By Marilyn Strickland
President/CEO, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
Sixty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Morehouse College, and challenged the graduating class to “remain awake, alert and creative” as revolution swept the United States and the world. This revolution, he noted, was not just social and political in nature, but also scientific and technological. To make it through the revolution with one’s humanity intact, Dr. King advised the students to remember that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality”—what affects one affects us all.
Dr. King was a visionary who anticipated the rapid pace of change and disruption in how we work and how the world functions. The Seattle region is now a global center for the innovation economy and we must ask ourselves how this benefits our under-served communities.
As we commemorate what would have been Dr. King’s 90thbirthday, I urge us to remember that in his final years, Dr. King became more pointed about economic justice, noting that “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality.” I believe that our focus on advancement opportunities for the employed is just as important as addressing unemployment for African Americans and other historically marginalized communities.
Metrics such as contracting rates, homeownership, and household wealth drive this point home. The disparities are real, not imagined. Washington State’s Office of Minority & Women’s Business Enterprises reportsthat in the five years before the repeal of affirmative action or I-200, state agencies and colleges spent 10% of their contracting and procurement dollars with certified minority and woman-owned businesses.
Since the passage of I-200 in 1996, that rate is now 3%, a decrease of 70%. The number of certified firms has declined by nearly half. This means that minority and woman-owned businesses were deprived of $3.5 billion in revenue.
A 2017 Seattle Times analysis of black home ownership shows that among the 100 U.S. counties with the largest black populations, King County is ranked 95, at 28%. This is a sharp fall from the county’s rate in 1970, which was 49%. It is also well below the national average rate of black homeownership, 42 % – a figure that has remained steady over the past 50 years.
This translates into racial disparities in household wealth that persist today. Data from the Federal Reservefound that in 2016, white families had a median net worth of $171,000, compared with $17,600 for black families and $20,700 for Latino families. The same report found that almost one in five black households has zero or negative net worth, double the proportion for white households.
What steps can we take in 2019 to help advance Dr. King’s vision of economic justice?
- Vote in every election armed with facts.
- Support minority-owned businesses.
- Keep up with technological changes in your workplace and insist on paid training to upgrade your skills and earning potential.
- Hold school board members accountable for policies and practices to address equity in instruction, discipline, advanced placement classes and paid internships.
- Contact your state legislators and urge them to support the restoration of affirmative action in Washington State.
Finally, if you are in the position to recruit, hire and promote talent, do so through the lens of racial equity – with consideration for those who may need a second chance to get back on track. Working together, we can honor the legacy of Dr. King on January 15 and every other day of the year.
