Dealing With our Racial Wealth and Income Gaps

There are many things we can do to reduce the inequity created by the income and wealth gaps between Black and White people in the United States. We should not wait.

Racial Wealth and Income Gaps are Real

The enormous differences in wealth and income between White and Black people in our country have been well documented. White households earn more than twice as much as Black households on average and have nearly 10 times as much wealth. These gaps are due partly to past racism and partly to present racism.

Past racism is important because it affects the ability of Black families to pass on wealth to their children.  For example, the Federal Housing Authority underwrote an enormous expansion of home ownership in our country after World War II, but the practice of redlining effectively prevented most Black people from buying houses under this program. Today, as a result, far fewer Black families than White families are able to pass on wealth in the form of a family home.

Present racism is also important because it affects hiring practices: it is harder for Black people to get jobs than it is for White people. Present racism also affects wages. Black people are paid less than White people in similar jobs.

Reducing the Gaps and Their Effects

It is going to take a long time to eliminate these wealth and income gaps, but we can immediately reduce their importance by enacting policies that provide non-monetary income for all of our people.

For example, health care costs account for about 35% of poor Americans’ pre-tax income, but only about 3.5% of rich Americans’ pre-tax income. So, a decent, tax-supported, national healthcare system would immediately reduce the importance of the income gap considerably. Such a program would also reduce the size of the barrier to wealth accumulation by Black people.

Free post-secondary education provides another example. Educational debts are well-known to be a heavy burden for young Americans, and the burden is heavier for Black Americans. That burden makes it harder for Black people to accumulate wealth, to form families or to buy houses. If the burden were eliminated, the wage gap between Black and White workers would remain, but it would be less of a barrier to wealth formation for Black people. Over time, the gap would gradually be reduced as black people accumulated more wealth.

American housing policies are well-known to increase the cost and reduce the supply of housing for all Americans. Naturally, the high cost of housing affects Black people disproportionately because on average, they are poorer than White people. Changes in zoning laws and tax policies to encourage the development of affordable housing would go a long way toward improving the condition of many Black people in the United States. Some would be able to buy houses, while others would find that rent took a smaller share of their incomes. As a result, Black people would become better able to accumulate wealth, and the gap between them and White people would be reduced.

Let’s Not Wait

Policies like these would go a long way toward reducing the inequities that have resulted from racism in our country, and we do not have to wait for the elimination of racism in order to enact them. We should of course strive to reduce American racism because racism and its effects have always made a mockery of our claim to provide liberty and justice for all. However, eliminating racism will be a long fight, and we can do things to make people’s lives better without waiting for victory in that fight. Let’s get started now!

White Fragility and American Popular Protestantism

Racism as a Private Sin

Recently, the book White Fragility has taken our country by storm. “Woke” progressives have read it and explored its meaning in depth. Many have found that its message resonates deeply with them. I think that one reason why the book has been so successful is that it fits well with one of the strongest strands of our culture – that of popular, American, Protestant religiosity. Like American, popular Protestantism, White Fragility is deeply conservative in its political implications.

Protestant Christianity generally focuses on salvation from sin through faith in Jesus Christ, but what is sin?  We can divide sins into two categories. There are public sins like oppression of the poor or corruption in public business, and there are private sins like fornication, gambling or drinking. American Protestantism has recognized both, but popular Protestant religiosity has focused much more on private sin than on public sin. Those like the 19^th century abolitionists who have insisted on social justice have faced widespread opposition from religious groups. 

The focus on private sin encourages individuals to work for personal development, self-understanding, psychological growth and repentance rather than to engage in social action, and White Fragility fits neatly into this tradition. Just as Protestantism insists that sin is the inescapable condition of mankind, so White Fragility insists that racism is the inescapable condition of our society. Just as Protestantism says that we should look into our hearts, find the sin there and turn away from it, so, White Fragility says that we should look into our hearts, find the racism there and turn away from it. In both cases, “salvation” comes from personal improvement, not from social action. Thus, the message of White Fragility fits well into the conservative religious tradition of one of the main streams of American culture. In that tradition, we achieve “salvation” by seeking virtue in our private lives. We do not have to confront the evils of our society.

White Fragility and Social Action

Readers of White Fragility may be social activists, but the book does not lead them in that direction. They may oppose the systemic racism of our society by fighting against discrimination in housing, in hiring or in education, and they can protest against police brutality. However, the decision to engage in that kind of public fight for social justice must come from outside of the book. The closest that White Fragility comes to promoting social action is its recommendation that we should be bold enough to object when we hear people make racist remarks or tell racist jokes. We should not allow such remarks to pass unchallenged. We should recognize and call out the sin of racism in ourselves and in our friends and associates. White Fragility asks us to do what we can to free ourselves and those around us from the sin of racism, but the book does not ask us to engage in a public fight for social justice.

This approach seems very natural and understandable to us because it fits well within our religious tradition. It allows us to think of racism as a private sin from which we should free ourselves as much as we can. We will never free ourselves from it completely, but we can begin our Pilgrim’s Progress.

Racism is a Public Sin

Treating racism in this way is profoundly conservative in its political implications. Such an approach does not directly challenge any institutional practice because it allows self-improvement to take the place of social action. The focus on self-improvement is very attractive to most of us because it is much less risky and requires much less time than social action. However, it is ultimately a dead end because it does not lead to social change. We cannot allow ourselves to be seduced by the attractiveness of self-improvement. We must remember that racism is not primarily a private sin. It is public, and it must be fought in the public realm.

Freedom and Masks

A Struggle Over Freedom in Our Country

Today, in our country, a struggle is going on between those who believe that we should require people to wear masks in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus and those who believe that the requirement to wear masks is an infringement on individual freedom. In this struggle, the two groups talk past each other. Neither side understands what the other is saying. To those who favor requiring people to wear masks, the advantages of doing so are obvious, and the opposing argument seems stupid or insane. Those who oppose the requirement cannot understand how anyone could favor such an intrusion on a free person’s right to live as he/she chooses.

Freedom Has Two Meanings

To see what is at stake here, we need to dig more deeply into the idea of freedom. “Freedom” has two, different meanings.  Sometimes, we use “freedom” to mean “freedom from authority.”  I am free in this sense if I may do what I choose without restraint from rules or bosses. Freedom in this sense is equivalent to autonomy.


A second meaning of freedom refers to capability. I have this sort of freedom if I can really do what I want to do.  To understand what this means, consider President Roosevelt’s famous “four freedoms.” The first two (freedom of speech and freedom of religion) clearly refer to freedom in the sense of autonomy, but the second two (freedom from want and freedom from fear) are different. If I am to be free from want, I must not only be autonomous, I must also have at my disposal the means of procuring sufficient food, clothing, shelter and so forth. Freedom in this sense includes capability.

We Must Sometimes Choose

Sometimes, the two kinds of freedom conflict, and we have to choose between them. Sometimes, increasing our capability requires us to act together as a group, and in order to act effectively, we must submit to the authority of the group. We must give up some autonomy in order to enjoy an increase in our capability. The most extreme example of this is the military. In the movie, A Few Good Men, there is a scene in which Col. Jessup is asked whether marines always follow orders, and he answers, “We follow orders, son. We follow orders, or people die. It’s that simple.”


Less extreme examples are all around us. For example, those of us who live in cities give up the right to use septic tanks because the city sewage system makes us capable of avoiding water-borne diseases like cholera, typhoid and dysentery. The key idea is that we give up autonomy in order to acquire capability. We submit to the authority of the group because we get something in return. Otherwise, the group’s assertion of power over us would be tyranny, and finding the right balance between autonomy and capability is and has always been at the heart of American politics.

The Second Meaning of Freedom Has Been Lost in Our Political Discussion

Unfortunately, the discussion of freedom in the United States has come to be dominated entirely by the first meaning of freedom.  In this discussion, the question of freedom has come to be always and only a question of autonomy.  Capability has been excluded completely by the way that the discussion of freedom is framed. We can see this not only in politics but also in popular culture. George Strait’s song, “Amarillo by Morning” gives us an example. It is about a rodeo cowboy who is on his was to Amarillo to complete in a rodeo. The cowboy says,

Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone
Everything that I've got, is just what I've got on
I ain't got a dime, but what I got is mine
I ain't rich, but Lord I'm free
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo's where I'll be
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo's where I'll be

The cowboy loves his autonomy, and he believes it makes him free. This framing favors the political right because it can always be used to oppose any government policy that infringes on the autonomy of individuals. We have seen this framing used in the debate over the requirement for every individual to have health insurance, and we on the left have been unable to respond effectively because we have failed to make capability an important part of the discussion of freedom. 

Masks and Freedom

This brings us back to the issue of masks. Requiring people to wear masks does infringe on their autonomy but it increases all of our capability. By submitting to the authority of the group, we increase our freedom from disease, and since, the disease in question can kill us, the trade-off seems reasonable.  If we are to have sensible, political discussions in our country, we must reframe the discussion of freedom. We cannot allow the idea of freedom to be limited to autonomy. We must insist that the meaning of freedom is broader than that. We must insist that for us to be truly free, we must be capable as well as autonomous.