[corp-focus] The Unrealized Dream: 40 Years After King's Assassination

[robert weissman]

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The Unrealized Dream: 40 Years After King's Assassination
By Robert Weissman
April 4, 2008

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr.

If the United States makes progress in closing the black-white income 
gap at the same rate it has since King was assassinated, there will be 
income equality in 537 years. If the racial wealth divide closes at the 
same rate as it has since 1983, it will take 634 years before 
African-American families have the same wealth as whites.

And that's the optimistic way of looking at things.

"The Unrealized American Dream," a new report from the Program on 
Inequality and the Common Good of the Institute for Policy Studies, 
shows that the United States has made significant, if wholly 
unsatisfactory, progress in closing racial education gaps. But income 
and wealth inequalities remain monstrous.

With the Iraq war continuing with no end in sight, this anniversary of 
King's death is spurring some reflection on King's actual views and 
actions -- especially in the last years of his short life -- rather than 
the standard iconization that focuses solely on his opposition to legal 
segregation. The real-world King harshly condemned the Vietnam War and 
was increasingly focused on questions of economic justice. He was killed 
in Memphis, where he had come to support striking garbage collectors.

Dedrick Muhammad is the author of  "The Unrealized American Dream." He 
says two key factors explain the failure to close income and wealth gaps.

First, the government investment programs of the 1930s and 1940s -- 
everything from the New Deal job creation programs to the GI Bill of 
Rights -- played a key role in building the broad U.S. middle class. But 
African-Americans were not able to participate in or benefit equally 
from many of those programs, because of legal and de facto discrimination.

Second, since the late 1970s, pro-corporate, pro-rich deregulatory and 
tax policies, along with corporate globalization, have led to an overall 
concentration of wealth in the United States. This has made income and 
wealth gaps much worse in the whole society. Middle class security has 
been weakened, and many working class communities and families have been 
devastated. There are relatively few, and proportionately fewer, 
African-Americans benefiting from recent decades' wealth-concentrating 
policies and corporate power grabs.

Indeed, one way to look at the data compiled in "The Unrealized American 
Dream" is that the country made modest improvements in reducing 
inequalities through the 1960s and 1970s, but that things have been 
stagnant or gone backwards since the late 1970s. Black per-capita income 
as percentage of white income started at 54 percent in 1967, reached 60 
percent in 1976, and has held more or less constant since. It was at 57 
percent in 2005.

That's income. Wealth is worse. Here are snapshots of the current state 
of wealth inequality:

* Median household wealth by race (2004) -- White: $118,300. Black: $11,800.

* Median financial wealth by race (2004) -- White: $36,100. Black: $300.

* Median home equity by race (2004) -- White: $82,200. Black: $11,500.

That last figure is crucially important, because although home values 
are plummeting for almost everyone in the United States, African 
Americans were disproportionately steered into the worst-term, 
higher-cost, rip-off subprime loans. A January report that Muhammad 
co-authored, "Foreclosed: State of the Dream," concludes that the 
subprime crisis "represents the greatest loss of wealth for people of 
color in modern U.S. history." The report estimates African-American 
borrowers will lose between $71 billion and $92 billion from subprime 
loans (Latinos will lose a comparable amount).

Muhammad notes that while the deindustrialization of the last quarter 
century has hardest hit working class African Americans, the current 
housing crisis is going to hit hardest at the middle class. Upper-income 
African Americans were almost as likely to be steered into high-cost 
mortgages as lower-income African Americans, and twice as likely as 
lower-income whites.

In short, when the data is in for 2008/2009, racial wealth inequality 
will almost certainly be worse than it was a few years ago.

There's little mystery about how to redress racial and overall income 
and wealth gaps. The key features include: a rebalanced tax policy; 
federal involvement to assist people get fair mortgages for home 
purchases; single-payer healthcare; massive public investment in 
infrastructure and to meet pressing environmental needs; real guarantees 
for workers to organize unions without employer interference; and a 
reversal of corporate globalization.

Muhammad says we are now in a "serious step-back recession." But he 
remains hopeful. The mounting dissatisfaction with the state of the 
economy, he says, offers "the opportunity to advance a progressive 
agenda" -- the economic justice agenda for which King was working when 
he was killed.


Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational 
Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org> and director of Essential 
Action <http://www.takingontobacco.org>.

(c) Robert Weissman

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