The U.S. economy has never worked fairly for Black Americans Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a speech delivered Monday.
King said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that “America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.” He called it ”a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe the bank of justice is bankrupt!”
From Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to the present day, our economy has never worked fairly for Black Americans.
The administration of President
Joe Biden has sought to ensure that no economic institution fails to work for people of color. Equity was built into the American Rescue Plan so that communities of color would get pandemic relief, and Treasury is injecting $9 billion into Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions traditionally poorly served by the financial sector.
“There is still much more work Treasury needs to do to narrow the racial wealth divide,” she said.