Close the Racial Wealth Gap

According to the National Equity Atlas, racial gaps in income cost the United States about $2.5 trillion in 2015.¹ Many economists believe that racial equity is a superior growth model and that by closing both the race income and wealth gaps, our nation will reap significant economic benefits by uprooting policies that have systemically excluded communities of color, leaving millions in poverty. They call this the "Equity Dividend."² Assets are critical to building wealth. But because of our nation’s long history of systemic and institutional racism, Black Americans have had limited opportunity to accumulate wealth and pass it down from generation to generation.

Congress should support Senator Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) American Opportunity Accounts Act to create "Baby Bonds" aimed at mitigating the growing gap between American families by creating a seed savings account at birth for American children based on family income. These funds would sit in an interest-bearing account that would receive additional deposits each year depending on family income until the child becomes a young adult. These accounts will increase an individual’s asset base, allowing them to put a down payment on a future home, finance their education without debt or start a small business.³ While Senator Booker’s plan does not explicitly consider the child’s race as criteria for eligibility, wealth is so unevenly distributed across races that children of color will undoubtedly benefit from this proposal.⁴

More than 40 million American adults currently carry a balance of federal student loan debt, which now exceeds $1.5 trillion.⁵ Student loan debt has an acute effect on borrowers of color who are more likely to borrow and hold higher balances, which undermines wealth accumulation over time. The average Black and white adult maintains balances of $43,725 and $31,357, respectively, in student loan debt.⁶ By cancelling federal student loan debt, studies suggest that this will result in a corresponding accumulated savings of the same amounts spread out over time for Black and white borrowers.⁷ COVID-19 will have significant impacts on higher education and graduation rates. Further, it will have lasting impacts on the job market for college graduates. Carrying tens of thousands of dollars in federal student debt during the coming economic slump will serve as a heavy burden upon our workforce from under which they will never come out. Furthermore, evidence suggests that 12 percent of Black and white high school graduates forgo college because of costs and preferences to not accumulate debt. Because of the racial wealth gap, students of color have less access to some external sources of funding, such as grants or financial support from relatives, to provide a backstop to excess debt.⁸ To recover from this pandemic and make serious progress in closing our country’s racial wealth gap, Congress should cancel federal student debt and make college debt free.

Established after the 2008 financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) seeks to protect consumers from fraud, discrimination and about in the financial marketplace. It has fought discriminatory lending in auto loans, home loans and credit card industries as well as payday lending companies which are located in predominantly black communities. Since its creation in 2011 to 2017, the CFPB returned nearly $12 billion to 29 million victims of financial malfeasance, including more than $450 million to about 1 million fair lending abuse victims. CFPB has also defended the economically vulnerable and marginalized by addressing forced arbitration in financial contracts blocking victims from court.¹⁰ Sixteen million adults in America lack even a bank account, with Black and Latino Americans being five times as likely to be unbanked as whites, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.¹¹ Many of these individuals must rely on costly and risky alternatives and often fall victim to predatory financial lending practices that help drive the racial wealth gap. The economic hardship created by the COVID-19 pandemic will undoubtedly cause further financial distress for communities of color that have been targeted previously by unscrupulous lenders. It is essential that further efforts by the Trump Administration and congressional Republicans to weaken the CFPB be fought and that this critical agency be given further tools to protect vulnerable communities.

Raise the Minimum Wage

The COVID-19 pandemic is making us all reassess what is considered essential work, from health care providers to grocery workers and factory line workers. Yet, the federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 per hour since 2009, the longest period of time that the rate has stayed flat since its establishment in 1938. In response, 29 states and D.C. have set their minimum wages higher.¹ Before the pandemic, Congress stalled on raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, which would have lifted pay for nearly more than 20 million workers in the 21 states where the minimum wage is still $7.25 and for nearly 13 million more in the 13 states where the minimum wage is less than $9.00.² Since it was last raised, the minimum wage has lost 17 percent of its purchasing power just because of inflation.³ This means they have had less money to save over that time. Even worse in the face of this public health crisis, those that have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment insurance will replace wages that are lower than they should be.⁴ Forty-two percent of workers in the U.S. make less than $15 an hour, and women and people of color are overrepresented in this group. Further, more than half of Black workers are paid less than $15.⁵ If the federal government is not going to make a definitive statement on the value of work in light of this pandemic and the public health threat it represents, then state governments should raise their minimum wage or give local governments the freedom to raise their local wage floors.

Outlaw Exclusionary Zoning

The availability of affordable housing is the key to reducing concentrated poverty. But because of decades of entrenched local exclusionary zoning ordinances, lower-income people and racial minorities have been kept out of wealthy and middle-class neighborhoods across the country. This prevents these individuals from equal access to adequate education, employment and healthcare.¹ Exclusionary zoning ordinances are income segregation that has resulted in one in four of the black poor living in a neighborhood of extreme poverty, compared to one in thirteen of the white poor.² Federal, state and local policymakers and courts should marshal the courage to combat and outlaw exclusionary zoning laws so affordable housing and equal access and opportunity can be shared by all.

Addressing Disparities in Maternal Mortality

We must begin to address the multifaceted issue of racial disparities in maternal mortality for American women. The United States is one of 13 countries globally, where the rate of maternal mortality is actually worse now than it was 25 years ago. According to the CDC,¹ an estimated 700 to 900 maternal deaths occur in the United States annually, and 3 out 5 of these deaths were preventable if standards of care had been followed.

When looking at these deaths disaggregated by race, African American women are three to four times more likely to die from childbirth than non-Hispanic, white women, and socioeconomic status, education and other factors do not protect against this disparity. There are many factors that contribute to the complexity of this issue, but access to high-quality health care systems and evidence-based care are central to the solution.

In the South, Georgia and Louisiana rank as the states with the highest number² of maternal deaths in the country. In Georgia, Black women experienced 60 percent of pregnancy-related deaths³ whereas in Louisiana, that number rose to 68 percent.⁴

In order to directly address these issues, the federal government should pass legislation like the Maternal Care Access and Reducing Emergencies Act⁵ and other legislation that strengthens maternal health care by: extending pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage for up to a year following delivery, developing networks of maternal providers to serve the needs in rural communities and addressing disparate treatment by healthcare professionals by funding culturally competent and responsive training to mitigate implicit bias in treatment.

States should establish Maternal Mortality Review Boards, which can be funded by grants established through the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act⁶ of 2018, to collect and analyze standardized data on maternal death, investigate every maternal death and develop uniform strategies and guidelines to prevent future pregnancy-related deaths by ensuring that the standards of care are met.

Increase Access to Telehealth Services

Telehealth is serving as a critical component of our nation’s healthcare strategy during the current pandemic by creating access to health services for those who can be safely treated at home, allowing those most in need of critical care to receive in person treatment. With the passage of the CARES Act, the federal government eased restrictions to telehealth in Medicare to allow physicians and other health care professionals to bill for patient care delivered during the pandemic, which has been critical for healthcare providers to continue to manage care for vulnerable patients and those that are unable to seek in-person care. But this measure is temporary and Congress should act to permanently expand access to telemedicine services by expanding the range of services eligible for reimbursement and providing funds to support the expansion of telecommunication infrastructure for providers and the low-income and rural communities that they serve.

Passing the Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act¹ is one step in the right direction to address access to care for vulnerable and location challenged populations, and will enable more patients with non-urgent conditions to reduce their risk of exposure to the virus by receiving healthcare services at home.

State should also expand coverage of telehealth services by requiring both Medicaid and private payer plans to reimburse telehealth services at the same rate as in-person services and diversify the forms of telehealth that are eligible for coverage.

Fight Climate Change Through the Lens of Environmental Justice

In February 2018, the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment released a study indicating that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. Specifically, the study found that people in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty.¹ The reason for people of color are more likely is because of redlining practices decades before² and continued use of expulsive zoning today.³ This amounts to environmental racism, which now takes new meaning because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exposure to air pollution contributes to disproportionate cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. But the novel coronavirus feeds upon and exacerbates these conditions. An explicit link between air pollution and COVID-19 deaths has been found.⁴ But the EPA is a shell of what it once was under the Trump Administration and in the face of this crisis is doing even less to protect the most vulnerable. Citing COVID-19 concerns, the EPA relaxed air monitoring rules for power plants.⁵ Before COVID-19, climate change was our biggest existential threat. For decades, environmental justice advocates have been challenging federal and state governments to protect the vulnerable communities from environmental hazards. And now climate change and COVID-19 have converged. Climate change is real and it makes COVID-19 worse. The federal government must rebuild and repurpose the EPA to hold polluters accountable. It should also rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and commit to worldwide emissions reductions through planning, incentivizing and investing in zero-emissions infrastructure and manufacturing.

Reimagine Policing

The brutal death of George Floyd has rightly trained our eyes on systemic racism and bias in our criminal justice system and the long history of law enforcement’s excessive use of force, which is most often aimed at black Americans. It is clear that nothing short of a complete transformation of policing is necessary to ensure safety for the people of our country. Whether it is implicit or explicit, racial bias is real, influences perceptions and behaviors and can be deadly. In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the national conversation around police brutality, we must push the debate beyond ending police violence. Policing practices should be modified to build mutual trust and respect between law enforcement agencies and communities through "community-centered policing." Congressional Democrats have introduced the Justice in Policing Act, a bold and comprehensive approach to hold police accountable, end racial profiling, change the culture of law enforcement, empower our communities, and build trust between law enforcement and our communities by addressing systemic racism and bias to help save lives. The Justice in Policing Act would: 1) establish a national standard for the operation of police departments; 2) mandate data collection on police encounters; 3) reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs; and 4) streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations. Police departments should also adopt personnel practices that result in the hiring and retention of diverse law enforcement professionals who are culturally sensitive, speak the communities' languages and are residents of their patrolled communities. To deconstruct stereotypes and bias, police departments should partner with their communities, actively engaging with youth, so trust can be established and crimes can be more quickly solved or prevented. Reforms should also include peer intervention strategies, based on a New Orleans Police Department peer intervention program called Ethical Policing is Courageous (EPIC) introduced in 2015. Designed to empower officers to intervene if they witness a fellow officer behaving in misconduct, the program helps protect the careers of police officers as well as stop a wrongful action before it occurs. EPIC strives to redefine police culture so that intervention to prevent or stop harmful action is not an exception to good team-work; it is the very definition of good teamwork.