In June 1963, there were two people in Washington, D.C. — from opposite ends of the economic spectrum — obsessing about the nation’s crisis over racial inequality.
The first was President John F. Kennedy.
The other was a frustrated cab driver from the City’s southeast section.
From the time the cab driver had been in high school, he’d aspired to do great things, the most important of which was to accomplish a feat that had escaped every member of his family before him: break a cycle of poverty that had endured in his family since before the Civil War and realize the dream of entry into the middle class.
He knew the odds were long. Born at the deadly intersection between race and poverty, he’d seen how scores of people just like him had failed in their own efforts to break free from poverty’s grip. He just believed that he would succeed where so many others had failed.
He put together his grand plan while still in high school. Having spent his formative years steering clear 0f drug peddlers and petty thieves in southeast, D.C., he figured he’d join the military to learn a trade. He was certain the education and skills he gained would pave the way to a good paying job at an airline after his service was complete — and finally get the family on the road to realizing the American dream.
In the spring of ’57, he walked straight from his graduation ceremony to a recruiter’s office to join the Air Force. Stationed at Chennault AFB in Louisiana, where he met his bride, he spent the next four years becoming one of the finest jet mechanics the Air Force had ever seen.
The young couple were certain the country they believed in the way other people believed in their religion would reward his grit, hard work and expertise.
Unfortunately, they were dead wrong.
In 1961, the man was honorably discharged and packed his bags the same day to move back to his hometown of Washington, D.C with his wife to start his job hunt. At first, he received several calls for interviews. But the hiring process always ended abruptly when he appeared for his interviews and they saw he was colored.
The young man wasn’t going to give up on his dream — or his family — easily. Determined to provide for his family, he started driving a cab full time. At first, he told himself it was only temporary. Dr. King was marching. JFK was talking about his high hopes that the country would change. He believed somehow things would get better and he would find a job that would change his family’s luck. But before he knew it, the days had turned into weeks and the weeks into months and it became clear that his fate would be the same as every member of his family who had come before him.
The system was rigged against him, and there was no beating it.
In June 1963, he headed over to the Capitol to pick up a fare that would alter the course of his family’s destiny.
The man who got in the back of his cab was Hobart Taylor Jr. Taylor worked for Jack Kennedy and explained that the President was struggling with the question of how to open opportunity in American industry to all Americans. He’d appointed Taylor to serve as executive vice chairman of the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (later to become the EEOC), tasked with coming up with a comprehensive legislative agenda that might address the crisis.
After Taylor heard the young man’s story, everything changed.
Taylor helped him find a job in his chosen field. A job that gave him an opportunity to earn his way into the middle class.
It was also a job that altered the course of my destiny and made my life — college, law school and a more than twenty-year career practicing law — possible.
That cab driver was my dad.
As Election Day quickly approaches, candidates on both sides of the aisle find themselves confronting a related crisis to one facing President Kennedy back in ’63. The crisis of income inequality.
Initially dismissed as an obsession of the left, this summer’s report from Standard & Poor confirms the same conclusions from other non-partisan institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — inequality is rising dramatically, and opportunity is declining just as fast.
There are too many facts, figures and metrics now available for anyone in any corner of the political world to deny the gravity of the problem. 400 American families now have more wealth than the bottom 155 million Americans combined. Globally, the 85 richest people on the planet have more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent. That’s 85 people with more wealth than three and a half billion.
While the remedies to address the crisis tend to differ depending on what position the advocate occupies on the political spectrum, one solution is now consistently referred to as the time-tested way to fight income inequality: increase the access to vocational and higher education. From the American Enterprise Institute to Brookings to The Atlantic, we keep hearing that the widening gap in income reflects the rising payoff for a college education and other skills.
But here’s the rub:
While it’s true that no world power has been able to achieve sustained economic development without substantial investment in human capital, and higher education is the key to upward mobility for most Americans, the manner in which education drives growth and social mobility is greatly affected by social, civil and economic policy.
My dad was a case in point. He possessed the training, education and know-how necessary to succeed in a complex field, but he was operating in a social, civil and economic environment that wasn’t going to reward it. It took a comprehensive legislative agenda that included a civil rights act, a voting rights act, and an act prohibiting housing discrimination to even begin addressing the problem. The same is true today. While higher or specialized education will dramatically improve an individual’s chance of entering and staying in the ranks of the middle class, government policies are still what determine what people can do with their education.
A legislative agenda targeted solely toward increasing opportunities for higher education—or attempting to assist the millions of Americans drowning in student loan debt — sadly won’t move the needle on income inequality. Effectively addressing this leviathan requires Congress to identify and then execute a broad legislative agenda — as we did a generation ago to combat racial inequality — that includes tax, minimum wage and corporate subsidy reform. It also might provide the path for a courageous politician to alter the course of someone else’s destiny.
Gary H. Collins, www.garyhcollins.com, is the president of the Council for a Livable World. He’s the author of The Last Election: A Novel of Politics, available now on Amazon.com.