connotes a kind of chasm that is impossible you know that it feels again as Dorian said disempowering but for now I'm gonna use the term because it's common parlance it's hard to think of something else to say but at any rate you know the numbers roughly are that african-american families have white families let's start there have median wealth of about 150,000 African American families about 10,000 this is you know all of your assets combined if you look if you take the numbers especially for women single African American women have about $100 single African American mothers have zero net worth so we are talking and what that means to me and we can talk about the drivers it is housing but it's also much more than housing and I think both sandy you and Derrick have made that point very well and very importantly what that means is that if you are in a family that has very little wealth it means you have absolutely no cushion against any of life's vicissitudes right whether it is your car breaking down or an illness or you know you know your kid getting sick these are you simply cannot cover for yourself it also means that if you wanted to take a risk to change jobs to you know again send your kid to a school that might be a bit more expensive as part of an investment strategy man capital investment strategy you're simply not going to have the ability to do that and income also of course contributes to this but the reason wealth is so important is that wealth if you think intergenerational wealth which we often talk about this is really just Chris realized history it is really just not just but it's really tragically a reflection of the fact that for 350 years we have seen a system of rules slavery Jim Crow redlining etc that have when you exclude a group of people for this long what you end up with is really having made a set of economic decisions on their behalf that leads them unable to cope with anything resembling risk so that is why I think it is so important and that is something about the magnitude of the numbers yeah it's um baseball season the World Series is on my cubbies aren't in the World Series but I bring that up because everyone last year after 180 years sort of like the wealth gap the Barry Switzer's famous for saying some people are born on third base but go through life thinking they hit a triple so that's the essence of wealth right and if you extend it well some people maybe make it the first base but there are lots of people that can't even play the game can even get in the game so that's that's sort of in a different you know it's a visual right of or different visual of the wealth gap and as Felicia said it's crystallize history so if you think of the first 25 decades of this country which is 250 years when black folks were property well property can't own other property and if wealth is an essence an asset and the owning of property so we got a we got to add all that up that's first 25 decades then the next hunt in the next hundred years in the next ten decades of Jim Crow which is basically slavery by a different name so debt peonage contract labor so black holes weren't able to build wealth for the next three years so that's the 350 years and then it's been 50 years since say the civil rights movement and there was some progress in response by the way to the New Deal that excluded black folks from building assets especially through housing policy Federal Housing Policy whether we had the 68 for Housing Act we had the 77 Community Reinvestment Act so those were a set of racial rules that were more inclusive that were meant to address the housing gaps in the wealth gap but then we had and we've talked about this a little bit deregulation as Felicia says deregulation is this tree regulation by a different name it's reregulate inform our 'fl so deregulation of banking and finance which think created a set of non rules that allowed the emergence of subprime lending and predatory lending that targeted especially african-americans and especially black women and there's lots of data in the book about this so you add up all of this right so this this is the crystallized history so 250 years a hundred more years then we have like a little blip of progress but then boom by the 90s we had the subprime crisis and then we get 2008 and although you know they see it's white so I mean it's amazing to me that some black people even still have like what seven cents on the one dollar of white wealth like wow I mean after that much history of the building and by the way this is the point of stratification economics inequality is relational so when the first one in 50 years when black people were property well somebody was owning them right this goes to richard rivas argument earlier about downward just think about upward mobility everybody can't always be going up somebody has to fall for there to be upward mobility so someone has to be accumulating wealth for others to be dispossessed of wealth so that adds then to the broader notion of the show wealth gap I can't think of another word either Felicia so some people are benefiting some people aren't but then to bring it back to the initial example this is how we have a lot of people who get bored on third base but and it's very easy and more convenient to walk around to not acknowledge that while other people are trying to get into the game so we have to essentially the bottom line is we have to change the rules of the game surprise surprise to allow broader access to building of wealth both for the insurance purposes Felicia talked about so when hard times come but then also for to be able to take risk wealth is also being able to start a business and have it fail and be okay so there's a general point that you made that echoes something that Richard Reeves said about the issue concerning downward mobility and I'd like to throw this open to everyone on the panel but if the argument is that for some to move up someone else must move down we're essentially suggesting that inequality is a zero-sum game and so then if that is in fact true then doesn't it become essential for us to make sure that we have a universal standard that makes the situation for folks at the bottom one that is not of one of severe deprivation that that if you're if you're going to be at the bottom your life is not going to be tormented and horrible and so if if that is the case then what steps could we take to make sure that our bottom is not awful the answer is absolutely yes inequality is zero-sum and we probably want to live in a society that is inclusive we don't let - we don't let people full - below a certain standard of living and inequality becomes really pernicious when it's based on some group identity like gender or race right as opposed to some other dimensions of inequality in terms of thinking about policies well that is indeed the stratification economics approach it is making sure that everybody has some minimum level of attainment so that they can be self defining and achieve their goals that would include some public floor on banking that would include taking credit scores out of the hand of the for-profit proprietary sector and putting it in an institution that will have some accountability because it has so much influence on people's lives that would include making sure everybody has single has health insurance so we you're not at the point of delivery of medical service you're not stuck with the stigma of having the finances that would include public education that would include other domains a job guarantee that we talked about some people have talked about income making sure we have a minimum level of income as an approach well I like the approach that uh Milton Friedman the categorize although I probably envision a different than he does a negative income tax so if we want to use the tax code as a mechanism to make sure that we have a society where everybody's included that's fine but we certainly need to at least establish some floor to ensure that there is inclusion of everybody given that we know inequality is a zero-sum game can I actually take issue with one thing you said it may be in fact is true that mathematically as Richard Grise pointed out this morning inequality is a zero-sum game but I think it is a very very very dangerous mindset and it is not necessarily you know empirically true that the economy is zero-sum because we have been for multiple decades in this country now stuck in a quite low growth economy but I would argue that that is because we have been following policies that are quote neoliberal or market fundamentalist or whatever that have basically created a set of companies that are very big and very powerful and essentially suck resources and money to the top without reinvesting those resources in jobs and expanded you know operations and you know new research and development if you that has in fact created such low growth that our world now feels zero-sum but that is not inevitable it is possible to break that kind of stranglehold at the top to reinvest to create I'm not gonna claim you know five six seven ten twelve percent growth but I do believe that and the research the the most recent research shows that there is a very significant output gap still in the economy whereby if you invested more you would see more growth and then what you need to do is to ensure that that growth is shared and that has both an economic perspective as an economic benefit obviously but also a political one one of the big metaphors now that's prevalent in kind of at least you know some political circles is you know it's a line so get in line this is the sort of early hook shield you know everybody sees themselves in a line and the unfair and the unfair line cutters namely African American people of color young people need to keep their place in line and not not cheat and get ahead well that image of a line is inherently zero-sum but if you flipped the line such that all people were standing shoulder to shoulder in an economy that was growing and pro investment and by that I mean both public and private investment you could imagine both a different politics and a different economy so I would just say that I think as zero-sum zero-sum language is in some ways an important thing to realize when you're talking about inequality in an abstract sense but it is not necessarily true that our economy is inevitably zeros and low growth so you you've actually gone back to Joe Stiglitz is initial discussion rewriting the rules of the American economy so that in effect we're rewriting the practices of macroeconomic policy in the United States in such a way that we alter the distributional consequences yes and then it's and and but you must we must make sure that these gains are shared in a way that I would say are consistent with targeted universalism in other words if the crystallized history of wealth has left some people much farther behind if the line flips who in fact needs the most such that everybody kind of gets gets to this kind of shoulder to shoulder position position so that's why I think the racial rules analysis and the economic rules analysis are are inextricably linked so here's a couple of responses let's say one we can't think that of collective assets in public goods where we're all better off and that indeed is part of a stratification economics frame also where if we have public education that's an asset for everybody it's not an individual asset but by definition inequality is zero-sum by definition I don't you know and and I think that some of the points that Richard Reeves was making is we need to recognize that and recognize that if we want a different system of distribution there there is somebody's going to have to give up something if they want to now now the question of ten we all be better off if we had a different type of economy that was more inclusive and leveraging so this question might relate to growth can we have better growth if we had a more evenly distributed economy well well here is a response some of the research might show that the answer is yes but that's context specific that is a paradigm that might be specific to a particular place at a particular time given a particular set of conditions for one I don't think we should justify our dignity to be included in a society based on economic growth I think that that frame of going into the narrative of well it's good for growth actually buys into a system that ultimately oppresses us because in this specific context it may be true but at another context it may not be true and if we're using economic growth arguments for dignity then I think that becomes problematic it even goes up back to the point that Dorian made also when he said that during slavery time the fact that black people were capital meant that somebody was being enriched so slavery very well can grow an economy we can we can describe a context through exploitation where an economy grows in fact that's how you can generate profit through exploitation which you can reinvest to grow an economy now I certainly will concede that if you leverage unproductive resources that's another way to grow an economy it might be one that I prefer but I think we need to reject the whole notion that we have to justify our will to have inclusion in the context of economic growth I actually do agree with you last thing I'll say and then we can take it offline a drink of course whatever growth you saw in the sort of pre 1865 economy in the South was absolutely immoral but that does not mean and any system of growth that we were able to you know reinvest in in the future must absolutely be moral and that is about the distribution but I do think that partly for economic reasons but I'm not an economist like I spend more time thinking of the politics and the economics we are not gonna get to a better society unless politically people believe that you know more of us can get ahead and that and that's I believe that growth is very important for a political mindset I also think some people absolutely have to lose they absolutely do whether it's the one percent the ten percent or the twenty percent that is a very good and important conversation but the important thing from both a political and an economic perspective is that if the 1% quote lose there is not a whole lot of pain that is going to be associated with that because most of those resources are just not productive and they're also not needed for for the dignity as it were of the 1% so I think anyway I well we'll have a drink it's it's the 6,000 square foot house for the family of four right okay or twenty does but I I want to comment about the the phases of exploitation in the US economy and and they're different phases so if I think about the past 50 years or so what is really a disturbing observation but most people who talk about progress dismiss this observation there's been no change in the relative economic position of black Americans over the course of the past 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act okay however there has been a change in terms of the relationship between the overall compensation for labor and productivity in the US economy so what one thing that we've observed is this vast gap that has evolved between real wages and productivity in the US economy and that is an indicator of the type of underlying exploitation that's associated with widening inequality and so there's a period of exploitation that we have been experiencing recently that also has to be addressed in some way yeah so one of the things that comes to mind is in talking about some of the policies that have been mentioned today especially the ones that Derek has talked about like a federal job guarantee or the introduction of a baby bonds proposal which is the provision of an endowment for every newborn infant by the federal government so you know rich people give their kids trust funds why shouldn't every child have a trust fund okay so that that's the idea behind the baby buttons these are big and bold policy changes and to be quite frank I don't think that any of us have an expectation that this will be adopted in the near term given the character of our current American Congress and and exec and chief executive however there may be some openings for some bold policies at the municipal or local level where there's a different political perspective and so Mary and I was wondering if you might comment on what you see as possibilities that could occur in a town like Durham or in other local other localities yeah I think I mean you all who live here know Durham is special and Durham is another thing that things are possible in Durham that aren't necessarily possible in other I mean even cities in North Carolina but I think I mean and I do what like I just keep out this conversation that you two had it's just still in my mind is the idea that like Genta fication and capitalism reduced these sort of inevitable laws of nature and you know like if we see downtown Durham to sort of exploding with wealth and other people are getting pushed out well that's just capitalism and it's not like it's capitalism is a choice and all these policies are choices and there are things like a living wage that are possible in at the city level I mean Durham has the liveable since we're Bull City we have the livable project which is I'm getting businesses to opt in to paying their workers a living wage so that people can actually afford to live and that's something that you know we talked about as a universal policy but it's actually really helping especially communities of color because you see people of color and especially women of color working minimum-wage jobs and if they're given more money I mean honestly the only like the best way to fight poverty is to just give people more money so paying people more for what they're doing paying people what they're worth is a phenomenal way to actually address income and wealth inequality and that's something that I mean we're seeing so many businesses and even Duke University opting into these policies and because we're in North Carolina they're sort of a we have a preemption law that cities can't pass living wage living wage ordinances for the city like we businesses have to opt into it that sort of thing but like these sorts of things are possible at the municipal level and even at the state and federal level there are things like you know prioritizing affordable housing fair lending policies making sure that you know companies can't prey on the already vulnerable communities that we see and so we're seeing things that like 300 percent interest rates for a loan like if you're not allowed to do that like if you're not preying on people who are already vulnerable you're at least giving them more of a chance and strong consumer protections which I know is not a national priority now after what the Senate just voted to do I'm not gonna get into that but anyway uh yeah I think these things are possible these things are all choices and we chose to hold communities back we can choose to elevate communities we can choose to help raise them out of poverty the one particular policy that I'm working on at the state level and it's I keep on telling people like we're gonna get there in three years and so if I keep saying that I think we'll get there to like five and seven years but just keep on being optimistic is the Earned Income Tax Credit which is a federal policy and it used to be a state policy until 2013 when the General Assembly voted to cancel it and it's basically a bottom up tax cut it's if you are making below a certain amount of money you will actually get a refund from the government so you're getting some more of your money back and it is one of the most effective anti-poverty tools that we have at our disposal and so cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit at the same time as you know cutting funding for things like public education and you know not expanding Medicaid these are things that are specifically trying to make vulnerable communities more vulnerable and not help them if we have an Earned Income Tax Credit and other such like income tax supports we're not only going to see communities of color being more economically secure we're also going to see you know benefits in mental and physical health we're also gonna see more better education outcomes and so there are a lot of policies that are available to us we just have to choose them and by we I mean our politicians and the politicians that we vote for have to choose them can build on one of the things that you said around the markets the notion that markets are inevitable natural self-regulating I just want to make the claim that a lot of that is also part of the the rhetoric where we don't even can test certain things we think that things like gentrification as you point out are somehow just natural when in fact as you point out there's nothing natural about it that the book talks about all the zoning things and and various other policies that enrich various entities so that they benefit at a at an unfair way compared to those that don't benefit from those policies raul Peck talks about that when he has this film where he says profit and nothing but so has capital one and he really frames it and they've they might have one the rhetorical battle where we don't we don't even fight things anymore because we just think it's a far going conclusion in fact sandy has mentioned this before when we've we've talked about some of the policies that we've been proposing with Mark Paul around like federal job guarantee you know what if we want to have deregulation let's shore up Americans so that they don't reach below a certain floor then let's stop bailing out Wall Street let's really let's see what the market does in those scenarios no mark we intervene in markets when it benefits certain classes of people so if we want to give everybody a certain liveable standard then let's really if we want to have a market economy let's do it then after we shore up everybody doot-doot-doot others of you have any additional comments you'd like to make before we put a you know I'm a supporter of both the job guarantee and a universal basic income I don't see those as mutually exclusive or opposed in fact the UVI support actually takes into account the racial wealth gap because I support a ubi and reparations together two of the most unpopular ideas in American politics why not combine them and fight for it so we could eliminate absolute poverty tomorrow with that you give every American $12,000 we eliminate absolute poverty not relative inequality but we eliminate absolute poverty we have the resources to do it we don't in the political will we're on the political will from most of the ideas right now that are on the table and so the the becomes a political strategy question yeah how do we build enough power and political will to win any of the ideas we have thrown out on the table and that's a much harder question well I think it also goes back to the issues that Nancy McLain raises in her book you know the obstruction of the political will of the majority of Americans by the use of big money to control our political apparatus mean one word I'll just start another term that the conversation this morning in this conversation reminds me of two terms one is we don't like to talk about it but arguably we live in a caste society there's a famous what does it race caste yeah the other word I throw out because I'm trained as a political scientist so I think about this a lot as is Felicia is oligarchy mmm-hmm rule by the rich view and there's a great book out a couple years ago called oligarchy just the title and the author identifies the United States as a civil oligarchy right because it's a peaceful oligarchy most oligarchies are very violent by the count police violence I don't know how civil we are real but civil oligarchy so we're kind of like I think of it as you combine white supremacy with oligarchy and that's the u.s. that's kind of what we're living right now so yeah I guess before we open it up some other comments just to go back on felicia pointed out the large disparate wealth gap but if we look at liquid wealth even take our housing wealth it even becomes more dramatic and is indicative of black and Latino households being solely reliant on work that they have virtually no assets at one point the typical black household had 25 dollars in liquid assets if you exclude retirement and 200 if you add retirement so there holistically relying on work and it leads to the importance of work I also wanted to talk about when when we talk about wealth inequality we it if the predominant aspect of it is in assets that's the debt is not the driver I'm using that word driver it's not the main accounting part but debt certainly matters as Maryann pointed out when you when you get into certain spheres like college-educated blacks you'll see a huge disparity in that domain if you look at fees and fines for subsistent population you'll see huge disparities in that domain but the accident is in an accounting sense with assets and the last point I want to make about wealth is we often think of it as an output but as an price brilliantly framed in her title for our article umbrellas don't make it rain just because we observe right the causality is important wealth is as much an input as it is an output so if we're really thinking about generations of inequality and the role of wealth we often think of it solely in its output form and that matters but economic security begins and ends with wealth if you want to finance an expensive education you do it out of wealth if you're confronted with a legal system that some some expensive legal system you'll finance a lot of wealth if you want to have political influence you finance it out of wealth the aspect of wealth that we neglect is its input in leading to life chances and as well as economic security so we can take some questions from the floor with people please come to the microphones again yeah please tell us who you are my name is Jen fry so I have a question regarding zero-sum game as we know that freaks out a lot of white people as we saw in Charlottesville it was kind of like you will not replace us a gentleman on Facebook asked me you know imagine a world if you were golf if you're a god how would that look for me and so it's just fear of being replaced so how can we explain the white people who are worried about their piece of pie being taken so that we can have equality because right now that's what they're trying to hold on to so hard is their piece of pie because they're afraid we'll take it and so I completely agree that economics is not zero-sum but you call excuse me that economics is zero is not zero-sum but you call the is zero-sum so how do we have this conversation how can we move forward if they're so afraid that we're going to take something from them this is the challenge the challenge you know a lot of the rhetoric is white people act against their interest when they vote for Donald Trump for instance and I'm not so sure that's true right they're doubling down on whiteness and that that has tangible and psychological benefits called white privilege so if we want to have a collective movement white people would have to give up white privilege at least to a large extent so if we think about Society we know that from our race stratification the capitalist class which is overwhelmingly white certainly benefits from this stratification black people certainly don't benefit from this stratification what is ambiguous is that white working-class if they were to bind together with other groups that are disenfranchised and not included could they collectively fight for better bargaining against the capitalist class to uplift themselves yes to some extent but on the other side of that to have that collective movement what would they give up the fact that if a white expectant mother dropped out of high school in comparison it has a lower likelihood of an infant death than or producing a baby that won't won't be healthy past their first year then a black woman who graduated from college or the fact that I'll give you one more if you're in a black household with where the head has a degree your net wealth position is going to be lower than that of a white person who dropped out of high school so there really are tangible benefits associated with being white so if we want this collective movement we white people would have to give that up and whether they're better or worse off I'm sad to say I'm not sure but I would hope that we end up in a moral society where they give it up anyway although so I'm gonna push back on that a little bit because I'm not sure the wages the whiteness are has beneficial today - the debate in a sense so hear me out so I think for wealthy white folks I think yes that's true but I think if you actually go and talk to people in Ohio or Wisconsin or Michigan who have been hit by deindustrialization and have indeed chosen to vote whiteness and their racial identity over their economic identity I think empirically what you see is white supremacy is actually killing white people to look at the health data who have the highest rates right of in terms of death right increasing this is what right so I don't know we don't have the length so like to say to folks who are unemployed or who also have mortgages under water you got to give up something I'm not sure as a political strategy that's gonna quite capture that's the blight that's not a winning political strategy I think right I think we I think we need new language to try to say at the same time actually I understand that you've been harmed and hurt by the economic policies that when you voted your racial identity have screwed you - and you also do still have benefits and privilege from whiteness and we got to be able to do both at the same time because I just I actually don't see the like when I talk to people in Ohio and I say to them working-class and white working-class poor people and I say you got white privilege so just suck it up yeah okay they're like yeah okay dude go somewhere so I think I think we need a I think need a different vision I think we need different language I think we need to we got a broadness somehow because we need a winning coalition and none of us have figured it out yet and I sorry I do think part of what has to be broken and/or pushed past here is this idea that the highly stratified and or unequal capitalism in which we live is like a normal thing I think the idea that whether it's the platform companies like Amazon and Google or whether it is the telecom and Apple monopolies you know like AT&T and Verizon the idea that that is normal and the idea that those CEO should be making an access of 300 times what the average worker in their own companies makes and further that the people who would make the least amount of money in their companies the front desk clerks the food service workers janitorial aren't even in their companies anymore they are they are it's part of a quote Fisher workplace they now work for janitorial companies you know making the absolute least amount you could possibly pay a human being like the idea that this is normal it's a were like you know the frogs in the boiling water we don't actually recognize how hard her is I do think this election showed many people that it is not normal and the reason I think it's so important to point the spotlight there from a political perspective is it's neither the poor white person you're talking to in Ohio nor the new Asian immigrants nor the you know families of color who have been here for 300 years none of those places are the places where you where we are going to see the resources with it that we should be quote taking from in order to promote and I will still go back to an investment economy you know a stronger more pro-growth and pro equity of distribution economy we have to be looking at the top and I think I think that that is very important to get out of this kind of you know this kind of it's your fault no it's your fault political strategy because that is that will never produce a winning coalition and we know where that leads but they went after me I get a rebuttal so just response but maybe you're right Dorian that I think it's to me it's an empirical question you very well could be right but you think if we're going to be honest in this we you very well could be wrong and again the very well wrong thing is we need to be cognizant that there are tangible economic benefits even for that poor white person when they go to try to get a job and they perhaps have a greater likelihood of getting that job than a black person who didn't even signal prior incarceration we've gotten regardless of whether or not they actually believe that they have that advant yeah but they frequently believe that they don't that the gap between blacks and whites has closed or that black people have surpassed white people but in fact the evidence doesn't show that yeah but yeah yeah you're right but there's some substantive benefits that they are afraid of losing yes but and then the question it came up about framing political framing the Reverend William barber has the right framing that we need to go with that this needs to be done because economic justice is a moral imperative that's what we value and that's what we want that's the ultimate framing we have to get to because frankly there's always going to be zero-sum but at the society do we want to have have are we going to evolve evolve to the point where economic justice is a moral and imperative and then the the last point about the death the mortality I think the case in Deaton are slightly wrong in their frame well first off let's put it in perspective what do they find they find for a certain demographic of white individuals this is a certain age group who does not have a college degree one misconception is that it's only white men but it's true for white women also that the mortality rates are rising what that doesn't mean that they have higher mortality rate and blacks right they're just that they're don't they're the only group whose mortality rates did not decrease or stay stagnant but actually rose so that that's context now in their argument of why that's true they frame it in absolute terms they talk about a worsening in terms of not having the trajectory of real wage growth and other other forms of economic outcomes compared to the past what they don't frame it as in which stratification economic has a lot to say and would I have a doctoral student working on now is perhaps the real reason is the relative that the the threat to the relative position imposed by some other groups including women coming into the labor force but or the position of blacks and Latino that perceived threat could be creating that anxiety that's leading to that change in mortality let's test that and find out one last question on this round sorry oh yeah I'll make it quick I am William Carrington again you mentioned on the panel during the discussion that one of the big problems is that a lot of times poor working-class people internalize the narratives of the society the oligarchic capitalists white supremacist idea we live in so knowing that government is not going to change government and industry are not gonna change on their own they're not gonna stop being racist and classist on their own what can we do to encourage working-class people and I'm specifically tired my african-american slave descendants of people poor people to demand of government demand the fully fund demand fully funded social welfare fully funded housing basic income for folks who are unemployed both on unemployment and and those benefits that we're entitled to because one of the things that happens we talked about this at lunch is that we fall into the self blaming that I need to work harder I need to I need to start my own business I it's my fault I'm lazy I'm something's wrong with me I don't work hard I sleep too long or whatever rather than no government needs to do this because I pay taxes and that so how do we how do we how do we flip that mindset with oppressed people and I'm talking on all people but specifically african-americans because we we really internalized the idea that we're at fault for being poor so that's I mean this is something that I do a lot in my work like I I'm lucky that I get to go out into communities a lot I don't stay in Raleigh all of the time and do work but I do get to go to other communities and talk to people and first I mean at least half of the conversation is just me listening saying you know like what's going on in your community what are you seeing what problems are you seeing and what opportunities are you seeing and then an important part in that conversation is also me saying okay so here's the truth and here's you know here's the reality despite what you've internalized despite what people keep on telling you like this is a reality and you are actually an incredibly powerful person and you're in a powerful group because our politicians are supposed to answer to us and they don't answer to us unless we are telling them things and we tell them things by voting and so you know now that you know you know that you have there these policy that have been put in place against you you can go to a city council meeting and demand what's yours you can go to town hall meetings and demand what's yours and say if you're not going to give me what I deserve as my representative me and all of my people are gonna vote you out we're gonna get rid of you and we're gonna get somebody who's gonna actually represent us and I think it's important for as many of us as possible to go into communities and have these conversations and empower people to hold their elected officials accountable to them because we have internalized for way too long that it's our fault or that we're asking for too much or that you know like well the system's broken so it's never gonna help me the system is working the way it was designed to work and we like we have to change it like we have to act the rules exactly like the rules are in place and we can change the rules by actually voting in large numbers and so that's yeah that's what I get most worked up about everyday like just getting people to believe that and some days it's harder than others because I see who's in the White House right now and but yeah I mean I truly believe it and I think that's the best way I mean just community level engagement and empowerment yeah because I think I don't believe in magic bullets but I do think it's a magic bullets the only thing that's ever worked organize organize organize organize everything you just said is organizing and it's really slow and it's really hard and it's you have to do the political education you have to actually try to move people to action god forbid you got to talk to someone who might not agree with you I might have some internalized going on and you can't then walk away and give up you got to have sustained conversations over and over and over and speak to folks from a place of experience and not just here like us on the panel right we're social scientists we're about here facts figures the evidence most people don't think like that we're trained to think like that so you got to do both right you got it by organizing and actually talking to people's experiences and where they are and then bright getting people to leave the reptile brain right to access their flow right in terms of being looking at the facts that connects with their story that's organized all of this is organizing and it's the only way we have built power and the political will to change the rules to advance any transformative ideas and it is the thing that is unheralded so thank you all that to say thank you for the one organizer on the panel thank you for the work that you do and I hope the work that you do as well keep it up because it's unheralded we don't we don't glamorize it it's it's not something that pays well but is the only thing that has ever worked in the history of this country every day that there are forces that work to try to sort of corporatize our public schools for instance and you know get them to be part of this I mean this charter school industrial complex and Durham organized and pushed these forces out of our city and so two of our public schools were at serious risk of being taken over by charter schools and we organized and said no not our schools not here and yeah it doesn't it's not it's rarely glamorous it's rarely quick but it is it works okay thank you thank you thank you thank you [Applause]
