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In fact, the Black-white home ownership gap is wider today that it was when the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. That adds up to opportunities denied to millions of Black New Yorkers, and wealth disparities perpetuated across generations. Because $277,000 can help a family withstand a medical emergency, send your kid to college, or to help them buy a home. $19,000 is not enough for any of that.
In “Where Do We Go From Here?” King argued that much of this disparity was because Blacks were locked out of business opportunities. At the time, he was celebrating a boycott that forced the Sealtest Dairy company to stop excluding Black workers from jobs and contracts.
Whites controlled even the garbage of Blacks. Black exterminators, as well as janitorial services, were excluded. Black contractors, from painters to masons, from electricians to excavators, had also been forced to remain small by the monopolies of white contractors.
Thus, Dr. King would be appalled by the woeful state of New York City’s own Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) numbers. Even though Black New Yorkers make up nearly a quarter of our City’s population, just 1.57% of the City’s contracts go to Black-owned businesses. Our office is working with Mike Garner, NYC’s Chief Business Diversity Officer, to change this. We’ve offered a wide range of suggestions for what agencies can do to increase MWBE contracts, and recently held MWBE roundtables in all five boroughs.
Dr. King also cared about the development of Black financial institutions. We are working every day in the Comptroller’s office to increase the diversity of the companies who manage the assets of our pension system.
In my first year as Comptroller, the value of pension assets managed by MWBE firms increased by nearly $2.7 billion. Under new plans to grow our emerging manager programs, we believe this can be increased by over $30 billion more. We also believe we can grow MWBE participation from 11.65% at the start of my term, to 15% by 2025, and 20% by 2029. The evidence was clear in 1967, and it is clear today: When ownership is held by Black business owners and asset managers, Black Americans thrive.
More information about the Office of the Comptroller’s work to close the racial wealth gap can be found on our Equity Landing Page, which was just updated for 2024.
Finally, one last important point: Confronting the racial wealth gap doesn’t only help Black and brown communities. As Heather McGhee has shown in her book, The Sum of Us, narrowing the racial wealth gap yields a “solidarity dividend.” That means better education outcomes, safer neighborhoods, and a more vibrant economy for all of us.
On what would have been Dr. King’s 95th birthday, that vision must be our path forward.
Thank you to everyone who is laboring to make Dr. King’s dream a reality,
Brad
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