Duke University professor offers unorthodox solutions for U.S. income gap
As a part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. 50th Anniversary Speaker Series, William Darity, Jr. spoke about economic justice Wednesday at Elon. Darity serves as the chair of the African and African American Studies department at Duke University. His research focuses on economic inequality. The talk focused on his plan to end unemployment and racially fueled wage discrimination. “The United States is characterized by a long-standing pattern of large structural racial inequality that has deepened further as a result of the economic down-turn,” Darity said. Despite the efforts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the unemployment gap and the racial gap have remained about the same nationwide. The joblessness rate for black male teen high school dropouts is 95 percent, according to Remapping Debate, an advocacy group based in New York. African-Americans with some college education or an associate’s degree earn less than white high school dropouts, on average.
