Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 90 on January 15, so it’s time for a progress report.
Fifty years after co-founding the Poor People’s Campaign, a multiracial campaign for economic justice, the state of King’s dream of racial equity and freedom from poverty is far from attained.
On the positive side, the U.S. Black unemployment rate reached historic lows in 2018. There’s also been a modest recent uptick in median household wealth for Black, Latino, and white families alike. We could easily conclude that the racial economic divide is closing.
But we took a closer look in Dreams Deferred, a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies. And it revealed we have a long way to go.
…