1. Inequality: Is the significance of race declining?
Kellor Yde

2. Racial Inequality
Racial discrimination has been well-documented as pervasive throughout US history
But overt forms of confrontational racism hold less sway than the more insidious forms of institutional discrimination
I’ll first focus on how racial inequality will, in fact, continue to be significant, and then examine possible institutional explanations for racial inequality

3. Wealth Inequality
Gap between median wealth of black and white households at its highest point since 1989
Gap between median wealth of hispanic and white households at its highest point since 2001
Median wealth of white households is currently 13 times that of black households

4. Wealth Inequality

5. Arguments for Declining Importance?
William Wilson: “now the life chances of individual blacks have more to do with their economic class position than with their day-to-day encounters with whites.” (282)
While race is still a factor, class is now much more important
Programs like anti-discrimination legislation and affirmative action help privileged minorities but don’t help impoverished minorities
Therefore, perhaps minorities have just as good chances of obtaining higher incomes as whites, and it’s just their generational wealth disadvantage that causes inequality

6. Income Disparity
But median adjusted income gap has increased for both Hispanics and blacks
Since the 60s, the white-black income gap grew from $19k to $27k
Since 1970, Hispanic median income was 68% of white median income, today it is 60%
The Asian American median income gap is negligible however

7. Institutional Explanations
Incarceration and the criminal justice system
Transportation inequality
Employment discrimination
Poor education

8. Incarceration Practices: Impacts:
Indiscriminate prosecution in the justice system
Police militarization and brutality
Lack of police accountability
Drug War
Impacts:
Cycle of poverty
Disenfranchisement politically and economically

9. Transportation Inequality
Massively disproportionate spending on the highway system and not urban transit
Urban segregation and “white flight”
Businesses relocate to areas with money
Low income families can’t afford cars to work or even access food
Reproduction of poverty
Transportation is a barrier to upward mobility
Many upfront and also unpredictable costs
American poverty line doesn’t even properly consider transportation costs, based solely on costs of food

10. Employment Discrimination
Racial discrimination makes it more difficult for minorities to obtain jobs, especially in a competitive market it’s very easy to avoid hiring minorities
This also makes it difficult for minorities to move upward towards white-collar jobs

11. Poor Education
Access to education can be difficult for minorities who are born into systems without a strong enforcement of school attendance
Furthermore, inner-city schools are chronically underfunded and disproportionately occupied by minorities
In Chicago, 87% of public school enrollment was black or Hispanic, while 10% was white
In DC, 94% were black or Hispanic, and less than 5% were white
Discrepancies between white-dominated private schools and inner city schools in terms of money spent per student and teacher salaries is often double or triple in favor of white kids

12. References
Drew Desilver, “Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites,” Pew Research Center, August 21, 2014.
Jonathan Kozol, “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1, 2005.
“King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities,” Pew Research Center, August 22, 2013.
Matthew Dombroski, “Securing Access to Transportation for the Urban Poor,” Colombia Law Review, 105:2, 2005.
Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry, “Wealth inequality has widened along racial, ethnic lines since end of Great Recession,” Pew Research Center, December 12, 2014.
William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, excerpts from pp. 1-9, 12-23, , edited by David B. Grusky and Szonja Szelényi, 1978.