Rooted Racism (4)

Estefany Sanabria

Blog 4

7/1/2018

At my job placement, (RESULTS) they have an international conference every year where people from all over the world come to DC and get to learn about the struggles that impoverished people are facing and then they get to use this information to try to persuade senators and house members to support bills that could help solve these issues. The interns who get to work at RESULTS for the summer are in charge of putting together a background packet in order for people to truly understand these issues. I was assigned to write the background paper for SNAP or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is always something that me and my family have benefited from and it feels really cool to be able to learn what the program is while fighting to keep it in place for other families to benefit from. 

One of the other interns had the job of writing the background paper for housing and racial wealth inequality. I had never really put too much thought into why white people have 8 times more wealth than Latinos and 10 times more wealth than African Americans. I also never put much thought into why people of color only own 13% of homes in the U.S. How did the racial wealth inequality become so great?

It all dates back to the 1930’s era, around the time of The New Deal. It was the prime time for economic mobility but of course, it was a time of great segregation. It was only until 1948 that people of color could finally live with white people. The Social Security Act of 1935 also excluded people of color until 1954. Raising the minimum wage will never solve the problem of wealth inequality that we have. “The only way to close racial wealth divisions would be for the government to make major policy transformations that target the structural and institutional factors behind the racial wealth gap made through historical legacy of policies rooted in racism.”