When Gwen Grant looks at the socioeconomic gaps between Black people and white people in the Kansas City area, she feels troubled.
“At first glance, you would think, ‘Are we ever gonna be able to make a difference?'” Grant said. “But then you also have to look at these numbers as an opportunity for our community to come together and think about or re-imagine how we’re going to bridge these divides.”
Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, shared statistics Saturday at the 14th Annual Urban Summit Conference at Metropolitan Community College-Kansas City. The data was presented in the 2020 Black/White Equality Index.
More than 100 people attended the conference.
Some of the disparities highlighted in the Equality Index include:
— Black median household income is 62.9% when compared to White household income
— Black home ownership rate is 56% when compared to White home ownership rate
— Black people in the greater Kansas City area are unemployed at rates between 1.5 to 2 times higher than white people
— Black children in greater Kansas City are two to three times more likely than white children to live in poverty or live in a household without a parent in the labor force
— In Jackson County, Black children are three times more likely than white students to be suspended from school for 10 or more days
— Seventy-two percent of murder victims are Black while 20% of murder victims are white
“Our efforts to achieve equality in economics, education, health and social justice are met with powerful forces of resistance that impede our ability to sustain forward movement, especially in the areas of economics and social justice,” Grant said in a statement announcing the findings.
Grant said she would present the report’s findings to the City Council. She hopes officials will use the information to influence their decision making. Grant believes the efforts that are being made so far aren’t enough to close the gap.
“These policies are inadequate to fully address the systemic and pervasive nature of these problems,” Grant said. “So something much more radical has to be done.”
The Urban Summit Conference included discussions on reparations, where government — either on a federal or local level — would pass policies intended to close the wealth gap and other disparities, which were created by centuries of anti-Black racism, including slavery, Jim Crow laws and redlining.
“Although unpopular as it may sound to some, the financial and political tools needed to close the racial wealth gap can come in the form of federal, state, and local reparations for African Americans,” said Ajamu Webster, Urban Summit Annual Conference chair and CEO of DuBois Consultants. “This is what restorative justice looks like.”
Grant isn’t sure if reparations will be passed at a local level. But if they aren’t at first, that’s not going to stop her.
“All I can say is we’re gonna fight for these things,” Grant said. “We’re gonna have a plan and we’re going to talk about what things we can do. We know this is not a sprint my any means.”
Over the summer, Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office said he was exploring how reparations might work in Kansas City.
This story was originally published November 6, 2021 3:03 PM.
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And exactly whose problem is this ? You have to work to have an income, something they don’t seem to understand.
“— Seventy-two percent of murder victims are Black while 20% of murder victims are white”
I.A.W. U.S. Census & 2018 FBI (Table 43a)
Black males make up about 6% of the U.S. population but every year commit ~56% of all the murders and ~54% of all robberies in the U.S… Every year in the U.S. there are ~6,000 African-Americans men, women and children killed and 92% of them were killed by fellow African-Americans.
” — Black children in greater Kansas City are two to three times more likely than white children to live in poverty or live in a household without a parent in the labor force.”
Two to three times more unmarried Black females have multiple children with multiple males and are supported by the taxpayers.
Why do the intelligent Blacks stay in school, learn and become respectable professional, workers and teach their children to be respectable, but a high percentage of the blacks drop out of school, sell and use drugs, live off of government hand outs and whine that others have more than them? And then the professional Democrat politicians promise to give more free stuff so that the foolish blacks will vote for them? Keeping them slaves to the government.
How’s about we compare BLACK ATHLETES to white?! Blacks make up iirc 72% of the NBA. 68% of the NFL. 56 or so% of the MLB, and at LEAST 50% or more for MLS…
YET BLACK MALES represent only 8% or so, of society…..
go pound sand in africa and see what that gets you
Part 1—I try very hard not to be racist—and I hate to use that word because it is overused and abused to the point that the actual definition gets lost in all of today’s drama—but I am finding that my tolerance is beginning to wear quite thin. There are good Black people. There are successful Black people. There are Conservative Black people—and all of these can have a much needed positive impact on the Black community.
But the low information Blacks—the activists and the Media Kings and Queens who are all about being up in your face and who have willingly placed themselves in a historical time where they didn’t even exist—where they did not endure the oppression they have adopted as a battle cry for reparations that they do not even deserve nor do Whites deserve to have to pay them.
Part 2—I have just about had it with this resurgence of a slavery mentality among an ill-informed segment of the Black population based solely on distorted history and Liberal propaganda and divisiveness. I am tired of **** being shoveled in my face that, because I am White, I owe them something that I had nothing to do with. I’m truly tired of it. Even celebrity Blacks who have done well for themselves like Barack and Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Spike Lee—beat the drum of how downtrodden Blacks are and how White Supremacy is to blame—and look at how they live. Why can’t they serve as spokespeople for the opportunities that America offers to everyone—Blacks included—instead of stirring up hate and discontent all the time?
I understand that it is the vocal ones making all the noise who are creating the picture that we all see, so I appeal to the members of the Black community who know better and who can set things straight with those promoting all the nonsense—get through to your people and denounce the Liberal campaign for division and unrest. Black animosity giving way to Black entitlement funded by Whites is wearing really thin. Do something about it, will ya?
Let’s start with the Great Society which with all its added on entitlement programs broke up solid black family households with restrictive rules that created a dependent society which was quickly taken up by the race baters to sew the divide we now have contrary to the vision of MLK. By the 2010’s this was ingrained in the mind that there was conspiracy against blacks much of which was generated claiming to be leaders but were prifiting by the discension. Reparations is a con game that won’t really help anyone, not even the ‘leaders’ who advocate for it because it will never be enough.