EastView Supplement to Inclusive Education 2.0

Understand the EastView Concept

Long before equity became common parlance for the American public, affirmative action was attempting to work toward an equitable solution to truly integrate black Americans into common American society. 

Executive Order 11246 (Sep 1965) intended to bolster the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Johnson required federal administrators and contractors cease discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

 Although neither EO 10925 (passed by President J.F. Kennedy in 1961) nor the latter EO 11246 specify any preferential groups, they were adopted by an American society that was struggling with a history of racial exploitation, segregation, and discrimination against black Americans. 

America was ready to move past segregation, and used affirmative action to put that sentiment into action. 

Fast forward to 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the practice of affirmative action in university admissions for both public and private colleges. Implementing systematic strategies to uplift historically underprivileged groups is a cause worth pursuing. 

Affirmative Action policies have definitely increased the number of black Americans in college, and allowed opportunities to young minority Americans that they otherwise would not have had.

2020 US Census data shows that median income of black and Hispanic Americans has roughly kept pace with other races since 1967 [See Figure 12, Poverty Rate]. 

One possible explanation for this is that affirmative action policies actually did help these racial groups: without affirmative action, their college admissions (and therefore employment in lucrative careers) and median income would not have kept pace with other races. 

Of course, this proposal is a bit of “proving the negative,” and isn’t something we could prove without a time machine and ethically malevolent social experiments.

A comparison of unemployment gaps between black Americans and non-Hispanic white Americans through varying education levels shows racial unemployment disparities decreasing with increases in education [Economic State of Black America in 2020, pg. 6]. 

This disparity ranges from 8.3% (non-Hispanic white) vs.14.8% (black) for less than high school educated Americans, to a vastly reduced 2.0% (non-Hispanic white) vs. 3.0% (black) for college educated Americans. 

This point alone is significant justification for ensuring black Americans continue to have access to college education, which Affirmative Action has done until now. 

Additionally, Pew notes that the college completion rate gap between white Americans compared to black Americans has decreased: the gap reduced from white Americans being 2 times more likely to complete college than black Americans in 1995 to the former being 1.5 times more likely to complete college in 2015 [Demographic Trends, Pew].

However, the median wealth gap of white and Asian American households is vastly greater than that of black and Hispanic American households. Black Americans also have less overall wealth, have lower rates of home ownership, and have double the unemployment rate of white and Asian Americans [Demographic Trends]. 

While these are disturbing trends, they may be attributable to the historically low availability of higher education to the black American community.

Not having had equitable access to college education, many lucrative career fields were also unavailable due to the lack of the prerequisite credentials and training. Lower paying jobs, possibly being reliant on hourly wages (which may necessitate frequent changes to new employment), subsequently leads to a lack of monetary savings, thus precluding home ownership. 

Home ownership being the leading contributor to generational wealth, black Americans are therefore further deprived of the opportunity to build wealth.This self-perpetuates, in an ouroboros-esque cycle of poverty: the black and Hispanic American communities don’t have wealth, therefore cannot pursue higher education to build wealth, therefore they cannot buy homes to use as appreciating equity, and therefore their children cannot benefit from generational wealth to pursue higher education..

While the racial disparities have been reducing over time, continued equitable access to higher education ensures that the trends continue to converge until there is no discernible difference in leading indicators of socioeconomic success among racial groups living in the U.S.A. 

References:

• Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020
• Figure 12: Poverty Rate and Percentage-Point Change by Type of Family; Source: 2021 Census
• Joint Economic Committee, Economic State of Black America in 2020
• Pew, Demographic Trends and Economic Well Being