Biden unveils plan to combat racial wealth gap
Rick Newman breaks down President Joe Biden’s proposed plan to combat the racial wealth gap in America and how its main key initiatives will focus on homeownership and small business ownership.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Today marks 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, an event that has gained much more prominence and knowledge in recent years. President Biden is headed to Tulsa, Oklahoma today to commemorate the event. And the administration, at the same time, is also announcing some new actions to try to combat the racial wealth gap. Our Rick Newman is here with more details on that. So, Rick, what is in this proposal? What are sort of the concrete measures that the administration is talking about?
RICK NEWMAN: Julie, the White House cites research showing that the average wealth of a Black family in the United States is only 13% of the average wealth of a white family. And they want to begin to redress that. So there are two different types of things Biden's going to talk about today. First are a couple of administrative actions. They want to direct more federal contracting to what they call disadvantaged businesses. Many of those are minority owned businesses.
And then they also want the housing and Urban Development agency to find ways to address an issue with depressed appraisals in Black neighborhoods. There's been some recent research on that, showing that appraisals just are remarkably low, compared with similar houses in other types of neighborhoods. And that, of course, makes it hard to get loans to fix up those houses or even to sell those homes or invest in them in the first place. So they want to do that. And then they will do that administratively.
And then, Biden also is going to be asking Congress for some more money for infrastructure programs in minority neighborhoods, including this kind of new idea we've been hearing about of trying to dismantle some of the highways that, decades ago, were built over top or through Black neighborhoods and really kind of destroyed community connectivity. So that's going to be a harder sell because that requires money from Congress to do that. But that's going to be part of what Biden is now asking for this year.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and it sounds like some of the measures you talked about don't require congressional approval. So that would obviously be an easier lift. As critics or as people in the Black community look at this plan, is there anything that's sort of missing? Are there any big holes in it that people are calling for? Yeah.
RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, I mean, this is much more than we heard about from the Trump administration. So in that regard, activists welcome this news. But there are two things that are not in here that some people would like to see. The first is student debt forgiveness for Black students. And there's also research on that, showing Black students just carry a heavier load in terms of debt relative to income once they get out of school. Biden did say while campaigning that he favors some debt forgiveness across the board, but he has not actually proposed that now that he's president. It's obviously controversial.
And then the other thing that's not in here is any kind of reparations for slavery. That would be very controversial and probably close to impossible to get through Congress. But some activists would like to see Biden put that on the table anyway, you know, give it some more prominence and talk about it from the podium in Tulsa today. And it seems he's not going to do that. So, you know, he's moving in the right direction from the point of view of the activists. He's just doing it in the kind of measured pace we've gotten used to from President Biden.
JULIE HYMAN: Yes, it takes some getting used to after the different pace that we had seen for the prior four years.
RICK NEWMAN: True.
JULIE HYMAN: Thanks, Rick. Appreciate it.
