“Racism, sexism, and other ‘isms’ are not simply irrational prejudices, but long-leveraged, strategic mechanisms for exploitation that have benefited some at the expense of others,” he said.

Hamilton, the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and founding director of the Institute on Race and Political Economy at The New School, noted that in a just world, one’s race, gender, or ethnicity “would have no transactional value as it relates to material outcomes.” The pandemic made it abundantly clear that is not the case.

“We should recognize that the biggest pre-existing condition of them all is wealth itself,” he said.

Hamilton’s lecture, “A Moral Responsibility for Economists: Anti-Racist Policy Regimes that Neuter White Supremacy and Establish Economic Security for All,” was the second distinguished economics lecture, which was launched last year by the economics department’s climate committee as a way to enhance diversity and inclusion.

‘Dysfunctional Concentration of Wealth and Power’

Hamilton began by pointing out that even before the pandemic, the United States was afflicted by an “obscene, undemocratic, dysfunctional concentration of wealth and power.” Currently, the top .1% of earners in this country—defined as those earning $1.5 million a year—own as much of the nation’s wealth as the bottom 90 percent of earners. The bottom 50 percent of earners own 1% of the nation’s wealth, he said.

This has affected Black people and other people of color disproportionately, as they’ve been denied economic opportunity through official policies such as redlining in the 1950s and events such as the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. But the narrative of why Black Americans have been unable to attain wealth has not reflected this history, he said.

The Narrative is Wrong

“Much of the framing around the racial wealth gap, including the use of alternative financial service products, focuses on poor financial choices and decision-making on the part of largely Black, Latino, and poor borrowers. The framing is often tied to and derived from a culture of poverty thesis, in which Blacks are presumed to have a low value for and desire for education,” he said.

“The framing is wrong; the directional emphasis is wrong.”

The idea that education alone is the path to prosperity is itself belied by what Hamilton called the “property rights,” which are the advantages that whites have been granted through history by the government.

Disparities in Education and Health

Black college students today are saddled with an average of $53,000 in debt, while white students graduate with an average debt of $33,000. Black college graduates are actually overrepresented in graduate education, relative to their share in the population, he said, but this is not enough. On average, a Black family with a head of the household who dropped out of college still has less wealth than a white family where the head dropped out of high school, he said.

“The fact that a Black expectant mother with a college degree has a greater likelihood of an infant death than a white expectant mother who dropped out of high school, and a Black man with a college degree is three times more likely to die from a stroke than a white man who dropped out of high school—these are all examples of property rights in whiteness,” he said.

Hamilton said that reparations are a necessary remedy but would only be a start. Only by implementing a program such as baby bonds, where government creates investment accounts for infants that give them access to capital when they turn 18, would we get the bold, transformative, anti-racist, anti-sexist policies that are long overdue.

“We need a deeper understanding of how devaluing, or othering, individuals based on social identities like race relates to political notions of deserving and undeserving,” he said.

“The structures of our political economy and race go well beyond individual bigotry as a matter of course.”

Eye-Opening for Students

Andrew Souther, a senior majoring in economics and math at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said that the talk was eye-opening for him, as his senior thesis is focused on behavioral economics, where biases and discrimination are key concepts.

“The language that Dr. Hamilton used in basically describing racism as this very strategic collective investment, as one group strategically investing in this identity of whiteness which has a return and also extracts from other people—that is a really, really powerful concept,” he said.

“It really cuts at something much deeper and much more radical than just conversations about behavioral biases, which of course are important too.”

Sophie Mitra, Ph.D., a professor of economics, said Hamilton’s perspective was an example of a topic students at Fordham might not otherwise be exposed to in the course of their studies, a key goal of the series.

“At a time of extreme polarization in the United States, Dr. Hamilton’s scholarship and anti-racist policy proposals are more important than ever,” she said.

“He powerfully prompted us to think about the need to move from an economy centered on markets and firms to a sustainable moral economy, an economy with, at its core, economic rights, inclusion, and social engagement.”

The full lecture can be viewed here.

At Fordham, about one-third of both undergraduate economics majors and economics faculty are women, while the graduate economics population is made up of about 50% women, according to Sophie Mitra, Ph.D., professor of economics at Fordham and co-director of the disabilities studies minor.

Despite the fact that the University is slightly above the national average in both of those areas, the economics department launched a “climate committee” in 2018 to examine these issues related to underrepresentation and develop resources to “enhance diversity and inclusion in economics at Fordham,” Mitra said.

One of their first initiatives is the “Inaugural Distinguished Lecture in Economics,” featuring Janet Currie, Ph.D., the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and co-director of Princeton’s center for health and wellbeing. The event will take place on Thursday, Dec. 5 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the McNally Amphitheater at the Gabelli School of Business. The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer session and a reception. 

The event was sponsored by the economics department, the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, the faculty of arts and sciences deans, the Economics Society, and the faculty working group on disability. Funding was provided through the economics department, Chief Diversity Officer, and the faculty of arts and sciences deans.

Mitra said they wanted to bring in Currie because her research “goes beyond this narrow and misleading understanding of what economics is about.”

“Currie is a scholar whose work spans labor, public, and health economics,” she said. “She has made fundamental contributions in many areas and is best known for her work on public policy issues affecting child health and well-being. Through this lecture, we would like students to get a taste of the breadth of her illuminating research.”

That’s also why the focus of the lecture, “Child Health and Human Capital,” does not fit with what is often perceived as an economics topic.”

“There is the commonly held notion out there that economics is about money, business, or material resources,” she said. “Economics is a social science that provides ways to understand human behaviors and can pay attention to ethics. It can help contribute to solving a variety of issues, such as improving child health by considering the sorts of economic arrangements and public policies that serve to improve child health.”

Mitra said that the goal is to make this the first in a series of lectures that will feature a “diverse set of scholars that undergraduate students may not hear about” and “scholars that use a variety of approaches and paradigms.”

In addition to offering events, Mitra said that the climate committee is also working to attract potential students who might not have thought about majoring in economics.

“One focus of this committee is to develop initiatives and resources that may help more diverse candidates study economics or at least consider studying economics at the undergraduate level,” she said. “We are considering new course offerings to that end as well as events.”

While the event is open to the entire Fordham community, the program is specifically geared towards undergraduate students who are just starting out in economics.

“Our main purpose is to expose students to a topic and a scholar that they might not typically study in the introductory courses in economics,” Mitra said.

To RSVP, please visit www.curiefordham.eventbrite.com. To learn more about the event, visit www.fordham.edu/info/20930/economics.