Across the United States, there are over 140 million poor and low-income people who are struggling to survive, according to the Poor People’s Campaign. Among those 140 million are Black people and other communities of color that are disproportionately impacted by the racial wealth divide. In relative terms, Native Americans and Alaska Natives have the highest poverty rate of any racial group, at 26.2 percent. Black people have the second-highest poverty rate, at 22 percent, and Latinos have the third-highest poverty rate, at 19.4 percent. The racial wealth divide is also gendered, with women bearing the brunt of poverty. Households led by Native American women had the highest poverty rates (42.6 percent), followed by those headed by immigrant women (41 percent), Latina women (40.8 percent), and Black women (38.8 percent).

Sojourner Truth Radio: June 10, 2021 – Racial Wealth Divide, False Climate Solutions, Peru

Today on Sojourner Truth:

The Washington Post is reporting that consumer prices jumped to 5 percent in May of this year. This is the biggest increase since the Great Recession. Meanwhile, activists are drawing to the growing racial wealth gap in the United States, as well as the feminization of poverty. According to the Center for American Progress, the median wealth for white households is $189,000. For Black households, it is $24,100. According to the Poor People’s Campaign, there are over 140 million poor or low wealth people in the United States. At least 73 percent of the poor in the U.S. are women and children. President Biden, in his recent trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to mark the 100-year anniversary of the massacre of Black people by white terrorists, announced some measures he hopes will lessen the gap. But the measures have been criticized as insufficient. Our guest is Dedrick Asante-Muhammad with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

For our weekly Earth Watch: as alarm bells on the environmental catastrophe continues to be debated, and as governments and the corporate world grapple with the crisis, environmentalists are calling them out for putting forth false solutions. Our guest is Anne Petermann, the executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project.

Will a socialist schoolteacher become the new President of Peru? What are the controversies? What is at stake? What are the implications? Our guest is Francesca Emanuele, a Peruvian sociologist, born and raised in the province of Ica.