In a new article for the American Prospect, RSF Visiting Scholar William Darity and co-authors Darrick Hamilton, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Alan Aja, and Carolyn Ash examine the challenges faced by historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the U.S. today.
HBCUs have long played a crucial role in nurturing black scholars, writers, and politicians, with alumni that include Thurgood Marshall, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, today the existence of these schools is threatened by dwindling funds. Several HBCUs have reached out to alumni for increased donations, but Darity and his colleagues believe that alumni donations alone are unlikely to lift these institutions out of crisis. They write, “Do blacks generally have the financial capacity to save HBCUs with their own donations to their respective alma maters? Given the historical, cumulative, and persistent black-white wealth gap in the U.S., this is not only unlikely, but a distraction.”
Darity’s research at RSF focuses on the persistent racial wealth gap in the U.S. As he and his colleagues note in the American Prospect, the vast majority of black wealth is held in home equity, which cannot be tapped for alumni donations. Furthermore, the typical black family holds about $7,113 in net worth whereas the median net worth of white families is over $100,000. Instead, the authors recommend reviving HBCUs through a series of broader public policies that would not only fund education, but also help to build black wealth and income. Such initiatives could include a federal jobs-guarantee program, “baby bonds” that ensure trust funds to children born to families whose net wealth falls below the median, and the expansion of Pell Grants for nonprofit institutions.
On October 21, RSF president Sheldon Danziger delivered the 2015 Bicknell Lecture, titled “Poverty, Public Policy and Public Health,” at the Boston University School of Public Health. Danziger, who is co-editor of the 2013 RSF book Legacies of the War on Poverty, has argued that since the early 1970s, economic gains in the U.S. have primarily benefited the elite, while wages for the average worker have remained stagnant.
“The conventional wisdom is that a rising economic tide lifts all boats. But it no longer works that way,” Danziger said in a new interview with BU Today. “The last 40 years have been a period of very slow wage growth and rising inequality.”
These growing disparities in income have led to disparities in health—which, in turn, exacerbate cycles of inequality. As Danziger noted, “Health disparities are tied to poverty rates. Those at the bottom have lower life expectancies, higher unemployment. And the causation goes both ways—people in poor health are less likely to work.”
Danziger’s Bicknell Lecture, which explored the connections between inequality and public health, was followed by a panel discussion with Charles E. Carter (Harvard), Molly Baldwin (Roca Inc.), and Perri Klass (NYU).