Andre Perry’s Prescription for Improving the Quality of Life in Black Communities

If you are looking for strategies to improve the quality of life and wealth in Black communities, look no further than Andre Perry’s new book entitled Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It. While focusing on Black communities, it is likely that the wealth building methods he discusses would be effective in most underserved communities in this country.

A scholar at the Brookings Institution, Andre Perry sets out in this book to improve the quality of life in Black communities. He states at the outset that his statistical analysis focuses on comparing outcomes in Black communities across the county. He selects life expectancy as a primary variable because “life expectancy summarizes the biological and nonbiological factors, including racist policies, the influence a person’s life.”

Perry’s econometric analysis finds thirteen variables that influence life expectancy including the rate of Black homeownership, college attainment, median household income, the rate of business ownership, the foreign-born share of Black adults, air pollution, and firearm fatalities per capita. The bulk of the book discusses strategies for improving life expectancy by addressing each of these thirteen factors.

While each of these factors are important, it seems that building wealth is one of the first things that should be done in Black communities. For example, wealthier communities have better educational outcomes for children; it is very difficult for impoverished communities to improve schooling first without addressing limited wealth and incomes in the neighborhoods feeding the schools. Likewise, small business ownership often hinges on homeownership. He states, “Most people start their businesses with equity they’ve accrued by owning their home.”

This emphasis on building wealth through increases in homeownership and small business ownership points to a need for a reinvigorated and community-centered Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which requires banks to meet the credit needs in low- and moderate-income communities. Accordingly, Perry’s book is a good pairing with my new book on CRA called Ending Redlining through a Community-Centered Reform of the Community Reinvestment Act.

Another major theme in the book is that action to improve life expectancy in Black communities must be done through collective action. Perry is not enamored of famous Black entertainers and other icons that assert that Black billionaires can be the saviors of communities. Instead, he points out that communities too often experience discrimination and displacement because corporations located outside of the neighborhood come in and swoop up property and then charge exorbitant and wealth-extracting rents from Black tenants and small businesses.

Perry discusses alternative approaches to traditional development including engaging the Black community in large scale economic development plans and offering residents equity stakes in the developments. Likewise, he describes collective approaches to homeownership including cooperative housing and land trusts. On the education front, he outlines an innovative approach that applies history or science instruction to tackling issues in the community to make school more relevant and exciting for students.

For a fresh and comprehensive approach to wealth building and community revitalization, you should read Perry’s book and can use it a resource when researching and writing about community development.