2021 Authors/Essays

The New Normal: Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive

Tim Murphy

Board Chair, National Urban League; Chief Administrative Officer, Mastercard

On behalf of the National Urban League’s board of trustees, I am proud to present this year’s edition of the State of Black America®: The New Normal: Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive.

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Meeting the Moment: The Urgent Case for Investing in Child Care

Erin Robinson

Campaign Manager, Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress

For too long, the United States has refused to support children and families, significantly underinvesting in child care and early education, hamstringing our economy, and making it harder for parents to work.

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Working Policies for Working Moms

Congresswoman Katie Porter

Orange County, California — 45th Congressional District

COVID-19 has been a disaster. Communities across the country, from Columbus, Georgia, to Costa Mesa, California, have mourned the loss of over half a million loved ones. Our economy shed millions of jobs, and families’ budgets have been stretched thin.

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Minding the Wealth Gap: Putting Policy in Place to Increase Black Wealth

Margaret C. Simms, Ph.D.

Nonresident Fellow, Urban Institute

When asked to describe the economic well-being of African Americans, there is a tendency to focus on income, employment, or poverty rates. While these factors are important, they are not the only measures of economic well-being. Wealth is another key measure.

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First Draw, Second Draw: Lessons Learned From the Paycheck Protection Program

Lisa Cook, Ph.D.

Professor, Departments of Economics and International Relations, Michigan State University; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research

Prior to the life-altering appearance of the coronavirus, most small businesses reported being in “good shape,” with 73% reporting good or stable financial health. However, depending on the race or ethnicity of the owner, the financial health of these businesses varied greatly.

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Walking the Walk: Lilly Acts, Advocates and Partners for Racial Justice

Tiffany R. Benjamin

Senior Director, Social Impact and President of the Eli Lilly & Company Foundation

Lilly’s purpose is to discover, develop and deliver new medicines to make life better for people around the world. It’s complex work that requires people with diverse skills and perspectives who challenge each other to be the best we can be every day.

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Changing the Trajectory of Health for Black America

Michael Sneed

Chief Communication Officer, Johnson & Johnson

When I was growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a towering figure in my life. In fact, my childhood address was just a few miles from where Dr. King and his family temporarily relocated in 1965 to lead a civil rights charge in our city.

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The Future of Work Should be Based on Where We’re Going, Not Where We Used to Be

Tony Xu

CEO and Co-founder of DoorDash

More than a year has passed since COVID-19 began to ravage our healthcare system, devastate our economy, and lay bare how systemic racism has contributed to the suffering of communities of color.

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Removing the Roadblocks to a Dream Deferred

David S. Huntley

Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Compliance Officer, AT&T Inc.

Many runners speak of a runner’s high. It’s a temporary state of euphoria when you feel as though space and time disappear and you can push past pain and exhaustion. I would know.

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Mitigating the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Black Communities Through Fintech

	Kristen E. Broady, Ph.D., MBA Fellow, Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
	Tiffany N. Ford, Ph.D., MPH Research Analyst, Future of the Middle Class Initiative, Brookings Institution
	Andre M. Perry, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program

The progress Black and Hispanic families have made since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have not shielded these communities from systemic barriers to wealth accumulation due to discrimination, poverty, and a shortage of social connections. While fintech cannot close the racial wealth gap, its technologies and innovations can be exploited to explicitly promote modern era financial literacy and generational wealth building in Black and brown communities.

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Confronting Racism: A Public Health Crisis

Mathew McCurdy, MPH

Director of Programs, Health DesignED: The Acute Care Design + Innovation Center, Department of Emergency Medicine at Emory University; President & co-founder, BLKHLTH Inc.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted preexisting economic, social, and health inequities in the United States and has exposed the nation’s deficient public health and health care infrastructure.

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Telehealth: Bridging the Digital Divide To Increase Access to Quality Care

Congresswoman Robin Kelly

Illinois — 2nd Congressional District

Our country is facing a health care crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we watched as some communities experienced skyrocketing COVID-19 cases, complications, and deaths while others had ample supplies of personal protective equipment and mass testing sites.

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The Promise of Partnerships for Health Equity

	Dr. Lisa A. Cooper Founder & Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity; Director, Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute
	Chioma Onuoha Research Assistant, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity
	Dr. Rachel J. Thornton Associate Director, Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute; Clinical Services Executive Director, Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Population Health

Following a year of excess pandemic deaths, job loss, residential evictions, food insecurity, police violence, and inequities in education and health care access due to the digital divide, Black Americans are experiencing “community bereavement.” We need a restorative justice plan that ensures access to COVID-19 vaccinations and overall health care and creates opportunities for improvements in education, employment, and living conditions.

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The Medical Sector’s New Normal: Understanding Racism is a Public Health Crisis and Addressing Social Risk Factors

	Amanda Merck Digital Content Curator, Salud America!
	Dr.Amelie G. Ramirez Director, Salud America! & The Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio

The United States should have a goal to achieve health equity, where everyone has an equal opportunity to be their healthiest. That means we must address racism across medical and non-medical sectors. We need cities to declare racism a public health and safety crisis and commit to systemic change.

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Availability, Adoption, and Access: The Three Pillars of Broadband Equity

The Honorable Geoffrey Starks

United States Federal Communications Commission

As a Federal Communications Commissioner, I believe deeply that broadband access is a civil right. That means — just like the right to vote — it impacts nearly all fundamental aspects of our lives, from health to housing, and must be guaranteed.

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Passing the Torch: The Life and Times of Vernon Jordan and the Lessons of His Legacy

Thasunda Brown Duckett

President & CEO, TIAA

The extraordinary life of a prominent Black man and the painful deaths of too many other Black Americans over the past year serve as a stark reminder of the conflicting state of race relations in our nation.

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Testimonial: The Deadly Intersection of Race and Policing in America

Tiffany N. Ford, Ph.D., MPH

Research Analyst, Future of the Middle Class Initiative, Brookings Institution

Katrina, a 47-year-old Black woman participating in a December 2019 focus group of Black middle-class women in Wichita, summed up her feelings about the violence and inequality that Black people face in the U.S.

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One Person, One Vote: Our Fight for a Free and Fair Democracy

Eric Holder Jr.

Chairman, National Democratic Redistricting Committee

For as long as America has existed, two opposing forces have fought over how we express and confer the rights and privileges of citizenship, freedom, and equality. Those who believe in a more inclusive nation have been countered by those who seek to maintain their own power.

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Policing Equity’s Pillars for Reconstructing Public Safety

Kimberly Burke

Research Fellow, Center for Policing Equity

The survival of Black communities necessitates that we make law enforcement less deadly. The emancipation of Black communities from interlocking systems of oppression necessitates a reconstruction of the concept of safety.

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Anti-Voting Laws Restrict Access to the Ballot

Eliza Sweren-Becker

Counsel, Voting Rights and Elections Program, Brennan Center for Justice

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, voters turned out in record numbers in 2020 — whether they voted in person or absentee.[1] During and after the 2020 election, then-President Trump raised frivolous claims that voter fraud, particularly in

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Ensuring Social and Economic Justice on Behalf of Communities of Color

Marcia L. Fudge

Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

On May 31^st, our country marked the 100^th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. We remember this day as one of the most painful moments in our nation’s history. A day when a community was devasted by hate.

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Investing in a New Normal: Reimagining Public Health and Safety

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Decarcerating America: How the Federal Government Can Incentivize States To Reverse Mass Incarceration

	Lauren-Brooke Eisen Director, Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law
	Hernandez Stroud Counsel, Justice Program of the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law

The federal government should no longer subsidize mass incarceration and should instead incentivize states to reverse the era of excess punitiveness and shrink the carceral state. One powerful way to do so would be for the president to champion and Congress to pass the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act (RMIA) to unwind these incentives by ensuring that federal grants are sent only to states that reduce incarceration.

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The New Normal: How Canceling Student Debt Can Create a More Equitable Society

	Ashley Harrington Federal Advocacy Director & Senior Policy Counsel, Center for Responsible Lending
	Wade Henderson Interim President, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights & Leadership Conference Education Fund; Principal, Wade J. Henderson, LLC

Once considered ‘the great equalizer,’ college and college degrees have failed to live up to their promise for too many Black students and graduates. As we begin to build our new normal, canceling student debt and fixing our broken higher education system is nothing short of essential. We can—and must—do better than continue to normalize the notion that higher education should lead to a lifetime of debt.

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