The Black-white wealth gap is staggering. In our recently released book, Just Action, Richard Rothstein and I describe how this gap is at the root of our nation’s most serious problems of racial inequality. While wealthy white families often use their economic resources to segregate and create unique advantages for themselves, lower-wealth African American families are limited to living in lower-resourced, more disadvantaged areas. Partly because the differences in household wealth between typical African American and white families determine the neighborhoods in which they live, this wealth disparity is a key factor in Black youths’ poorer academic outcomes, Black adults’ greater health challenges, and young African Americans’ disproportionate exposure to police abuse and higher incarceration rates.

As we note in Just Action, African American household income is about 60% of white household income. That discrepancy is concerning in itself, but the wealth gap is much, much worse: African American household wealth is only 5% of white household wealth.

Government housing policy exacerbated the wealth gap

While many factors have contributed to the troubling disparity between the income and wealth gaps, one factor stands out: government housing policy in the early- to mid-twentieth century.

Policies that subsidized homeownership for white working- and middle-class households during that period allowed those families to buy homes. They accumulated wealth over decades as their homes appreciated. They then passed on that wealth to their children and grandchildren.

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Revised December 21, 2023

This summer, Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington D.C. will raise their minimum wages, boosting pay for 765,000 workers who will collectively gain more than $615 million in wages. Meanwhile, 15 cities and counties will implement minimum wage increases, providing timely relief for low-wage workers facing rising prices. These updates can all be viewed in EPI’s interactive Minimum Wage Tracker and in Figure A and Table 1 below.

Beginning July 1, Oregon will increase its hourly minimum wage by $0.70 to $14.20, while Nevada’s will increase by $0.75 to $11.25. Washington D.C. will increase its regular minimum wage by $0.90 to $17.00 while increasing its tipped minimum by $2.00 to $8.00. Connecticut increased its minimum wage on June 1 by $1.00 to $15.00 an hour.

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After extensive deliberation, the Supreme Court has delivered a landmark ruling that effectively prohibits the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Race-blind admissions processes will further exacerbate existing inequalities and undermine the recognition of the unique challenges that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students encounter throughout the admissions process. By disregarding the significance of race, these approaches risk creating a wider divide between equal opportunity and communities of color. 

This decision marks a significant setback for colleges, which have relied on this tool for over 40 years to enhance racial diversity on their campuses and compensate for decades of both explicit and implicit race-based exclusion. Colleges must now explore options like targeted recruitment programs and using other metrics such as household income and wealth as substitutes for race-based admissions. However, flagship schools from states that previously banned affirmative action and used these alternative tactics have a poor track record of success in achieving meaningful diversity gains in their student body without using affirmative action. 

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In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests calling for justice following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, right-wing backlash has taken concrete form in highly coordinated campaigns against books, programs, or curricular resources designed to analyze and address systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. Over the past two years in state legislatures across the United States, campaigns targeting a caricatured version of “critical race theory” (CRT) have evolved into intertwined attacks on truth itself and the workplace rights of teachers, librarians, and other educators.

A 2022 study documented how hundreds of state and local anti-“CRT” campaigns have been “fueled by powerful conservative entities (media, organizations, foundations, PACs, and politicians) that exploit and foment local frustration and dissent over what should be taught and learned in schools.” Such fear-mongering has appeared especially effective in districts facing rapid demographic shifts. School districts where white student enrollment fell by more than 18% since 2000 were more than three times as likely to experience local anti-“CRT” campaigns than districts that saw little or no enrollment change in white students.

Anti-“CRT” campaigns have emboldened school boards and state legislatures to ban teaching about racism and sexism in classrooms and to disempower educators from teaching about the true legacy of white supremacy. Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism. 

Florida in particular has emerged as a primary battleground over proposals to censor truthful teaching in schools while restricting the academic freedom and union rights of educators. Earlier last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida state legislature enacted the Stop W.OK.E. Act, an acronym standing for “Wrong to our Kids and Employees.” This law limits how K–12 public schools, public colleges and universities, and Florida employers discuss race, gender, and sexual identity. 

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Workers should pay attention to news that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been wined and dined by a billionaire businessman for years without disclosures, while Justice Neil Gorsuch sold property to a law firm executive who has been involved in numerous cases before the court. It will come as no surprise that justices receiving lavish gifts are going to side with the interests of their wealthy benefactors when a case comes before them involving business interests versus workers’ rights.

We can all hope the law will prevail, and that some of the moves to install new codes of ethics can restore some of the integrity of the court, but the Republican-appointed justices’ track record is dismal when it comes to empowering workers.

The Supreme Court has played an important role in the decades-long campaign to erode workers’ rights in this country. In particular, the Supreme Court has issued rulings that have undermined everything from workers’ rights to form unions, the ability to build strong unions, and health and safety on the job. This term, the Supreme Court once again sided with corporations in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters to make it easier for employers to sue unions over their decision to strike.

Beyond Glacier, here’s a rundown of several key decisions that hurt workers just in the last few years:

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Most of the $350 billion in State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) allocated under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) remains unspent. County governments, in particular, have been slow to spend or obligate their fiscal recovery funds compared with cities and states. Those that have spent a large share of their allocation have generally used the funds for basic revenue replacement, which makes it less likely counties will take advantage of the flexibility allowed under SLFRF rules to make new investments to advance equity. Counties have myriad opportunities to use remaining SLFRF dollars to help working families, and advocates should encourage them to do so.

County governments were granted $65.1 billion in fiscal recovery funds, and $52.4 million of that went to 882 larger counties that have more frequent reporting requirements than smaller counties. As of the last reporting deadline on December 31, these larger counties have spent less than 27% of that money and obligated just 41% of it. This is substantially less than the pace of SLFRF spending by cities and states, as shown in Figure A below. Counties only have until December 31, 2024, to obligate these funds.

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Last week, the Supreme Court handed employers one more cudgel to use in trying to squelch worker organizing: the threat of a state court lawsuit for economic harm. In Glacier Northwest Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174, the Supreme Court upended decades of labor law precedent by allowing an employer to file a lawsuit for damages caused by spoilage of a day’s worth of product during a strike.

There’s been a lot of writing about the case, but here’s the upshot: Workers still clearly have the right to strike, but the Court’s decision opens the floodgates for employers to weaponize financially burdensome state court litigation as a pressure tactic against workers and unions. The decision could have been worse—it contains some guardrails that may help limit the damage and provide unions with defenses because it doesn’t allow lawsuits for economic harm under any and all circumstances. But it’s still a very harmful decision that hands employers another way to suppress worker organizing and reduce worker power.

As with abortion, guns, and so many other issues, Glacier shows just how out of touch the Supreme Court is with the national pulse. The opinion was issued amid a wave of union organizing and worker action not seen in decades, including at household-name companies like Starbucks, REI, and Kellogg’s. Television and film writers—members of the Writers Guild—have been on strike for a month. Public opinion of unions is the highest it’s been in my lifetime, and a majority of workers surveyed say they’d join a union if they could.

However, only around 6% of private-sector workers are unionized. Our weak and outdated labor laws make it terribly hard to unionize, and employers routinely violate these laws by firing, threatening, and otherwise retaliating against workers who try to exercise their rights. This context makes last week’s decision even worse; it’s enraging and tragic that the Supreme Court has once again put its finger on the scale in favor of corporate America.

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The debt limit deal that Congress passed and President Biden will sign tonight may avert the economic crisis that would be caused by the U.S. government defaulting on its payments. But it’s worth reiterating that we shouldn’t be in this deal-making situation to begin with.

“Debt limit deals” are a way to force policy change through a backdoor by holding the U.S. (and global) economy hostage. Accepting that “debt limit deals” are just business as usual every time we approach the ceiling basically means that one political party can gain access to an inordinately powerful “hack” around the normal democratic process so long as some arbitrary conditions prevail.

Republicans have a majority in just one chamber of Congress, and face a president of the opposing party. Normally, this would mean they would have to argue their case for policy changes on the floor of the House, and compromise more often than not. However, just because we were about to cross over the utterly arbitrary debt limit, Republicans magically gained enormous amounts of leverage to dictate policy—including a lot of policy divorced from the specific conversation of addressing the debt and deficits. This is not a sensible way to govern.

This deal looks significantly less harmful than the original McCarthy proposal that passed the House last month, but it still contains several worrying provisions. Notably, it still includes a concession to expand and tighten work reporting requirements for some of the most vulnerable Americans to access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These should never have been part of a debt ceiling discussion.

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Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould shares her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 339,000 jobs added in May. Read the full Twitter thread here. 

The job report for May shows notable employment gains in education and health services, professional and business services, government, and leisure and hospitality in May. pic.twitter.com/c36lnWkCNR

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023

While the boost in govt jobs is welcome news, state and local employment is still down 1.4% since Feb 2020. Private-sector jobs fell further and came back stronger due to largescale policy investments. Lagging public sector jobs is concerning for the vital services they provide. pic.twitter.com/1s2QgFu2Zc

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023

The household survey is a bit mixed but has more volatility so I don’t think represents a general cooling off, especially in light of the strong payroll numbers for May. The drop in employment seems to be isolated within self-employment but wage and salary jobs rose in May.

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023

After hitting 80.8% in April, the share of workers 25-54 years old with a job edged down but remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, second highest level in over 20 years (since 2001). pic.twitter.com/NNkTPJPSDi

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) June 2, 2023