Bloomberg said it, the uncomfortable truth

We like to think that the property we own, and the successes we have, are earned fair and square.  

We know better. 

     "I also know that my story might have turned out very differently if I had been black, and that more black Americans of my generation would have ended up with far more wealth, had they been white. Instead, they’ve had to struggle to overcome great odds, because their families started out further behind, and excluded from opportunities — in housing, in employment, education, and other areas.”

             Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg said it aloud. There isn't equal opportunity. It isn't a square deal.

He chose the site of the race riot massacre of black owned businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 to make his speech and meet with the black community. The Greenwood Massacre destroyed 35 blocks of the wealthiest black neighborhood in America, called the Black Wall Street. He was attempting to repair the damage caused by his endorsement of a stop-and-frisk policy. 

Bloomberg spoke to the issue of inequality. Michael Bloomberg represents an America of stratified wealth, the rich getting richer, the poor and middle class falling behind. 

He represents meritocratic success, at its pinnacle. His TV advertising starts off with photos of young Michael and narration affirming he had a middle class start. His biography communicates boundless American potential. 

His bearing and manner project alpha male confidence. He knows Donald Trump is the phony and he the real deal.

To black Americans he represents something else, privilege and entitlement. Johns Hopkins, Harvard Business School, and Wall Street were not accessible to black Americans born, like Bloomberg, in 1942, into a legally segregated America. Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy wasn't targeting Wall Street bankers. It targeted street crime. The policy was not another Greenwood Massacre, but it is the shadow and remnant of it, cleaned up for 21st Century sensibilities. Young males of color were stopped on the street, patted down, told not to resist. It was public humiliation.

To some white Americans Bloomberg represents the unspoken rebuke by limousine liberal Democrats in the meritocracy party, telling struggling whites not to whine about how the deck is stacked against them. Inequality? Sure, but Michael Bloomberg got ahead, and if you did not, then you didn't measure up. (Yesterday's Guest Post describes this unspoken insult.)

Bloomberg spoke a truth about inequality. 

Every American--every human--stands on the shoulders of parents, grandparents, and community. Black Americans have been treated unfairly. White people squirm at internalizing that reality because they also experience a second understanding, that white people, too--they themselves-- have also been treated unequally and unfairly some point and no one likesto be blamed.

Americans observe inequality every day. Most Americans internalize the notion that inequality is inevitable and ultimately consistent with the American principle of liberty and justice for all. After all, we have freedom to choose careers, work-life balance, life partners, family size, whether or not to drink or use drugs, whether to drop out or continue schooling. Exercising that freedom, we then experience the unequal consequences of our choices.

But we know it is way more complicated than that. 

We know people do not start out the Monopoly Game of real life even. Instead, we start with property already occupied, and some neighborhoods are way better than others, and parents earn different amounts of money as they pass Go.

Michael Bloomberg holds a nearly unique position in America. He has become gigantically wealthy dealing with some of the wealthiest and most sophisticated people in the country. He has credibility to lead a change in the system, to insist we tax wealth at a higher rate, to advocate education and health policies that push more national wealth away from capital and toward workers. 

He could do what Bernie Sanders could not. Bloomberg could surprise America. He could surprise progressives.

Real change is unlikely to come from the top, spurred by a prudent recognition by the wealthy that the deck is too unfairly stacked for a democracy to survive. That isn't how change happens. Historically in America progressive change happens because people at the bottom demand it, as in the Progressive Era, and again in the New Deal, and then in the Civll Rights movement.

Still, Bloomberg voiced the uncomfortable truth about the allocation of wealth in America. It isn't fair. Not to blacks, not to Latinos, not to women, not to anyone. 

We don't start out even. And a lot of people are restless.