((PKG))  PROTESTS – ANALYSIS 
((Banner:  A Moment Long in Coming)) 
((Reporter/Camera:  Deepak Dobhal)) 
((Additional Camera:  June Soh, Jeff Swicord, Chris Simkins))   
((Map:  Washington DC))   
((Main character:  1 male)) 
((NATS)) 
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
Wow.  You know, I've been here several times.  I live here and I 
don't think I've ever stood at this spot of “I Have a Dream” 
speech.  August 28, 1963.  “I Have a Dream”, Martin Luther King 
Jr. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Wow.   
We still have that dream.  That's what we're still fighting for - jobs 
and freedom.   
African-Americans in this country are frustrated, absolutely 
frustrated.  The cruelty that was on display, [George] Floyd….and 
being kneeled into and that police officer’s knee behind his neck 
suffocating him.  And we’re watching his death.  Juxtaposed 
against years and years of similar protests really showed that we 
haven't moved all that far away from those moments.  And so 
people are just frustrated.  They said, “My father had to deal with 
this.  My mother had to deal with it.  My great-grandmother had to 
deal with it.  And it's still upon us.  When will it end?” 
((NATS)) 
((Banner:  The death of George Floyd led to widespread protests 
across the US)) 
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
Protests in 2020 is different in this regard.  You had a major 
health crisis in COVID.  The places in which black people are 
dying at a higher rate are places with lower housing quality, are 
places with higher unemployment, higher incidence of racial 
discrimination in the job market, higher levels of discrimination in 
the housing market, all of these factors that policy created.  Policy 
made black communities more vulnerable to the spread of 
COVID.  And that's been made obvious.  And so this moment has 
just punctuated the role that structural inequality plays in our life.   
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
The median of wealth of white Americans is $170,000.  The 
median wealth for black American is $17,000, so a tenth of white 
American.  
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
Unemployment rate has always been double for blacks than for 
whites.  Black communities see the 23 billion dollars less in 
school funding.  Blacks are pulled over two-and-a-half to three 
times more in communities by police.  They understand these 
numbers.  They feel the numbers.  They live these numbers.  
These are not just academic figures. There's tears behind every 
single statistic.   
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
I did a study that looked at housing prices in black majority 
neighborhoods and compared those to neighborhoods where 
those share of the black population was less than one percent.  
And what I found simply astound.  We controlled for education.  
We controlled for crime.  We controlled for walkability, meaning 
that we had an apples-to-apples comparison between a black 
home, a home in a black neighborhood and a home in a white 
neighborhood.  And homes in black neighborhoods were 
devalued, undervalued by 23 percent, about $48,000 per home.  
Accumulatively that's a $156 billion in lost equity.  What people 
don't realize, that's the money that people use to start businesses, 
to send their kids to college.  It's used for municipalities to finance 
education and to improve infrastructure.  It's all the resources that 
people use to lift themselves up.  But that money is extracted 
because of the perceptions of the neighborhood.   
((NATS)) 
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
For me, this is not an academic exercise.  I've been there, I 
understand it.  I grew up in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a small, 
black municipality.   
((Stills Courtesy:  Andre Perry)) 
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
My father was incarcerated and he was murdered in prison.  
When I was born, my mother gave me to this older woman, Elsie 
Boyd, and I was informally adopted.  My brother, my older brother 
at the time, came along with me.  My younger brother eventually 
came.  We grew up very poor, we shared clothes.   
When I look at my yearbook, I stopped counting on the number of 
folks that have gone to prison or jail.  I say I got lucky because 
there are lots of people smarter, more driven, but they made a 
mistake and one mistake in the black community can mean a 
complete downfall for the rest of your lifetime.  I feel that pain.  I 
feel the pain.  And it's real.  It's, you feel it.  It takes years off our 
lives.   
((Andre Perry, Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program, 
Brookings Institution)) 
Structural racism is so baked into policy that it takes years, if not 
decades, of investing in anti-racist policy and structure while 
removing old policies with that racist frame.  It takes years of that.  
It's not going to come about with a few pieces of legislation during 
a historic period of time as it did with the Civil Rights legislation in 
the 60s.  Yes, those are major milestones and we made some 
advancements.  But you see how long it is taking for those pieces 
of legislation to take hold.  It takes a consistent commitment to 
anti-racist legislation and investments in black people, if we're 
going to see a true change.