AMNA NAWAZ: Now we continue our Race Matters coverage about inequality, racial justice
and specific challenges for black Americans, the first, a story on major economic gaps
in wealth and income, the second on Hollywood's need for better representation on and off
the screen.
Economics correspondent Paul Solman starts with a report on the historic disparities
African-Americans face, and how that history is making the current problems of COVID even
worse.
It's part of his regular reporting for our series Making Sense.
LYDIA CHATMON, Selma Center for Nonviolence: When the rest of the country catches a cold,
a place like the Black Belt catches the flu.
PAUL SOLMAN: Or, these days, something worse.
WOMAN: COVID hit us hard.
PAUL SOLMAN: The pandemic has delivered a knockout blow to black Americans physically.
They're dying at twice or more the rate of whites.
MAN: Good afternoon.
PAUL SOLMAN: But they are also hit much harder economically. Why?
LISA COOK, Michigan State University: African-Americans are concentrated in the areas of the economy
that have been hardest hit by COVID-19.
PAUL SOLMAN: Economics Professor Lisa Cook.
LISA COOK: Let's just look at unemployment statistics. There's 14 percent unemployment
rate among black women, 16.3 percent among black men.
PAUL SOLMAN: Compared to 10.1 percent for whites. Now, it so happens a black-white unemployment
gap, widening when times are bad, is, sadly, par for the course, in the Great Depression,
in the Great Recession, as economist William Rogers told me in 2009.
WILLIAM ROGERS, Rutgers University: When we entered the recession, African-Americans started
with a higher unemployment rate. And, as we have gone through these last 16 months, the
gap has widened.
PAUL SOLMAN: Pre-pandemic, black unemployment had hit a record low of 5.8 percent, a fact
President Trump often touted.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We have the best numbers we have ever had.
PAUL SOLMAN: But Cook says black workers, stuck in low-wage service jobs, embody the
old adage last hired, first fired.
LISA COOK: The last hired means that there is not the ability to accumulate income. That
makes African-Americans less able to weather such a storm.
PAUL SOLMAN: In Alabama's so-called Black Belt, the jobless rate is at 20 percent.
Lydia Chatmon of the Selma Center for Nonviolence.
LYDIA CHATMON: So, where other people are able to still survive, work from home, we
don't have a whole lot of businesses and industries that allow for that. So, the financial impact
has been great.
DAVID LEONHARDT, The New York Times: The black-white wage gap among men is as large as it was in
1950.
PAUL SOLMAN: That's New York Times writer David Leonhardt.
DAVID LEONHARDT: We see that black men make only 51 cents on the dollar, relative to white
men.
PAUL SOLMAN: Therefore, says economist Trevon Logan:
TREVON LOGAN, The Ohio State University: Much less of a cushion to cushion the blow. Much
more likely, then, of course, to need to be employed in the places where they are essential
workers.
LISA COOK: So, yes, there would be desperation with respect to trying to find another job.
DERRICK PALMER, Amazon Worker: You guys need to provide us with masks. You need to provide
us with gloves.
PAUL SOLMAN: Starting in March, Amazon warehouse workers, disproportionately people of color,
staged protests around the country over what they said were unsafe working conditions.
GERALD BRYSON, Amazon Worker: They was talking about, we're going by CDC standards. But when
we call the CDC, they are not.
PAUL SOLMAN: Amazon fired several of the activists, though the company has since rolled out safety
measures. But good protection still isn't available to many of America's essential workers.
JASON HARGROVE, Bus Driver: This coronavirus (EXPLETIVE DELETED) is for real. And we out
here as public workers doing our job trying to make an honest living to take care of our
families.
PAUL SOLMAN: Detroit bus driver Jason Hargrove on March 21, in a Facebook video complaining
about a passenger.
JASON HARGROVE: That woman that was on this bus that stood up behind the line, where they
are not supposed to be, and coughed four or five times, and didn't cover up her mouth.
PAUL SOLMAN: Eleven days later, Hargrove, a 50-year-old father of six, died of COVID-19.
African-Americans like Hargrove make up only 13 percent or so of the U.S. population, but
nearly double that percentage of transportation, warehouse and delivery workers.
Just imagine what happens to a family's finances when that worker is incapacitated, or worse.
And the problem is, African-American finances have been deteriorating for years, says economist
Logan.
TREVON LOGAN: Wealth actually has receded for African-Americans since the last Great
Recession. And, in fact, the wealth disparities are larger than they were 20 years ago.
DAVID LEONHARDT: The typical white family has a net worth 41 times the typical black
family, which is just remarkable.
PAUL SOLMAN: And, adds David Leonhardt, to a large extent, the wealth gap is a function
of policy.
DAVID LEONHARDT: The U.S. government in the decades after World War II subsidized families
to buy houses, which is a key way that people build wealth.
But the way the policy was written, they essentially said, to get these low-interest loans, you
have to live in a predominantly white neighborhood. The government justified this by saying that
white neighborhoods were essentially better housing investments.
TREVON LOGAN: And then I looked at the map of Columbus, my home, right in that giant
red box.
PAUL SOLMAN: Black neighborhoods were literally redlined on maps for decades, off-limits to
the housing investment which builds wealth.
TREVON LOGAN: I can show you every city in the United States. It's the same in Indianapolis.
It's the same in Cleveland. It's the same in Detroit. It's the same in Philadelphia.
PAUL SOLMAN: And during the crash of 2008, those neighborhoods became hotbeds of sleazy
subprime loans and often, as a result, foreclosure, less wealth, and thus less access to capital
for buying a home, for building a business.
ALPHONZO CROSS, Owner, Parlor: Having operating capital is everything. We are not afforded
the same kinds of opportunities, because we're looked at as a risk. And we're looked at as
a risk because we don't have access to the capital in order for there not to be a risk.
PAUL SOLMAN: Alphonzo Cross owns Parlor, a craft cocktail lounge in Atlanta. It's in
a building his family owns in a less fashionable part of town.
ALPHONZO CROSS: As a black business owner, there are still places that you cannot get
a lease, no matter what.
PAUL SOLMAN: But they don't say to you, we're not leasing to you because you're black?'
ALPHONZO CROSS: Well, this isn't 1952. Of course they're not saying that.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL SOLMAN: But being locked out of high-traffic areas means less revenue, even during the
good times.
ALPHONZO CROSS: Throw a pandemic into the mix, and you now need access to more capital
to get through this dumpster fire of a year.
MARC MORIAL, President, National Urban League: African-American businesses come to the pandemic
smaller.
PAUL SOLMAN: Marc Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League.
MARC MORIAL: Less of a reserve in cash and money, and, therefore, harder to weather the
storm.
PAUL SOLMAN: What's so infuriating to African-Americans is that this is a legacy of an intentional
past, slavery and Jim Crow, most notably segregation.
DAVID WILLIAMS, Harvard University: Segregation is the secret sauce that creates racial inequality
in the United States.
PAUL SOLMAN: Harvard sociologist David Williams in a 2017 TED Talk.
DAVID WILLIAMS: If you could eliminate statistically residential segregation, you would completely
erase black-white differences in income, education and unemployment.
PAUL SOLMAN: And, Williams might have added, perhaps the differences leading to a very
different COVID-19 death rate. It's the reasons behind that death rate that we will explore
in our next Making Sense report.