With regard to all the recent public discourse on race and racism, I say this: Highlighting, protesting and reducing instances of excessive force by police is important. Curtailing violent crime among young black men deserves new urgency, especially in Baltimore. But more important is the need for a populist movement to change an economic system that leaves millions of Americans — black, white and brown — running in place or falling behind.
The latter might not carry the emotional weight of the first two, but it certainly feeds them at their roots.
You want fewer confrontations between police officers and young black men? That requires two things — serious and sustained efforts to end racial profiling within police departments, and living-wage jobs for the young men who would choose the street because they think the opportunities are better there.
You want fewer young men ending up shot to death? Then get more boys to finish high school and train for mid- to high-skill occupations, either through college or apprenticeships. Young men and women need hope that there's a way out of poverty. Encouraging words are great, but real hope is an education or training for a job that supports a family and provides a path to at least the middle class.
I even heard a CEO say something like this.
All right, maybe it was a former CEO (Norman Augustine, former chief executive at Lockheed Martin). But it's something.
Augustine chaired a commission on improving Maryland's business climate, and he actually mentioned "income inequality" as a troubling phenomenon. In an interview after the commission issued its report, he noted that, in one of the wealthiest states in the country, 44 percent of our public school kids qualify for free and reduced lunches because their families are poor. "That's not a formula for success in the long term," Augustine said, mentioning K-12 education as a way to address income inequality.
Of course, it takes taxpayer dollars to keep funding public education, and even more tax dollars if Maryland goes fully with prekindergarten.
But this brings me to another area of economic inequality — a tax system that favors the wealthy and leaves less money to fund schools.
A new study from the nonprofit Maryland Center on Economic Policy shows that the state's poor and middle class pay a greater share of their annual income in state and local taxes than the wealthiest families do.
"Low- and moderate-income taxpayers, those making less than $67,000 and who are more likely to be people of color, pay the highest share of their household incomes in state and local taxes," the report said. "The top 1 percent of Maryland taxpayers, those making more than $481,000, are more likely to be white and pay the lowest share of their household income in state and local taxes."
The report said Marylanders in the lowest 20 percent (below $24,000 per year) pay an average of 9.7 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes while Maryland's top 1 percent pays only 6.7 percent. (Our 1 percenters, the report says, average $1.6 million in annual income. The state leads the nation in millionaires per capita, according to a market study published in January.)
I've seen a lot of reports on income disparity and skewed taxes. But the report from the Maryland Center on Economic Policy stood out because of the racial factor in its analysis.
Here I was, seeing income inequality as a sprawling common ground for blacks, whites and browns — a place where race disappears and working-class outrage over economic disparity becomes a uniting, driving force. It presents a great opportunity for a broad coalition and a populist movement.
And yet there's a racial divide even here.
The report said black Marylanders are nearly twice as likely as whites to be among the poorest 20 percent (less than $24,000 in annual income) while white Marylanders are almost twice as likely as blacks to be in the richest 20 percent (income greater than $111,000). The report said blacks and Hispanics pay more in taxes as a share of their income than do whites.
Benjamin Orr, executive director of the center, says his group based conclusions on census data.
"We don't have actual taxes paid by race — tax records are confidential — so I can't give you an exact figure," he says. "What we do in this report is say that African-Americans are more likely to be making less than $24,000 per year. That income group [pays taxes] at a higher rate than those making more than $111,000, which is the group white Marylanders are most likely to be in."
While economic disparities disproportionately affect blacks — about 323,000 "persons of color" were in Maryland households that made less than $45,000 a year in 2013, according to Orr — there were 332,000 whites in the same bracket. That's more than 650,000 in the bottom 40 percent. That's a good starting point for a coalition and a movement.
Dan Rodricks column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. He is also host of "Midday" on WYPR-FM.