more robust discussion. >> we need books with tom robinson's point of view. we need to have a range of voices, not just that as the teachable books. >> we need diverse books issue. >> yes. >> the way i would respond, harper lee wrote a brilliant book. there's no doubt about that. she is celebrated to my knowledge, -- i don't know she she supported sncc. in south froze, very petite white woman dade reception for me and her name was nadine

mortimer. there's absolutely no doubt where her commitment to the struggle and liberation of people were. i said, harper lee is a great novelist. don't know where she stood on race relationships. i don't. >> that's it. thank you all so much for coming. >> that panel on harper lee was from the first annual mississippi book fair, held at the state capitol in jackson. and by the way, "go set a watchman," harper lee's sobel novel, has sold about 1.5 million copies since it was published in july. up next, an economics panel from the harlem book fair in july. >> thank you max rodriguez.

i'm rich from columbia university. an absolute pleasure to be here to introduce the panel that will launch the harlem book fair's author panel, broadcast on c-span, booktv. the panel is particularly timely given the crisis -- some staggering numbers about wealth inequality and should be a national crisis, this panel is calls wealth and finance in post civil rights area. i witness well moderateled by damon phillips, the codirector of the center of social enter produce. the author of shaping jazz. we're in good hands, damon, take it away. >> first of all, thank you, rich, for your leadership over the years, at least for this fantastic event.

so, is this is a really fresh time for me to have this opportunity to moderate this panel, so i have really in front of me some top scholars and i will introduce them. then we'll just jump do a discussion about the topic for the day, and then i'll say a few words in between. my job here is as a moderator, to facilitate the discussion, and allow us all too learn from one another and also to get some insights from these fantastic scholars. so, i'll start on the far end. dalton conley, a professor. holds faculty appoints at nyu sociology department, school of medicine, and wagner school of public service. he has written quite a few books and articles. one in particular which will be a focus for today, which is "being black. living in the red. race, wealth, and social poll?

i america." next to him is vesla we weaver, and her book, one of the most recent book is is arresting citizen happy. the consequences of american crime control, and i'm assuming she has been feeling a lot of -- fielding a lot of reporter inquiries in the past couple of weeks. then to my immediate wright is william tabb. an economics, political science and sociology at the graduate center. at the university of new york. these are fantastic scholars tht span multiple feels feels and perspectives and that one of the great opportunities we have here for this dialogue to learn from one another. i wanted to have the conversation in at least talking about maybe four piece toilets.

the way they relite to one another, i imagine that they are going to blend. so the first is to up pack this title. we have in this title wealth, finance, and then post civil rights america. so let's -- first we'll unpack that. then once we do that, i imagine if we haven't already we'll discuss the relationship between something like wealth with education, criminal justice, employment, those things. we also want to make sure town pack inequality ask think about the intersection between race and class, and what that means for understanding how wealth, finance, and post civil rights america work together. finally we'll behind bit what should we think about in moving forward in terms of reform and policy. so i was thinking, with those, given you can see how they blend

with one another. they may also not just -- i thought it would be great to really take advantage of this opportunity to have you all here to talk about those four topics. let me begin with the first question which is the first word of the title, wealth. so, first, especially in the context of inequality by race, what do we mean by wealth? i'll start with dalton and then we'll go on from there. >> of course, when we talk about wealth, we can have a very broad definition meaning everything from literally how much money you have in the bank, to sour social connections and cultural capital, but really when i analyze wealth, i mean something very specific, and something distinct from income. think of income as the checks that come in every week or month, it's like a stream, flow of money.

wealth is your pond, and it's another term for networth, and simply adding up everything you own you can sell that is liquid then paying all off your debts, mortgage, credit card, student loans, whatever that number is, now for many people, it's a negative number. in the red. for some people it's a positive number, and in research that now stands over two decades, i'm embarrassed to say, i've found that wealth is really a key net worth as distinct from income or what someone's job is, is a key factor in explaining the ongoing continuation of racial ion equality in the post civil rights era. >> this -- one of the reasons why i think an interesting way of focusing on it because it will matter when we talk about policy prescriptions, and often in the national discourse these

things are blended, income and wealth are often blended or may be discussions about wealth but not a sense of what actually is being captured and why it matters. so, one of the thing hopefully we can get to is also the national discourse around the discussion of wealth versus what the research might be saying and what the three of you have learned in doingure own work. before doing that i want to get a sense whether that definition of wealth was one which is consistent with what you, vesla and william focus on are there a aspects you bring into this. >> it's a very good summary of what wealth is. wealth matters for so many things, including win me get to policy. people of color in this country and all people of color, about 37% of the voting electorate, contribute one percent to

financing politics. now, the koch brothers by themselves do quite well, and when you think of where the money comes from, and then think about the issues that concern ordinary people, political scientists find that your elected representatives basically don't listen to anybody under the top one percent unless what ordinary voters want happens to be what their major contributors want. otherwise they go with the major contributors, and so that the lack of wealth for people of color impacts on the policies they would like to see changed, but because they can't buy politicians or influence them the same way. so wealth is crucial in all these ways. also, the accumulation of wealth comes from owning assets that rise in value, and one of the things we know about how people accumulate wealth is a major way

for most people is the value of their home, and the extent to which black people have historically been denied by the u.s. government as well as big gotted discriminating real estate people and so on, means that black people have not accumulated wealth in the same way, and this is not just a matter of past history. since the collapse of the financial system from the subprime mortgage debackle, the people who are most affected by the subprime mortgage where people of color, and actually middle class people of color were the ones who lost the most, because as economists looked at the situation, and also our friends and sociology and political science, what they found was the banks and the mortgage originators went after people of color particularly, people who had been red-lined, denied mortgages, and the reason there was this change in policy

from denying people of color mortgages to going after them particularly, was because the mortgage originators sold the mortgages on. they became derivatives. and wall street did all sorts of magic with them, which then collapsed. but the people who sold the mortgages in the first place, they got their money up front, and they didn't care. they knew especially for people of color, that there would be these defaults, and people of color defaulted on their mortgages to a much higher extent than the general population. so, the denial of access to accumulating wealth is seen in not just real estate but in education, the other things we'll be talking about. >> if could ask that when i think of wealth, i think of a dynamic property, one that acts often through a protective mechanism.

it buffers you. it buffers your ability to endure certain social myths, certain economic risks. so most another us throughout our lifetime will at some point endure losing a home, a spell of poverty, losing a job, undergoing a divorce, having a loved one fall into economic or financial crisis, having some sort of -- not necessarily catastrophic circumstance but have an important life circumstance, and wealth is that buffer that buffer to other types of vulnerabilities. so often, though i'm not an economist, i think of it as a living condition. it's something that is going to allow you to endure aspects of life that regularly happen, and if you don't have it, you will not be able to sort of bounce back as much. >> thank you. this is great because i think

it's goetz to lead into our other discussions about how to start to connect to these other aspects of society, of being a citizen, of -- we haven't yet brought in health care, but i think that is an -- what was just saying. before we do, william you spoke towards the end of the time and subprime mortgage differential, and what some of the banks have now also admitted to have participated in. in terms of finance, are there other things that rise to that level of prominence when we think about racial inequality? >> there are number, but the general way in which government tries to help people accrue wealth is to give tax benefits of, for instance, the home

deduction for your mortgage. most of the home deduction for mortgages goes to very rich people because they have the big houses, and so that if you look at the homes of typical people of color, they're going to be much more modest. many of those people are going to do the short form and aren't going to itemize, and so that's one area where government programs that are supposedly going to help people are not in fact helping working people and especially people of color. others are special treatment of funds put away for college oil education. if you don't have much money, you're not putting extra money into these accounts, you don't have the wealth to do it. all of the programs of retirement, the 401(k) program, well, most of us, not me, i'm fairly wealthy -- but most people don't put money into

401(k)'s, and when they do, they have to take it out in those emergencies of illness, divorce, and so on, and so they don't benefit. and so we have a situation where almost all of the programs that the federal government has to build wealth discriminate in impact, if not in intent, against people of color. >> thank you. so, we have had a -- now i think we have covered both wealth and machines. the last phrase is post civil rights america in our title. so my question to all of you is, two parts. one is, how would you characterize post civil rights america today, and i imagine that the other part of it, which you may be thinking, how do we think of weather -- how we think of post civil rights america as

something which has been proved. >> if i could jump in before you and -- pardon me me for doing this if don't accept post civil rights america. the attack on voting rights. the effect on -- the attack on the rights of people of color, not just in the south but in the midwest now, in states that were once very progressive, wisconsin, michigan, states where civil rights was sponsored by those governments, those states, those governors, those legislatures, are now taking away rights, and so i'm not comfortable speaking of post civil rights america. i would be interesting know what you guys think. >> i agree with that. i think no serious academic really uses that term anymore as others in a straw-man sort of category. if we were to ask the question of -- what is truly different,

what is new, and what is continuous, across our hoyt, i think there's a couple of things that jump out with regard to wealth and income inequality. the first is the rise in income based residential segregation. most people don't realize this but blacks actually used to live in fairly similar circumstances, poor blacks lived around wealthy blacks. today income segregation has jumped much more among blacks than among other groups. so that's something that is truly distinct. the second thing i think is maybe distinct, maybe continuous, is level even as inequality across racial groups has narrowed, wallet inequality and income inequality among

blacks has grown. most people don't realize this because many of the national outlets, many of the magazines you'll read and newspapers will say, income inequality. the growth of the top one percent. the fastest rate of growth in income inequal is among blacks within blacks. right? so that's something that is try truly distinct. the other aspect is -- you mentioned this in noting that economic power often bleeds into political power. those two are very connected. one of the things i'm quite worried not my own work is what happens -- worried about in my own work what happens when intraracial income inequality gets so large that the best blacks are not concerned about the plight of the worse off blacks, and we're beginning to see in social surveys and the like that though allegiance to

the racial group is strong among the wealthiest blacks, when you ask them do you support welfare, do you support increasing spending 0 public schools do you support increased government activism on a host of not explicitly racial issues, there's support was waned and waned compared to wealth counterparts in the '80s. that's a nauplial at cal -- new political stands and one i find troubling because it means the worse-off blacks whose conditions have deteriorated and whose income growth has not kept pace, have lost crucial coalitional partners in the struggle for equality. if that can no longer lean of

affluent black dozen support their policy previous reins we are in a bad place, and we're in a new place politically than we have been. idiot to be that plate -- political scientist used to palestine of the fact that class variation within the black community did not, did not predict political variation. affluent blacks supported the same thing that their least well off counterparts did there those are three of the biggest changes that we should be troubled by. >> let me just before getting -- let me ask the question like this. how can we reconcile -- for mose people this is a surprising statistic. but how do we reconcile that with the understanding that there's this declining black middle class? you've talked about the inequality between those with the most well off and those the least, and also hearing about the declining black middle

class. how do we take all of that together and understand something of a -- mow coherent kind of story about what is happening? for anybody? these are two -- there's a statistical fact but also a narrative and i think for this evidence around the shrinking black middle class -- >> in the middle class has been hollowed out. i'll give you one example. we're talking about wealth today. if you look at one of our best measures of wealth across longitudinally, back in the '90s, exactly 50% or just under 50%, just under half of blacks and latinos had no assets whatsoever. nothing. no dollars to their name and a bank account. no nothing that -- no rainy day fund. no retirement account. no assets. today, the exact same proportion

is true. half of blacks have no assets. if you look at the best off blacks, way back in the '90s, almost no blacks and latinos had the top wealth, meaning over $250,000 in their bank accounts. over $250,000 of assets. today that number is one in ten. and i say that to say that, while you have stagnation or stasis at the bottom, you have actually seep progress at the top. now, how we interpret that, right? we can celebrate the top at least growing marginally, or we can say it's a really bad thing the bottom has not some returning ' -- shrunken as the top has grope. >> i think the growing inequality in any slice of --

subslice of the population we look at, you're going to see rising inequality. it's not uniquely african-american. it's a sign of the larger rise in inequality. if we look in 1994 when i was in a graduate seminar, look at a table of race by income, and then -- shows the wealth level. what blew me away was that even at the same income level, a family that earns hundred thousand a year or $50,000 a year or at the poverty line, there were huge gaps in wealth, and we haven't mentioned the gap at all yet. over the course of that last 20 years, back to 1984 is the first year we have good data for wealth -- how much better or worse it was before the 1960s, but it's been pretty stable around ten cents on the dollar.

means median or typical african-american family has one-tenth the assets of the median or typical white family. that's conservative estimate. it's a median, not an average, which eliminates the effect of very wealthy people that irdis proportionately white. at some point i think in the '90s it went one to 12 cents on the dollar and down to eight cents varies a lot with the stock market. what i find remarkable since the financial crisis is a lot of us thought, in 2007, inequality had gotten so high that it had reached the same level as 18929 in terms of the share of the top one percent. there's many measures but that's one of them. when the crisis happened, it seemed like it was almost a natural law that things have gotten too top heavy, they were going to tip over. and i guess expecting history to repeat itself, many of us

thought that there would be a destruction of wealth at the top there would be a reduction of inequality just like there was between 1929 and 1931. the greatest drop in inequality in the hoyt of the country, which kind of continued at a slower rate whats called the great moderation. but we didn't get that. we got t.a.r.p. the toxic asset relief program and other bailouts of the banks and aig and et cetera, and instead inequality has continued to rise, and that is reflected also in the black-white gap, which is continued to rise since 2007. so, why did we get a bailout like -- unlike in 1929? the irony is that's because a much more -- greater proportion of americans are invested

through their 401(k) and through their college savings accounts for their kids or what have you, are invested for a peppy in the stock market, to so save their pennies they had to rescue the pounds of the very elite rich. so we got more of the same, and increasing inequality since the crisis rather than a rethinking or a leveling off. so, i think given the importance of wealth to other things like education, you already mentioned voting, i think the area of criminal justice, a new area where wealth affects haven't really been investigated but for health, for education, for job pros suspects, what your family's wealth is it one of the most important predictors, the second most important predictor, after your parent' education level, was they're college graduates or have graduate degrees. that this -- i personally think

of wealth as one of the root -- not to minimize criminal justice issues or health issues or other things but think that wealth is the most extreme given one-tenth ratio, and really a critical issue that is not as much on the public policy agenda in terms of racial equality of opportunities as it should be. >> it's good. i know this is one of the areas you have done a lot of great work on. so if you're making the case for health being central to this conversation, how would you make that particular. >> for health? >> health. as it relates to wealth inequality. >> well, we know that health -- there's a really strong correlation between social position, whether you measure that by your education level, or your wealth, or your occupation, and your health and your life expectancy.

literally how long you live. and that the -- we also know that there's a huge race gap and life expect stance si in -- expect tenancy in other diseases, and we also know that financial crises tend to lead to health -- neglect testify health effects and negative -- pour importantly, negative health eevents lead -- is number one cause of bankruptcy in america. we have just had finally a couple years the affordable care act go into effect into it could be one of the most important policies that everybody is going to have insurance supposedly, or a vast majority of americans will have insurance that will hopefully stop the healthcare crisis from being one of the biggest wealth drainers, and crises that you were talking about earlier, that destroy low

wealth, uninsured families, nest eggs. so, hopefully that will attenuate it but we don't know yet. >> thank you. so this leads us to the discussion between wealth and other things, health being one of them, education, citizenship, criminal justice. i will say i have noted there's i think a motion to strike post civil rights america or at least maybe to strike "post" and that vesla seconded the motion. so, -- >> could i add. the very good summary. here we are the langston hughes auditorium and i was thinking of jesse being simple. those would grew up reading langston hughes, he made gears in a defense plant and did hard, physical labor, and the health

issue is tied to the kind of work people do, that i'm a retired professor. i'm in good health. i didn't do hard, physical labor. moe people of color do really hard, physical labor, and they're work -- worn out a lot sooner so the effort to raise the social security beyond 65 because they want to do that because they think people are living healthier and later, but not all people are living longer. not all people are living healthier. that was very important point to make because that is another area of inequality. just people being worn out through how they have to earn their living. i just want to add that. >> thank you. thank you. so, work on citizenship and criminal justice and how do you do your research? how have you seen the relationship between wealth inequality and -- >> i think one of the -- we were talking about financial instruments earlier.

one of the biggest things that is not on the public radar, it is not a political salient right now, but that is a huge asset drainer, it is a mechanism of family dependency that really hurts low income and middle income communities, is legal financial obligations. right? so it's not just that blacks are more likely to get bad subprime loans, to pay more for their mortgages, have more student debt, more medical debt to be more unbanked, it's also the case that they shoulder a big burden of legal financial debt. in other words, when you come into contact with the criminal justice system, you are tagged with what is kind of inappropriately called user fees. so, anything from room and board

in jails, to probation fees, all kinds of victim restitution, and the numbers are striking. they're not quite as well researched as they should be, but to use the work of some of our sociological colleagues, the average black person that excites being justice involved has $17,000 in legal financial obligations, which is crippling for even folks who have money. so i think that's one piece of the kind of hidden wealth destructive mechanisms. i think another hidden wealth destroyer also has to do with the work of devin fergus, and just by virtue of what zip code you live in, what neighborhood you call home, you're going to be shouldered with higher auto insurance premiums, be paying

more to -- for your house, you have a bevy of different things that mean that you're making -- you're paying more for your goods and services. you're paying more just to live a daily life. now, the thing i really want to get into this conversation because one of the things as political scientist that bother mist about the national conversation on wealth inequality, is it's often just a statistic. blacks are so much further behind in asset accumulation. what is it about their behavior that is leading them to be in that situation? i want to talk about the policies and practices of various levels of government and private sector actors that drive those processes. so, on my mind today is, ira nelson rizz when affirmative action with white. we have this hidden history of the moment when the nation

cemented the white middle class, cemented affluence, helped them get educational loans, helped them buy their first houses, and also a moment where we cemented blacks not having access to those things. now, i've never seen somebody run some numbers on this, but how does that trickle cross generations of not having access to those instruments of financial security? >> if i could jump in here. i can tell you some numbers. 20 before of lifetime inhairs tenant is attributable to past generations. one kid graduated with zero student debt and the other one has $100,000 of debt because of their parents' difference, and larry summers put it at 80%.

i'm not going to -- those are all really fine researchers so i'll just split the middle and say 50% theft what is interesting about education, that really directly rid late'llly picks the be quietment of past injuteses and past inequities and will take longer, even if we have the right policies. it would still take a couple of generations to close the gap. i think it is the most daunting statistic. >> i almost think we need to get away thrown language of -- the vocabulary of gap and disparity feels very depopulated to me. it feels very apolitical and ahistorical. it feels like we're just statistics walking around. we're just numbers. in fact i have a colleague who has run experiments and asks

people to think about certain images, what images do you think of when you hear the term "inequality" and people point to graphs and figures and statistics, and then he says, what do you thing of when you think of the term" unemployment? " and they point to people. groups of people. and i think we need to shift the vocabulary away from gap, disparity, inequality to more purposeful language, that this was a policy driven phenomenon cross all levels of government across the decades-it's itemly remade, has incredible feedback effects and it's not simply, well, didn't elect to get a bank account. ... a bank account. well, i didn't pay my car loan. on time. there's all kinds of mechanisms that have to do with policy

choices, explicit policy choices. that's not in our national conversation. guess what. it's hard to start a movement. we have a great movement around policing right now because we can point to explicit practices and policy choices. wind you are talking about gaps in disparity, you don't have a villain. there's no, something, to move against the it's all about you just need to get yourself bank. >> i get to beckham so what's the alternative? what is the hashtag or the way to get people to think about people and not some line graph when we talk about this issue? >> i mean, i don't have the answer. good question. >> i mostly think about white people, not black people. because most white people think that they are discriminated against and they are

discriminated against more than black people are discriminated against in this country. the polls are just overwhelming that they think special treatment for blacks and blacks get more than whites do. so that these liberal discussions we have about blacks being discriminate against them most of americans, that's nonsense to them. blacks are getting special treatment, money, education, things are being thrown at them. my kids don't have that are in white america it looks very different. that white america votes conservative, it's getting more and more reactionary it is getting more reaction because their lives are gettin getting . effects of black people's lives are getting harder still because they don't see the point. i think that tremendously important. i want to comment also on, not just come and happy to talk about the past. i'm happy to talk about slavery and the fact that capitalism in

america was built on the work of black people, the black people are the wealth of america, that at the end of the civil war started, 62% of our exports was kind, at the new york banks their money off of slaves, although the cotton trade, that the new england mills were built on time. the wealth of america comes from black people. you can trace it all the way through and the treatment, but if you look at now in a history continues that when ferguson came into the news and michael brown was shot by a white policeman, the thing that struck me was not just another black man was killed by a white cop, but the way ferguson works, ferguson is a suburb of st. louis. st. louis, the whites left because they moved to all white suburbs. they moved to small suburbs that are now not economically viable.

ferguson is a heavily black but it used to be all white. the whites who controlled ferguson paid account budget out of black people by addressing him because their tail light is out, putting them through the court system, charging all of the seas. those towns around st. louis, and that's not the only city it's true, make a big chunk of their city budget off of black people through fines, jail these and all the rest of that. this is the reality of the. i think a conversation of this kind that works really well for liberals and progressive people about how the system is that there has got to be extended to think about how white oppression still works and how whites don't understand any of this. they think they're the ones being abused. i just had to say that, i'm sorry. >> just to add to that, it's amazing to me how often those

practices duty abstraction above and limited wealth that from poor communities. we don't have the conversation of what's going on there, and the subprime lending, and the current national economic condition. we need to bring those two conversations together. people read ferguson as being sort of an anomaly, aberrational, outlier corrupt, you know, government. but those kind of practices i think are lined up with the practice of extracting wealth through legal financial obligations from extracting wealth through greater mortgage payments go through zip code profiling. they are all, we don't tend to think of them that way or talk about them that way. so that what emerges is a picture black communities that yes, they are hit over here by corrupt municipal budgeting office and yes, they are hit

over here by the subprime lending and yes, they are hit over by the auto industry charging them higher. but we don't have a language for discussing all of that kind of systematic policy driven extraction of wealth that regularly occurs in the life that makes people, it makes it difficult for people to be financially responsible. not to mention how incredibly -- >> we have covered some criminal injustice and health, and voting behavior. we haven't really touched on education or employment that i wanted to give you a chance either come from the research or going from your respective fields, sort of give a sense of also how we can do that if you think about the right language is the sort of capture this paper we haven't even covered all of the particulars of implications as well.

so first on the matter of education. curious to get your thoughts on how when one thinks about the educational crisis that we have, how an understanding of differences and wealth, how that helps us also understand the issue of education. in particular one of the things i wanted to bring up, and this could be said i guess about crime from which i'm sure you have it in this debate about the what is causing what, right? there's certainly people who argue that education is a chief cause of wealth differences. i'm sure that argument has been made and it should people have also made argument that that relates to crime as well. i guess my question is into force.

one is first to think about the relationship between wealth and education but also what do we know about how one of them affects the other? >> you are absolutely right that there is a bidirectional relationship. obviously, achieving a high level of education helps you in the labor market to earn a higher wage and that, of course, helps a team of wealth. we also know that if we look at, if you just compare blacks and whites in terms of, or any other group, in terms of likelihood of graduating from high school, actually there's no real gap in black-white high school graduation rates. that is the quality of education budget is in terms of graduation rate. you go to college and you find that that's where educational inequality at least in terms of complete degree really starts to emerge.

if you choose to do that comparison like it i in the newspaper and to talk about dropout rates or rates i pressure you are comparing apples and oranges because unlike many other defend countries, colleges are both expensive, four year college in particular. what i found in my own research is about we need to the apples to apples comparison, that is going to dedicate is coming from a family with the same provincial education and wealth level, you have to do both. both of those matters but nothing else really matters. then you find that a college graduation rates from a four year degree program by age 25 are the same. it's not rocket science because we know that college costs money. even if we are talking about a state school where the tuition is low and that is increasingly rare these days for four years

institutions because getting squeezed, you select of living expenses and, in fact, holding down jobs and taking out loans and so forth. one of the major causes of folks not finishing college at all work on time. so will the israeli parental wealth, i mean this key to launching a successful or ensuring a successful post secondary educational career. and also for job searches and that kind of period of extended adolescence after college and starting a career, you find that wealth of parental wealth matters. the unequal outcome of the previous generation becomes the unequal starting positions for the next generation. that's sort of the cycle that i observed and education is key in the cycle but it itself is affected by the prior generati

generation. >> things are changing, that not only are the public universities, and i've taught my entire career and different public universities, and the government of giving far less money for education, for the colleges and universities. this means tuition goes up and the kids have got to come up with more money and they are taking out loans. they are taking out huge loans at a time when the jobs they did when they get out of college, if they get a job, are not paying enough to pay back the loans. these kids will be in debt for the rest of their lives, and the parents will be in debt because when the kid defaulted on a loan that is cosigned by the parents, their parents are then liable for that long. the banks got congress because the banks seem to have some difference with congress, to prevent default on student

loans, even when th the studentn no way can pay back the loan. so you've got this new chattel system that you are intended for life out of college loans that are not payable because you don't have jobs that earned enough to pay them back. the other thing about wealthy parents is they understand financing. both working-class parents and those young people who have no idea of the dead are taking on and the consequences of that debt are taking on these huge loans and they're creating a right of policy with a not be able to buy homes were and what if kids can't get married, don't want to have kids because they don't -- they want to bring to get up right and they can't afford. you've got a system where because the public sector is being defined, because tax cuts are going to the wealthy, the government has a structural deficit, the difference between basic expenditures and what it

takes in in taxes, there's a huge gap. what the demand is more cuts in spending, and the spinning they were cut off the spending that benefits for people and especially people of color. this is different. this is not always been this way through the '60s. with progressive programs. we have a different political situation. so it's not just the development of education and costs and so on, but it's the politics that is intensifying the suffering that is going with that that needs to be pointed out. out. >> if i can jump in. i think we really have a to unpk the college costs or college loans crisis that really has reached a crisis. there's different components. number one, a two-year degree means very little in the economy. increasingly knowledge-based technical economy. a few need a four year degree if

you're going to make it worthwhile to bar the money. the absolute worst outcome to berkeley fo for the nephews andt get that degree. employers care that you actually have a degree. about the people end up in dire straits because they bar of ottoman and they never actually got a degree. and talk about, the wealth extraction industry, we have the fact that for profit colleges can get, can get guaranteed student loans. is basically a giant vacuum mechanism. i know the obama administration is trying to do something right now but a for-profit colleges have very strong allies in congress. pat toomey scenes the most tragic thing. the decrees from those schools are not worth the decrees from

any state university in the country. and they cost a lot more. they are exactly like subprime aggressive lenders in advertising ever from the city subway to late-night tv and so forth and making promises about the value of decrees which is not true. it's really at extraction mechanism of the public funds for private shareholders. i think that needs to be really on the political radar as well. starting to be a little bit but hopefully very quickly. >> there's a great book about that. and just basically if you look at the racial demographics of who is going to the for-profit colleges, is largely black women who end up with a degree, as you said, that doesn't mean as much. returns and wealth are not as

great. they are saddled with debt spent a lot of these for-profit companies are owned investment banks. this is not taking any stuff. they send their people to welfare offices and to black churches to drum up business, line two people about what the benefits of this private education, people pointed out. the other thing about it is that the government pays for it. you touched on that but it's tremendously important to legally these for-profit colleges can get up to 90% of the income from the government. and they do. album is coming from taxpayers it been that debt goes to the students, people of color. so we lose at both ends. and it is again is wealth extraction that targets people

of color just so heavily. so in education. the other thing at the top in the ivy schools, you are not seeing very many people from the bottom of the income distribution. you are single legacies of people whose parents went to yale and columbia. my daughter is now teaching at columbia. it's a very different kind of situation that a public university. what it takes to get through college, had the privilege of some people have of living in dorms and having enough money for says other kids, these differences are just a man's. and become from a total system. i think what i get out of our discussion, from what my college on the panel have said, it's just the totality of this

oppressive extractive system is huge. and i know we don't have much time that you want to talk about what to do about it, i think, looking forward to the panel later on the politics later in the day which i look forward to being at, but perhaps we might say some things about that. >> so let's move to that discussion. i will ask a couple sort of specific theoretical motivating questions but then maybe we can get into some of the details around it. i'm just going to throw out a hypothetical let's take a genius appears in front of us and says i will grant you two things. one is about if you take it policy to eliminate, that will be illuminated. the other is -- [inaudible] those are the two you get. what would you say?

>> i'll go first. i would use to a laminations. i believe the positive. i would eliminate any sort of public funding whether it is loan guarantees or pell grants or what have you going for a pro--- for-profit colleges and tried to squeeze them try. second i would cap the home mortgage income deduction. the interest deduction. because i think was said earlier, you know, we believe in homeownership as a coach. goes back to jefferson, but there's no reason that we should be subsidizing, you become as much home, mansions up on mansions, even second homes. ..

a. >> to the people, and there are several big advocates for the for-profit colleges. they provide an on ramp for an education to people that would not otherwise have it. ins and yes, they are not as good a' the four year public institutiob degrees.te but they aren allowing people wo are working with degrees to go f back oftentimes in their '30s. opti universityre are plenty of options people, that

is essentially free. and just as good as the university of phoenix, which is going to charge you a lot of money for exactly the same amount of educationsive convenience. i think the language that would work in america in american politics -- you hear the plate tallundits -- is you the fact that they're just hoovering up public resources, they're not really free -- they're not really businesses that are standing in competition in the real economy. they're just these -- just like defense contractors with no bid. they're just something that are actually just like welfare, sucking off the government, and that is a language that most americans will resonate with and will turn the tide, i think, rather than focusing just

strategically to focus on that, on them taking our money, rather than the fact that the damage it does to the students, which is the ultimate issue, but in terms of political tactics, focusing on the fact they're taking taxpayer dollars would the more effective argument. >> uh-huh. for me i'm going to go with one big philosophical transformation, so not necessarily a policy intervention, and then one smaller thing. i think the smaller thing is to close the mismatch between the extent of student loan funding, pell grants that are available to people that often are unable, first-time collegegoers, to access college opportunity. close the gap between pll grants following behind and tuition

costs rising over time. and then my big philosophical transformation -- this is something we haven't yet touched on but that keeps coming back to me in every conversation i have like this, and that is that as a society we tend to think we can get equality on the cheap. we think that we can do this by tinkering around with policy designs, and not actually challenging the private decisions that all of us make daily in our lives, and one of those decisions that i think is still very politically correct, it is not -- there's no public norm. there's a big public norm against discrimination but there's not a public norm against constantly re-affirming segregated neighborhoods. so, the affluent are incentivized to make private decisions to accumulate more wealth, to keep their kids in

an -- i live in knew -- new haven and i see this. the yale faculty and anyone affiliated with yale lives in one specific neighborhood, and there is one specific good school for the entire city of new haven, and they all send their kids to that one specific good school. or they -- if they can't get into that school, they send them to private education. i think until there's a real norm against private behaviors like that, we're just going to keep having the same conversation across generations. in other words -- i've seen this month progressives, liberals, who believe to their core in equality and they want to do the right thing, but then they'll say, bit decided to live in this neighborhood and i decided to send my kid to this school, and i make a little donation to the other school in that neighborhood and i feel okay about it. i think until there's a strong

public norm against private behaviors that accumulate wealth and that drives enter generational- -- enter generational wealth accumulation, we're not going to get very far. so that's any bigie. if the genie was here and i could wish for anything it would be the similar norm against education would exist against private choices that adduce benefits regularly and that hurt. don't have a language that these actions actually hurt others. they draw down resources for failing schools. they mean you don't interact with neighbors who have different income levels. they mean you don't even need to see the poor on a regular basis, and i think that until we have that conversation, you can tinker around with getting rid of the home mortgage interest deduction, tinker around with maybe -- my other suggestion,

increasing pell grants but we're not going to get very far. >> let me ask a question with that. so, sort of bold, let's sort of change even the way we're thinking about it. so what would we say as an alternative? i'll give a bit of a personal story. we lived in chicago for 12 years, and we were one of the, i guess, black special families that moved back to the hood. and maybe the first couple of month we were there, there two two boys coming buy on a bicycle, and we got in a conversation got going to school, and he went to school in the local school in the neighborhood. when i asked him about the school he said do not send your children there. so this is a young black boy, just broke may heart for him to say it. but he went on to talk about just how challenging it was, and that he -- it was -- this ten-year-old's recommendation, based on his experience, that he

should -- i should not send my children there. so, what does one do, then? what does one do with that norm? it doesn't -- the norm isn't wrong but speaks to the totality of what would need to actually change in order for that conversation. >> i'm not sure exactly, and this isn't what i study but why not organize a community jump where several families that believe in the value of not just getting your kid up the ladder but of giving them a diverse environment, and teaching them the value of living around people with different means and teaching them value -- i live in a similar neighborhood, and 90% black and latino, mostly working class, lots of people falling under the asset poverty line, as it were. if i didn't live in that neighborhood i wouldn't have a chance to give me old laptop to

to 12-year-old kid that lives next door to me. wouldn't have the chance to interact and say, check out the preschool my kid goes to. and people said to us the same thing. it's more criminal in that neighborhood. your housing value won't appreciate, this, this and a third. and you know what? we're fine. and i like it. and i think there's value in my child's learning to not hyper segregate himself and i wanted to -- i guess that's my big kind of -- if i were to transform something it would be that. i don't know how you do it. maybe when he gets to regular school, age, i'll have different feelings. but there's -- it's really funny to me how quickly people become pseudo scientific when it comes to their own children. and when it comes to their own decisions about where to live. there's no science saying that if you send your child to a

school that doesn't have the greatest test scores that the bad test scores will rub off an your kids. there's no science saying that. so why not embrace the actual science, which is that parenting matters, that reading to your kid matters, that talking to them matters, and regardless of what schools they're going to. but i think that this conversation is not one that i'm seeing in "the new york times," not one that i'm hearing. in fact i hear quite the opposite. the regular messages when we first moved to yale, you need to live in this neighborhood, you need to send your kid to this school. >> it's not just yale. >> it's not just yale. it's my example but you're absolutely right. it's everywhere. >> william? >> until we october of these things in structural terms and not individual terms we won't

have the change we need. i think it is important that people struggle, as you explained, with your own situation, and how you live your life. that is important for each and every one of us. but change comes when people get together, organize, demand that the sim change, and that that's really the issue. i would endorse the suggestions that you made on education and -- there are thousands of these changes that would make a difference. the freedom budget, black lives matter now has an economic program that some people are working on, which i think is very good. we know what needs to change. the question is how to change. so, i was thinking, your genie coming here and granting us the wish, anybody here -- probably not as old as i am but remember ozzie davis' play, pearlie

victorious, you remember the genie, and he turns that racist cracker black, and it was such a great image because if white people could understand black reality and just get out of what they're in -- well, ozzie davis was great and it was brilliant but that's what i'd ask of the genie, the problem is stupid white people and scared white people. mostly scared white people. and until they understand why -- where their impression comes from and it's not from blacks -- we can't have the kind of changes that's going to make a difference for people of color. so i go for ozzie davis' genie and help white americans understand a great deal more about the realities that people here have been describing, that people in the audience know very well. because academics, we're always

asked for policy advice. i'm going out to detroit to be an expert witness at a trial against the emergency financial manager in detroit, but it's not just detroit. every black city practice, dominantly black city in michigan, has an emergency financial manager who has taken over from the democratically elected governor, while white cities in as bad shape -- a lot of white cities in detroit that should have -- but they don't because they're white. sort of basic stuff that has to be fought, got to be understood, has to be seen structurally and has to be changed through collective action. so i want that genie to help me organize the white folks. thank you. >> let me build off of that. with the followup question. what would you say to someone like me, just a concerned citizen -- talking very high level policy and sometimes when

we talk very high level, we talk policy, and we're often asked about policy -- it's much clearer for, say, a concerned citizen what one can do. so, let's say i -- this is -- we're done here and i walk off and say, incredible, i'm not a policymaker, i don't know any policymaker, i don't have enough wealth to influence policymaker. what are some things that i can do? >> each of us is going to work in ways that seem sensible to us and that are consistent with who we are, and we can't tell people, you know, that some people here might have been a year ago a man was selling loose cigarettes in staten island and got murdered bay cop. well, a year later, that is

still eric garner's reality and the eric garners in across the country, and until we manifest in large enough numbers and with the intensity to change that, it doesn't change. but what we see happening as people get angry, as they get organized, de blasio is a decent guy, and i think he is making some differences. i think we support the politicians who do good stuff, but we also say that it's the system that is broken. this is a broken, sick system and it needs changing, and the only way it's going to change is through organization. now, as individuals, we're each small. we can't do it, as you say -- just a concerned guy. what are you going to do? but we can give money to the organizations to support the

young people who are out there when we're not so young anymore and the marching isn't quite as easy for us. we can teach them and give. the a sense of the history of the only changes that matter came through struggle. frederick douglass, without struggle -- and that's what we can do. even if it seems small collectively as we all do it, the world changes, and that's basically all the genie could tell you. >> it's a very good question. i think there are organizations out there that are pushing economic justice initiatives. there's one starting up, i serve on the advisory council for it, at the center for community change, for example. a way that's going to re-orient and make economic demands. right?

so i think supporting their efforts -- i think also more broadly, realizing that all of our fates-linked. whether you're wealthy or not, your fate is linked. we as political scientist have begun to say that we have reached levels of income and wealth inequality that make us look more like an oligarch can i than a democracy, and the stream levels of wealth inequality and income inequality are hurting the democratic function of our system. they're actually contributing to political polarization, contributing to spatial sorting so it you've look at maps from then 1970s versus today, you're much more likely to police in counties with other people of similar political persuasions. it has meant that the parties have pulled further and further apart. it's more difficult to get compromise legislation through.

the ach achievement notwithstanding it's extremely hard to eek out political broad consensus on legislation and conditions of extreme polarization, and that polarization, i think has everything to do with wealth polarization, and income inequality. they track each other. if you look at political polarization and income inequality, they track neatly. so i think by realizing that we're kind of all in this boat together, and if we're all in an oligarchic boat, how safe are any of our achievements? right? when we are -- you see this in tax dynamics all the time. when you are forced to pay for emergency healthcare of somebody else, or when you are forced to pay for failing schools over there and you're paying in new haven it's not uncommon for somebody to own a regular old

house and be paying $35,000 in property taxes. because the poverty over there, i might be able to keep it over there and live in a different neighborhood, but i'm going be taxed for it. i'm going to be paying for it. so, i think until we have that broader conversation that we have really reached levels of racial and class-based inequality that are just simply not sustainable for the democratic health of our nation. i think that can be a sort of broader mental transformation that makes people realize, okay, it's in my interests to support bringing people above the asset poverty line. >> i'm of the small little policies from universal preschool to an early childhood to paid family leave, to

something like a nest egg for every american when they're born, that they can accrue and everybody can have, by virtue of being born to this rich country, have a nest egg, a sovereign wealth fund where we all own one share by virtue of our citizenship. i can go on and on literally probably -- not in a thousand but maybe a hundred different policies, getting rid of the cap on social security and on fica taxation. to save our pension system, our public pension system. rather than raising the retirement age as william mentioned. but iles recognize you don't get those thousand changes without a social movement behind it. i'd like to ask my panelists what you think, because we had

this moment with obama wall "oc" we'll street a couple years ago and it passed and seemed like there was a potential for some real policy change or political change from that, and now that seems to have slipped beyond our grasp. so, that is -- i assume what you're talking about in terms of social movements, william, but what could we have done differently or do differently now? ,. >> i'm stumped. >> that's a great question. >> i think the way things are going, that we talked about the shrinking middle class, and again, something like -- the statistics are 25% of young white people born after 1970 to middle class families dropped out of the middle class. it's 37% for african-americans

born into the middle class have dropped out. so this slink s-h-h-h rinking of the middle class as impacted black people and has impacted white people, too, and with the globalization, the loss of jobs that -- factory jobs that people without skills, without education could do, those jobs going abroad to the global south, with technological changes that have taken, even accountants, paralegals -- there's a lot in the information processing arena where processing can do so much. even retail trade with amazon and having stuff delivered to your door, people are working in warehouses at very low wages under horrible conditions. we don't see them. they're preparing this stuff that you buy, but you don't see

the exploitation. the better jobs, the unionized jobs, the jobs with protection, with lifetime security, have been disappearing. the public sector, the attack on teachers, and saying that poverty is no excuse just because a kid comes to school hungry and goes to a place where there's no room to study and prepare for school the next day. that none of this matters. it's the fault of the parents. it's the fault of the teachers. we're interesting -- we're in this period that is a very dramatically different period than the post war period. the technology, the globalization, the financialization, so many of us are in debt and that the debt is dominating our lives, and the inability to get out of that debt. this is stronger in europe because the euro has created real problems for the peripheral countries, greece, and others,

and in america, we're actually doing better than these countries, but we're not doing well. and so we're in a very different historical period, and it is my sense that, especially the young people know this -- and we will see -- i was thinking as you were talking when i was in college, the vietnam war was just starting, and a group of us, antiwar activists before there was an antiwar movement -- every week would go to a different dormitory, a different fraternity and explain that kennedy had sent so-called helpers to train the south but what was really going on -- this was going to -- it was very frustrating because we never thought we would get anywhere. but as things developed, more people joined the antiwar movement. the same with the civil rights movement. when the kids sat down at the counters, but things, i think, we are entering a period where -- we're in a period where that's going to happen. it has to happen because what is

happening to so many people in this country is not good, and it's the inequality that you both were talking about. it is more extreme than any year -- not since 1929 but since 1928, as you pointed out, once the depression started, the rich lost a lot, but the difference was this time around, the federal government gave it all back to them. and that is why the ruling class did not have the same interests as the new deal did, in dealing with the system to create a demand ask create jobs and so on, because with globalization, everybody is trying to do it through exports, to somebody else, but unless the martians are going to buy a lot of stuff, china can't keep experting because we can't keep buying it. so you're working with a very serious, very serious global economic situation, and again, while it seems big like the war in vietnam or the civil rights

movement, there will be organizations. there has to be, and the kind of changes, the big and small -- i certainly agree with all of the small suggestions. they're not so small. they make a big difference for real people and you're really right about that. but i think that there's going to have to because we're going to have a more jobless economy. there are too many people looking for work and not finding it. it means wages are going to continue to be pressed down. it means the one percent -- the one percent is getting 95% of the increase in national income. so, growth really doesn't help the other 99% because 95% of it is going to them. we have had wage stagnation for three coming on four decades now of people's money incomes going up but their real income after adjusting for price changes has been stagnant, and for a lot of people, surviving is a real issue, and i think that what is

preventing the kind of economic movement that can change that is racism, because it is the racism in america that keeps whites thinking that if government has programs for education, for building infrastructure, for all of the things the country needs, it's going to help them and it's going to come out of my tax dollars. this is the racism of the current period. it's different than the old style racism of lynching and cross burning, but it is a very real racism and hence my objection to post civil rights america. and i think that we have to both educate ourselves and work with other people to understand this current moment, what is wrong with the way it's set up, the kinds of things we can fight for, and i think that's what comes out of this and that's our job. it's no easy way. that's the work we have to do.

>> just -- i've also been struck by the rise and fall of the 99%. my speculation is that we are still in the era where we're learning about how to do protest through social media. and while that allows for the spread and gathering people, it doesn't necessarily yet allow for a way for them to coalesce, whether it's through a consistent message or a leader even if that leader is symbolic or anything else, but just as an observation, this is one thing that i've noticed. i'm quite curious to see how we evolve, and through the use of social media, for these types of activities, but certainly with the "occupy" movement, at some point -- many groups are out there with multiple agendas, and

i think that made it difficult to sort of maintain consistency. there were other factors, of course, but that's certainly one that i observed. so, we have just a few more minutes and i just wanted to both sort of pull things together. a lot that was covered. but also just give each of you a minute not to wrap up your statement but when this type of gathering is here, i like to have the broader conversation and then just one minute of what your book is about. and the specifics of it. so, thank you first for coming. this has been a fantastic discussion. and i think we could keep talking and i hope that offline we do keep talking, not just to one another but with all of you as well. there are a lot of factors but one nice thing about this -- the way we wrapped up there are also paths for hope and progress as well. and that we can think more

sophisticated about how all these different factors that are associated with wealth, wealth inequality, how we can start to think about how they all work together, whether it's something as concrete as voting rights or how -- but also thinking about how we even use in our discourse. so, i'll end there because i want to make sure everyone has their minute, and it is a minute to just -- what your book is -- current book is about. >> well, the book that -- the reason i'm on this panel, i think, about the social poll? i america, think tries to put wealth at the center of the policy debate and specifically racial inequity and wealth and argues for a new affirmative assets policy and other policies to promote integration of neighborhoods, family homes are

the primary vehicle of wealth for a typical family; and sort of goes over all the evidence and -- of the importance of wealth and what we can do to promote equal opportunity in the united states. >> thank you. >> my current research is on intraracial inequality across cities with jennifer but that is not yet written. half the research didn't done mitchell book last year was called "the regs citizenship" and its main intervention was to say, look, major part of government for the black poor and governance is -- happens through being involved with the criminal justice system, so and so we need to understand if we want to understand what democracy means, what

citizenship means in these communities, we have to actually understand how being stopped by police, being convicted, being booked, being sent to the halfway house, affects one's political life world, affects how they see and make claims on the state, affects how they weather and how much path they have in the american dream. affects how they coalesce with others around shared interests, and if you can believe it, most political scientists mostly treated criminal justice as an apolitical institution. surety of a bureaucracy, wasn't something to the studied, wasn't consequential, and so i was trying to argue along with amy herman that this actually is very important for how people make meaningful the quality of their citizenship, and we argue that what came out of this

intervention 0 over the past four or five decades was something we called custodial citizenship. people that feel that they need to stay under the radar, people that feel that the only government they see is the police, people that feel that they don't have an equal shot at the american dream. and so most of my work has to do with the bottom half of the distribution. not the top half. i do believe that what is going on at the top has everything to do with extraction and custodial supervision at the bottom. >> economists look at macro economists look at the large and inequality -- it's bad for all the reasons we have talked about, and you have all thought about, but it's also bad economically because it means people don't have enough money

to buy the potential stuff we could produce, and that would make their lives better. the people at the top end up with all the surplus, but they don't invest it to produce more goods and services because the ordinary people don't have the money to buy that. so it goes into financial speculation, and it bids up markets, bids up financial assets, bids up derivatives, bids upped stocks and bonds and then crashes and that is what happened in 2007-2008 and will happen again because the inequality slows economic growth because we can't make the things people want because people don't have the now buy it. it's that which makes inequality economically harmful to us as a society, and i want to leave you thinking a little bit about that. >> thank you very much. thank you