Inequality

There has been inequality in this country since the very beginning when Europeans arrived with indentured servants who had to work off the cost of their passage to the New World, then enslaved men and women, and later their children, borne on ships from Africa, often via the West Indies, first slaves for a period of time, then for life.

One hundred and fifty years ago there was emancipation, but Abraham Lincoln only freed the slaves living in the Union-controlled areas, hoping the news would cause insurrection in the Confederacy, and that the issue of slavery would keep Europe out of America's civil war.

The US fought two world wars with segregated troops.

In 1944, Irene Kirkaldy, a young black woman who was recovering from a miscarriage wouldn't get out of a seat on a bus headed across a state border. She kicked and screamed while being taken off the bus, arrested by a state trooper. Her case was one of the first modern civil rights cases to reach the US Supreme Court. The ruling was that interstate transportation could not be segregated by law. I had the great pleasure of meeting Ms. Kirkaldy, but her mind was already fading. She shared her scrapbook with me over a glass of iced tea in her home in Roosevelt.

The aftermath of inequality by slavery is the inequality of wealth. Not just class, but wealth. Institutional racism has allowed white people to accumulate stuff to pass onto their children. Until recently home ownership was the key to this accumulation for the working and middle classes. That dream disappeared for many as greedy mortgage brokers lured homeowners-- white, black, and brown-- into using their homes as ATM machines for cars, vacations, and consumer spending, instead of using them as piggy banks for college educations for their children and retirement.

Yesterday the Pew Hispanic Center released a new report that shows home ownership decreasing more drastically for blacks and browns than for whites in this post-subprime meltdown.

"The boom-and-bust cycle in the U.S. housing market over the past decade and a half has generated greater gains and larger losses for minority groups than it has for whites."

"Overall, the ups and downs in the housing market since 1995 have reduced the homeownership gap between whites and all racial and ethnic minority groups. However, a substantial gap persists. As of 2008, 74.9% of whites owned homes, compared with 59.1% of Asians, 48.9% of Hispanics and 47.5% of blacks."

"At the same time, blacks and Latinos remain far more likely than whites to borrow in the subprime market where loans are usually higher priced. In 2007, 27.6% of home purchase loans to Hispanics and 33.5% to blacks were higher-priced loans, compared with just 10.5% of home purchase loans to whites that year."

Many of the African American homeowners who purchased subprime mortgages at higher interest rates could have qualified for regular mortgages, but someone's greed sold them the higher commissioned mortgages instead.

Inequality exists because of racism, discrimination, and unregulated markets that prey on people just because of the color of their skin.

Inequality exists despite the fact that our president is a man of color.

There is no such thing as post-racialism in America. Not yet. Not without a helluva lot of work to do.

Who We Really Are

This last election was what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 intended, although I am still not ready to give up this most effective civil rights statute.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, this last election, November 2008, had the most diverse electorate ever--nearly one in four votes cast came from a person of color. "The nation's three biggest minority groups--blacks, Hispanics and Asians--each accounted for unprecedented shares of the presidential vote in 2008."

In twenty years, the percentage of white voters reduced from 84.9% to 76.3%. "The white share is the lowest ever, yet is still higher than the 65.8% white share of the total U.S. population."

African American voters increased significantly from 9.8% to 12.1%, which is up almost a third. Hispanic voters doubled in twenty years, from 3.6% to 7.4% in 2008. Most importantly, black voter turnout nearly equaled white turnout: 65.2% for blacks and 66.1% for whites. The upsurge was mainly due to a rise in black women and young people voting.

Download the entire report from the Pew Center for Hispanics.

Unfortunately, although President Obama was elected, we are not yet in a post-racial society. We cannot avoid the painful and long history of racism that infects almost every aspect of our culture. White people might want to believe it's over, as we watch this extraordinary man lead our nation through this perilous time. However, from the perspective of people of color, the lines of respect, the opportunities, and the confluence of race and poverty are constant reminders that we ain't there yet.

And take a look at Alexandra Pelosi's documentary film "Right America, Feeling Wronged," her HBO film and you will see just how brazen and strong this racism is.

That's why we have to challenge ourselves to be intentional in reaching out to create opportunities for all of us to get to know each other. Eric Holder was right, although the media was wrong in how they portrayed his speech before the Justice Department on race. Take a look at it and see whether you are ready to be couragous.

Who Are We When We Are All Suffering?

The Pew Hispanic Center released a study this week that revealed that Hispanics living in America have the same concerns as everyone else: the economy, the state of public education, and health care top the list of most important priorities for the Obama administration. With Latinos amounting to half of the US population growth since 2000, we better start seeing our Hispanic residents as part of a whole, too, the whole of America. Latinos voted for Obama 67% to 31% for McCain. So now, even the Democratic Party has to pay attention to our neighbors.

Which brings me to Suffolk County, NY. Home of the hate crime as sport among young white teenagers with nothing much else to do. In addition to killing Marcelo Lucero, an Hispanic immigrant in Patchogue, a group of high school boys has been indicted for beatings of other Latinos. What is most disturbing is that Suffolk County police admitted that they didn't consider these other attacks as hate crimes, despite the fact that Latino men were the victims and the perpetrators were young white men. Ummmmm.

Words have meaning and the vicious xenophobia of Suffolk County executive Steve Levy has infected the Suffolk County police so that they are blind to the obvious.

We have a problem here.