WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Sherrod Brown is using the "Dignity of Work" platform he’s long campaigned on to serve as the foundation of how he runs the Senate Banking and Housing Committee.
It was on full display on Thursday as Brown, (D-Ohio), chaired a hearing about the racial wealth gap.
“You can’t look at the racial wealth and income gap that has barely budged since we passed the Civil Rights Act and think the economy looks just or that we have equal opportunity,” Brown said during the hearing.
Brown assembled a panel of academic experts who explained a root cause of minorities being hit so hard by COVID-19 is the gap in obtaining financial stability. It's something Spectrum News has covered extensively throughout the last year.
“The biggest pre-existing condition of them all is wealth itself. Wealthier families are better positioned to finance elite education, access capital, finance expensive medical procedures, reside in higher amenity neighborhoods, exert political influence,” Dr. Darrick Hamilton, who leads the Institute on Race and Political Economy at The New School, testified.
Brown became chair of the Senate Banking and Housing Committee just weeks ago and is already using these hearings to criticize Wall Street, which he blames for not treating workers fairly.
Republicans on the committee defended America’s economic system and argued it creates opportunity, but there was bipartisan agreement that more needs to be done.
Last summer, WalletHub published a list of ‘state economies with the most racial equality’ and Ohio ranked poorly — 45th out of all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
"The racial wealth gap in Northeast Ohio is just a tremendous liability on our region’s balance sheet,” Benjamin Collinger said in a Zoom interview on Thursday.
Collinger is a program manager in the equity and inclusion division of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, which serves as the chamber of commerce for Northeast Ohio.
He said the business community is slowly starting to recognize that closing the racial wealth gap means undoing decades of barriers that were put in place to make it harder for minorities to buy homes, get funding for businesses, and be paid fairly for work.
“I think that there’s definitely been a bit of a culture shift, but in terms of the raw economic data that we could talk about even more, fundamentally there hasn’t really been much progress,” Collinger said. “And that’s one of the things that we’re really concerned about because it’s just going to get worse as it relates to the pandemic.”
Editor's note: Benjamin Collinger was initially described as the division leader for the equity and inclusion division of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. The story has been corrected to reflect his title as a program manager.