The mass protests that have gripped America in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last week have been centred on outrage at police brutality and racial injustice targeting black communities.
But they have also been underpinned by frustration that African-Americans still suffer from a large economic gap compared with the rest of the country when it comes to wealth, income and wages, even after the longest US expansion on record and despite record-high pre-pandemic stock markets.
“What we have experienced since the last recession is that those disparities were not minimised, we did not see systematic improvement in people’s economic wellbeing, and we are seeing some of the ramifications of this now,” said Amanda Cage, chief executive of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, who has spent years working to help distressed neighbourhoods in Chicago’s South Side.