Racial inequality, be that in housing, education, jobs, or our justice system, is holding back our economy and limiting the realization of the American Dream. Too often, gridlock on Capitol Hill does not address these challenges head-on, allowing them to grow into more significant problems. State governments, our laboratories of democracies, have a much-needed role
The social arguments for erasing the racial economic divide are clear. Systems and institutions have been stacked against Black people and others who are not white and the initial conditions of slavery and segregation and other racist policies still exert forces on the finances of many Americans.
“Biomimicry is the practice of solving problems by asking the question, ‘What would nature do?” says Boston Impact Initiative Fund founder and President Deborah Frieze. Her answer to that question has her flipping conventional investing wisdom on its head to close the racial wealth divide in Boston.
While she hopes the fund will serve as a
The Democratic primary debates have officially begun. And as the candidates shared a stage for the first time, it was clear that serious contenders needed to not only acknowledge our country’s extreme economic inequality but also put forward concrete plans for tackling the problem.
How much has the conversation changed since the last presidential election? The
In 1940, a white developer wanted to build a neighborhood in Detroit. So he asked the US Federal Housing Administration to back a loan. The FHA, which was created just six years earlier to help middle-class families buy homes, said no because the development was too close to an “inharmonious” racial group. Meaning black people.
It wasn’t