Author: jnweaver

Quoted: The racial wealth gap began with slavery, but even after the institution was abolished, the gap persisted, said University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor Steve Kantrowitz.

Many Black Americans could not qualify for Social Security, as jobs typically held by Black workers, such as agricultural and domestic positions, were excluded from the program. Black residents also were blocked from getting some home loans and from living in the types of neighborhoods where home values were steady or rising. Such barriers made it nearly impossible for Black people to acquire and accumulate wealth at the rate of white Americans, Kantrowitz said.

“So the end of slavery didn’t mean that Black and white people were suddenly on an equal economic, political, civil footing,” Kantrowitz said. “It meant instead that the institution of slavery had been formally abolished, and disabilities that followed from slavery were supposed to be abolished.”

Andrew Kydd, a new assistant professor, tries to get The New York Times web page to load in his Harvard office — a stark, unlived-in place with a scattering of books.

Tommy Thompson, the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, views television coverage from his office in Washington, D.C., and knows the day’s meeting — a discussion of pandemic flu preparations — is history.

“At the end of the ’90s some intellectuals thought, ‘History is going to be kind of boring for a while,'” says Kydd, now a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“My memory is that 9/11 was unlike anything I’d ever seen before and potentially disastrous in terms of the follow-up. A lot of us were thinking about chemical plants, oil refineries, nuclear power plants. It struck me, if they could do this, they could probably do more. I thought this could be the precursor to a lot more high-casualty attacks.”

The making of the racial wealth gap starts with slavery, but University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor Steve Kantrowitz said after the institution was formally abolished, it manifested in other ways.

Many Black Americans could not qualify for Social Security, as jobs typically held by Black workers, such as agricultural and domestic positions, were excludedfrom the program. Black residents also were blocked from getting some home loans and from living in the types of neighborhoods where home values were steady or rising. Such barriers made it nearly impossible for Black people to acquire and accumulate wealth at the rate of white Americans, Kantrowitz said.

“So the end of slavery didn’t mean that, that Black and white people were suddenly on an equal economic, political, civil footing,” Kantrowitz said. “It meant instead that the institution of slavery had been formally abolished, and disabilities that followed from slavery were supposed to be abolished.”

Quoted: Andrew Ruis, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a book about the origins of school lunch, said universal lunches are good for families as well as children even beyond providing meals to students who need them.

“One of the things that school meal programs have always done, going back to the turn of the century, is that they’re extremely beneficial for parents and in particular for mothers, who tend to bear a larger portion of the child care burden,” he said.