Community Wealth Building: The Way Forward

On March 5, Penn IUR hosted Marc Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League, for a special lecture on community wealth building in minority communities at the Kleinman Forum. A Penn graduate (C’80) and member of the Penn IUR Advisory Board, Morial served as a Louisiana State Senator from 1992 to 1994; Mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002, during which time he oversaw reductions in crime rates and reinvestment in historic neighborhoods; and President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors from 2001 to 2002. In his lecture, Morial outlined the historical role of government and public policy in creating the racial wealth gap and the necessity of using public policy in the present day to rectify this.

Morial described how wealth and income inequality have continued to grow even as the country’s overall economy has expanded; this reality, he noted, betrays the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats. Arguing for a deeper, historical understanding of how and why inequality has grown even as the economy has expanded, he outlined some of the major public policies that have created the American middle class. These include: the revocation, by President Andrew Jackson, of General Tecumseh Sherman’s post-Civil War promise to freed slaves of “forty acres and a mule”; the late-nineteenth-century establishment of land grant colleges and universities that provided free agricultural and industrial education, which overwhelmingly benefited white Americans; the creation in the 1930s of federally guaranteed home mortgages and the exclusion, through the policy of redlining, of minority communities from these programs’ benefits; and the establishment after WWII of the GI Bill®, meant to provide returning veterans with educational funds, which resulted in far more support for white veterans than for African American veterans. “These things, together, created the modern middle class in America,” he said. “But African Americans were, for the most part, left out.”

Morial called for addressing inequity with intentionality and inclusivity, offering the National Urban League’s Main Street Marshall Plan as a model. Proposed in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the plan called for federal investments of about $2 trillion over ten years into infrastructure (defined broadly to include transportation systems, schools, libraries, water systems, community centers, health facilities, and more); additionally, it called for training construction workers and for awarding 25 percent of ensuing contracts to women- and minority-owned businesses.

Morial also described the country’s housing situation as “absolutely distressing.” Noting that rents are rising much faster than income, and that overall rates of homeownership are falling, he added that the homeownership rate among African Americans has fallen to a level not seen since 1968, the year President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act (FHA) to ban discrimination in housing. Referring to contemporary politicians, Morial said “the silence on a national housing plan is deafening.”

Morial explained that public policy can and must play a role in turning the corner on these issues. Thanks in part to President Johnson’s War on Poverty, the poverty rate of all Americans was cut in half between 1963 and 1976. He noted the effectiveness of these expansive public programs and policies in building modern middle-class American wealth and called for similar intentional investment in communities of color today. “Public policy played a role in creating what we have today,” said Morial. “Therefore public policy has to be one of the important drivers moving us into a new direction.”

--

GI Bill® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill.