A REVOLUTION OF VALUES FOR BLACK AMERICAN FAMILIES in now. During the Great Recession, about intersections of race, gender, and occupation. half of Black businesses survived, compared Our solutions, then, must be intersectional in nature. When talking about Black American families, to 60% of white-owned firms. we’ve all heard someone say this not-sosubtle dig: It all starts at home. The phrase The $156 billion lost on racism should The issue of birth equity, like all the other suggests that if we could just fix Black have helped municipalities fund essential issues presented in Know Your Price, is mothers and fathers to be responsible like services such as education. For decades, not an academic one for me. In the book, white, middle-class families, we wouldn’t we’ve known that school funding, wealth, I detail the very personal struggle that my and racial prejudice are correlated with wife—who is a physician—and I had in have any problems. academic achievement. Schools dominated trying to have a child while she was going False narratives such as this one help by students of color received $23 billion through a professional crisis. In the chapter normalize a hierarchy of human value that less than majority-white districts; this is “Having Babies Like White People,” I show leads to an investment into whiteness. Since largely a byproduct of an educational system that instead of restricting access to women’s the Moynihan Report was published in 1965, that devalues Black communities through a fertility options—an idea that the Moynihan researchers and journalists have continued financing structure based on local property Report gave life to—we must expand Black women’s reproductive choices. The lack of framing poverty mainly as a function of taxes. wealth that the federal government facilitated individual choices. The report offered a robust structural analysis, but it set a dangerous Many education reformers ignore structural should not continue to limit Black women’s precedent by identifying Black people not racism, saying that it’s too hard to address choices. living up to white middle-class ideals as a segregation and school financing systems. But central problem. This falls in line with the when reform is applied within the confines Just as the U.S. government actively worked white supremacist myth claiming that harsh of inequality in Black-majority cities, we to normalize bigotry through policy, it can conditions in many Black communities are leave little room but to effectively blame normalize investment in the people who have the result of Black people’s collective choices Black teachers, parents, and school boards been denied wealth, dignity, and opportunity. for underachievement. I saw this up close as Indeed, discrimination has serviced whiteness and moral failings. a charter school leader in New Orleans after in public policy for so long that it has become an immoral entitlement, an iniquitous form One of the major goals of my new book, Hurricane Katrina. of social security. We need an anti-racist Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, is Approximately 10 years after the levees were policy agenda that normalizes support for to show that there is nothing wrong with breached, the share of Black teachers in New the injured. Black people that ending racism can’t solve. Orleans dropped from over 70% to about Presumptions of Black people’s unworthiness 50%. Replaced by a younger, mostly white Over the next few months, I will roll out undercut efforts to invest in Black-majority teacher corps, two-thirds of the teachers who the Valuing Black Assets Initiative (VBAI). neighborhoods. There’s a whole lot of had worked in New Orleans before Katrina The initiative will employ a virtual book tour to help communities mobilize around programs and research that attempt to fix were no longer in the field. their assets amid COVID-19 recovery Black people, and not enough focused on fixing structural racism. Until we rid The erasure of Black teachers flew in the face efforts. Brookings’s Metropolitan Policy ourselves of these underlying assumptions of research showing the positive effects of Program will also develop an index of target found between the lines of our research, Black educators on academic success. Black goals to advance Black businesses. We’re policy recommendations, and reforms, we students who have one Black teacher by determined to increase employment among third grade are 7% more likely to graduate 15% of Black businesses at a rate which will always do more harm than good. high school and 13% more likely to enroll will add an estimated $55 billion to the U.S. Know Your Price identifies how Black lives in college. After having two Black teachers, economy. The “path to 15/55” will convene and property are devalued by racism. By Black students’ likelihood of enrolling in business leaders, government stakeholders, exalting the assets and strengths that have college increases by 32%. Unfortunately, and communities, and provide them with the been devalued, we can debunk the false hiring more Black teachers is something we necessary steps to achieve this goal. narratives that distract us from investing have yet to try at scale. In addition, Brookings Metro and the social in those assets. If we can account for the associated costs of racism to individuals, then The values underlying the erasure of Black entrepreneurship organization Ashoka will we can begin to properly restore lost value teachers are also behind why Black women solicit social entrepreneurs in cities across by investing in the people who have been can’t buy or educate their way toward better the country for a $1 million competition to birthing outcomes, despite their educational develop policy- and market-based solutions penalized simply for being Black. and professional gains in the past few that confront the problem of housing devaluation. The project will incentivize The anchor study in Know Your Price found decades. innovators who are proximate to the problem that after controlling for factors such as housing quality, education, and crime, owner- More Black babies die before their first and will seek to foster structural changes that occupied homes in Black neighborhoods birthday than all other racial categories. The remove the drag of racism on home values. are devalued by $48,000 on average— mortality rate among Black mothers is three amounting to a whopping $156 billion in times higher than their white counterparts. Earlier this week was the birthday of Malcom cumulative losses. The value of homes in These disparities exist even after controlling X, who once said, “When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing Black neighborhoods is much higher than for education and income. under the sun that he will not do to acquire they are priced. Isn’t this true in other parts In a 2017 study using death records, my that freedom.” of our lives? wife, Joia Crear-Perry, and her co-authors That figure, $156 billion, could have been found that racial inequality in factors I wrote this book because I know my price. used to start over 4 million Black-owned such as educational attainment, income, I look forward to working with those who businesses. Black entrepreneurs certainly unemployment, and imprisonment showed know their price, too. could use the money, as they are denied harmful effects on Black infant mortality. bank loans more than twice as often as their When racial inequality in employment Andre Perry’s book, Know Your Price: white peers (and when they do get loans, they increased, Black infant mortality worsened. A Valuing Black Lives and Property in pay higher interest rates). The loss of equity decrease in educational inequality improved America’s Black Cities, is available wherever books are sold. means that many Black business owners are Black infant mortality. less likely to have the financial cushion to weather economic crises like the one we’re The devaluation of Black lives is at the Article from brookings.edu By Andre M. Perry
The Columbus & Dayton African American • June 2020
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The Columbus African American News Journal • February 2015
