At the Democratic National Convention, former First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a speech supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, who made history as the first Black woman to lead a major party's presidential ticket. Perhaps the most memorable quote came from her response to former president Donald Trump — "Who's going to tell him that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs?" While Trump claimed that immigrants were taking Black jobs, this was widely seen as racism on the campaign trail, as his message leaned into the notion that Black people should only perform menial labor. In Mrs. Obama's speech, she pushed back, making it clear that a Black job could be the presidency or any position a Black person wants to fill. Katie Rogers in The New York Times suggested she effectively "turned Trump's 'black jobs' line against him."
Another quote that's received far less attention centered on barriers to Black Americans' upward mobility. Nevertheless, the former first lady should be credited with exposing the racial hierarchy at a time when many are endorsing a colorblind worldview. Michelle Obama argued, "Most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth." The "us," she was undoubtedly referring to, are Black Americans, the group with the least wealth in the country. While her delivery was crystal clear, it may have been cloudy to those not up-to-speed on racial policy discourse. Isn't affirmative action designed to help Black people and other racial minorities, and what does any of this have to do with generational wealth, some may wonder? So, let's examine this matter in detail.
While affirmative action policies can alleviate discrimination impacting a variety of marginalized groups, most Americans assume these policies always center around "race." Some schools employ socioeconomic status or gender-based affirmative action policies. However, the only type the Supreme Court banned was race-based affirmative action policies. Conservative justices claimed these policies were unfair to non-Black applicants. However, their decision overlooked the unequal investment between predominately Black and White schools and other factors contributing to academic outcomes. On the surface, the official implementation of affirmative action policies has nothing to do with generational wealth. However, Mrs. Obama's use of the phrase as a rhetorical device exposed the benefits afforded to many White Americans. Consider that the racist laws and policies of the Jim Crow era did more than harm Black people by depriving them of opportunities. This system simultaneously benefited White people by granting them access. Thus, it makes sense that Michelle Obama referred to this phenomenon as the "affirmative action of generational wealth," as it describes the cumulative impact of this inherited privilege.
If we want to live in a country where citizens have equal opportunities, then we must consider the inherent injustice that Black Americans have been deprived of to amass and transfer generational wealth. Neither the abolition of slavery nor the passage of civil rights legislation was sufficient to mitigate the damage caused by one hundred and eighty-eight years of legalized racism. As Ira Katznelson, a political scientist and historian, noted, "You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want and do as you desire, and choose the leaders as you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." And yet, that's precisely what America did, which is why many white people benefit from the "affirmative action of generational wealth," while their Black counterparts don't.
While Americans often consider their social standing as reflective of their willingness to work hard and nothing else, this myth of meritocracy ignores the impact of generational wealth. Taney (2022) found that grandparents' net wealth accumulation is "strongly determinative of the net wealth holdings of their adult grandchildren." This suggests that the wealth many white families created during the Jim Crow era, which shut Black Americans out of opportunities, was indeed passed down to modern-day white Americans. While segregationists did not refer to their whites-only policies as affirmative action, they were allocating resources to one group and not others. However, we mustn't conflate efforts to fan the flames with those trying to put them out. An important distinction is that while race-based affirmative action policies attempted to mitigate lasting disparities, racist policies exasperated the gap between groups.
Research has shown that gaps in racial wealth impact health disparities. Boen et al. (2020) found that while savings, stock ownership, and homeownership improved health, debt contributed to poor health. The findings revealed that differences in wealth are key to explaining differences in Black-White health outcomes. Furthermore, differences in survival rates were mediated largely by differences in household wealth (Himmelstein et al., 2022). Their simulation revealed that issuing reparations payments to close the racial wealth gap between Black and White people reduced the racial inequalities in longevity. In other words, Black Americans have a shorter life expectancy compared to white Americans, but this disparity could be alleviated by closing the racial wealth gap. Levy (2022) suggested that these disparities extend even among Black homeowners, who were doubly disadvantaged to white people "in the neighborhood-wealth relationship."
Many white Americans benefit from the "affirmative action of generational wealth," that Michelle Obama identified in her speech at the Democratic National Convention. However, the country has not supported restorative justice measures to fix the problem. Indeed, many white Americans have no desire at all to discuss racial disparities, let alone close the gap. Some claim they don't see race at all. So, while it's essential to identify the barriers many Black Americans face to upward mobility, this social problem cannot be solved simply by shining a light on the injustice but by building a consensus that these conditions must change. One of the reasons her speech will be remembered beyond this election cycle is her ability to expose the irony within conservative political discourse. From clarifying that a Black job may be any job, including the commander-in-chief, to revealing how white Americans have often benefited from generational wealth, her speech left no stone unturned.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Allison Gaines' work on Medium.
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