‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.’
— Martin Luther King 28th August 1963

‘We must recognise that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power’
— Martin Luther King on SCLC staff retreat in 1967

Today, the election of Barack Obama to the White House has given rise to the belief that America has successfully dealt with its history of institutional racism. ‘It’s been a long time coming, but tonight… change has come to America’. Unfortunately, the idea that the election of Obama as president embodies a significant change within American society is not one that I personally buy.

Martin Luther King is widely celebrated as a figure that fought to change a society in which race itself determined one’s social status. However, as his career went on, he came to realise the intrinsic link between race and class which formed the real basis of social inequality in America. It is a link that still exists today.

Figures for 2008 from the U.S. Census Bureau have shown that 23 per cent of all African Americans are living at 100 per cent below the poverty level. On top of this, 21 per cent of America’s Hispanic population are living at the same level below poverty. These figures bode even worse when we consider that the minority percentage of American society has rocketed over the past century. Today it stands at 66 per cent white and 33 per cent minority.

In urban America the wealth gap between white Americans and minority groups has led to self-segregation. White Americans who can afford to live in predominantly white areas do. African Americans are locked out of the white suburbs due to the higher prices of housing there. Segregation has become an economic issue, and the chasm between the races is one of wealth and not simply prejudice.

Legal discrimination has ended, but social marginalisation remains the reality. America’s problem is that its minorities on the whole represent a distinct group of economically and socially disadvantaged people. This is something that Obama must address. There is a damning inconsistency between the American dream of social mobility and the reality of its deeply entrenched structural poverty.

Solving the problem of this situation is far harder than just identifying it. A change in policy will also need to be equalled with a more general cultural change for an American public wary of government hand-outs. The proposed introduction of American Opportunity Tax Credit that will ‘ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans’ in exchange for doing 100 hours of community service has been lambasted for amounting to paying students $40 per hour.

With the new fiscal stimulus Obama has been given a profound opportunity to reshape America’s socio-economic landscape. Throwing money at the problem within the states will not work. The federal government must take the lead in restoring equal opportunity or be faced with the enduring malignance of a large group of structurally impoverished Americans.

Filed under: barackobama, education, poverty, racism on March 1st, 2009