Report Defines Challenges Ahead for Black Women

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FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

From NPR News, this is NEWS AND NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya. The different ways that black men and women bear the weight of race in American can make us allies sometimes, competitors at other times. We know about low marriage rates and single motherhood, but did you know that black women also were more likely to get subprime loans? Every year the National Urban League publishes a report called "The State of Black America." This year's is called "In The Black Woman's Voice." It includes essays by some of the most influential black women in America, including Julianne Malveaux.

Julianne Malveaux is also our regular economics contributor and the president of Bennett College. It's good to have you on again.

Dr. JULIANNE MALVEAUX (President, Bennett College): Always a pleasure to be with you, Farai.

CHIDEYA: So you wrote this essay for "The State of Black America" and you talk about something that you call the third burden for African-American women. What is the third burden?

Dr. MALVEAUX: You know, there's been so much commentary this year about race and gender. Does race trump gender? And I think that there's a nuance that we missed, which is that African-American women are connected to African-American men. So that when African-American men are unfairly treated, it gives a burden to African-American women. The best example I can give is the fact that a million more black women work than black men.

Now, there are those who would say, oh gee, this means that African-American women are more advantaged. But I would look at it as saying that African-American women have the burden of having to take on more economic slack in our community.

CHIDEYA: How do you think that affects - and then I want to move back into some more strictly economic topics - but how do you think that affects dynamics on an interpersonal level between black men and women sometimes?

Dr. MALVEAUX: Well, in my essay in "The State of Black America," I attempted to deal with, although I don't think adequately, how the backlash of resentment of rapper types come from perceiving that African-American women are doing better. After all, if you are here in a community and you see some sub-constituency being better off, there's a likelihood of anger and resentment. And I think we've seen that. I think all of the rap music with the, not all of it, but the ones that show black women as gold-diggers, in unflattering ways, are the result of a sort of a backlash saying you're doing better than me, why are you sweating me?

CHIDEYA: So what else really pinged your mind when you were looking at the results of this annual survey? I mean what popped out at you?

Dr. MALVEAUX: Well, you know, Maudine Cooper's essay is just such a brilliant essay whether it talks about the way that social services ignores so many African-American women. I think also Alexis Herman's essay, "You Take From the Bottom to the Top," that looks at corporate women, is important. For me it was important to look at black women in our roundest way, in the most phenomenal manifestation of us, which is to look at all of us and to look at this third burden which I think is so important.

I think that, again, in this year you've got Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and people sort of jockeying, is it race? Is it gender? And I would suggest that we can't ever as African-American women divide ourselves. In other words, you don't get up in the morning and say, oh gee, this is going to be my black day.

CHIDEYA: Right.

Dr. MALVEAUX: And tomorrow is going to be my female day.

CHIDEYA: Right.

Dr. MALVEAUX: We are all of that and it's intertwined and I want us to celebrate our intertwining.

CHIDEYA: Do you think that economists need to dig in deeper into how these intersections of race and gender play out in the workplace? I mean do you think this is something, obviously there are plenty of people who work on it including you. But does it get enough attention and is there enough impetus to really put into place some of the learning that's happened?

Dr. MALVEAUX: I think we have a lot more work to do when we look at race and gender in African-American women in the economy. I do think that the concept of a third burden, which speaks to any number of our economic manifestations, is a useful one. Of course that's self-serving to say, but I would say that anyway. But I also think that we need to look at - as we look at unemployment rates, we look at wealth - one of the pieces in the book that I think is really great is one from Andrea Harris, who talks about the fact that African-American women are more likely than any other group to get subprime loans.

Why is that? Part of it is a function of the burden that we feel in providing for our families. And so I think that economists could do a lot more and so could many others in looking at what it means to be seen as gendered but to operate as race. In other words, your son, your, you know, your cousin, your brother, is someone who's collided with the system. Gender doesn't help you there.

CHIDEYA: There's something else that has gone on with this report, something called the opportunity compact, and it talks about four cornerstones of values of the American dream, the opportunity to thrive, the opportunity to earn, the opportunity to own, and the opportunity to prosper. What do those big concepts mean to you?

Dr. MALVEAUX: You know, the Urban League has been really pivotal, Farai, in attempting to put some data around what it means to be American and then African and American in a society that does not affirm you. And so when you talk about thriving, you're talking about living lives free of property. Talk earning, you're talking about equal pay. When you're talking about owning, the whole home ownership mortgage issue leaps up. You talk about prospering, it's a whole issue of how you get to play in an economy that may be hostile to you.

And so what the League has done over the past several years, since Marc Morial has been president, is attempted to put some numbers around this, to say what does this mean. And what you really see is us treading water and really not improving. There is some improvement in some of the indices, but by and large you are looking at a level or a flat field for African-American people. I don't find that to be alarming. I find it to be disturbing, but the fact is that improving the racial position has not been a priority for anyone in public policy.

And so when we see the result in terms of a very complex index that uses any number, 20 or 30 various kind of indices, you know, you see economics flat. You see health flat. You see that there is a flatness to the way that African-American people have moved through the economy in the last year or so.

CHIDEYA: Now, when you think about what's going on with all of these different aspects, one of the biggest issues really facing the community at this point is housing. And there is a recommendation to adopt a home buyers bill of rights. What's that bill of rights? What would it do?

Dr. MALVEAUX: It would make sure that people had full information about the kind of things they were getting into. Farai, this last five years has been catastrophic for working class people, for African-American people and for others who've attempted to buy. What they've found is that predators have come after them and said, oh, you can get a two percent loan. Well, here's a question. How long can you get the two percent loan? We've had our elders, grandmothers and fathers, who need to get their steps fixed, cost them a grand, two grand maybe. But somehow they've got into some loan that they are encumbered for $40,000.

You've got people who are involved in loans where they are just buying food, where people are saying you can buy a freezer full of food, and the next thing you know their house is on the market. And so the home buyers bill of rights would really ask lenders to give people more information than they have now. And there are many of us who are very sophisticated, who know how to negotiate this, and probably half of all African-American people and Latinos are basically potential victims.

CHIDEYA: Now, last week home equity fell to a record low. The average homeowner's equity dropped to below 50 percent for the first time since World War II, and the equity being, you know, the amount that you actually own as opposed to what the bank owns or someone else owns. What does it really mean that people are living in places that, you know, we say we own but we may not actually have that much in them?

Dr. MALVEAUX: Again, it's the sense of economic vulnerability, the sense that you went out there and bought a home and then you refinanced because someone came after you and said, oh, come on, I've got a great deal for you, and then refinance again. People have been living on their home equity. But those chickens will come home to roost and they are with this new report.

What they suggest is that people don't have as much as they think they do. They are more vulnerable than they think they are. Banks and others are going to be forced to make certain kinds of agreements with people who borrowed from them. And what I'm most concerned about is that no race, no gender, no filters come in to separate people of color and women from their property.

CHIDEYA: On a broader level, there is a report in the Wall Street Journal that the FBI is starting an investigation into the mortgage lender Countrywide for securities fraud. Is this kind of top level action going to help people who are struggling at this moment in time?

Dr. MALVEAUX: You know, the FBI investigation is too little too late and too alarmist. Countrywide didn't break any rules that anyone else did as far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen anything that suggests that FBI should be involved. Here is what needs to be an issue. How do we provide mortgage loans? If we suggest that home ownership is the American dream, who gets to have a dream and who has a nightmare? But for the FBI to come in now to look at Countrywide as opposed to a variety of others seems to be to be a face-saving game on the part of the Bush Administration to make sure that they essentially say we're not going to put up with this.

Now, let me be clear and in full disclosure. My mortgage is a Countrywide mortgage and I just need to say that because I could be accused of favoring Countrywide, which I don't. But I do think that this FBI involvement is amusing. What needs to happen is that if the FBI is investigating, they need to be investigating an industry and not a particular lender.

CHIDEYA: Briefly, do you think that there will be some widespread look at the industry? Will the whole industry be changed?

Dr. MALVEAUX: I think that this is time for the industry to be changed and I think that we're going to see that. There are so many questions that are being raised about what we do about housing, about how much of this is speculation, about how people are being pushed into loans. You know, you've got people who are blaming black people and blaming poor people and saying, well, these people could never have afforded loans anyway. But if they couldn't have afforded them, why did you give them to them?

So we have to look at culpability all around and I think that this is a climate where culpability is going to be examined fully. And I expect that every number of lenders from Merrill Lynch to Countrywide to Citicorp, to others. There are a dozen or so we could look at.

CHIDEYA: We're going to have to end it there. Thank you so much.

Dr. MALVEAUX: Okay, Farai, you always cut me off when I'm rolling.

CHIDEYA: I know. It's just time. Julianne Malveaux, economist and president of Bennett College joined us from WFDD in Greensborough, North Carolina.

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