SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) - Local folk artist Bertha Cooper Harris, like many African Africans, knows the struggles against the gripping cycle of generational poverty.
Cooper Harris, 81, grew up in Cooper Hill, a community named for her grandfather who once owned more than 250 acres of land there.
“My grandfather Riley Cooper, built and owned a house, but my father did not own a house,″ she said. “He lived in his father’s house, which was my grandfather’s, house.”
Cooper Harris’ father and grandfather were farmers who planted corn and cotton. With the death of her father when Cooper Harris was still a child, her mother remarried and left grandfather Cooper’s home.
“My stepfather didn’t have anything so we were just struggling, which put us in a place of poverty,” Cooper Harris said. “For most families, when they die, they don’t have anything and so they can’t leave anything for their kids and it just goes into a cycle of poverty.”
The reality is that African Americans more often than not, inherit poverty and debt instead of wealth. A recent study which examined well-being gaps in Louisiana found those gaps are not inevitable.
In her book, “The Courage to Rise Again: A Journey from Tears to Testimony,” Cooper Harris tells the story about her life and the time she and her family lived and worked on a plantation in Bossier City after her father died.
She recalled how as the years passed, her family worked and worked but never got ahead.
“You just owed money and it went through generations like that.”
In former slave societies throughout the Americas, ex-slaves sought to free themselves from what was called the “gang system” of labor on plantations by establishing small-scale, self-sufficient farms.
African Americans working on such plantations after slavery were trapped in what was referred to as debt bondage, indentured labor, tenant farming, and sharecropping.
Though African Americans have been able to find success in high places with high rankings and status, overall, breaking the cycle of low wages and earning potential, and generational poverty, remains a challenge.
African Americans have about a $1.3 trillion gross national income. Only 2% of that money, about $26 billion, is re-circulated in the Black community, according to the U.S. African-American Business Directory.
How long does money stay in various communities?
—Six hours in the Black community
—Seventeen days in the white community
—Twenty days in the Jewish community
—Thirty days in the Asian community
Systemic racism continues to play a big role as to why so many African Americans lag behind compared to others who thrive in this country.
LOUISIANA, SHREVEPORT STUDY FINDINGS
The findings of a recently released study, “A Portrait of Louisiana 2020: Human Development in an Age of Uncertainty,” by Measure of America, a non-partisan project of the Social Science Research Council, uses what’s called the human development approach and the American Human Development Index (HDI), a 0-to-10 scale based on the United Nations’ Human Development Index, to explore well-being and access to opportunity among different groups of Louisianans.
The study examines a range of critical issues, including health, education, living standards, incarceration, youth disconnection, residential segregation, and inequality.
This particular project, Director of Measure of America Kristen Lewis said, was funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and JPMorgan Chase.
“We did this report for the whole of the state,″ Lewis told The Times in a recent interview. “We calculated the well-being index for every parish and then we did sort of a spotlight on some of the big cities to show disparities even by Census tracts within neighborhoods,” Lewis said. “We did that for Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and for New Orleans and also for Monroe just because in that area, we were seeing pretty low well-being scores in general, so we wanted to do at least one city in northeast Louisiana.”
The main takeaway from the results of the study is that there’s nothing inevitable about the inequality seen in Louisiana.
“The well-being gaps in the state are really the result of policy decisions and the racial disparities are the result of centuries of systemic racism, basically,” Lewis said. “These numbers are very upsetting, and I think sometimes, people in Louisiana might be having some kind of statistic fatigue because Louisiana is not performing well on some of these measures.”
People in power made the decisions that resulted in the inequalities we see today and just as they were able to make those decisions then, they can make different, better decisions now, Lewis added.
Caddo Heights and South Highland are examples that highlight the inequalities in Shreveport. One neighborhood has the highest score in Caddo Parish with 8.55, which is South Highland, and just across the highway in Caddo Heights, the score is more than seven points lower at 1.51.
“South Highland is extremely white,” Lewis said. “Eighty-five percent of the residents are white, while 95 percent of Caddo Heights residents are Black. We just see tremendous disparities in life expectancies, educational attainment, and in earnings between these two places.”
While somebody could look at this and think of all sorts of reasons why this would happen, the really powerful reason dates back to “The New Deal” times when maps were created, and the term redlining, where actual red, green and yellow lines were drawn on maps of the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation.
A government-sponsored corporation, The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was created as part of “The New Deal.”
“The New Deal” refers to a series of domestic programs (lasting roughly from 1933 to 1939) implemented during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration to combat the effects of the Great Depression on the U.S. economy.
The maps were used to classify neighborhoods for what was called “mortgage risks.” Those practices are still used today.
“Part of “The New Deal” was giving federally guaranteed housing loans but these maps were used to block non-white communities from receiving these kinds of loans,” Lewis said.
An old map included in the report shows the “redlining” in Shreveport. Caddo Heights’ map is colored in red and yellow which meant hazardous or definitely declining while South Highland’s map was in the green zone.
“So, already, 90 years ago or so, you saw where these neighborhoods were classified differently and today, when we look at how people in these neighborhoods are doing, you can see that people in South Highland have a life expectancy of 83 years and people in Caddo Heights have a life expectancy of 70.5, so more than a dozen years of life expectancy difference and the earnings are much higher.”
Coupled with the Jim Crow era, and all the things that happened prior to the Civil Rights Movement, “These were all policy decisions that were made,” Lewis said. “So, a very strong conclusion of our report is that this is not inevitable, these disparities we see today are very much the result of policy and anti-Black racism.”
Included in the report is a map from 1860 that shows the share of the population from counties and parishes in the South, not just Louisiana, but from across the South, that shows the share of the population that was enslaved at that time.
“In parishes in northeast Louisiana that are along the Mississippi River, between 70 and 90 percent of the population was enslaved,” Lewis said. “Those same exact parishes today, are where we see the lowest well-being scores in Louisiana. So, again, it’s not a coincidence.”
STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS
The study includes different levels of recommendations, some that are urgent, Lewis added.
“COVID-19 did not create the tremendous inequalities but will widen them for sure,” Lewis said. “People who are suffering the most from COVID-19 and its various repercussions, are the groups that were suffering the most before (the pandemic).”
One recommendation from the study group is to use the maps included in the report, to prioritize the recovery effort. Because the places that rank below 3 on the well-being scale, are those areas that were struggling the most before and are hardest hit during the COVID-19 crisis.
The group plans to meet with social advocates in the state and members of the Louisiana State Legislature to talk about the report and make people aware of resources.
WELL-BEING STUDY FINDINGS
Caddo Parish lags behind Louisiana as a whole on well-being: The below-average HDI score in Caddo, 3.56 compared to the statewide score of 4.35, is weighed down by shorter life expectancies and lower median earnings than found in the state as a whole. Louisiana’s statewide HDI score has improved over the last decade but remains below the U.S. average (5.37).
Racial disparities within Caddo Parish are stark: White residents of Caddo Parish live four years longer than Black residents on average, are twice as likely to have a bachelor’s degree, and earn $18,000 more each year.
Health outcomes vary widely by race across the Red River: in Bossier Parish, the overall infant mortality rate is 6 per 100,000, but the Black rate is more than double that, at 13 deaths per 100,000. The white rate is 4 deaths per 100,000 births.
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