Narrowing the racial divide of US wealth will still require a lot of work, says Treasury secretary

The U.S. Treasury took crucial steps last year to address long-standing racial economic injustices, but it still has “a lot more work” ahead of it to close the racial divide in wealth, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday. Monday (17).

Yellen told a meeting hosted by the Reverend Al Sharpton and his human rights group National Action Network that the Treasury is working to right economic wrongs pointed out by former civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream” speech. I have a dream) from 1963.

“He knew that economic injustice was linked to the greater injustice he was fighting against. From Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the present day, our economy has never worked fairly for black Americans — or, for that matter, for any North. American” non-white, Yellen said over a breakfast honoring King.

Jim Crow refers to the laws put in place in Southern states in the decades after the US Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, to legalize racial segregation and deprive black citizens.

Over the past year, she said, the Treasury has completed its first equity review, hired its most diverse leadership team ever and appointed its first adviser on racial equity, while creating a Covid-19 support plan to address better for non-white communities.

“Of course, no program and no administration can fulfill the hopes and aspirations that Dr. King had for our country,” Yellen said. “There’s still a lot more work the Treasury needs to do to bridge the racial divide in wealth.”

Data from the Fed (Federal Reserve) shows that white families owned 85.5% of the wealth of the United States in 2019, although they represent 60% of the population, while black families had 4.2% and Latinos, 3.1%. Those numbers have changed little from 30 years ago, according to USAFacts.org, a non-partisan nonprofit.