Race, Class and Opportunity: Understanding the Convergence and Divergence of Race

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Race, Class and OpportunityUnderstanding the
Convergence and Divergence of Race Class in the
US

• Guest Lecture Race, Class and the United States
• The Ohio State University
• Jason Reece, AICP
• Senior Researcher
• Reece.35_at_osu.edu
• The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  Ethnicity
• January 16th 2008

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Discussion Points

• What does the data say?
• Race and socioeconomic status in the US
• Distinctions and differences
• Defining class is difficult
• Depth of poverty
• Thinking about assets not income
• Geography and access to opportunity
• Why is this important? (applied examples)
• School desegregation (education)
• Fair housing opportunities (housing)

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Socioeconomic Status in the US

• US poverty rate
• 13.3 of the US living in poverty in 2006
• Number in poverty
• Representing 38.8 million people in 2006

Source US Census Bureau
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Historical Trends Poverty in the US
Source U.S. Census Bureau
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Historical Trends Poverty Rates
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Race Socioeconomic Status in the US

• Poverty and race 2006
• White (non-Hispanic) 17.9 million in poverty,
  9.3 poverty rate
• Black 9.0 million in poverty, 25.3 poverty rate
• Asian 1.4 million in poverty, 10.7 poverty rate
• Latino (all Latinos) 9.3 million in poverty,
  21.5 poverty rate

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Could Class be a Substitute for Race?

• Given the correlation between socioeconomic
  status and race can socioeconomic status be
  simply substituted for race?
• No, due to several complications
• Defining class is difficult
• Varying depth in levels of poverty for various
  races
• Asset and wealth disparities not addressed
• Geographic distinctions and access to opportunity
  not adequately addressed

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Variation in Defining Class Some Examples

• Class is an abstract concept and measuring it in
  empirical terms is difficult, the definitions and
  concepts are not static, often shifting
• Poverty
• Sets various thresholds (poverty line) for
  household size, based on measures of estimated
  resources needed to sustain access to certain
  goods
• The poverty thresholds were originally developed
  in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social
  Security Administration 
• Low income
• Broader definition, usually defined as number of
  households with incomes lower than 80 of median
  income

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2007 Poverty Thresholds
SOURCE  Federal Register, Vol. 72, No. 15,
January 24, 2007, pp. 31473148
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How do we define class? Some Examples

• Middle class
• Evolving definition, historically conveyed
  meaning relative to type of employment, now more
  commonly a measure of middle income
• Non class based concepts
• Thinking about access to critical resources and
  opportunity
• Human development index

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Depth of Poverty

• Black and Latino households are more likely to be
  in the lowest ranges of poverty (extremely low
  income)
• In 2006, 3.5 of Whites were at less than 50 of
  the poverty level, for Blacks this figure was
  10.1
• In Franklin County, OH only 13 of Whites are
  extremely low income (earning less than 30 of
  area median income)
• In comparison 27 on non-Whites were ELI (2002)

Source U.S. Census Bureau
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Depth of Poverty

• The difference in poverty level between races
  has significant implications for social policies
  and the income thresholds used to target programs
• For example
• Proposed 2005 rule changes to the housing choice
  voucher program, which would have stopped
  targeting as many vouchers to extremely low
  income households, would of resulted in 392,000
  Black and Latino families losing vouchers to
  White families

Source PRRAC, Civil Rights Implications of the
2005 Flexible Voucher Proposal
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What About Assets and Wealth?

• Traditional measures of class (income, poverty)
  do not account for assets or wealth
• Racial disparities in wealth are far more
  pronounced than disparities in income

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Racial Disparity in Wealth

• What is wealth?
• Income is what people get paid, wealth is what
  people own (investments, equity, assets)
• Wealth is a surplus, resources that may be relied
  upon in time of need
• Wealth is what we use to buy opportunity and it
  allows us to take risk which also creates new
  wealth
• Wealth changes your time frame
• A welfare recipient lives on a day to day, week
  to week basis a wealthy person can plan in the
  long-term (years or decades)

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Home Ownership Wealth

• Home Equity
• Home equity is often the largest component of the
  average American familys wealth
• It account for 75 of the assets held by the
  median household in the U.S.
• It has been critical in the growth of the middle
  class throughout the U.S. following World War II
• Unequal Access to Home Equity
• A legacy of historical discrimination in lending
  and access to home ownership, the cost of living
  in segregated communities and discontinued
  discrimination in the housing market have
  prevented families of color from accessing the
  wealth potential of home equity

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The Racial Wealth Gap
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Racial Inequity in Wealth

• Wealth disparity in America
• In 2000
• The median asset value for a white household was
  79,400, for African American households this was
  7,500 (a disparity of 900)
• For every 1 in assets held by the average
  African American family, the average white family
  has 9 in assets
• The additional assets held by White Americans
  open doors to more opportunity

Source U.S. Census Bureau
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Geography and Access to Opportunity

• Traditional views on class also miss a pronounced
  distinction in living conditions for low income
  Whites and low income Blacks
• Impoverished Blacks and Latinos are far more
  likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated
  poverty
• These high poverty environments create deplorable
  living conditions and are a manifestation of
  living isolated from opportunity

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The Cumulative Impacts of Spatial, Racial and
Opportunity Segregation
Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunities
Impacts on Health
School Segregation
Impacts on Educational Achievement
Exposure to crime arrest
Transportation limitations and other inequitable
public services
Job segregation
Neighborhood Segregation
Racial stigma, other psychological impacts
Impacts on community power and individual assets
Adapted from figure by Barbara Reskin at
http//faculty.washington.edu/reskin/
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Who Lives in Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods?

• Over 3.1 million African Americans lived in
  Concentrated Poverty Neighborhoods in 2000,
  Blacks and Latinos represent nearly 3 out of 4
  residents in these neighborhoods
• Nearly 1 out of 10 Blacks lived in a concentrated
  poverty neighborhood in 1999, compared to 1 out
  of 100 Whites
• Whites only make 30 of people living in high
  poverty neighborhoods, although they represent
  55 of the total population living in poverty

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Segregation from Opportunity Neighborhood Poverty

• In all three of Ohios largest metropolitan
  areas, African Americans live in neighborhoods
  with 2 to 3 times the poverty rate experienced in
  White Neighborhoods
• In the City of Cleveland, 1/3 of African
  Americans live in concentrated poverty
  (neighborhoods with more than a 40 poverty rate)

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Neighborhoods determine access to schools.
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Access to jobs
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Access to neighborhood amenities
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Even Higher Income African Americans are Isolated
from Opportunity
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Race, Class Dynamics in Education and Housing

• The distinctions between low income White and
  Black populations and the limitations on using
  class as a proxy for race are more than academic
  conflicts
• They are reflected in on-going legal/policy
  issues
• Examples education (Seattle/Louisville)
  housing (Thompson V. HUD)

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Seattle/Louisville

• Race conscious student assignment
  policies/integration plans
• Challenged in Seattle and Louisville, struck down
  by the US Supreme Court in 2007
• Some experts argued that race conscious
  integration plans were no longer necessary and
  the economic integration strategies alone would
  produce racial integration
• This was based on the success and experience of
  several socio-economic based integration plans
• Wake County, NC

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Seattle/Louisville

• The challenges with socio-economic student
  integration plans
• The success of Wake County in integrating
  racially was based on its unique demographics
• Black and Latino students were 10X as likely to
  be on free and reduced lunch in the County
• Other SES based strategies resulted in
  significant racial segregation (San Francisco,
  Charlotte)
• In short, SES based strategies can work but they
  require the correct mix of demographic
  geographic conditions to be successful
• These strategies will not work for all districts

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Housing Thompson v. HUD

• Lawsuit filed on behalf of 14,000 African
  American public housing residents in the City of
  Baltimore, plaintiffs representatives include the
  Maryland ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• The case has been in court for 12 years
• In January 2005, US District Court Judge Garbis
  found HUD liable for violating the federal Fair
  Housing Act, for not providing fair housing
  opportunities to Baltimores African American
  public housing residents
• The current remedial phase involves designing a
  court ordered remedy to address HUDs fair
  housing violation
• "Baltimore City should not be viewed ... as a
  container for all of the poor of a contiguous
  region
• U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis

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Thompson V. HUD

• Professor powell was a lead expert witness for
  the ACLU and NAACP LDF
• Proposing a remedy for the case in 2005
• Thompson v. HUD is one of the largest fair
  housing lawsuits in recent years

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Conditions in Baltimore

• Subsidized housing opportunities in Baltimore are
  generally clustered in the regions predominately
  African American neighborhoods

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Director powells Remedial Proposal

• The remedy must provide desegregative housing
  units in areas of opportunity
• The proposal conducted an opportunity mapping
  analysis in the region to locate high opportunity
  census tracts
• The remedy must be regional in scope
• The remedy must be race conscious
• The remedial program should be a structured
  choice model and voluntary for P.H. residents
• The remedy must be goal driven, not process
  driven
• HUD must consider both vouchers and housing
  production to meet the remedys goals

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Opportunity and Race

• African Americans are generally clustered in the
  Baltimore regions lowest opportunity
  neighborhoods

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Conditions in Baltimore

• Subsidized housing opportunities in Baltimore are
  generally clustered in the regions lowest
  opportunity neighborhoods

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Rationale for a Race Conscious Remedy

• To address the history of de jure racial
  segregation in public housing
• To assure that access is adequately provided to
  new housing opportunities
• The Mt. Laurel experience
• To avoid unintended outcomes
• Resegregation in the suburbs, spurring White
  flight

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HUDs Response

• HUDs experts counter arguments touched upon the
  race and class issue, in relation to the proposed
  remedy needing to be race conscious
• HUDs experts response
• Segregation is natural and the result of only
  income and personal preference, the government
  can do nothing about this
• Because segregation is just based on income, the
  remedy did not need to be race conscious
• Having a race conscious remedy was not justified
  and represented racial steering

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The Class and Segregation Argument Is
Segregation a Result of Income or Race in
Baltimore?
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(No Transcript)
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Opportunity, Race and Class
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Concluding Points

• Although there is a natural convergence between
  race and class, specific distinctions make a
  racial analysis still necessary
• The shifting and varied definition of class
• Traditional definitions of class ignore wealth
  disparities
• The depth of poverty experienced by Blacks and
  Latinos
• The geographic isolation of poor Blacks and
  Latinos into high poverty-low opportunity
  environments
• As a result, a more nuanced analysis is needed
  that reflects both issues

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