According to the Black to the Future Action Fund, a political advocacy think tank, Black Americans strongly support initiatives that would raise the minimum wage to $17, make affordable housing more accessible and create a fair tax system. On Thursday, the group released a 55-page economic agenda based on its 2023 survey of 211,219 Black people in all 50 states. The organization hopes the report will guide elected officials to fill policy gaps and that activists can launch campaigns that hold politicians accountable.
“We have to start imagining what we want and not be afraid to break out of what is,” said Alicia Garza, founder and former director of the Black to the Future Action Fund, at a symposium in Atlanta on Thursday.
The agenda proposes a series of policy changes in the areas of worker protections, housing, health care, child care, higher education and taxes, and cites examples of successful models already being implemented by some state and local governments. “The economic insecurity suffered by black communities cannot be solved by individual actions alone, such as working longer hours, getting a college degree or saving money to buy a home,” the agenda’s authors write. “These problems are systemic and government intervention is needed to address these inequities and improve the situation for our people.”
In addition to raising the minimum wage to $17, the authors also recommended that elected officials pass labor protections for domestic workers, who are often black women. Expanding paid family and medical leave laws would help workers provide for their households. And on the issue of affordable housing, the think tank recommended laws that ensure that rent payments are factored into credit scores to make it easier for renters to get mortgages.
Another affordable housing proposal included developing shared equity programs, which use public or private investment to build or buy homes that are then sold at a discounted price to low- to moderate-income buyers. According to the agenda, there are currently 250,000 shared equity models in operation, mostly in New York City. Christopher Towler, an associate professor of political science at Sacramento State University and director of the Black Voter Project, called the programs a “really good model to get people into the housing market so there are more first-time buyers.”
The origins of the United States’ continued ethnic wealth can be traced to the transatlantic slave trade, when enslaved blacks were denied access to the capital generated by their forced labor. During Reconstruction after the Civil War, then-President Andrew Johnson revoked the 40 acres of land promised to formerly enslaved blacks.
When black communities achieved economic freedom, they were sometimes violently attacked by angry white mobs, such as during the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, in which an estimated 300 people were killed. In addition, banks frequently denied home loans to black Americans from the early 20th century until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in the housing market.
“The mistakes of Reconstruction have yet to be made up for,” Towler said. “And a big part of that is the continued residential segregation and the fact that black Americans have been excluded not only from the housing market, but from the resources, wealth and opportunities that come with where they live and access the community.”
The legacy of systemic inequality continues to impact Black workers today, who earn less than U.S. workers overall, according to 2022 Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by the Pew Research Center. The median weekly earnings for Black full-time wage earners are $878, compared to $1,059 for all U.S. workers, according to Pew.
During Thursday’s symposium, actor and activist Kendrick Sampson, singer and songwriter Trae Crockett and digital storyteller Conscious Lee spoke with Garza about the need for Black communities to collectively discuss necessary solutions and come together to create political change.
“When it comes to health care,” Lee said, “many of us … have internalized the inferiority of black people in this industry. For me, that means imagining what it looks like for my grandmother to get affordable insulin.”
Black census respondents cited lack of affordable health care as the fourth-biggest economic problem. Expanding Medicaid to the 10 states that did not do so under the Affordable Care Act could help keep rural hospitals open. “The communities most affected by the closure of these rural hospitals often have high black populations,” the report said, “and the closure means rural residents must drive 25 or more miles to receive health care.”
Although Towler praised the agenda as the first he’s seen that addresses the concerns of black communities across the country, he believes it will be a “hard sell” to mobilize black voters. “Any kind of policy promise is viewed with a certain amount of skepticism right now, simply because the Biden administration’s policy agenda, while it has a great many accomplishments, is still misunderstood in some ways,” Towler said. “The average voter doesn’t know much about how the policies Biden passed have actually impacted their individual lives.”
According to his research, Towler says that people are encouraged to be civically engaged when they are taught how political institutions maintain the status quo and resist change: “If we want redress to be possible at all, we have to keep voting, keep activism, and keep appointing policymakers and legislators who will work toward that.”
At the end of the symposium, organizers asked participants to share the agenda with their network and elected officials. In the eyes of the Black to the Future Action Fund, the electorate has the power to create political change through mass mobilization.
“We are the power,” Sampson said toward the end of the symposium. “When we all pull together and move in the same direction, we are stronger.”
