Dedrick Asante-Muhammad & Algernon Austin on the Black Economy

Welcome to Counterspin, your weekly look behind the headlines.

I'm Janine Jackson.

This week on Counterspin, corporate economic news can be so abstract that it's disinforming

even when it's true.

The big idea is that there's something called the U.S. economy that can be doing well or

poorly, which obscures the reality that we are differently situated.

And good news for the stock market, say, may mean nothing or worse for me.

A people-centered press corps would spell out the meaning of economic indicators, not

just in terms of their impact on different communities, but in relation to where we want

to go as a society that has yet to address deep historical and structural harms.

A new report on the current state of the black economy takes up these questions.

We'll hear from its co-authors.

Diedrich Asante-Mohamed is president of the Joint Center for Political

and Economic Studies, and Algernon Austin is director of the Race and Economic Justice

Program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

That conversation is coming up on today's show.

You're listening to Counterspin, brought to you each week by the Media Watch Group FAIR.

Corporate news media tend to report economic news,

like the weather.

Yes, it affects different people differently, but the source, the economy, is just stuff

that happens.

But there's really no such thing as the economy.

There are policies and practices about taxes and lending and wages, and they are as historically

embedded, preferentially enforced, and as susceptible to intentional change as everything

else.

So how should we read reports about...

We're joined now by the brief's co-authors.

Diedrich Asante-Mohamed is president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies,

and Algernon Austin is director of the Race and Economic Justice Program at the Center

for Economic and Policy Research.

Welcome back to Counterspin, Diedrich Asante-Mohamed and Algernon Austin.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

Well, economic reporting can seem very dry and divorced from life as lived.

We read that the country's GDP is up or that inflation is leveling off.

And a lot of times, we read that the country's GDP is up or that inflation is leveling off.

And a lot of us just don't know what that means in terms of whether we're more likely

to get a job or a wage increase or a home loan.

If you can parse that data, though, it does tell us something, if not enough.

So let me ask you first, what particular indicators are telling us or showing us that

Black Americans are experiencing the most positive economic conditions in generations?

What are you looking at?

Well, this is Algernon Austin.

And one thing that I pay a lot of attention to is the employment to population ratio or

the employment rate.

And that's simply what percent of the population is working.

That's something that's very concrete that people can relate to.

And for the Black population, the Black population historically has had a significantly lower

employment rate than the white population.

So why we're in the greatest economy on record is because if you look at the prime age employment

rate, that's individuals 25 to 54-year-olds, the Black prime age employment rate, the annual

rate, is at a record high, or at least for the first half of this year, it's been at

a record high.

So that is certainly quite positive news and something that we should celebrate.

But...

As you pointed out, compared to what?

Compared to the white prime age employment rate, it's still below average.

And when you do the full calculation of what I call the Black jobs deficit, we need about

1.4 million more Black people working to have the same employment rate as white people.

And what does that mean in terms of income for Black America?

If you had an additional 1.4 million Black people working,

you would have an additional $60 billion, that's with a B, $60 billion going into Black

America, which would significantly reduce Black poverty and would help Black households

start to build wealth.

So that's the positive.

We have a high employment rate.

The negative is it's still lagging and still causing a great deal of poverty.

That lag, that deficit is still causing a great deal of poverty.

So, Algernon, you've connected employment and poverty and income right there, which

are kind of the key indicators that I'm seeing lifted up in this report.

Unemployment is one that is a complicated thing to report because, as we know, sometimes

unemployment rates don't include people who've stopped looking for work and all of that.

But you're saying that unemployment and poverty and income are all connected here.

But what can you tell us about?

What those other indicators, the poverty rates and the income and wealth indicators,

what do they add to this picture about good news?

We pay a lot of attention to the unemployment rate, which is valid.

It's an important indicator.

But for populations that face persistent challenges finding work, and I just said that the Black

population, there are about 1.4 million people, Black people, who should be working but who

aren't.

For population.

That face consistent challenges, you see the unemployment rate undercounts joblessness.

And it undercounts joblessness because if people have been repeatedly rejected by employers,

so imagine someone who maybe was formerly incarcerated, that individual is less likely

to be actively looking for work.

And if you're not actively looking for work, you're not counted as being unemployed.

Or if you're in an economically depressed area and you look around and you say, there

are no jobs.

And you're not actively looking for work, you're not being counted as unemployed.

So the unemployment rate is an important indicator.

And the Black rate is typically about twice the white rate.

Right now, it's a little bit less than two times.

So that's, again, another positive sign.

But it does undercount joblessness.

Yeah.

And in terms of income, in terms of income and wealth, we've also seen some positive

signs, right?

So I think that's why we're saying it's the strongest Black economy in general.

And I think that's why we're saying it's the strongest Black economy in general.

So I think that's why we're saying it's the strongest Black economy in general.

Because we see in many of the major indicators that Blacks are at record high.

Also, in terms of median household income, Blacks in 2022 were at $53,000 median income

for households.

And so that is a record high for African-American community, as well as wealth in 2022.

We have the most recent data, the data record high of $45,000.

Now, just as Algernon had noted, record highs can be great.

But, you know, relative to the average American community, it's not a record high.

It's a record high.

So relative to what and what does that mean, the median income for white households, $81,000.

So Blacks are still about $30,000 less in terms of median income.

And I think most people would understand that $53,000 for a household is not a lot of money.

And we look at wealth, you know, we also argue that $45,000 median wealth is actually

a household that is asset poor, that does not have enough wealth to keep them financially

secure.

And there's been estimates, well, let's just put forward that white median

wealth is $285,000.

So you have that $45,000 compared to $285,000 with past estimates of middle class wealth

beginning around $170,000.

So we can see that we're hitting record highs, but we're still, we being African-Americans,

are still in spaces of economic insecurity.

And that's why it isn't enough and we need to do more.

There's been a phenomenon lately where reporters and pundits seem to say people are saying

they're not happy with the economy, but they're wrong.

Because look at this chart, you know, it's sort of like people are maybe too dumb to

know how good they have it.

But people aren't dumb.

They know they have two jobs and still struggle.

You know, they know they have a fairly good income, but they could not survive one medical

emergency.

But reporting and some politicking seems to suggest that if you aren't doing well, then

maybe that's a you problem.

Because after all, the economy...

Is firing on all pistons.

But people's opinion about their economic health and their economic situation, Black

people's opinion comes from a combination of things, you found, yeah?

A lot of the reporting is based on macroeconomic indicators, which are, you know, I'm not

disputing them.

It's just that they are not necessarily the big picture national average can mask a lot

of variation on the ground.

And can be distant from what people are feeling.

So we've been through, because of COVID, because of the lockdowns, because of the shutdown

and supply chains, because of the war in Ukraine, we've seen a massive spike in inflation.

I think probably more than we've seen in a generation.

And that has been quite a shock.

And I think that affects people's views of economic conditions.

We've also seen...

Very high interest rates.

And that makes it very hard for people to borrow or increases the cost of trying to

get a mortgage, increases credit card debt.

We've seen, in terms of housing, a real scarcity in housing and a real spike in housing costs.

So there's a lot of things for people to be worried about, to be anxious about.

And of course, there was the COVID recession, which was a massive...

So there's been a lot of economic turmoil.

And it's an error to discount what these recent traumatic experiences are.

And the fact that they're not just experiences, they're real economic consequences that people

see every day when they go to the grocery store and pay their grocery bills.

And, Diedrich, the report says, you know, Black Americans are optimistic, pessimistic,

multifaceted and complex in terms of their understanding of their own economic situation.

And then when they're asked, how do you deal with that?

And then when they're asked about the broader picture.

And that makes sense as human beings, yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

No, I did think that was an interesting thing pulled out of our paper was looking at some

past surveys and seeing 67 percent of African-Americans expressed optimism, feeling good, somewhat

good about their financial future, while at the same time, in a different poll, in a

Pew poll, we saw that African-Americans, 70 percent said they did not have enough money

for the life they want.

You know, and these are different things, right?

Like, again, if you're used to...

If you're used to ridiculously high unemployment rates in your community and then it's getting

a little bit better, that might make you feel optimistic that, oh, well, maybe things can

get better in my household.

But at the same time, you can still understand that, you know, but I don't have enough money

to be a homeowner.

I'm having a harder and harder time paying grocery bills.

So, like, both of those feelings can live within one's life experience and be real.

I think it's only when you're trying to just have a very simple explanation of how people

feel that we act like they're in contradiction.

Well, Algernon has referred a couple times to consistent challenges faced by Black Americans.

I think that's part of what's left out of a lot of news media conversation.

So let's just talk about when you say big numbers, macro numbers can be trending in

a good direction, but they're not enough and they're not going to be enough without something

else.

What are you getting at?

What would responsive policy look like?

In response to the COVID pandemic?

The federal government expanded the child tax credit and expanded the earned income

tax credit so that more poor people and more poor people with children would get aid from

the federal government.

And what did we see?

We saw a dramatic decline in poverty, dramatic decline in Black poverty, dramatic decline

in Black child poverty, as well as for American Indians, for Latinos.

And for...

And for the white population.

So we know what works.

We know that we have the power to do it.

But unfortunately, conservatives in Congress decided that they were not going to extend

the expanded child tax credit and the expanded EITC.

So we've seen a reversal.

So we've seen Black poverty rates, and this is using the supplemental poverty measure

that factors in these tax credits.

We've seen the poverty rates increase again.

So it's unfortunate that policymakers don't put the policy agenda to fight poverty and

to produce more racial equality as a higher priority.

Yeah.

And I'll just add to that, you know, I think an important takeaway from this is that though

we have some record highs, we don't need to let up on the economy.

We need to kind of put our pedal down to the metal, as the saying goes, in order to continue

to build and strengthen.

Because even with these record highs, in terms of income, we noted a report that was

done last year with the Institute for Policy Studies that noted that even at the current

rate, if you look from 1960 to 2020, it would take hundreds of years before Blacks had equal

pay with whites.

And it would take almost 800 years for Blacks to have equal wealth with whites.

And so over the last five years, we're having some important advances.

And so what we need to do is do policies that build off of that, right?

Right.

So whether it's, you know, continue to strengthen earned income tax credits and other such types

of credit, I think increased homeownership, there's a lot of conversation on that.

We have to make sure any type of homeownership advancement is something that disproportionately

affects African-Americans in particular, but Latinos as well.

African-Americans have never had the majority of their population as homeowners, and that's

number one source of wealth for most Americans.

So if we can do something in 2025 to really strengthen homeownership of first-time homeowners,

that could be something substantial.

That could help break away from these historic inequalities that have made racial inequality

not just something that occurs through prejudice, but something that can be seen through socioeconomic

status.

We also need targeted job creation.

Subsidized employment is the most effective way.

So subsidized employment programs targeted to high-unemployment communities.

I mentioned that we still need about 1.4 million more Black people working for the Black and

white employment rate to be the same as the white employment rate.

So we need to target those high-unemployment communities with effective job creation.

When I hear consistent challenges, I mean, we're talking about racism, you know, in terms of

economic policy in this country, and harms, the harms have been targeted historically and

presently.

If I could say redlining, loan denial, all of that, the harms have been targeted.

But at this moment, we're not talking about racism.

We're talking about racism.

And supposedly reforms are not allowed to be targeted because that would be DEI.

That would be unfair, you know.

And I know we've talked about, for example, the COVID response was not about race.

The Great Depression, the WPA was not targeted by race.

It was actually something that helped Black people because it helped everyone.

But we're in this present moment that we're in where if you say these people are being

particularly harmed, and so at least some remedy should be targeted towards them, we

know that that's going to be politically difficult.

And I know that's a weird question, but I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

Well, I mean, clearly, racial equality has always been politically difficult, as the

history of this country has shown.

So it will continue to be politically difficult.

You know, I think we have seen times like the war on poverty that sometimes in its name

might not appear with something particularly critical.

It's focused on African-Americans, but it was coming out of the strong Black civil rights

movement of that time period when we saw, you know, a substantial decline of Black poverty,

in particular, all poverty.

But many of the policies I did think have a disproportionate impact on African-Americans.

The most effective and efficient way to address disproportionate negative harm is to then

put in positive economic impact, particularly on those communities.

So we should look at ways of doing that.

Sometimes race would be the factor named.

But sometimes.

You can also get it just by focusing on first-time homeowners of certain income and wealth levels

that would disproportionately have a good amount of African-Americans, Latinos, and

would have some whites, but would have a disproportionate impact on the community.

So I think the policymakers are willing, and I think it's our job as the electorate

to make policymakers willing.

We can get forward these policies, whether we call them DEI policies or whether we call

them trying to ensure that America is majority homeowner or America.

Is fully employed throughout the nation.

There are ways of putting this forward.

This is a long struggle.

So if you look at the history of the Black civil rights movement or Black liberation

struggle, however you want to characterize it, there have been moments when we've moved

forward.

There's been movements when we've moved backwards.

So this is just one phase.

Yeah.

So it's important for people to recognize, OK, what's next?

How do we move forward from this?

This particular point.

So I think it's important to regroup and think about how we move forward.

Well, I'm particularly focused on affirmative action policies and particularly affirmative

action and employment, which still exists, which needs to be protected and fought for

because it will be under attack.

The second point that Deidre was making is that there are ways that may be less efficient

for racial.

Justice, but there are ways to make impacts that reduce racial inequality.

And we saw it going back to poverty, the expansion of the child tax credit and the

earned income tax credit had a disproportionate positive impact on reducing Black poverty.

It also reduced white poverty and poverty for all of the groups.

But because more Black people were poor and in hardship, it had a disproportionate benefit.

So although that was a race neutral program, it did have a disproportionate racial benefit.

And similarly, I've called for targeted subsidized employment.

And I noticed I said targeted to high unemployment communities.

Right.

You can go to Appalachia and find majority white communities that are high unemployment.

And we should be concerned about those high unemployment white communities.

But if you target job creation to high unemployment communities,

you will disproportionately benefit Black communities because that's where the high

unemployment is disproportionately concentrated.

So I think it's important that we continue on both fronts.

Let's exploit all the race neutral policies that we can, but also let's not give up on

a race conscious economic justice fight in addition.

Well, I just want to ask you finally about news media, about reporting.

When, Deidre,

we spoke in 2017, I was talking about a Washington Post piece that said that a rise in middle

class incomes was unequivocally good news, even as the same report had some sort of notes

in between, one of which was, oh, yeah, yawning racial disparities remain.

And that's kind of par for the course in news, the idea that racial gaps in economic circumstances

and options are lamentable, but normal and kind of a footnote to the real story.

Which holds an implication that a rising economic tide will eventually lift all boats.

And that framing and that absence of complexity, while it's kind of par for the course in corporate

journalism, it reflects a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of the way economic

developments affect different groups, which is what we've been talking about.

And I wonder from both of you, if you have any thoughts about the role that journalism currently

plays in illuminating this set of issues and about the role that journalism maybe could play.

Things have changed a lot over the last 30 years, even this idea of racial inequality,

minority groups. I mean, now you look at Blacks and Latinos, and Latinos oftentimes as well have

lower income levels, have lower homeownership levels. And you put these populations together,

Blacks and Latinos, and they're about a third of the population. And if you talk about youth and children,

you see that the majority of kids in many school districts throughout the country are

students of color. So no longer can it be kind of, well, there's an issue with a small part of

the population, but the rest of the economy is going strong. The future of the economy is based

on how will minorities do in America, Latinos being the largest group now, African-Americans

being the second largest group. So it will be essential if we're looking at how the economy can

grow, making sure these communities are getting...

Their share of the growth that would get them at a level of true middle class. Because I think

that's one thing I particularly look at in terms of wealth, is that Black America has never had

a strong Black middle class in terms of wealth. You've always had a very small population that

have had middle class economic wealth stability. And again, the future of reporting on the future

of the country really requires understanding those differences and highlighting that so we can

push the country in the right direction. And how do we move the country forward?

And how do we move the country forward in a way that is equitable in a manner that it never has been?

I don't want to appear to be too self-centered or self-serving, but we need the information

presented in this report covered. Because I feel both parts of the story has not gotten

sufficient media attention. One, that we're at historic highs on so many different measures

that I don't think has been talked about enough. And two, we still have

significant inequality that we haven't addressed. I mean, there's some positive signs, but we

obviously need to do a lot more. And like Dietrich said, we need to keep pressing the gas. We can't

take our foot off the pedal. So that's one thing. The other thing I try to stress this when I speak

to people is that we're talking about the United States. And Black people are part of the United

States. Latinos are part of the United States. The American Indian or the Indigenous,

Black population are sort of part of the United States. Some are independent nations, but they're

also interacting with the U.S. economy. If you improve the economic conditions of the Black

population, you're improving the economic standing of the United States. If you improve the economic

condition of Latinos, you're improving the economic strength and health of the United States.

And it's important that people understand that, because unfortunately, people,

tend to go into a zero-sum mode and not recognize that helping Black people in terms of public

policy is a way to help the entire country, help the United States. So that's something that

I think reporters can also work on communicating. The one thing I'll add in terms of, you know,

what can reporters do is, you know, I think reporters need to focus in on expertise,

Black expertise.

Expertise around racial inequality, you know, put forward as a recently new president of Joint

Center for Political Economic Studies. It's important that Black institutions are utilized

and are put at the forefront of conversations around the economy and these issues. You know,

it's great that there's been more conversations around racial wealth divide and race and

economics. There's been a lot of conversation around DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion movement

and the tax on it. But I don't feel that they have enough center.

I think it's important that we focus on those who have been at the forefront of highlighting these

issues, putting forth policy solutions to address them. There are a cadre of reporters who have been

focused on these issues for the last 20 years. And these reporters need to be at the forefront

of the conversation. Sometimes if I do get a call, I'm getting a call from someone who's

reporting this for the first time, he doesn't even quite understand the reality that there

is deep economic inequality. It has been ongoing, and it would take radical change to really get us

to a point where we can talk about it. So I think it's important that we focus on these issues.

So again, I think, you know, we need to value those who have been focused on this area and

those institutions from these communities, if we really want to report correctly on these challenges.

We've been speaking with Deidre Cassante-Mohamed, President of the Joint Center for Political and

Economic Studies, and with Algernon Austin, Director of the Race and Economic Justice

Program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The brief we've been discussing can

be found at both jointcenter.org and cepr.net. Thank you both so much for joining us this week

on Counterspin. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

And that's it for Counterspin for this week. Counterspin is produced by FAIR,

the national media watch group based in New York. You can learn more about FAIR on our website,

FAIR.org. The show is engineered by Alex Noyes. I'm Janine Jackson. Thanks for listening to

Counterspin.