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Volume 2 Number 12 Your Opinion Matters


Poverty and the Fallacy of Long- Term Economic Greatness


who crows about economic expansion without paying attention to those on the bottom.


Macroeconomic indicators


suggest the economy is healthy, but for how long? How long, can we expect our decades-long economic expansion, to continue? A minor blip, an extended trade war or, heaven forbid another kind of war could have devastating effects. This is why our 45th President keeps picking fights with the Federal Reserve Bank, urging them to cut already low interest rates to fuel economic expansion. Our nation can't thrive when nearly half of its citizens are on the outside looking in. And poverty can be a drag on economic expansion.


The people who are doing well in BY DR. JULIANNE MALVEAUX The first week of July produced


a somewhat positive Employment Situation report. While the unemployment rate ticked up just a bit, about 224,000 new jobs were created, nearly three times as many as were created in the tepid previous month. There was, of course, the Administration crowing about the


strength of the economy, and with wage growth on the rise, an impassioned outsider might agree that the US economy is doing well.


But too many aren't doing as well


as they might, and too many, even with wage growth, aren't making enough money to lie on. Rev. William Barber's Poor People's Campaign says that more than 140 million people are living in poverty or near-poverty, nearly 100 million more than the Census suggests. Indeed, the very existence of a Poor People's Campaign, 51 years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched his initial assault on poverty, speaks volumes about the status of our economy.


Poor people have been the


volleyball in a partisan net game, with some simply ignoring the realities of poverty, and others vilifying the poor for their poverty. These are the folks who will tell you that the economy has never been better, ignoring the fact that at least 40 percent (and perhaps as many as 60 percent) have not benefitted from economic expansion. The average family has yet to recover from the Great Recession. Many have financed their survival with credit cards, and between student loans and consumer credit, our nation's households are $13.7 trillion in debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank, 40 percent of our nation's families can't manage a $400 emergency.


Half of all jobs in this country


pay $18.58 per hour or less. How stable is an economy that pays people so little? Fully a third of all jobs pay less than the $15 an hour, many legislators want to pay all workers. The minimum wage, at $7.25, has not increased in a decade, even as the economy expanded, productivity has risen, stock market indices are at an all-time high, and we have a President


our economy have a stake in it. They own their homes. They own stocks and bonds. They have retirement accounts and investment accounts. They've seen their asset base soar as the economy has expanded. But the Great Recession cause African American people collectively to lose a third of our wealth. Black homeownership rates grew for thirty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Those gains were wiped out mostly during the Great Recession, and today Black homeownership is as low – 41.2 percent – as it was in 1968 when discrimination was legal. In contrast, the overall homeownership rate in 2016 was 63 percent overall and 72 percent for whites.


If this is a stakeholder economy,


African Americans have fewer stakes, but we don't occupy the economic periphery alone. Latinos and whites also experience poverty, but not at the disproportionate rate that African Americans do. Racism makes it possible for excessive poverty to exist! As long as some see poverty as a personal, not structural failure, it is easy (and acceptable) to demonize the poor, and even to criminalize them for their poverty. Thanks to folks like Rev. William Barber, some Americans are awakening to the fact that one person's poverty is another person's profit center, that the prison industrial complex needs to be dismantled, and that a restructured, less militarized (and dare I say green) economy might offer more opportunity for all!


The folks who earn $18.58 an


hour or less aren't benefitting from the expanding economy, but some of them support a wealthy huckster who lies with the same ease that he rises in the morning! He spins economic confusion in jingoistic and confusing terms so that an unemployed manufacturing worker in Ohio will passionately argue that he'd be working if it weren't for illegal immigrants!


Will we buy into the fallacy


and let increasing poverty imperil long-term economic expansion? Or will we develop a more inclusive and expansionary economic model? The Presidential campaign offers the opportunity for a dynamic exchange of ideas. What's next?


NSU Mourns Former President Harrison B. Wilson's Passing


When his first wife, Mrs. Anna


(Williams) Wilson, passed away in 1967, Dr. Wilson persevered through a world of heartache, leaning on friends and family for support. He was blessed to later meet Dr. Lucy Cutliff, who with her beloved daughter Jennifer, would eventually fill the monumental role of mother in the Wilson household. They later shared in the birth of a daughter, April.


Dr. Harrison B. Wilson COURTESY OF LEGACY.COM


Dr. Harrison B. Wilson II,


former president of Norfolk State University, has passed from this life after 94 fulfilling years. Many knew Dr. Wilson for his lifetime of organizational leadership, not only during his tenure at Norfolk State, but for his broader contributions to the Commonwealth of Virginia and beyond. Dr. Wilson always explained his life in the context of his past, positing that his achievements were rooted long before his birth on April 21, 1925. His grandmother taught school to the formerly enslaved in the years after the Civil War. Marguerite Ayers, his beloved mother, carried on this tradition by impressing the value of education upon Harrison and his four brothers and sisters. With all his accomplishments, he conceived of himself as a link within a longer chain of past and future; of triumphs, setbacks, and continuous learning.


President of Norfolk State


University from 1975-1997, Dr. Wilson's professional and community


successes seem


unbounded. In 1946, after service in the United States Navy during World War II, Dr. Wilson enrolled in Kentucky State University, just miles from where his mother and father were born. There, he would receive the familial and educational support that would launch a lifetime of accomplishment. In college he pledged to the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., and thrived as a member of the Thoroughbreds basketball team. After graduating with high honors in 1950, Dr. Wilson carried his Kentucky State education further, pursuing his PhD at Indiana University while serving as head basketball coach at Jackson State University. While coaching in Jackson, he earned his doctorate of education, accomplished a coaching record of 365 wins and 74 losses, and birthed four boys with his first wife, Anna Williams. Their four sons, Benjamin, Harrison, John and Richard, would grow up on the campus of Jackson State, surrounded by the atmosphere of the historically


black institution that their father helped grow. As a couple, Dr. Harrison


Wilson and Dr. Lucy Wilson built outstanding careers in higher education. Echoing the stories he'd share of his grandmother working to expand black education in the Civil War South, Dr. Wilson committed himself to developing the highest educational standards at the nation's premier Historically Black Colleges and Universities. As an administrator, he contributed to the growth of Tennessee State University, Fisk University, and of course, Norfolk State University where he served as a president beloved by many.


Dr. Wilson believed deeply


in the worth and potential of the schools for which he served. While at Norfolk State, he accomplished university status for what was then Norfolk State College. He increased the number of African American students pursuing STEM fields at the institution. He recruited highly qualified faculty and established mentoring programs to ensure that his students were equipped with the tools for graduation. Dr. Wilson expanded the university's facilities, maintaining positive relationships with state government to expand university resources. He served on the Board of Directors of Bell Atlantic Virginia, the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, and the Commonwealth Ethics Committee. He received honorary doctorate degrees from the Eastern Virginia Medical School and Kentucky State University. In 2014, Dr. Wilson travelled to Lexington, Kentucky to receive an honorary doctorate


from the University


of Kentucky with his grandson, Brandon, who received his Masters. Significantly, the University used the occasion as an apology for decades of discriminatory


and


segregationist admissions policies against African Americans like Wilson.


himself


Of course, Dr. Wilson defined beyond the realm


of


professionalism. He was a father to six, grandfather to eight, and great grandfather to three. Those closest to him experienced his fantastic capacity for storytelling and oral history, his sense of humor, his wisdom. True to form, Dr. Wilson spent his final days teaching - telling


DR. WILSON PAGE 10


The HBCU Advocate


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