Injustice spreads. As economic and health policies aim to threaten even greater swaths of the U.S. population in 2025, we know that the toll these measures take on families is nearly impossible to quantify and takes decades to understand. Policies such as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” are going to take historical injustices and apply them on an enormous scale, decimating families and communities struggling to advance economically. 

Data shows that social fabrics are critical to determining the futures of children. Concentrating marginalized communities into economically depressed areas, then tying school funding to property taxes, has had severe consequences for families. Our research affirms that majority-Black neighborhoods face steeper hurdles to economic mobility, such as higher student loan debt and less access to the kinds of social networks that fuel mobility. 

As we show in the white paper, economic empowerment must include affordable housing, community-rooted schools, and policies that champion proximity, trust, and collective care over profit.We must continually demand better for those already entrenched in impossible circumstances, and we can not tolerate certain groups receiving less than others. When we raise our voices together in favor of oppressed communities, everyone benefits, and that’s because economic freedom is collective.  If inequality is the expression of our current values as a nation, then we must change. And that change starts with investing in the places where Black families live and learn. Injustice may spread, but it is no match for our collective action.

(Image: Sandy Stokes walks down Main Street in Farmville to protest school closures in July of 1963. Courtesy of VCU Libraries)