Algernon Austin is an economist at the think tank Demos and the author of the book America Is Not Post-Racial.
"I think what sometimes people miss is, what are the comparisons?"
He points out that college-educated and high-earning black folks are in many ways more likely to be better off than black people who earn less.
But Austin, who did not work on NPR's poll, adds there is overwhelming data showing that when comparing educated and high-earning blacks to their white counterparts, the gap is substantial.
Thank you.
My name is Allie Boldt, and I’m an attorney at Demos, an organization working to advance equality and inclusive democracy through advocacy and litigation. We’ve been partnering with CASA of Virginia and the Residents of Fairfax County Coalition to analyze how County policies can and must be strengthened to protect immigrant community members facing unfair and terrifying policies at all levels of government.
FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA -- Fairfax County Coalition, a group of local civil rights and immigrant rights organizations, will demand that Fairfax County end its collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and protect hard-working immigrants and their families during a press conference Tuesday.
Latino homeowners’ median net worth increased from 2013 to 2016, but the net worth of Latino renters* declined 22 percent. The median net worth of Latino renters fell from $5,200 to $4,000 (Figure A). Non-Latino renters also had a decline in their median net worth, but only of 9 percent, from $5,800 to $5,300.
New York, NY – Today, Heather McGhee, president of Demos, and Garry Civitello, a resident of Asheville, North Carolina, released the following statement on the premiere of the second season of Upstanders, a Starbucks original series. This season features the story of Heather and Garry’s friendship, which began after Garry called into C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program, on which Heather was a guest.
“In our interconnected society, racism — both interpersonal and institutional — is the flaw in the machine that often stymies our democracy and our economy,” McGhee, who’s working on a book on this topic, said. “Racism and bias against full portions of the population color the policy responses of elected officials.” [...]
Some are heartened to see functioning-for-free college popping up in places like New York and elsewhere. Mark Huelsman senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank and the author of an influential white paper on free college, said he hopes they’ll serve as “laboratories” for policymakers to understand both the benefits and the limitations of different free college program designs.
Many Americans believe that we have achieved black-white racial economic equality, but the data continue to show that we have a long way to go. For centuries, we have had policies to help white families build wealth at the expense of black families.
Another solution — though one that is often a struggle to achieve — is to unionize, which has worked before in industries like teaching, policing, and manufacturing. “If retail workers were able to organize strong unions across the country, there’s no reason retail jobs couldn’t be good jobs like manufacturing jobs,” Amy Traub, Associate Director for Policy and Research at public policy organizationDemos, tells Bustle.
TRANSITIONS -- Arlene Corbin Lewis has joined the D.C. office of the public policy think tank, Demos, as the director of communications. She previously was at the Case Foundation where she was the VP for communications
Even before the Equifax breach, the integrity of credit reports was murky at best. A Federal Trade Commission report found that as many as one in five consumers had a credit error from one of the top reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). But the fundamental problem isn’t data integrity—it’s economic justice. According to a survey by the think tank Demos, declining credit was associated more with misfortunes and unforeseeable crises than with a lack of financial responsibility.
