John —

United for a Fair Economy is excited to support the release of the State of the Dream 2026: From Regression to Signs of a Black Recession by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, under the leadership of Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, a long-time UFE collaborator.

State of the Dream 2026 presents a sweeping review of the racial economic impacts of the retrenchment of civil rights programs and policies, amidst the ongoing concentration of wealth and income. 

The dizzying changes of the past year collectively are exerting a disproportionately negative impact on Black workers and communities. For example – notably – Black workers at prime working age have experienced rising unemployment over the past year, while similar white workers saw little to no change in rates of employment.

The executive summary and a link to the full report are available from the Joint Center, and we encourage you to click through and read about policy changes and their impacts across a broad range of domains and indicators:

• Black Employment and Unemployment
• Black Federal Employment
• Tax Policy
• Black Entrepreneurship
• Financial Deregulation, Crypto Markets, and Digital Assets
• Broadband Policy
• Artificial Intelligence Policy
• Social Media Policy
• Workforce Policy and Black America
• Black Homeownership and Housing Policy
• Deletions of Black Heroes and History

UFE and the State of the Dream series

The “State of the Dream” report series was published by UFE from 2004 through 2020. It is hard to overstate what this report has meant for United for a Fair Economy as an organization. In UFE’s early days, our Popular Economics Education curricula and reports spoke about the economy and its growing inequities without explicitly naming the ways race plays a part in systemic inequality. 

Through the State of the Dream report series — along with UFE’s successful 2006 book, The Color of Wealth — we undertook necessary and overdue work to shift our narrative about how economic inequality is created and sustained, with what impacts. 

Building a critical consciousness of race and racism is essential to any understanding of the systems and structures that create vast wealth for some and conditions of struggle and oppression for others.

We are so grateful to the Joint Center for their work to track and understand the impact of current developments on Black workers and communities. This political moment is calling for more information and education that can support the transformation necessary for all to reach a fair economy. I encourage you to read this report!

In solidarity,

Jeannette Huezo
Executive Director and Senior Popular Educator, United for a Fair Economy

United for a Fair Economy
https://www.faireconomy.org/