Mayor Benjamin hails Mike Bloomberg’s record on creating economic equality for African Americans

Every year around Martin Luther King Jr. Day I take stock of the prior 12 months and reflect on the availability of opportunity for everyone in my city and across America.

I celebrate the advances, pray over the setbacks and consider the world that I want to help create going forward.

I face the reality that statistically speaking, genius is spread across every ZIP code in this great country — but that opportunity is not. The great challenge that our great America continues to face is equal opportunity.

The strength of the American Experiment is that it has always featured individuals from all walks of life. For generations there have been contributions — and for generations there have still been so many who have overwhelmingly felt left behind. Remarkably, however, there has never been an abandonment of hope that the tantalizing promise of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution would one day fully apply to all Americans.

Economic inequality data provides a stark contrast: 51 percent of African Americans who are born into the lowest fifth of the earnings distribution will remain there at age 40 — compared to only 23 percent of whites who are born into the same quintile. There is a huge divide between black and white wealth, and it is a divide that represents a deep moral problem that is holding the nation back.

On his last day on Earth in April 1968, King said in Memphis that we can ”get more together than we can apart.”

Those words hold true today.

If Americans are left behind, the whole nation suffers and we will never reach our full collective potential.

A fundamental component of wealth creation is the American dream of home ownership. But for African Americans, it has been a fraught road blocked by red-lining and racism — a challenge faced by many communities over the course of time.

Mike Bloomberg knows firsthand the benefits of home ownership and community, and he also knows how difficult it can be to achieve for people who are viewed as the “other.”

Mike’s family was Jewish, and his parents could afford a home in Medford, Mass., in a nice neighborhood with good schools. But nobody wanted Jewish neighbors, and the deal got done in the end only after the real estate broker for Mike’s family posed as the buyer. Restricting Mike’s family from obtaining that home might have cost America the 20,000 jobs he created in his business — and the nearly 500,000 jobs Mike also helped to create while serving three terms as the mayor of New York City.

How many African Americans have been left out of the equation because of systemic discriminatory practices?

How much greatness has been squandered because of that?

Now, as a presidential candidate, Mike is working on the home ownership problem.

He has set a goal of creating 1 million new first-time African American homeowners by utilizing an innovative down-payment loan assistance plan. He wants to help people participate in the banking system and be recognized by credit scoring companies. He is calling for the enforcement of fair lending laws. He wants to limit foreclosures and evictions — and he wants to increase the supply of affordable housing.

These are bold and promising steps, and this represents a bold and promising start.

In Columbia we know that these sorts of interventions work: we have leveraged down payment assistance, low-interest loans and grants to create nearly $200 million in new affordable and workforce housing over the past several years. These smart policies are working here on the ground in Columbia.

We also maintain a very significant depository and transactional relationship with Optus Bank, which is South Carolina’s only African American-owned bank. It is a relationship that has brought so many African Americans into the banking sphere, and Mike’s plan will support banks like Optus.

Mike is also determined to double the number of African American businesses by investing in training and support to increase African American entrepreneurship.

We know this works, too.

Through our city’s Office of Business Opportunities we have significantly increased minority contracting opportunities and rolled out the Fast Track and Next-Level programs to train hundreds of minority-owned and women-led businesses to grow and prosper and to effectively do business with the city.

We are all interconnected and racial inequality harms every American; it depresses overall economic growth. Our GDP could be 6 percent higher by 2028 if the racial wealth gap were closed, and we would be adding $1.5 trillion to the American economy.

Civil rights are at the core of the American experience, and basic freedoms are a prerequisite for realizing every American’s full potential. That’s why my wish for 2020 is that every American will participate in and profit from the great opportunities that America offers. We all win together.

Achieving equity won’t be easy: it will require talent, leadership and experience. Mike Bloomberg is ready for the challenge, and I look forward to helping him change the lives of all Americans.

Mayor Steve Benjamin is the national co-chair of Democratic Party presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg’s campaign.

This story was originally published January 20, 2020 at 9:54 AM.