To get in the weeds a little bit more:
If two people get the same job - one black and one white - paying the exact same amount of money, that's progress. Currently white people make on average 3-7% more than similarly qualified black people. (
Source)
However, if those two people saved the exact same amount of money and applied for a loan on the exact same house, the white person is more likely to get the loan approved and is more likely to get the loan at a favorable rate.
The “decades-old credit scoring model” currently used “does not take into account consumer data on rent, utility, and cell phone bill payments,” Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina wrote in August, when he unveiled a bill to require the federal government to vet credit standards used for residential mortgages. “This exclusion disproportionately hurts African-Americans, Latinos, and young people who are otherwise creditworthy.”
Source
That bill got stuck in committee.
So now our black person who is making as much as the white person doesn't get the house in the good neighborhood. They are left either having to buy a cheaper house in a worse neighborhood or renting somewhere - also likely to be not as affluent as the white person. Because of the way schools are funded from property taxes, the black person's kids have less access to tutoring, after school activities, and their quality of education is lower. Crime in the area is likely to be higher as well.
According to
a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, a "20 percent increase in per-pupil spending a year for poor children can lead to an additional year of completed education, 25 percent higher earnings, and a 20-percentage point reduction in the incidence of poverty in adulthood."
Along with the lower quality education, the black kids now also have less access to recreational sports at the youth level. Also, unlike the white kids in the better neighborhood, the black kids' schools are more likely to charge for sports. Not only does this lead to more free time, less structure, and less disciple, but there are
health impacts too:
"The research shows physically active kids are less likely to be obese, more likely to get a college degree, less likely to suffer chronic illnesses including cancer and more likely to be active as adults, and twice as likely to have active children," he said. "Everyone will pay price if we don't get them off the couch."
The next logical step would before the black person to vote for new representatives who will enact better policies. The problem is, access to voting for the black person - who makes the same amount of money in the same job as the white person - is less. He likely has to go to longer lengths to actually vote.
In a new study led by economist Keith Chen of the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers matched anonymous location data from 10 million smartphones to 93,000 polling places to create the most extensive map to date of voter wait times across the U.S. The results, reported in a preprint paper posted on arXiv.org on August 30, showed one very clear disparity: voters in predominantly black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer, on average, than those in white neighborhoods. They were also about 74 percent more likely to wait for more than half an hour.
Source
It should be noted here that the Presidential Commission on Election Administration declared in 2014 that "no citizen should have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote."
(Source)
So while I agree the things you're talking about can bridge the gap, I believe they're merely bandaids that will help stop the bleeding but not cure the infection. We have to go after the deeper, systemic issues before those suggested policies will have the last impacting they should.
(Edits: Formatting)
- By ECC29
- By thepostman