For Some, Powerball's Promise Wasn't Just A Big Payout — But Stability, Too

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Finally today, we're still thinking about that record Powerball jackpot. The winners are still coming forward. For the record, we are not among them. And yes, we've moved on. We're letting our dreams with being besties with Oprah go by the wayside - we're OK. But before we let the whole thing go, there were a couple of interesting things that got our attention. First thing - when producer Alexi Horowitz and I first went out to go get some off-the-cuff interviews with people buying Powerball tickets, not a single white person would talk to us about what they would do if they won. Now, that could've been for a lot of reasons. There are a lot of law enforcement agencies near our D.C. office, so maybe everybody we approached just happened to be deep undercover. Who knows? But the second thing we noticed was that a lot of African-Americans would talk with us. And when we asked them what they would do with the money, they said very similar things. In fact, almost to a person, they said they would one, help family, two, give to church or charity and three, get investment advice - family, community, investment advice. Can I just tell you, it was that last item that got me thinking about a report I read recently in The New York Times by ProPublica's Paul Kiel and Annie Waldman. And it explains why, they say, if you are black, you are more likely than a white person to see your electricity cut, to be sued over a debt and more likely to land in jail because of a small matter like a parking ticket. It's not unreasonable that some of the difference could be discrimination, the authors said. But there is no doubt that the lack of a financial cushion is a key reason why small financial problems like an unpaid parking or speeding ticket are far more likely to have devastating consequences for black people than for white people. The numbers are startling. According to an analysis of a 2013 federal survey, the difference in the net worth between the typical white family and the typical black family was - wait for it - $131,000. And even more distressing, a different survey by Pew Charitable Trusts reported that a quarter of African-American families had less than $5 in reserves if they somehow liquidated all of their financial assets. Hispanics had about $200 while white people in the bottom 25 percent of income still had about $3,000 - $3,000 - which is surely not a fortune but enough to keep you out of jail for a parking ticket, especially, the ProPublica authors pointed out, in an era when many localities are turning to aggressive private debt-collection agencies to make people pony up. Now, how did this come about? It doesn't seem unreasonable that long-ago discriminatory practices still play a role, such as redlining and housing and employment discrimination that deprive black people of the ability to create wealth on equal terms with white families. If you've ever seen the classic Lorraine Hansberry play "A Raisin In The Sun" or read Ta-Nehisi Coates' about redlining in The Atlantic, then you know what this is all about. The recent housing crisis and the recession surely have worsened the problem, as well as aggressive policing strategies that involve heavy fines for small infractions. If you remember, the Justice Department report about the conditions in Ferguson, Mo., after the riots in 2014, investigators pointed out that a key source of resentment towards the police were the fines imposed for things like manner of walking and uncut grass, fines that were more likely to be imposed on black citizens who were also more likely to have their household budgets destroyed by those unexpected expenses. And they are more likely to get locked up when they can't pay. Now, people who've lived this know all this, which may be one reason why the African-Americans we spoke with were so pressed to learn how to protect their wealth if they ever manage to get their hands on any. But I think it's also true that people who haven't lived so close to the bone have a hard time imagining why a ticket for uncut grass or an unshoveled walkway or for driving 10 miles over the speed limit can be more than an inconvenience and come close to a tragedy. That's why I think our off-the-cuff interviews were so skewed. Winning Powerball is a fantasy for everybody. But for some, it's a fantasy about a life of luxury. And for others, achieving financial security is fantasy enough. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.