Moving Forward Together

When it comes to our economy, we’re all in it together. Fostering entrepreneurship, savings, investment, and stable homeownership across America’s diverse communities instigates not only individual opportunity, but shared national prosperity. It powers job creation, business innovation, public investment, and strong neighborhoods. Yet research shows that, in good economic times as well as bad, communities of color face steep barriers to economic security and mobility linked to race.

For example, minority borrowers are more likely to be offered high-interest subprime loans than are white borrowers—irrespective of their income level—according to a study by The Opportunity Agenda, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Discriminatory and predatory lending practices combine with factors like housing discrimination and banking deregulation to perpetuate a racial gap in economic opportunity.

The Opportunity Agenda and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development are working with a growing cadre of researchers, advocates, public officials, and business leaders to close the racial gap in economic security and mobility while expanding opportunity for all. Our work includes:

  • Training dozens of spokespeople spanning the issues of employment, lending, housing, business development, and land-use;
  • Crafting collaborative message recommendations which incorporate Asian American, Native American, African American, Latino, and European American perspectives;
  • Media outreach; and
  • Support to policy advocacy.