KELLIS E. PARKER KEYNOTE ADDRESS[dagger]

St. John's Law Review, Fall 2003 by Meeks, Gregory W

I have spent the past week in contentious debates in the House of Representatives, battling against the pretentious budget proposals from the other side of the aisle. So it is great to be here this afternoon among people who are focused on taking our country forward in the twenty-first century, instead of backward to the worst of the twentieth and nineteenth centuries when segregation and worse ruled the roost.

This conference is convened at an important moment in the nation's civil rights history. It comes at the end of a week in which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Grutter v. Bollinger1 and Grate v. Bollinger2-potentially the most farreaching affirmative action cases since the 1978 Bakke3 decision.

Nor could this conference have been organized under a more important topic: namely, the interaction between race, corporate law, and economic development with respect to people of color.

Before getting into the substance of my remarks, I would like to express my gratitude for the honor of being invited to deliver the Ellis E. Parker keynote address. The innovative, intellectual legacy of Professor Parker, a noted and beloved legal scholar, civil rights activist, and jazz musician, inspires us to continue the struggle for racial equality with imagination and determination.

Thank you also for this opportunity to take part in a dialogue with thinkers and practitioners on the intersection of race, corporate law, and economic development.

I would also like to thank the Northeast People of Color for existing and persisting in its efforts to expand opportunities for youth in under-represented communities who wish to avail themselves of an education in the field of law.

Finally, I am grateful to the St. John's University School of Law Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development not only for co-sponsoring today's event but also for its ongoing examination of two of the most unresolved issues of American history: (1) How to ensure civil rights progress, and (2) how to enable people of color to fully participate in America's economic mainstream. Actually, we could formulate the latter proposition another way: how to enable America's economic mainstream to flow broadly through the communities of people of color and in ways that are predominantly beneficial to these communities.

I need not offer proof that civil rights progress and minority economic development are still among America's foremost unresolved issues, but I will. I am, after all, not only a member of Congress but also a lawyer. Because I am speaking today primarily to law professors, legal scholars, practicing attorneys, law students, as well as business, government, and civic leaders, and because we all know that under our system of jurisprudence, the burden of proof is on the accuser, I am fully cognizant of the necessity of providing proof of my point.

About a year ago, Franklin Raines, Chairman and CEO of the Fannie Mae Corporation, gave a speech at Howard University's Charter Day Convocation.4 Raines, who was also the Director of the Office of Budget and Management in the Clinton administration, noted that a 2001 poll indicated that a majority of Americans believe that African Americans are equally successful as white Americans in the areas of employment, income, health care, and education.5

Although the facts reveal that the opposite is really the case, Raines nonetheless posed the question of what life for African Americans would be like if the majority of Americans was right. What if there were no racial disparities in jobs, income, education, and health care?

Raines concluded:

If America had racial equality in education and jobs, African Americans would have two million more high school degrees . . . two million more college degrees . . . nearly two million more professional and managerial jobs . . . and nearly $200 billion more income.

If America had racial equality in housing, three million more African Americans would own their homes.

And if America had racial equality in wealth, African Americans would have $760 billion more in home equity value. Two hundred billion dollars more in the stock market. One hundred twenty billion dollars more in their retirement funds. And $80 billion more in the bank. That alone would total over $1 trillion more in wealth.6

Moreover, as Raines also pointed out:

African Americans came from 400 years and 13 generations of subjugation, humiliation, segregation and discrimination, de facto and de jure. You cannot reverse the impact in 30 years and one generation. African Americans have been denied the miracle of compound interest. One dollar in 1865 at only 3 percent interest would be worth almost 60 times as much today.7

Even more crucially, it is the absence of historic wealth accumulation or asset building that restricts the capacity of African Americans and other minorities that endured historic oppression and discrimination to leverage their labor, particularly assets in the form of property ownership.8 From slavery to the preemption of "40 acres and a mule" to redlining, African Americans in particular have been systematically prevented or restricted from acquiring wealth and then transforming that wealth into productive capital.9