When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the Black community owned less than 1% of the United States’ total wealth, the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans was told during its fourth meeting.

Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor at the University of California Irvine, School of Law, shared the statistics during the “Racism in Banking, Tax, and Labor” portion of the two-day meeting on October 13.

From her perspective, the power of wealth and personal income is still unequally distributed. And that inequality, in her view, has always been allowed, preserved and compounded by laws and government policy.

“More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged,” Baradaran told the Task Force, tracing the wealth gap from the period after the Civil War when President Lincoln granted formerly enslaved Blacks their freedom to the present day.

“The gap between average white wealth and Black wealth has actually increased over the last decades. Today, across every social-economic level, Black families have a fraction of the wealth that white families have,” she said.

Baradaran has written a range of entries and books about banking law, financial inclusion, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. Her scholarship includes the books “How the Other Half Banks” and “The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap,” both published by the Harvard University Press.

Baradaran has also published several articles on race and economics, including “Jim Crow Credit” in the Irvine Law Review, “Regulation by Hypothetical” in the Vanderbilt Law Review, and “How the Poor Got Cut Out of Banking” in the Emory Law Journal.

Baradaran, a 43-year-old immigrant born in Iran, testified that her work on the wealth gap in America was conducted from a “research angle” and she respectfully “submitted” her testimony “in that light,” she said.

In her research, Baradaran explained that she discovered an intentional system of financial oppression.

“This wealth chasm doesn’t abate with income or with education. In other words, this is a wealth gap that is pretty much tied to a history of exclusion and exploitation and not to be remedied by higher education and higher income,” Baradaran said.

According to a January 2020 report, the Public Policy Institute of California said African American and Latino families make up 12% of those with incomes above the 90th percentile in the state, despite comprising 43% of all families in California.

In addition, PPIC reported that such disparities mirror the fact that African American and Latino adults are overrepresented in low-wage jobs and have higher unemployment rates, and African American adults are less likely to be in the labor force.

Many issues support these activities that range from disparities around education, local job opportunities, and incarceration to discrimination in the labor market, according to PPIC.

“While California’s economy outperforms the nation’s, its level of income inequality exceeds that of all but five states,” the report stated.

“Without target policies, it will continue to grow,” Baradaran said of the wealth gap. “And I want to be clear of how this wealth gap will continue to grow. It was created, maintained, and perpetuated through public policy at the federal, state, and local levels.

“Black men and women have been shut out of most avenues of middle-class creations. Black homes, farms, and savings were not given the full protection of the law. Especially as these properties were subjected to racial terrorism. The American middle-class was not created that way (to support Black communities),” Baradaran said.

A June 2018 working paper from the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute written by economists familiar with moderate-to-weak Black wealth backs up Baradaran’s assessment.

Published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the authors of the report wrote that strategies to deny Blacks access to wealth started at the beginning of the Reconstruction era, picked up around the civil rights movement, and resurfaced around the financial crisis of the late 2000s.

Authored by Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick, and Ulrike I. Steins, the “Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949-2016” explains a close analysis of racial inequality, pre-and post-civil rights eras.

The economists wrote that the median Black household has less than 11% of the wealth of the median white household, which is about $15,000 versus $140,000 in 2016 prices.

“The overall summary is bleak,” the report states. “The historical data also reveal that no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households over the past 70 years.”

Baradaran recently participated in the virtual symposium, “Racism and the Economy: Focus on the Wealth Divide” hosted by 12 District Banks of the Federal Reserve System, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

There are some positives that are not typically included in discussions about the challenges Blacks have experienced historically in efforts to obtain wealth, Baradaran said. Many African Americans, specifically in California, were able to subvert the systems that discriminated against them.

“Black institutions have been creative and innovative serving their communities in a hostile climate,” Baradaran said. “I’ve written a book about the long history of entrepreneurship, self-help, and mutual uplift. Historically Black Colleges and Universities have provided stellar education and Black banks have supported Black businesses, churches, and families.”

California’s Assembly Bill (AB) 3121, titled “The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” created a nine-member commission to investigate inequity in education, labor, wealth, housing, tax, and environmental justice.

All of these areas were covered with expert testimony during the two-day meeting held on October 12 and October 13. The task force is charged with exploring California’s involvement in slavery, segregation, and the historic denial of Black citizens’ constitutional rights.

Fifty years after the federal Fair Housing Act eliminated racial discrimination in lending, the Black community continues to be denied mortgage loans at rates much higher than their white counterparts.

“Banks and corporations have engaged in lending and hiring practices that helped to solidify patterns of racial inequality,” Jacqueline Jones, a history professor from the University of Texas told the Task Force.

The Racism in Banking, Tax and Labor segment also featured testimonies by Williams Spriggs (former chair of the Department of Economics at Howard University. Spriggs now serves as chief economist to the AFL-CIO), Thomas Craemer (public policy professor at the University of Connecticut), and Lawrence Lucas (U.S. Department of Agriculture Coalition of Minority Employees).

The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans will conduct its fifth and final meeting of 2021 on December 6 and December 7.

The East Oakland Stadium Alliance (EOSA) and other groups are asking local residents to attend and speak at next week’s Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting to oppose a proposal to spend county residents’ tax dollars to pay for the Oakland A’s massive multi-billion-dollar real estate deal at Howard Terminal at the Port of Oakland. 

Please attend the meeting Tuesday, October 26 and express your opinion; call or e-mail your supervisor and Keith Carson, president of the Board of Supervisors, through his chief of staff Amy Shrago at (510) 272-6685 or Amy.Shrago@acgov.org

The Stadium Alliance urges community members to “let (the supervisors) know that Alameda County residents don’t want our tax dollars to pay for a private luxury development. This proposal does not include privately funded community benefits and would harm our region’s economic engine – the port- putting tens of thousands of good-paying jobs at risk.”

“The Oakland Post’s coverage of local news in Alameda County is supported by the Ethnic Media Sustainability Initiative, a program created by California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services to support community newspapers across California.”

For some reason, the day we learned about the water cycle in science class stayed with me. Then, many years later, when deciding on a career I knew that I wanted to help bring clean water to homes that currently didn’t have access to safe and reliable drinking water and to protect the environment for future generations.

Now that I serve on the board of the state agency that is responsible for protecting and managing California’s water resources, my view of what it means to ensure people have access to water has expanded, especially as we grapple with another drought.

Board Member Nichole Morgan of the California Water Resources Control. Photo courtesy of Lagrant Communications.

California is only getting hotter and drier. We’re seeing it all over the news as the water crisis hits closer and closer to home. Karla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources, put our harsh reality into perspective when she said, “the challenge is there is no water.”

As Californians, we’re no strangers to the drought, but as we anticipate another dry year, it’s more important than ever for all of us to take action to save our water for today and  years to come.

It is imperative for us to understand that the drought truly impacts everyone. From our state’s ecosystems to its economy, we all rely on an ample water supply; without it, we all suffer.

Climate change is ultimately driving these threats to California, including the dire drought conditions, low reservoir levels and parched landscapes seen throughout the West.

Unfortunately, we can already see some of the consequences of the overuse of water. California’s fish and wildlife are facing severe challenges, threatening the survival of species, including our iconic Chinook salmon.

The drought also affects businesses across California, especially small business, like family-owned restaurants and hotels. Many business owners are already struggling to reconcile dried out wells and limited water supply, in addition to still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Water is essential not only to keep our economy healthy, but to keep our communities thriving with business that foundation to many of our communities.

Now is the time to strengthen conservation efforts and make active changes to save water.  We know that it can be hard to change our habits when it comes to conserving water, but the smallest changes really can make a difference. If we all make little changes in our daily routine to save water, it adds up. Below are some simple steps we can all follow to conserve water both indoors and out.

Inside the Home:

1. Wash your produce in the container instead of under running water.
2. Only use your dishwasher and washing machine for full loads.
3. Install low-flow shower heads as well as taking shorter showers. Showers under 5 minutes can save about 15 gallons, saving you money and the planet!
4. Turn the water off when brushing your teeth and soaping your hands.
5. Install a high-efficiency (HET) 1.28 gallons-per flush toilet. Check with your water supplier for current rebate information.

Outside the Home:

1. Water your yard in the morning or evening when temperatures are cooler.
2. Check your sprinkler system and adjust them so that only your lawn is watered and not the house, sidewalk or street to eliminate any wasteful runoff.
3. Plant drought-resistant trees and plants! There are so many options to create a beautiful landscape that conserves water – succulents and California poppies are great options.
4. Use a broom to clean driveways, sidewalks, patios and walkways instead of hosing them down.
5. If you have a pool, install a pool cover to reduce evaporation and filter backwash. And, if draining your pool is necessary, make sure to find a use for that water.

We know it won’t be easy, but it’s up to us to make the necessary changes to conserve the water that we need. Let’s make sure our kids and future generations get to enjoy the California that we know and love. Together, we can make our water last. Visit www.saveourwater.com to learn more about what you can do to help.