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Dr. Angela Simms on the American Dream, Black Mobility & Unequal Returns
2 Playsin 6 hours
In this episode of Unsolicited Perspectives, Bruce Anthony sits down with Dr. Angela Simms—sociologist, professor, researcher, and author of Fighting for a Foothold—for a powerful conversation about what suburban success really means for Black families in America.
Dr. Angela Simms breaks down the gap between the promise of the American Dream and the reality many Black families still face, even after doing everything they were told was supposed to lead to stability: getting the education, earning the income, buying the home, and moving to the “better” neighborhood. From her own childhood growing up Black in a predominantly white suburb to the deeper policy and historical forces that shaped her research, this conversation exposes how inequality doesn’t disappear just because your zip code changes.
Bruce and Dr. Simms unpack racialized investment patterns, the unequal returns Black communities receive on hard work and class mobility, why Black suburbs still face structural constraints, and how public goods, housing policy, taxation, and local government shape who gets to thrive. This is a conversation about neighborhoods, but it is also a conversation about systems, power, history, and the truth behind what America rewards—and what it doesn’t. #DrAngelaSimms #BlackSuburbs #StructuralInequality #AmericanDream #HousingPolicy #RacialCapitalism #BlackWealthGap #Sociology #PublicPolicy #unsolicitedperspectives
Chapters:
00:00 You Made It to the Suburbs… So Why Doesn’t It Feel Like Success? 🏘️🤔💥
00:01:57 Growing Up Black In A White Suburb — The Untold Trade-Offs 🏘️👀💬
00:03:34 Two Worlds, One Childhood: Black in a Predominantly White Woodbridge 🌍🏠👀
00:05:31 The Subtle Othering That Shapes Black Childhood Early 😶🌫️🖤📍
00:07:07 The Bridge Between Black & White Spaces Nobody Talks About 🎯🖤💡
00:11:54 Were You Raised Black Enough? The Question That Hits Different 💥🖤😶
00:19:05 From Curious Kid To Policy Scholar — The Origin Story 🚗💡📚
00:27:05 Why Black Suburbs Don’t Get the Same Return on Success 💰🏘️⚖️
00:29:00 The System Is DESIGNED This Way — Racial Capitalism Explained 🔥📊⚠️
00:33:36 Black Politicians, Black Wealth… Still Not Enough 😳🗳️💸
00:40:25 They Targeted Us With Bad Loans On PURPOSE — The Truth 💸⚠️😡
00:46:45 Watering Down The Soup: Why Black Leaders Can't Win 😤💔📉
00:49:15 The 15 Percent Tipping Point That Makes White Neighbors Leave 🚪📍👀
00:56:13 Oprah & LeBron Don’t Represent The Rest Of Us 💀📉😤
01:02:09 Public Goods Are the Foundation of Real Opportunity 🛣️🚰🏫
01:06:07 Reparations, Co-Conspirators, and Real Justice ✊🏾⚖️🔥
01:08:40 The Soil Was Never Equal — The Real Message 🌱💯❤️
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
You live in the suburbs, but have you made it? We gonna get into it. Let's get it.
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome. First of all, welcome. This is Unsolicited Perspectives. I am your host, Bruce Anthony, here to lead the conversation in important events and topics that are shaping today's society. Join the conversation or follow us wherever you get your audio podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for our video podcast, YouTube exclusive content, and our YouTube membership.
00:00:34
Speaker
Rate, review, like, comment, share. Share with your friends, share with your family, hell, even share with your enemies.
Introducing Dr. Angela Sims and Topic
00:00:42
Speaker
On today's episode, I'll be interviewing Dr. Angela Sims, author of Fighting for a Foothold. We'll be talking about the inequality between the suburbs.
00:00:53
Speaker
But that's enough for the intro. Let's get to the show.
00:01:03
Speaker
This is a conversation I've really been looking forward to having. I'll be talking with Dr. Angela Sims. She's a sociologist, professor, and former federal policy analyst who has spent years studying the political and economic forces that shape Black communities and suburban development here in America. What makes her perspective especially interesting is that her journey into this work is also personal. She grew up right down the road in a white suburb of Woodbridge, Virginia, and that experience helped shape the questions she would later explore as a scholar and researchers.
00:01:31
Speaker
Questions about opportunity, belonging, investment, and what the American dream actually looks like depending on where you live. She's also the author of an upcoming book, Fighting for a Foothold, where she takes a deeper look at why many Black middle-class suburbs still face structural challenges, even when families are doing everything they were told would lead to success.
Exploring Suburban Inequality for Black Families
00:01:50
Speaker
In this interview, we're going to unpack the idea that reaching the suburbs don't automatically mean that you've got equality. We'll talk about the systems people don't always see, the policies that shape communities over time, and why this conversation matters for anyone who cares about equity, growth, and the future of our neighborhoods.
00:02:08
Speaker
Because this isn't just about geography. It's about access, resources, and who gets positioned to thrive. So without further ado, Dr. Angela Sims.
00:02:19
Speaker
I'm here with Dr. Angela Sims, author of Fighting for a Foothold, professor, sociologist, researcher, and... Native Virginian, that's right. She was raised right down the street from where I am right now. We'll get to that in the first question, but the first thing I want to do is say thank you for coming on the show. This conversation is interesting, something that, as a historian, I didn't know about the disparities in the and the suburbs, and doing a little bit of research was...
00:02:57
Speaker
fascinated at some of the things that I learned. So I know that the audience is going to be fascinated by this conversation. So once again, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for the opportunity. Great to be here.
00:03:09
Speaker
ah Look, I'm grateful for the opportunity because we're about to learn, ladies and gentlemen, and y'all know how much I love learning. But Dr. Sims, let's go back to the beginning. I start with this question for every interview. Let's go back to the beginning.
00:03:22
Speaker
Tell me about growing up in a predominantly white suburb right down the street from me in Woodbridge, Virginia.
00:03:33
Speaker
And overall, it was a very positive childhood. I grew up ah in the 80s and 90s. I'm 43. So I graduated from my school in 2000 just to kind of situate people in terms of timing. So at that point, Prince William County was majority white. Now it's probably still plurality white. But I would guess if
Childhood in Predominantly White Suburb
00:03:49
Speaker
I had to look at the numbers that it's probably 30% Latino, But at the time, definitely overwhelmingly white.
00:03:54
Speaker
and but you know so but at the time definitely overwhelmingly white So I grew up with middle class black parents. They themselves were upwardly mobile. My dad grew up poor in Jamaica, immigrated at 18. My mom grew up in Washington, D.C. and Northeast. So when we were sick, we still went to grandma's house. You know how that works, right? So these are one of the tradeoffs black folk off often make in terms of proximity to their social ties relative to where they believe they can get more material resources, which at least, you know, for some, it's it's in the suburbs. And we can talk more about the complexities of whether that's actually true.
00:04:24
Speaker
But yes, but I i would say overall it was positive in the sense that I had parents who were financially stable so they could you know support the basic needs and more. I went to high quality public schools and my brother and I, I'm the oldest, my brother is two years younger. I used to say little brother, but he's 6'3", so, and I'm 5'7", so I can't exactly say little. He reminds me of that when he stares down at me like, okay, big sister.
00:04:44
Speaker
So, but anyway, so, you know, so think we had a lot of the emotional and social supports at home and and both in um my immediate family and extended family. And I think we had the resources in public schools. My brother and i are both athletic. So I ran track and played basketball. Also nerdy. I was in high school in the...
00:04:59
Speaker
ah the Debate team, student government, excelled ah it with journalism. So definitely well-rounded. And so i I would say overall positive. I would say at the same time that there were what I would call tells or just things that, you know, that there's Cs that would later allow me to see more clearly what was happening. So in the book, one of the things I say is that It wasn't so much that I've experienced direct racism in terms of people calling me the N-word or openly telling me they were going to withhold resources because I was less worthy. them That may have happened, but it never happened in my face. But what did come up for both me and my brother was just this reminder, this othering that would happen. So it's subtle things. Like we were both on the swim team one year. And so when our hair didn't do what white folks' hair did when we were in the pool, we needed to explain ourselves. said, you know, what? Why is your hair doing with that? So it's like, well, I don't know.
00:05:45
Speaker
My hair a different texture. you know you're You're eight trying to explain people to people hair texture. And you're like, okay, why why am I even on the spot to to to help you understand you know my hair texture? or Or little things where people will compliment you, but it's a backhanded compliment. And and and we can talk more about Black exceptionalism because for people like me who are highly educated and well-resourced relative to other African-Americans, there is this way in which our exceptionalism is actually a way of throwing shade, shall we say, at the majority of Black people as opposed to thinking about how the exceptions prove the rule, right? That you choose which black folk you're going to invest in. So then you can use us, me, to say, oh, no, no, no, the system is not unfair. It's not militating against black people. In fact, look at Angie Sims. But I would also hear things like, oh, you're very smart, especially for a black girl. You so that like reminds you, right, that people are judging you both in comparison to other black people and in comparison to white folk.
00:06:35
Speaker
And even among black folk, you know, I would get, you know, oh, you're ah you're're you're you're doing us justice. Like, you you're out there rubbing us hard with the white folk. And I think i at the time I took it as a compliment, I think that's mostly how it was intended. But I also think that there was a way in which I was already kind of serving as a bridge. I was moving between black and white spaces because I was in advanced placement courses, again, because of the ways that tracking works in public schools. Yeah. The majority of Black children, Black students that I was with, mostly that would be through sports, Black basketball and track. But then in terms of my education, I was with white students. So I would say my parents managed that by the in the ways that many Black middle class parents managed that, which is not exactly leaning into the Black exceptionalism. But in my mom's case, she's very hands-on. She saw everything as an opportunity to give me, I think, strategies for, if I could use, i don't know if she would say this, but strategies for navigating whiteness and to do with aplomb and to do it in ways that allow me to leverage the resources I would need to excel on my terms. But again, it's still this othering. So, for example, in fourth grade, we went to meet with the principal and she said, I would like to do a Black History trivia contest. My daughter will make announcements in the morning and then we will do trivia questions on Monday and then we will announce the answers on Friday and give prizes. So she saw this as a public speaking opportunity for me. And then we went to the Nigerian embassy. She ah made sure that throughout the month, I wore different ah different wear from different parts of Africa. And then I would know the the parts of the headdress to the you know to the different kente prints. And so it was there was still a way, though, even though she intended well, that I was still a bit on display if I think about it now looking back.
00:08:08
Speaker
And the one I kid her about the most is I went to a new elementary school named Antietam. And the great, great, great, great whatever of Robert E. Lee, as in the the former general of the Confederacy, his grandson came to speak. So this was supposed to be a moment of reconciliation across racial lines. And so we had a you know competition for who would introduce him. So I won the competition and I asked my mom, you know,
00:08:30
Speaker
20, 30 years later, like, mom, do you really, ah maybe I was the best speaker, but do you also think that the optics were really good to have this little black girl introduce the former, the the great, great, great, whatever of the of the former Confederate leader? And so she's like, oh, I i didn't think about it in those ways. I really thought about it as public speaking, opera as a public speaking opportunity. so So I say that to say that my parents, I think, very much meant well. But Even though I can say overall my childhood was positive, I think it really laid the groundwork for me having some questions. Some some some of those questions that we often will say, like, make that math ain't mathin', right, in in terms of like how I'm getting resources but other Black folk aren't or how I'm being brought in on conditional terms. And when I ask certain questions, I can see there's discomfort. And rather than the issue that I'm bringing up being centered, it's the discomfort that white people feel. when we have to talk about things that are uniquely experienced by the Black community. So those are just some of the the seas that were laid early that I think allowed me to then, as a sociologist, as a policy professional, to start asking those deeper questions around the soci the social and historical context that really shaped my experiences.
00:09:32
Speaker
So there was a couple of interesting nuggets in there. I know in the Black community, and not all of our audience members are Black. So for all of our non-Black audience members, you're about to learn something.
00:09:44
Speaker
in our In the Black community, there is this put up on a pedestal when there is something that's ask s excellent. It could be academics. It could be athletics. You see this even in poorer neighborhoods that are...
00:10:00
Speaker
that have gangs, right, that gang members will even look out, no, he stays away from this. he Kendrick Lamar is a prime example. For those exceptional academically, even in the suburbs, because I faced this growing up in two separate areas, Lynchburg, Virginia, and then Gaithersburg, Maryland.
00:10:23
Speaker
I was in what is called in Virginia accelerated or advanced placement classes. All of my classmates were white. Right. Very uncomfortable when we're having civil rights talk in Lynchburg, Virginia, and I'm the only black kid. Where my experience in Gaithersburg was completely different. Maryland has a different type of school system. They don't really differentiate between the academic levels. Everybody is in the same class.
00:10:49
Speaker
But the black suburbs or the black middle class, it was more prevalent in Gaithersburg than it was in Lynchburg. My question to you is, because my parents kind of did this, because you're surrounded and you're in white spaces for the majority of your time in school. Do you think your parents did those things or your mother specifically to make sure that you don't lose, in essence, your blackness while being surrounded in these white spaces? Because I know that that is a fear. and And a lot of people won't understand what I mean by blackness if you're not black, but our culture.
00:11:28
Speaker
who we are, the way we speak, the way we move, things that we understand amongst each other that people who are not Black, by and large, don't understand.
Preserving Black Identity in White Spaces
00:11:37
Speaker
Okay. So the question is, did my mom intentionally put me in black space to try to counter some of those experiences with white folks? Yes, it was a long-winded question, but that's what I was asking. Yeah.
00:11:48
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Make sure i'm make sure i'm picking up what you're putting down. That's a great question. And and it's always helpful to have the background in terms of what resonates between our experiences, because i think it it helps us to see the through lines, right, as we can we can start to put these pieces together.
00:12:00
Speaker
So, yes, I think one of the things that I often chide my mom about and my dad is that we even in church, we went to an Episcopal church. My dad's Jamaican, as I mentioned. He wanted something close to the Anglican church. And, you know, I i appreciate, you know, the the the ritual. I still, you know, mostly have the Nicene Creed, you know, memorized and, you know, still a Christian. At the same time, and and certainly my faith is a core is the core part of my identity, at the same time, that was more white space. And so I said to them, Even in church, you couldn't, you know, make an exception, Dad, if we can go to a Baptist church or, you know, AME church, you African Methodist Episcopal, which is the first, by the way, black denomination started in, I think, 1793 by Richard Allen in Philly after, in his case, the Methodists, no, yeah, Methodists told him that the black congregation was getting too big, black portion of the congregation was getting too big, so they needed to go to the balcony. And he said, in the name of Jesus, no, we're going to start our own denomination because we are all Imago Dei. So whatever y'all are doing over here, that ain't gospel. So we're moving on. So anyway, so we you know even in church, we were in white space. My brother and I were both acolytes, you know. So like I said, I have a lot of love for the Episcopal Church. But I think they were not as intentional about that. I think the most consistent black space I was in was when I went to my grandma's house. So that was also complicated by race and class. So my mom, as I said, is upwardly mobile. By black middle class standards, they were probably middle class, lower – core middle class, lower middle class. It's complicated in the black community. We can get into this later in terms of how you think about the middle class. If we're using yeah a score across racial groups in the United States, usually it's median income education type of work. You know, so white collar would be the middle class type of work, professional office work. But my parents, you know, were um my grandparents, my maternal grandparents were were f definitely stable. My dad, my great-grandparents.
00:13:41
Speaker
My granddad had a trade. So my, you know, they own they owned a home in D.C., did not buy it through contracts that were exploitative. They bought a decent contract through Riggs Bank. So in many ways, and I talk about that of the book, they they they were they were very blessed. and Not that God doesn't want to bless everybody, but they experienced fewer of the, let's say, constraints of Jim Crow.
00:13:59
Speaker
ok But still, it was a community where it was black and more working class, lower middle class, and very close to black folk who were poor. So I say all that to say when my brother and I would bring our bikes from Woodbridge, Virginia and ride around and like we had a certain – there's a, as we would say in sociology, a certain habitus, you know, sort of way of being and doing. With white kids, they would look at us like, y'all little different. Not in a bad way, but just, again, people noticing that you're different. And so we also had to learn, too, that there was a more rough and tumble way in which you engaged each other. that meant that you couldn't you couldn't expect people to to always just accommodate you. I think there's a way in which you're trained to to accommodate and to essentially submerge a lot of the conflict. So I don't think it's one is what better than the other. I think in in in in Black spaces, we're just more, are are a in general, don't want to overgeneralize, but I think in general, we're more willing to to name things as opposed to being more, shall we say, subtle or indirect. So I think just even those aspects of it were different.
00:14:59
Speaker
So Those were the primary spaces. I was, you know, as I said, I did play basketball and i ran track. I did try to think of the other spaces that would have been majority black. my you know My grandmother, same thing. Grandma, we would do revivals in what she would call the country. So she grew up in Richmond or outside of Richmond, Virginia, and in Henrico County. So when we would go at least a few times a year for the revivals or and on Memorial Day to put flowers on the grave, we would go to Black church revival. you know So that would be you know the Black church experience if we're still thinking about church. I would say that there weren't steady places where I was with majority Black folk. My parents didn't have me and Jack and Jill, which is its own complex space where Black folk you know who are upper middle class and wealthy – want their children to have the habitus of the black elite.
00:15:39
Speaker
And so they want them to be comfortable in their own skin, as you're suggesting, in terms of understanding black culture, understanding our history. But those parents are also concerned about what they consider to be the behaviors they associate with black people are poor and therefore do not want their children to adopt behaviors that they believe will hold them back in terms of being either socially reproducing their class status or advancing beyond it. So my parents were not intentional in that regard. And so that's something I've had to reflect on process. And I have talked about it with them. And for them, it was really about the resources. They said, we thought Prince William County schools were good, more affordable than Fairfax County, which is the counties I compare Prince George is to. My dad was a psychologist at Lorton Penitentiary, which is where people in prison from D.C. were sent. And so, you know, very interesting, you know, juxtaposition, right? You have the crack epidemic in the My dad was As a black immigrant, as a psychologist talking in many ways to these black men who essentially did not get the breaks he got. You know, even as an immigrant, he got some lucky breaks to be able to come, be able to go to an HBCU, to then be able to graduate once integration or desegregation occurred. I went to University of Maryland College Park and then GW for his master's. So,
00:16:42
Speaker
So definitely, i think, a positive impression of Black people growing up. But I think definitely with, ah quite frankly, a fear that the Black middle class has around their children not being able to attain what they have. But that fear is not unfounded. The fear comes from...
00:16:57
Speaker
yeah We'll talk about later with the book, the fundamental precarity that black folks have, whether it's the lack of wealth, whether it's the way in which – as my brother had a couple experiences, especially when he's around white women and anything pops off, you know where you're automatically considered suspicious and you have explained to do and you're concerned that your child will – you know end up, you know, incarcerated, you know, even for things that are, you know, ah white kids are doing too. And so I think that is something that I've still had to process too is, know, as we all have to do, regardless of our racial status, is remember that our parents are people first. right
00:17:30
Speaker
yeah And our parents are doing the best they can with what they know and what they have. And then doing our work as adults to process that and to move forward, right? Chew the meat, spit out the bones, honor them as best we can, and decide what we want to bring with us, you know, into our adulthood. Yeah.
00:17:45
Speaker
So you're getting a view of the suburbs and the black suburbs going back and forth, living with your parents in Woodbridge and visiting your grandma in Northeast.
00:17:59
Speaker
Is that the beginning of the idea starting to form
Historical and Geographic Inequality
00:18:04
Speaker
into your head that will eventually lead to your book, These Inequalities and the System that create these two separate environments?
00:18:16
Speaker
I think in a way, I think, let me just back up to one more thing. my Since we're thinking about movement through the D.C. metro area, one of the the highlights of the book is to think about metropolitan areas and then the different local jurisdictions, suburban and city. And so I just want to flag, excuse me, while I think about it, that my aunt and uncle lived in Prince George's County. Maryland. And so they actually lived in, at that point, the county that had just become majority black and middle class. And that as and that is at the center of my work. And so one of the vignettes I talk about at the beginning of the book in the preface is literally asking my parents, like, why are there so many more black people in Prince George's, which is essentially a child noticing racial residential segregation. And there's, you know, they they you know they mostly, as as I said, you know tell me it's because of the schools and and it's close to dad's work. But so the question is the seeds that lead to the research. So I would say that it's To be a better metaphor to think about it, almost like a primordial soup in the sense that this was there. It was in the background.
00:19:05
Speaker
And then it's it's just kind of hanging out. It's it's part of my identity. It's part of this that what I'm processing with friends in my classes, you know, in undergrad as a government major, Black Studies minor in policy. It's in conversation with therapists. right So it's there. It's being processed but not but not necessarily actively leveraged, shall we say. So then fast forward, I graduated from William & Mary with my college degree in government. Then I do a master's in public policy. And then I worked for the federal government for seven years under under George W. Bush's second term and Barack Obama's first term. So it's really in terms of crystallizing this moment where, again, here I am, you know, that speaking of black exceptionalism, I'm at OMB, one of the ah the whitest agencies. So that we know the federal government disproportionately has black Americans. That's one of the primary ways in which we attain our middle class status, in fact, and that's because civil service across levels of government is always discriminated less against black folks. So there's a reason for that. But anyway, so I'm in one of the widest agencies, though, because I'm in the executive office of the president. OMB is the agency that produces the budget and essentially is the sort of central nerve system of the federal government. We're the ones making sure that the federal policy that the
00:20:06
Speaker
administration sets out is is implemented by the respective agencies. So I say all that to say, I'm there. i'm in I'm there with George W. Bush. Certainly, we know he's conservative. We know he's putting less money into social services. You may remember that he had a whole marriage initiative, and the data has always shown us that it's not and direct focus on marriage because Black folk value marriage. It's the economic underpinnings, but it's really not into the 60s that you really see the divergence in marriage rates among Black folk. I have a colleague that's wrote a book called Inherited Inequality that literally talks about how even when Black people get married, they still don't get the same returns to marriage. So we need structural solutions for structural problems. But anyway, I digress.
00:20:42
Speaker
so So yeah, so there I'm noticing, right, that there are changes when Barack Obama comes in, right? He's focusing on the Affordable Care Act, which, you know, disproportionately helps Black people because we're we were disproportionately and continue to be disproportionately uninsured. So definitely here for showing for naming the things that President Obama did that that were pro-social and shaped the black community. But as we also know, he was, you know, for for reasons of strategy, not targeting resources toward us because he wanted to make sure he signaled that he was a president for everyone. And in his interpretation of that, that meant you couldn't, you know, truly honor, I think, the history of the differences of experience that we've had, which therefore warrant different government responses. But
00:21:21
Speaker
Still, one of the aha moments for me was like, huh, a lot of the things that you thought would change and the numbers you thought which would shift, one, I already saw the data, which is that since the 1990s, these gaps have either been stagnant or widened. So you take the wealth gap, it it started to close as we come into the Civil Rights Act of 64, which prohibits discrimination in education and employment. Fair Housing Act of 68, Voting Rights Act of 65. So that's kind of the triumvirate, you know, among other laws that we know in many ways are the legislative response to the modern civil rights movement. So you're seeing those numbers close, right? So that's the good news, right? We want to honor the progress. we we We don't want to conflate chattel slavery with what we experience right now. But we do want to honor the through lines in terms of this decision to not honor Black people with full human regard. So but so I'm noticing these numbers that are just available to us from the policy data. And then I'm noticing that things aren't changing in terms of meaningful change and structurally for Black people's access to resources other than, say, the the Affordable Care Act and a few of the main initiatives that Obama initiates. And I'm like...
00:22:20
Speaker
So we have the rise of mass incarceration, by the way, at the same time that you have the rise of the black middle class. William Julius Wilson, very controversially, you know, talks about this underclass that's developed as black folk who are middle class start to have some geographic mobility and upper mobility, although, you know. I think he's picking up on something that is true, but also, as many scholars have shown, is more attenuated than he described. But the point is, that was the aha moment. I was like, so so this so is not adding up here. So I decided that I wanted to have the tools to understand that on my own terms. I was also recognizing in terms of career that I didn't see myself as climbing the ladder in the civil service, although I was doing well. And so I just decided, well,
00:22:55
Speaker
you know If you go back and get more education, you can enter the federal government or any space, academia or otherwise, with your own research agenda, with your own tools, and the ability to answer the questions that you want to answer and to direct your energy where you want to direct it, with the idea being that you need to be strategic, you know which is something I did learn in childhood about how you use your energy so that you don't waste it on the things that are not really worth your time, but really get to the heart of the matter. So this book, in many ways, is kind of...
00:23:21
Speaker
allowing me not only to process that history that I experienced as a young child in Prince William County, Virginia, but also to sort of, as I say in the book, to sort of look from the outside in. Little Angie was, you know, in the car, in the station wagon, asking her parents questions, observing things, so you speaking on the loudspeaker of fourth grade. But big Angie, you know, with all this education, can look from the outside in with social science and with policy and ask these deeper questions about why, why this and not that, or why this is more likely to be than that. And so to me, it's it's it's my offering in many ways to our community to try to use my experience to help us to understand where we are now, what we've learned along the way from other scholars and activists, et cetera. And then also to speak to the broader community about essentially, you know, what are we going to be about? This is the 250th anniversary of this country. Are we going to continue to double down? on systems of evil, quite frankly, that, you know, built we built a country on and of free labor, uncompensated labor for 250 years, and stolen land. So if we're using Christian terms, this is a fix essentially the epitome of common grace, God's grace. Like, everything we have is despite our origins. And so to me, the best way to honor our country is to truly see that that's the truth
00:24:28
Speaker
And build systems that are designed for everybody to flourish, not, you know, the few flourishing at the expense of the many. And we know that's true because we we see the growing inequality that has transpired since the Nixon administration. so so I'll leave it leave it at that for now.
00:24:41
Speaker
Okay. So that's a lot. And we're going to start to move towards your book now and some of the things that your research uncovered.
00:24:59
Speaker
It's always been the Black family dream to get up out the hood and get to the suburbs, right? yeah Good schools, safe neighborhoods, and more opportunity. What did your research reveal about why that dream hasn't played out equally for Black suburbs?
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, excellent question at the heart of the research. I think first we have to honor the fact that it's always been the case that there is geographic inequality, whether you look within cities or between cities or within suburbs or between suburbs. So some of this is also just recognizing that there's some myths out there that just were never true, but they were like working understandings. And they're not completely untrue. There is all um many, many myths, stereotypes have a kernel of truth. That's why they hang on. So the key is to figure out like what's true and what's not. So I think, first of all, just starting with the fact that there's always been geographic inequality. And so I often will say that geography, that the racial race initial segregation is essentially the geographic coordinates of racial subordination. So if we start with race as ah as a political category, meaning that you impose this idea of racial difference onto humanity, there is no basis for racial difference at the biological level Sure, sure we use things like skin color to assign people to racial category, but it doesn't actually map to human variation. But it's so significant for access to resources, right? And so it's essentially a tool for justifying the unjustifiable, which is to treat some people like trash and people like treasure just to keep it a buck, right?
00:26:19
Speaker
So I think what we notice then, if we start with that, that race is a political category, that ge that that location is essentially going to reflect this broader sense ah set – this broader experience of racial subordination, then in some ways, it's not a complete surprise that Black people, wherever they live, whether they're in cities or whether they're in suburbs, are not going to get the same returns to their class status.
00:26:39
Speaker
One, because we've never been made whole from intergenerational, from the intergenerational consequences of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. And number two, Black people continue to be excluded and extracted from by white government and market institutions. And so we become this continuing depository from which white people extract. And so so even though we may have more attenuated experiences attenuated experiences of that, depending on where we live and our resources, that general logic, as it were, still holds. So for the Black middle class, as I mentioned, 1968 really is this moment where even though it's it's it's still weakly enforced, even though there are a number of concerns we could raise, that the Fair Housing Act 1968 really opens up the suburbs to Black people en masse.
Systemic Disadvantages in Suburbs
00:27:17
Speaker
We were always in the suburbs, but in terms of the great, if you think about great migrations, the significant migration to the suburbs really happens then. And importantly, the black Black people period across racial groups, we're majority suburban. Like every every racial group is majority suburban in this country. We we tend to think about Black folks being an urban community. In many ways, we are. And and we'll talk about inner-ring suburbs versus outer-ring suburbs. But I just want to start out with the fact that most of us actually don't live in cities, but in these peripheries of cities that we call suburbs. Mm-hmm.
00:27:43
Speaker
So in terms of the inequality, what we end up seeing then, and i argue in the book, is that local jurisdiction boundaries enable white folk to bind and amplify the resource advantages that they inherit and that they accrue over their lifetimes. And the courts have said that's OK. So, for example, take public schools. Usually that's a shared responsibility between the state and the local government, but what do we do for all public goods and services in terms of raising revenue? We tax property. So essentially you're doubling down on racial capitalism. You're amplifying the intergenerational inequalities in terms of investing in black people and investing in black spaces. So then you concentrate then the harms in black communities irrespective of their class status and the advantages in white communities irrespective of their class status because white folk are going to bring more money and so they can buy higher ah higher priced homes. They're going to bring more wealth. And we also know that market actors from realtors to appraisers to banks just value white space more highly. So even when black people have equivalent public goods and services and private amenities, we just get a haircut because we're it's black space.
00:28:41
Speaker
So you you combine those kinds of things. And we can't forget, of course, that the federal government actively contributed to this with the Fair Housing Administration's decision to not insure mortgages for Black people or in Black neighborhoods. So even returning soldiers trying to activate the GI Bill couldn't actually use that benefit to the same degree because they had to actually find homes in segregated spaces. And there was less credit, less opportunity for us to have those same kinds of loans, right? The good loans, right? Not these toxic things, but... That 30-year fully amortized mortgage, that fixed interest rate of 5% or below. And so so the black middle class that is able to attain some geographic mobility, in Princewood, this county specifically, it is able to concentrate that black middle class wealth. So Wayne Curry is the first just county executive.
00:29:22
Speaker
And he intentionally was very open something. He wants to create executive housing. Essentially, he wanted to make it clear that this was the premier black space, the sort of ah Mecca or promised land, depending on which religious allegory we're using, and was very active about recruiting black folk. And we might remember, too, speaking of these city suburb relationships, that the black middle class in terms of the civil service really grows up under Marion Barry, the first black mayor of D.C. Much controversy around Marion Barry, but we got to give him with credit for what he for what he did do. in The video. I studied the video. She set them up. All right. She set them up. But I digress.
00:29:58
Speaker
So, yes. So all the with all the complexity of of our dear late brother, Marion Barry. So but thinking about then, again, these flows of people in capital. So you have this flow of black folk out to suburbia seeking to realize, like you said, the same opportunities that white folk want to realize when they have upward mobility into the middle class and higher. So they want the single family home. So that the the detached unit, less density. they They expect to have high quality public goods and services. Right. so they So they're not doing anything different than than the and than most Americans and seeking that. So black folk are doing those things, as I said, in mass or starting to do it in mass after you sort of late 60s forward. And they're thinking about now, we would remember, the Voting Rights Act of 65 means that we can in now ah but that we can now elect, ah not only can we vote, in places where we weren't able to vote because of grandfather clause and literacy tests and all these barriers. But now it also means that districts are being drawn. this is not quite as important at the local level, but certainly overall black people are participating more in in politics is the point I'm making. So you're starting to see more black folk elected to office. So we have political control. So partly why Prince George's County is such a great place to study is that it's actually been under black political control, at least official political control, let's put it that way, in terms of people in elected office at the at the at the highest positions, county executive, school board chair, state's attorney since the nineteen ninety s
00:31:11
Speaker
So it's also a case where you have over a generation now of Black leadership, concentrations of Black wealth, again, ah relative to other Black people. But importantly, what this book is going to show or or does show, because it is out now, is that Black people can still still are not able to overcome essentially the legacy effects of racial discrimination, nor are they able to come overcome the ways in which but local boundaries bind and bound resources all along racial lines. um Nor are they able to overcome the ways in which resources flow from government and market actors in racialized ways, not only in terms of investment, but also in terms of predation. So another key moment in the book is really citing how the foreclosure crisis ah hobbled the county because they had more than twice the number of foreclosures because irrespective of credit score and other forms of worthiness for mainstream mortgages, they were targeted for the toxic versions. So that blew up in people's faces during the Great Recession of 2009 to 2011. So the term I used to try to cover all of these things I just talked about is converging fiscal constraints. And I'm arguing that you the black middle class uniquely experiences shared governance structures that mean that we're we're taxing things that we know are underinvested in, like, you know, by like by using things like property taxes. We know that we experience the negative side of the race and class flows of people in capital in terms of what concentrates in our community, the demographics of our community, even when we're middle class.
00:32:27
Speaker
as well as the kinds of investments we receive from private actors and and public actors. And then, as I said, the cumulative weight of anti-Black racism being something that Black people uniquely bear and that continue to advantage white folks. So this is where we get to this idea of systemic racism and where it doesn't take white folk being intentional for racism to still benefit them and for it to still burden Black folk.
00:32:47
Speaker
I think everything that you said was very important for people out there who are going to question, wait a minute, These black suburbs have high incomes, high household incomes and black representation. And you are pointing out that, yes, even in those instances, the system of America makes it so even if you have high income.
00:33:16
Speaker
income households and Black political leadership, the systems and the predatory um investment schemes of America will still create this disparity between Black suburbs and white suburbs.
00:33:36
Speaker
right And I think that's that's brilliant because it was something that Most people don't think about, you know, especially in the black community. I remember when we, my parents had me young. So we climbed that social economic ladder. And I remember when it was like, okay, we hit middle class. We're good now. And we still weren't good.
00:33:57
Speaker
Brent. Yeah, we still weren't good. Can you explain a little bit about these racialized investment patterns, especially what you present in the book? Because a lot of people out there, it might fly over their their head a little bit. They won't understand. We're like, no, we all apply out to mortgages. But yet Navy Federal Credit Union just a year or two ago has been accused of giving bad loans or the declining black people from getting mortgage loans. So can you explain to people how this happens with the investments and racialized investment patterns and all that type of stuff?
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's there's a deep history. So I want to make sure I cover as much ground as I can. And and I'm a big proponent of going all the way back to the beginning. So a term that I think will be useful for us for this question is racial capitalism. And so that's a shorthand way of saying profit generation through racial difference. And so, of course, the the the way – where this initial mass of wealth – amassing of wealth occurs that disproportionately helps white folk, of course, not evenly because there's class structure, ah class de phrases differentiation among among black ah among white folk. In fact, you know about 40 million Americans are poor. 40 percent of them are white. So I often will say, look, racial capital and doesn't work for a lot of white folk. But of course, disproportionately, we're affected because of the history. So so that racial capitalism piece, right, this is what i mean by the logics that we've essentially inherited and that just get rearticulated. Other scholars will talk about we're living in slavery's wake. This is a way of trying to capture these through lines of racial capitalism, which we'll then talk about how they show up in terms of racialized investment patterns now. So it's important, though, to anchor that there. And I always like to just, again, as a a sort of public service announcement, remind people that before we could even have Reconstruction after the Civil War, it is Black people that preserve the destruction of the Union because there's 200,000 of us that actually fight for the Union that really allow for this country to even remain so that we can even have this conversation. So just you're welcome, America, right? I just always like to make sure i get that in there. but Let them know. Yeah.
00:35:59
Speaker
Folks be tripping, you know, about like, look, y'all, talk about who's the maker and who's the taker. let's just let's just set some Let's just say some basic facts on the table first before I proceed. So then essentially what I'm setting up is that even after you have the Civil War, you have the 13th Amendment, which ends chattel slavery, by the way. It says, except if duly convicted of a crime, slavery's ended, which televises for us, you know, where we're going next. 14th Amendment establishes our citizenship, equal protection of the laws. That's critical. And then some 15th Amendment grants black men the right to vote. So you have this reconstruction moment. You see Black folk despite the headwinds. We don't get our 40 acres and a mule. We have this moment with Special Feudal Order 15 where it starts but it ends very quickly under President Hayes and and essentially the retreat of the Republican Party and the federal government broadly in terms of actually enforcing Black people's citizenship rights. but We still buy land. We still have historically black colleges and universities. And so we're so we're starting to see black folk establish themselves as we're moving toward what we' what what we will come to call the Jim Crow segregation period, which supposedly is separate but equal, which speaks to this 14th Amendment that it's because it's supposedly equal, then we can still be separate, which, you know. We know it was always separate, but never equal. Anyway, that those racialized investment patterns start early. And so that you're seeing even as early as you know a few years after Reconstruction, you have these all-Black towns, you have these Black folk being incorporated into white spaces. And so you see these extractive economies. You're suddenly extracting from you're still extracting from Black labor through things like sharecropping, exploitative farming practices where you're paid you know i'll portion paid through a portion of the crops you yield. You've got to buy all your equipment from the person who owns the land. So essentially, the Republicans you know allow for the planter class to reasserve themselves. And for black folk to be, again, resubordinate again. But at the same time, we do buy land. We do establish backtown. So there's this dualism happening. We're making it. We're striving. This is this making a way out of no way that we see the black folk group been doing since we've been here. But we want to honor the both end of it, right? The both that we're making these strides, these headways, and we're still facing these headwinds. So got the HBCUs, you've got black land, you've got black towns. But importantly, when we think about taxes, black folk are paying taxes and they're getting inferior or no public goods and services. So you literally can look across the United States. There's a colleague, his name is Andrew Call, who wrote a book called The Black Tax. And so he's an historian who literally just takes the time to go through everything.
00:38:11
Speaker
out the United States to look at how black folk were paying taxes, state and local taxes, and you would see the sewage line just stop right before the black community. You would see a new white high school and black kids literally have to share books. And so when you think about the fact that we're paying into the public fist, but we're getting no returns, that's a subsidy, which which is something that I'm going to carry through in a moment when I talk about you know what black people are still doing, which I argue is still a subsidy for white folk. So this extractive economy is something that we see happening throughout the the Jim Crow period where black folk are investing in taxes. They are working, but they're not getting the same return to their labor. And importantly, it's not just that we're excluded. I think we can't under-emphasize – we can't emphasize enough that it's not just the
Resource Extraction and Demographic Shifts
00:38:52
Speaker
exclusion. Because Focal talked about the exclusion the segregation – It's extraction. So it's the weathering, the slow extraction that comes from things like, oh, we're going to put the polluting industry in black people's neighborhoods. Well, those are our lungs now that are that are inhaling those toxins. And we're getting cancer early and dying earlier. Well, you now breathe clean air.
00:39:09
Speaker
So that's a subsidy to you. That's a subsidy for literally the the not only the quality, but the longevity that you have. So in the book, I try to capture this idea of the exclusion extraction two-step. And I say that it's ah it's too it's two speeds, so the pollution is a slow speed. But the foreclosure crisis, which we'll get to in a moment, That's fast. That was 10 years of Wall Street, Wells Fargo, Bank of America. Yes, I'm naming names. You know, we can be the Justice Department has put it ah in a report. So I'm not naming anything that is not public, public available, you know, ah just blanketing us with these to toxic assets. But that was money for them. Right. Through the transaction fees, through the interest, through the balloon payments. And remember, they were too big to fail. MLK Boulevard and Main Street were not too big to fail. We were left to hold that bag and figure it out for ourselves.
00:39:52
Speaker
So I want to honor the fact that these processes are not new. You fast forward to the post-World War II moment. I've already mentioned the GI Bill, Federal Housing Administration, lending policy that discriminated against Black folk. But then we also have to think about urban renewal. So in terms of exclusion and extraction, we have to remember this serial removal that Black folk across class experiences faced as we were investing through the Fair Housing, through the Housing Act of 1949, to use eminent domain to ostensibly, ostensibly revitalize cities. So at the same time that we're supposedly revitalizing these cities, disproportionately targeting Black communities as blighted, and therefore raising those communities, leveling them entirely, removing Black folk across Even in neighborhoods that were thriving, they were just deemed blighted because black folk were there. Remember, we we aren't worthy of full human regard. And certainly not going to bear more burden white folk. So they just bulldoze our communities. So you have that experience at the same time, of course, that you're building white wealth by building the highway system and by investing in the white and white folk movement to suburbia. So that's how you get this idea of chocolate chocolate cities in white suburbs.
00:40:51
Speaker
Again, always more complicated, but that's a working understanding. So these extractive economies are also helping us to see how government and markets have been making money on black people all along. Realtors still make money on the fact that white home values are higher because that premium for whiteness does what? It raises the value of those homes. So their fees, their percentages go up. So they have a stake still. And steering, and that's one of the primary tools they use, which is if you or I go to look for a home, they're more likely to show us different neighborhoods and they're show white folk with equivalent credit scores and other forms of supposed worthiness for a loan or for certain kinds of housing.
00:41:27
Speaker
So when we get then to, you know, this moment of of extraction and exclusion, you know, in the more recent moments, say the last 10, 15 years, You know, really what we're seeing then is how ah Black folk have experienced this cumulative effect, you know, intergenerational, Because this has consequences in terms of how much you inherit, where you live, the kinds of resources your parents can afford based on where they live. So you're then seeing that Prince George's County is showing us an extreme case of Black affluence, as we don't want to lose sight of it. One of my blurbers on the book said, it's a Black Wakanda. So I don't want to lose sight of the fact that you've got, you know. No, it is not. It's not no Black Wakanda. PG is not a black Wakanda. And I guess you wouldn't say black Wakanda because Wakanda is black. But the idea is that I think what he was trying to say was it's is this is this is this place where you see things that you don't see elsewhere in the United States. So I don't want to – I guess what I'm saying i don't want to lose sight. I don't want to pathologize. I don't want to –
00:42:21
Speaker
only have a deficit mindset in terms of what Prince George's does offer. There is a high quality of life in many respects, but we also have to hold that it's still precarious and that, as an argument, still subsidizing the white middle class. And so, you know, so the predation that Black people experienced in the lead up to the foreclosure crisis is in many ways the most recent example of what I'm calling this fast speed of of of the exclusion extraction two-step as a way of capturing racial capitalism. I think I may have lost the the thread, though. What was I supposed to be answering? Sorry, remind me of of getting me back on track.
00:42:51
Speaker
No, it was just that the concepts of how you have these communities that are... thriving Black, high-income households, Black politicians, but yes, the investments are still racially charged. right And how that creates a disparity between the Black suburbs and the white suburbs. Right, right. I think I just wanted to you you hit on something that I think I needed to, you know, draw out yeah from my meandering response, prior response, which is that one really one of the things I think we need to think about as Black folk, too, is often we will be very frustrated with our politicians. And it's not to say that we shouldn't hold our politicians accountable.
00:43:30
Speaker
All of us as Americans have a skepticism of institutions that reflects, you know, many of the ways in which our institutions have have have underserved us. And so I'm here for that critique. But I want to make sure that we don't conflate a critique of government in as much as we want government to perform at levels that was that reflect competence and and the shared values as Americans from the the particular constraints that black politicians uniquely face. So they were looking at the black mayors that taking over cities as we talked about these chocolate cities, you know, vanilla suburbs.
00:43:58
Speaker
You know, whether you're talking Harold Washington in Chicago, whether you're talking about Marion Barry, all of these said all of these black mayors are struggling financially because they're trying to figure out how to make that math math when you're losing your high-income residents, disproportionately white, and you're losing private investment to suburbs. And so we know that the growth still in America is at the margins, is in suburbs, although you have gentrifying cities like D.C. that are experiencing particular kinds of gentrification, although there's some elsewhere, of course, ah across the U.S. So I guess to answer your point more succinctly, you see this black upward mobility economically. You see black political figures attaining on political authority. But the the question is, what are they what do they have to govern?
00:44:37
Speaker
What is in the public fisk? I can only allocate what I take in in terms of revenue. Unlike the federal government, local governments cannot borrow money. You have to balance your budget every year. That means if the Office of Management and Budget at the local level projects that you're going to get lower revenue, you have to cut services. In fact, Wayne Curry, the first county executive of Prince Richard, cut services. Why? Because Paris Glendening, who, by the way, would go on to become governor, white man. Hands him $100 million dollar deficit. And that's because Prince George's County was on its way to becoming majority black. White folks saw the writing on the wall, as it were. They underfunded public goods and services, targeted the areas where they lived, particularly municipalities like, you know, Greenbelt, Bowie, and until they could get out or they could keep their properties. Either some of them left entirely. Some of them just kept their properties and rented it. But, you know, so he unharried the deficit. So you already see, akin to these Black mayors, this this way in which Black folk are already struggling at the local level to make ends meet. So then what you have, and in terms of what I look at at the in the book, is less capacity to have consistent high-quality public goods and services. And so I think the frustration that Black people feel, I hope, is from helping us to see that we have to always walk and chew gum. We have to always hold multiple things at once, which is, yes, let's hold our public officials accountable, but let's be clear about levels of authority and where our energy should go. So really part of the issue here in Maryland ah and across the United States is what is mary how much is Maryland taxing?
00:45:55
Speaker
Maryland needs to raise its taxes. And then Maryland needs to redistribute more redistribute more resources for public goods and services across its local jurisdictions so that you lower you rate you lower the temperature in terms of the local government competitions for high-income residents and for businesses because they're less reliant then on that local tax revenue, the primary – source of which is property taxes and these other forms that essentially leverage the racial capitalism. So I think what we're seeing then is these black politicians, even when they're highly competent and well-intentioned, they're fundamentally constrained by these structures economically and politically. And so that's what I'm trying to highlight is this this subsidy that black folk end up giving white folk because we have the disproportionate burden for higher needs residents in our communities, even if we're majority middle class, and the fact that white folk can shield themselves from that responsibility because they're just higher cost of living areas in the first place, but then also because of realtors and other white actors steering people to black neighborhoods disproportionately. And the fact that black folk can't get stably integrated neighborhoods. Often we will, you know, move into a neighborhood, Prince Rogers County included, thinking, oh, it's an integrated neighborhood. But then it becomes black around us because there's a tipping point. White folk at about 15% or so, the data shows, and and ideally not all black, but 15%, certainly 20%, especially if it's majority black, you will not see white folk look in those neighborhoods and they will leave. So white flight. You said 15 to 20 percent. So it's still 80 to 85 percent white. But when they get to that 15, 20 percent of non-white, they're looking to bounce. They're chasing the supermajority, which is also, I think, a you know, a word in this moment in terms of you know the ways that white folk are feeling some type of way, right, that that the country is, you know, increasingly less white in terms of Anglo, meaning not Latino or mixed race. Again, race is also constructive in terms of how people identify. And so we know that part of that growth at the margins in what we call the the the fringes, the urban fringes, is ah sorry, suburban fringes, is that sprawl is driven by white folks chasing white towns, right, where they can have that supermajority. And so it's not to say that it's this's not complicated certain areas or are places like Katoma, Tacoma Park on the D.C. and Montgomery County side that are stable integrated Silver Spring. But even there, if you look underneath the hood at the census block level, like going neighborhood to neighborhood, like Chevy Chase is not the same as, you know, some of the less affluent parts of of of Montgomery County. So you have to you know still look at the sort of neighborhood level and think about the catchment zones for schools, the ways in which people still find a way to differentiate by race and class to gain access to resources. So, yeah, so the idea is that black politicians, black residents are not able to overcome these distribution these asymmetrical distribution of people and resources but just asymmetrical distributions of resources that are inherited. and ongoing. And so then the Black officials are really in a tight spot as they're trying to meet the needs of their residents. Of course, residents expect returns as they should, but they have different conditions for meeting it. So my hope is that, you know as Black and oak pla people read this, and I hope everybody reads it, that we're also able to think about where we should be putting our energy. Some things, yes, are locally decided, but a lot of where our grievances are are really about federal and state policy. And so we should be putting our energy there to build coalitions across the state, across the government, to raise taxes, to redistribute resources more equitably that honor our histories. And then and thinking about ah metropolitan area distributions of resources so you don't have this competition even across states and and local governments. And then, of course, we have to get to reparations. We get we get we go back to the beginning, you know, in terms of the fact that Black folk who have never been made whole. And so until you make us whole, We're all we're always starting with this, ah you know, with with different capacities to navigate. And it's not to say that we haven't still done well, despite it all. I mean, we're still here and we you know certainly want to keep that both in perspective. But I do think it's unfair to to not honor the history and expect the same and expect the same outcomes without honoring that history.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I did not know local governments couldn't borrow. you know, couldn't take out loans. Like what they have is what they have. They can get bonds. They can let bonds. So if you're doing capital expenditures, like if you're building a school, building roads, they can let bonds. and that's the primary way. And that's its own racialized market, you know, in terms of having to maintain a AAA bond rating and the ways they look at black, black jurisdictions versus white jurisdictions. So I get into that a little bit in the book too. So just like your credit worthiness and how far your credit score can go personally, local governments have the same thing. So black jurisdictions have some of the same constraints as they're trying to borrow money. So that that's the only place they can truly borrow money at scale where But otherwise, yes, they have to balance their budget. Same at the state level. Most state constitutions require a balanced budget.
00:50:22
Speaker
But that's why I'm saying it's truly then about federal redistribution to make people
Policy and Government Spending
00:50:27
Speaker
whole. And and we know that this is something that has been either held stagnant, um ah held constant or decreased from Nixon forward because we've been cutting taxes, remember, and at the same time holding constant or cutting social services, health services, at the same time that we've we've been investing in the carceral state and the military. So, you know, we've got to be, again, all of these things are layered at different levels of social organization. But I think for black folk, it's important to remember that some of these fights really need to be fights at another level, at a higher level of social organization. So state and federal, building coalitions, using our churches as sites to organize, as we did during the Modern Rights Movement. So there are a number of things that I hope, if nothing else, help us to be more strategic and intentional about where we put our resources. And then thinking about, in the spirit of self-determination that we see across,
00:51:11
Speaker
Black folk over time, whether we're talking about the enslaved people who are self-minimating or whether you're talking about ah the Black Reconstruction Period, whether you're talking about W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. And I mean, again, we can just name so many sheroes and heroes. we We know that that self-determination piece has always been so critical for us. At the same time, we also know our things get burned down if white folk, you know, feel threatened by us, right? That was what Ida told us about lynching, that is not it's not about protecting white women. It's about putting black people bull in their place and and using spectacle to reinforce this this sense of of of black supposed inferiority And and and then having these these red herrings, these these excuses for the things that you that you're claiming it's about.
00:51:51
Speaker
And so they said that those things were even warranted in themselves. So, yeah, so so I think that that's partly you know where I'm trying to go with this book. It's a clarion call for all of us as Americans to really think through who it is we are, what we value, how our history shapes our present, and how we have to be just as intentional about building a future for all of us to flourish as we were about discriminating against people and excluding them and extracting from them.
00:52:13
Speaker
And then thinking about what that looks like at the practical policy level, but then also at the hearts and minds level about what we value and why and how our histories really distort the real grievances that Black people have uniquely. I would say Black folk and Indigenous people uniquely because of the inheritance.
00:52:28
Speaker
and Wow.
00:52:37
Speaker
So there are going to be a lot of people, I call them the ill-informed, who are going to look at Black Americans and say, well, Michael B. Jordan just got an Academy Award.
00:52:49
Speaker
LeBron James is making $50 million dollars a year. I see all the artists, musicians, and everything. You had a Black president. How are there are still disparities between the Black suburbs and white suburbs when financially,
00:53:07
Speaker
Black people were doing better than ever.
00:53:11
Speaker
True. multiple Multiple things can be true at once. And it's sort of the black people doing better than ever. So we can look at key figures, right? So particular people, Oprah, you know, LeBron James, essentially, you know, our athletes, our entertainers. those are Those are the categories where you see black folks, particularly making, you know, these orders of magnitude of 10 million plus. And of course, there are the black elite, you know, who are making that that good 1 million a year, right, as doctors and engineers. So we want to leave room for that black elite. those Those who summer in Martha's Vineyard, right? I love that for you. You should enjoy your life. Absolutely.
00:53:39
Speaker
At the same time, I i believe as a Christian that, you know, God came to give us life and life abundantly. So I'm not here to say that people can't enjoy themselves, but I want to be very clear about how we think about, um that's why we often will talk about median income, be very clear about what we mean by the average or what's modal. Modal meaning what's most common, the of the average being the sum and then, you know, dividing by the total or the median, that point in the middle. So all of these measures Help us to understand the importance of things that might skew our understanding by virtue of focusing on outliers versus focusing on what's the most common experience. So certainly we want to honor ah black folk who are doing quite well. But when we look at median income, we we know that black people make about $20,000, $15,000, depending on whether it's a family of two or or three or four. We're usually talking about, know, differences in income of $20,000, $30,000 and more in difference in income. If you look at the wealth gap, it's about 8 to 1, meaning for every $8,000 a white family has, a black family has $1,000.
00:54:37
Speaker
If we look at downward mobility rates, meaning like intergenerationally, are your children doing as well as you are in terms of class status or better? Black folk are more likely to be downwardly mobile from the middle class, meaning they have middle class parents. but theyre but they're themselves working class or lower, so they have lower income, lower education. This also speaks to what I was talking about earlier in terms of the the civil service being one of the primary on-ramps or ladders to the middle class. So as we've been cutting government services, that's also a cut to black people's Black people's sources of income and their access to the middle class. So right now, with the federal government cuts, I have many black girlfriends who are highly, highly, highly qualified. But, you know, in this in this economy, with all of these people cut all at once, they're struggling, if not to find a job entirely, they're they're struggling to get even 60, 70% of what they were making. And so we know that that's not an accident. We know that, you know, at at every level of government, the
00:55:27
Speaker
And Reagan made it very clear that he wanted to starve the beast there. And that idea of the beast, the government being a beast, was he belied himself. Because at the same time, he's cutting social services, health services, and other things that I would call the pro-social programs. He's increasing money for space, for prisons, for we're still in the Cold War. can think about all the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex that was still getting funded, right, at the same time that we claim to have no money. Right now, we're bombing Iran. And right now, I think our last... Statistic is up with $11.3 billion so far on like, I don't know, it hasn't been a week, two weeks at the time that we're talking now, maybe. 13, 14 days. I think we're about to hit two weeks officially tomorrow. Right, but we don't have money for food stamps, remember? And mind you, the federal minimum wage is still $7 an hour. Now, most city and local governments have increased it to closer to $15, as they've done in New York where I live or in the D.C. area where I did my research. But still $15 an hour is not going to be sufficient for living in these high-cost-of-living areas especially. But even in the middle of Missouri, no shade to Missouri, but even in the middle of the Midwest, some of the lowest-cost-of-living spots, it's still not enough. So we know that people don't, even when they're poor, get the compensation they deserve, even when they're laboring. So this is the working poor. And I do think that we need to just have a deeper conversation around what we owe each other as human beings, but that's another conversation maybe for a Bible study in terms of how we ought to treat all of our neighbors.
00:56:52
Speaker
But I think that for the for Black folks, though, this is why I've been hitting on this point about inherited inequality and the need for reparations. We we shouldn't confuse these outliers. The people at the end, if we're looking at a normal curve, the people at the end of the curve are not in representative of the people in the middle And so those extremes are to be celebrated. They certainly can give us access to resources. I actually challenge them in the book to help those of us who have less have fewer resources to guard ourselves, and use our resources to help us guard ourselves against the harshest edges of racial capitalism. So could they, Robert K. Smith and you know Oprah, those with the Odors of maximum a billion, because they could they help us to think through some credit unions and other things that would get us away from the Wells Fargo's and the banks of America's and the others that we know are there to exploit us? could could you know We know that black banks have struggled. A colleague named Mercer Baradaran, who wrote a book called the Color of Money, and there are number of Black banks struggle when they have to compete with white folk who have and all this disproportionate wealth. ah But there are still ways that we can think about this idea of self-determination. Cooperatives are another space. Jessica Nimhard has a book called Collective Curse. It really thinks about mutual aid and shared governance and worker-owner purpose. Workers and owners, workers owning their their property, owning their work, land land grants, i'm land trusts and housing, land and cooperatives and housing cooperatives are another thing that we see black folk are doing. So I want to you know, also leave space for the fact that, you know, black folk are thinking about alternatives to capitalism or different ways of engaging capitalism that honor our needs, that center us. I want to honor the fact that we do have these wealthy people who have done well in capitalism. But again, these are exceptions. So my work really centers on the black middle class because these are the people who have ostensibly played by the rules. So they not only show us something about black people, but they show us something about America writ large because they show us that despite the rhetoric, despite the hype, right, it is not the case that merit talk that that ah hard work, ah education and a little bit of luck are all you need. it's it's axiomatic of sociology that the best predictor of your social status is your parents. And so that means that really it's about those resources that you have early and that you build upon. So the reason not only do do I study the black middle class but also study public goods and services is because that is a that is the substrate. That is the foundation upon which most of us build our lives. Unless we have Oprah's money, unless we have LeBron's money, we need –
00:59:08
Speaker
Clean drinking water. We need roads. I mean, even LeBron and and Oprah got to still drive on these roads, though. They still got to take off and their in their private jets, you know, using air traffic controllers that, you know, if they if it's a public airport, it will be, you know, federal workers, right? So even people who are rich, Jeff Bezos still needs, you know, the policing, right, to to make sure our packages don't all disappear from our port. but like So all of these folk, even if they're making money, are still – in embedded in the social system that are paid for through tax dollars. So I use taxes and public goods and services as a way to see something that so critical for everyone's quality of life and importantly for black people because we have fewer household resources, we can't substitute for those. When we don't have high quality public goods and services, we can't just send our kids to private school as easily, not to not trade off something else. And so we really need these services to be high quality. They also knock on to this idea of racial capitalism because when you have higher quality public goods and services, that increases the demand in your local jurisdiction and in your neighborhood.
01:00:04
Speaker
This is another way where white folk where a white folk don't have to do anything except exist. And by virtue of the demand going up for their housing because of the quality of public goods and services and private amenities, the home values go up. So when their home values go up, what does that do? That's not only personal wealth for their family, but that's also new revenue for the government. They don't even have to raise tax rates in order to get new revenue. Whereas black folk who are experiencing these forms of predation, they either have to raise tax rates to get the same revenue, which means we're paying more for less, or they have to cut services. So, you know, it's like grandma. Grandma's always to sure everybody eats. She's going keep watering down that soup. But at some point, the soup is not nutritious, right? And we've got to honor the fact that folk are hoarding. They have a whole meal, a whole feast, right? right If we're switching metaphors, they got a whole pie. We got three crumbs, you know, and we're over here rubbing them together trying to act like – no. Like, again, we want to honor the fact that those three crumbs and maybe – shall we say a slice? I don't want to diminish what we have achieved.
01:00:57
Speaker
But it's still the case that that these public goods and services really are a window into a critical aspect of what we need for quality of life, a critical critical aspect in seeing how markets and governments converge in terms of how markets make money on these higher quality public goods and services, how governments make money out on the fact that they're able to Use political boundaries to keep those kinds of market actions in their communities, the ones that are positive, if they're white, in their communities, the ones that are negative, if if they're black. They're trying to figure out how to how to have ah ah a better mix of the of the different kinds of investments. And so the last thing I'll say is that even in ah ah recently, speaking of of Jeff Bezos, there was a competition for his second headquarters.
01:01:36
Speaker
You know, when I was doing my research and the shortlist was ah created for the D.C. area because he decided one of headquarters would be there. The only jurisdiction that was dropped off of his shortlist was Prince George's County, Maryland. so the So the politicians, you know, did their kind of reconnaissance behind the scenes. they' like, well, what happened? Like, why would we be the only ones dropped? And they said pretty boldly.
01:01:54
Speaker
The schools are not good enough. none of our None of our workers who are elite workers, the engineers, not the people working in the the warehouses on average, they're not going to live in Prince Rogers County because the schools aren't good enough. So then Prince Rogers County ended up with the warehouses for for you know for for Amazon, but the headquarters went to Arlington. So that's the way of seeing this different investment pattern, right, which we know has implications then for revenue generation from commercial taxes, right? So this is this is its crosswalk, and this this dexterity I want to on us to have in terms of thinking about how government and markets are always mutually informing each other. Markets rely on government structures and processes to not only enforce contracts, but also because they rely on public goods themselves to produce their goods, to make their money. And then – Governments rely on markets because they're taxing them, right? And so we need to think about how people, neighborhoods, local jurisdictions different conditions. And if we're simply leveraging those conditions and not honoring, as I've been saying, honoring the history and the current reality, then we're just doubling
Call for Reparations and Persistent Struggle
01:02:51
Speaker
down. their Bottom line is there is no neutral. There is no neutral. Either you are reinforcing the racial status quo or you are leaning into a more just set of arrangements. And so that's why the book, as we talked about, you know, ends with reparations. You know, this this clarion call for really sitting down and honoring our our reality and where we want to go. And if we're not going to do that, then let's just call it for what it is, right? If we're not ready for the reckoning, then then what we're not going to do is, as Grandma also said, we won't call a spade a spade, least my grandma, right? We won't call it the beta spade, right? What you're not going to get credit for is solidarity and allyship. No, no, no. I need, as as one of my white colleagues says, she goes, what you need are co-conspirators. I'm like, yes, you need the Jane and John Browns who are willing to stick their actual neck out.
01:03:32
Speaker
And until that happens, right, until we're ready to actually have that conversation, then, okay, you're doubling down on the status quo. The fight will continue. And and that it it it that's it.
01:03:44
Speaker
The fight will continue because we who believe in freedom shall not rest until we have it, right? And so one of my colleagues calls us freedom seekers. And so I think there's something in the seeking of the freedom. There's something in the honoring of what we have achieved in Prince George's County and elsewhere. There's something in the honoring of our spiritual and emotional other the forms of resilience. I don't want to lose sight of the resilience and the brilliance without waxing the black excellence in a way that detracts from the social fabric of the community. I do want us to honor the fact that we have come this far by faith and through agitation. And those are the thing that will still carry us. And we have real grievances that still need to be addressed. And we should keep our eyes on those things. And people who will claim solidarity with us need to step up to the plate. and if you're not, then don't step up But what we're not going to get credit for is stepping not stepping up or taking half a step and getting credit for a whole step.
01:04:31
Speaker
Yeah. And then and when they step up and we get co-conspirators, we can get some more ah PG copycat Wakandas out there in different states.
01:04:43
Speaker
There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Angela Sims, author of Fighting for a Foothold. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
01:04:55
Speaker
and And wow, like, I'm going to go back and listen and watch this as I'm editing and learn even more. Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to have to be a listen and watch that you're going have to go through a couple of times because there was so much information that I didn't know. and i kind of say to myself, I'm one of the informed. If you are not one of the informed, you learned a lot. And so I want to thank you so much for coming on the show, talking to us about your book and teaching us, most importantly, teaching us.
01:05:27
Speaker
Thank you so much. It's it's great to learn together. Iron sharpens iron. So thank you so much. What makes this conversation so important is that it forces us to to rethink what success actually means in America.
01:05:39
Speaker
Because a lot of us were told a very simple formula. Work hard, get educated, get a good job, move to a better neighborhood, do everything the quote unquote right way, and eventually the system will reward you.
01:05:51
Speaker
That's the story. That's the promise. That's the America dream we've been sold. But here's uncomfortable part people don't want to talk about. What Dr. Angela Sims laid out is that for black people, even when you follow those rules, when you get the degree, when you make that money, and when you move to the suburbs, you can still end up playing a game where the scoreboard was rigged before you even got there.
01:06:16
Speaker
And that matters because too many people look at black success through exceptions. They see the athlete, they see the actor, they see the celebrity, they see the millionaire, and then they use those few examples to pretend the larger problem doesn't exist.
01:06:32
Speaker
But a society is not judged by its exceptions. It's judged by what happens to ordinary people trying to build ordinary lives. That's why this conversation hit so hard.
01:06:44
Speaker
Because this isn't really just about the suburbs. It's about what happens when a country tells you to climb the ladder, but keeps moving the building. It's about what happens when communities pay in, work hard, do what they're supposed to do, and still don't get the same return.
01:07:03
Speaker
It's about understanding that inequality is not always loud. Sometimes it looks quiet. Sometimes it looks like lower home values.
01:07:14
Speaker
Sometimes it looks like weaker schools. Sometimes it looks like fewer resources, older infrastructure, bad weather, less investment, and politicians trying to stretch three crumbs into a full meal.
01:07:30
Speaker
And maybe the simplest way to understand all of this is take two families. They can plant the same seed, water it the same way, work just as hard.
01:07:41
Speaker
But if one is planted in fertile soil and the other is planted in rocky ground, the outcome was never just about effort. The soil mattered. The environment mattered.
01:07:53
Speaker
The system matters.
Expectations and Questions on Systemic Inequality
01:07:57
Speaker
That's what this conversation was really about. Not whether Black people have ambition, not whether Black people have talent, not whether Black people know how to build.
01:08:06
Speaker
We've proven that over and over again. The question is why, even after all that building, so many Black communities are still expected to thrive with less.
01:08:17
Speaker
And once you understand that, you stop blaming people for conditions they didn't create. You start asking bigger questions, better questions. Harder questions.
01:08:29
Speaker
Questions about policy. Questions about history. Questions about who benefits when some communities are forced to carry more and receive less. Because if we're serious about fairness, then we have to be honest enough to admit that equal effort has never guaranteed equal outcome.
01:08:47
Speaker
and that And that honesty matters because you can't fix what you refuse to name.
Conclusion and Engagement
01:08:56
Speaker
I want to thank Dr. Angela Sim for this enlightening conversation.
01:09:00
Speaker
And i want to thank you for listening. I want to thank you for watching. And until next time, as always, I'll holler.
01:09:14
Speaker
That was a hell of a show. Thank you for rocking with us here on Unsolicited Perspectives with Bruce Anthony. Now, before you go, don't forget to follow, subscribe, like, comment, and share our podcast wherever you're listening or watching it to it. Pass it along to your friends. If you enjoy it, that means the people that you rock will willing enjoy it also. So share the wealth, share the knowledge, share the noise.
01:09:36
Speaker
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01:09:48
Speaker
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01:10:04
Speaker
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01:10:31
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for listening and watching and supporting us. And I'll catch you next time. Audi 5000. Peace.