Stanford Politics

On Tuesday, Jan. 16, progressive scholar Dorian T. Warren and economic activist Mia Birdsong held a lecture titled “Basic Income and Racial Justice” in the Tresidder Union Oak Lounge. The discussion was moderated by Professor Juliana Bidadanure, research director of the Basic Income Lab (BIL) at the Center for Ethics in Society.

Warren is President of the Center for Community Change Action (CCCA), Co-Chair of the Economic Security Project and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Meanwhile, Birdsong serves as a Senior Fellow at the Economic Security Project and as Co-Director of Family Story, an organization that “does the communications, research, and storytelling work necessary to correct the most dangerous misconceptions about families today and to create new narratives about what makes a good family,” according to its website.

Warren began by drawing attention to the fact that, not only was Monday Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but that this April marks the 50th anniversary of MLK’s death by assassination. Warren said MLK died at a time when he was supporting striking sanitation workers who demanded safe working conditions and a living wage.

“There’s so much to talk about, especially in the last five days, the politics of this country, that I imagine Doctor King would be rolling over in his grave right now,” Warren said.

Warren gave a reflection on the final years of MLK’s life, pointing out that MLK brought up the idea of a guaranteed income in his 1967 book “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” He noted that MLK was concerned with concepts like automation of the workforce long before today’s talks on the work force and the idea of a universal basic income (UBI).

“For those of you in the audience who may be supportive of [UBI], it’s gotten a lot of buzz in the last couple years, I just wanna say, ‘Welcome 50 years later, to the party,’ cause it is not a new idea,” Warren said.

Warren quoted “Chaos or Community?” throughout the night, touching on topics such as income inequality, militarization and mass incarceration, particularly of blacks. Warren did not discuss poverty strictly in terms of race, noting that two thirds of America’s impoverished population was white when MLK called for full employment and a guaranteed income in his book. However, Warren repeatedly mentioned that blacks faced many more obstacles than whites, in general.

“If you think of American history say, from 1607 to the present, the first 25 decades was a system of racial slavery, the next ten decades, basically from the end of reconstruction to 1965, was a system of Jim Crow, and it’s only been five decades that we’ve been approximating a democracy in terms our racial caste system,” Warren said. “So when you add up all those decades, especially the first 25 and the next 10, it’s clear to me black Americans helped build the total owned wealth of our nation.”

Warren elaborated on his concern, saying that the black unemployment rate is nearly twice that of whites and that black workers often end up in the least desirable and lowest-paid jobs, if any. He compared black workers’ conditions today to those of 50 years ago, when the Blank Panther Party called for a guaranteed income in the second point of its Ten-Point Program.

“I think five decades later it’s time that the rest of us caught up to their vision,” Warren said.

Birdsong echoed Warren’s sentiment in the final 15 minutes of the event.

“America hates black people. America hates poor people,” Birdsong said.

Birdsong explained how she grew up learning how difficult the path to fulfilling work was for a poor black female such as herself. In what she referred to as “the American dream mythology,” Birdsong said the belief that those at the top are more deserving does not reflect the unequal footing of blacks and whites from birth.

“Poor people are seen as a slightly different breed of human beings,” Birdsong said.

Still, Birdsong said she initially had doubts about the validity of a guaranteed income in a capitalist society.

“Free money, as I thought about it then, went against everything that I’d been taught by America about how to be a respectable citizen,” Birdsong said. “I was taught that my value as a human being was tied to my ability to produce through paid labor, that my dignity was earned through hard work, and the hard work was not the challenging effort of personal transformation or even how engaged or focused I was at work. It was about sacrifice.”

Birdsong said that in her travels around the United States, she asked people in poverty what they would do with money received as UBI. Birdsong said investing in education, whether it be college, tutoring or simply rewarding children for hard work, was one of the most common responses. Housing also came up often, Birdsong said, as people mentioned wanting their own bedrooms, space for their kids and a yard for barbecues.

“People don’t just want housing,” Birdsong said. “They want home.”

Birdsong brought up the idea of people putting their public housing payments toward mortgages rather than rent. And in addition to functioning cars and gasoline, she said, impoverished individuals expressed their desires for vacations and other family outings. Birdsong indicated that the people in want of these things need to bring their concerns to politics to create change.

“It’s time for us who have the most at stake in this movement to lead it,” Birdsong said.

And the movement, according to Warren, could be for either guaranteed jobs or guaranteed income, since both would benefit impoverished individuals.

“Whether you’re for guaranteed jobs or guaranteed income, nobody has the political power to win right now, so how about we build a movement, and I will vote for either one if we can build that movement,” Warren said.

When he his initial speech to start the event, Warren ended with a quote from “Chaos or Community?” He described MLK’s words as the pinnacle of morality.

“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age,” Warren read. “It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization.”