#andre m. perry

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It

By Andre M. Perry.

[leftofblack]

Left of Black S11 · E23 |  The Devaluation of Black Homeownership with Andre M. Perry    

$156 billion. Think about that number. That is the gap of value between homes owned within pre-dominantly Black neighborhoods versus areas that are less than 1% Black. Breaking that number down even further, this equates to the average Black home being undervalued at $48,000 less than the average white home. In this episode of Left of Black, Brookings Institution senior fellow Andre M. Perry joins host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal to argue that this is the cost of racial bias across the housing market and how that limits entry into the middle-class. They discuss his new book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, published by Brookings Institution Press.

[medica-pseudoacademica]

“For life expectancy, money matters,” [link] according to the Harvard Gazette. Wealthier people live longer - but the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that our fates are more intertwined than we think. Due in part to a lack of access to managerial positions, Black workers are overrepresented [link] in occupations that require face-to-face contact, such as health care support, personal care, and protective services, as well as in gig-economy jobs [link]. While business in these sectors has been rising [link] during the pandemic, the nature of these jobs places workers at greater risk for contracting the virus, with many employers refusing to offer paid sick leave. While white-collar workers telecommute, receive paid time off, or are otherwise able to both socially distance and remain financially secure, the most vulnerable members of society are forced to choose between their work and their health.

This is a structural problem created by the social distancing of people of color - and the more we put these workers at risk of COVID-19, the longer the entire country will suffer. The proliferation of the coronavirus forces us to see the inherent connections we share in a way that our public policy has not always recognized. Individual recovery is contingent upon how much we collectively listen to the principle of being “all in this together.” If undocumented residents are sick, the country’s citizens will be as well. If Black and Latino or Hispanic people suffer from COVID-19′s effects, so will Asian American and white people.

We are at war with not just the virus, but our past mistakes. Now is the time to create the kind of social safety net that America’s segregated communities never received. ... Even as we heed the CDC’s advice on social distancing, policymakers need to see opportunities to bring historically disenfranchised communities closer to the systems they’ve been excluded from. The war against the virus and the war against structural racism can be fought at the same time.

- Andre M. Perry, “Black Americans were forced into ‘social distancing’ long before the coronavirus” on Brookings (Mar. 20, 2020) (link)

[iamvictoriaanne]

The devaluation of assets in black neighborhoods

Owner-occupied homes in black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home on average, amounting to $156 billion in cumulative losses.

Majority-black neighborhoods hold $609 billion in owner-occupied housing assets and are home to approximately 10,000 public schools and over 3 million businesses. We find that in the average U.S. metropolitan area, homes in neighborhoods where the share of the population is 50 percent black are valued at roughly half the price as homes in neighborhoods with no black residents.

[tomorrowusa]

Clearly, an uptick in first-time voter turnout, galvanized by calls for reform from candidates, could turn the tide in a number of key races this November.

Andre M. Perry at the Washington think tank The Brookings Institution; commenting on the impact of new voters in the 2018 midterm elections.