Chapter 6: Equity is the Superior Growth Model

In many ways, America has been here before, confronting an epic financial crisis with a charismatic, new president known for his soaring rhetoric, admired First Lady, and bold promises to break, sharply, from the policies of his unpopular predecessor.  

The epoch, of course, was the 1930s, the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the crisis the Great Depression. In the midst of the deepest financial catastrophe the industrialized world has ever known. Roosevelt’s response was nothing less than to re-invent America with a bold package of programs aimed at putting the country back to work, rebuilding its infrastructure, and protecting vulnerable persons and communities from the free-market’s worst excesses.

But if Roosevelt’s New Deal is a model for how this nation can recover from its worst economic collapse in 80 years, it also offers a profound lesson on how even the grandest plan can fall short of the mark if it doesn’t specifically address the results of America’s Original Sin: systematic racial injustice and exclusion.

As we noted in our first chapter, far from seizing an opportunity to reform longstanding disparities in the U.S. economy, parts of the New Deal reinforced and even deepened this enduring racial hierarchy.  Today, with the nation hemorrhaging jobs, families losing their homes, climate change threatening the planet, and an integrated global economy that does not wait for stragglers, America needs another new deal—or a new New Deal—to rebuild our economic and environmental foundation, and strengthen it to better withstand any storm that comes our way in the future.  But to be successful, this new New Deal will have to address the realities of racial inequality and inequity forthrightly and intelligently.

America is at a demographic, economic, and environmental crossroads. How we act today will determine whether we embrace our multicultural future, forge an economy that delivers for all, and save a planet threatened by our wasteful consumption. Yet despite the multiplicity of challenges, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this nation is tasked with answering one fundamental question:  What will America be?

We must capitalize on a renewed enthusiasm for change to craft a bold vision for the country we want our children to inherit, and back up that vision with an action plan infused by our collective wisdom and creativity, and by the fundamental American ideals of fairness and democracy.  There has never been a better opportunity to make good on America's promise.