Urban Policy Professor Darrick Hamilton recently testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for a briefing on Higher Education.
Professor Hamilton examined the possible civil rights impact that access to and completion of higher education has on minority social economic mobility, focusing specifically on the racial wealth gap and the role higher education has in addressing, or failing to address this gap by improving economic mobility. Wealth, as laid on in the testimony, is the “paramount indicator of economic well being”.
The testimony provided a detailed account of the wealth differences between black and white families and demonstrated that simply increasing access to higher education for black communities does not fully address the income and wealth disparities. In fact, unemployed white heads of households still fared better on average than fully employed black heads of households.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights “was established as an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding federal agency, [and its principle] mission is to inform the development of national civil rights policy and enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws.”
