Our Work
In Common: Romare Bearden and New Approaches to Art, Race & Economy
Two generations after the passing of American icon Romare Bearden in 1988, The New School’s Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the Romare Bearden Foundation, and the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University Newark combined forces to examine Bearden’s legacy under three distinct lenses: the impact of his activist work, especially his prints; the role of music in both his practice at large and the activist projects; and the resonance of his oeuvre in contemporary art making. This multi-tiered initiative—In Common: Romare Bearden and New Approaches to Art, Race & Economy—resulted in a three-day symposium, an exhibition, and this digital platform dedicated to extending the Project's lessons and value for users across the United States and abroad.
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Budget Equity Project
Budget equity is the just and fair allocation of government resources to create the conditions for all residents to participate and thrive. The Budget Equity Project empowers community leaders and policymakers with research, tools, and frameworks to promote public budgets that uplift historically underserved and excluded communities. Through this research and action project, we are tracking how local governments are using federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to advance racial and economic equity, producing public data tools democratizing this information, and showcasing innovative investments. Additionally, we are developing a prototype budget equity assessment tool to help community leaders advocate for more equitable budgeting practices and investments.
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Health and Political Economy Project
The Health and Political Economy Project (HPEP) is catalyzing action toward an economy that enables all people to have what they need to experience wellbeing. Through field-building and organizing initiatives, we seek to create a forward-oriented community — and roadmap for change — in pursuit of this vision.
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Baby Bonds
Baby Bonds are a policy proposal aimed at addressing wealth inequality and promoting economic mobility. Developed and championed by Founding Director Darrick Hamilton, the concept of Baby Bonds is designed to narrow the racial wealth gap and provide pathways for wealth building for all children, regardless of economic circumstances at birth. Explore a host of resources about Baby Bonds, including our 2022 report with Prosperity Now, A Brighter Future with Baby Bonds: How States and Cities Should Invest in Our Kids, which presents frameworks for states and localities to design and implement Baby Bonds.
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Equity Scoring
In response to the federal government’s executive order advancing racial equity, Institute founding director Darrick Hamilton and Andre Perry of the Brookings Institution called on the federal government to develop a scoring system that measures the potential impacts of proposed policies on racial equity. Following this call to action, our organizations partnered to produce research that contributes to the development of equity assessment and scoring frameworks that can be implemented at the local, state, and federal levels.
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The Color of Wealth
Racial wealth inequities are rooted within histories of structural racism and state violence with profound structural intergenerational effects. The Color of Wealth studies examine historical forces, regional variations and local asset market and policy conditions, across and within racial and ethnic groups, migration and immigration patterns and measures racial wealth inequities, assets, and debts.
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California Explorations Project
The California Explorations Project explores opportunities to support California grassroots activist leaders in efforts to co-learn and better align around emerging issues related to race, gender, and economic justice in state policymaking. The Project engages an impressive group of advisors to surface structural (rather than mere issue-by-issue) change campaigns, innovations in issue-framing and public opinion-shaping, and multicultural youth activism and voting with an eye to reshaping public priorities during coming election cycles.
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Guaranteed Income Research Hub
Building on the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy’s guaranteed income federal policy proposal, the Institute is producing and seeding research that facilitates the movement for guaranteed income and direct cash support as an economic right and a medium through which policymakers can abolish poverty in the United States. In partnership with Economic Security Project, PolicyLink, and Liberation in a Generation, the Policies for Action Guaranteed Income/Cash Support Research Hub is building a positive narrative about unrestricted cash supports, and equipping policymakers and grassroots advocates with ideas, evidence, and tools to design, demand, and deliver equitable policies.
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The Color of Achievement
Racial inequality was entrenched in the American education system prior to the country's inception. The pernicious achievement gap exemplifies an enduring outcome of this historical legacy. Research on disparities in academic achievement is predominantly based on quantitative studies, mainly emphasizing resource allocation, parental involvement, and socioeconomic status, to name a few. The Color of Achievement uses mixed methods to interrogate inequality in three critical aspects of public education: the instructional framework, the curriculum content, and the standardized assessments. This research investigates education as a civil right by making visible salient themes of enacted and espoused values, common law, history, and hierarchies.
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Building an Equitable Recovery: The Role of Race, Labor Markets, and Education
A research paper released in February 2021 by Darrick Hamilton, Ofronama Biu, Christopher Famighetti, Avi Green, Kyle Strickland, and David Wilcox, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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New Imperatives in American Learning, Civic Education & Employment Equity
Advancing the Common Good Through Expanded Racial & Economic Justice
This project is a multimedia series of conversations and examinations intended to assess the need for new approaches to American human capital formation and community building. We examine these important topics with an eye to their racial and economic justice dimensions. This work is essential to strengthen our democracy and to promote more equitable economic development and prosperity sharing across the nation at a time of growing racial and economic division. We focus aspirationally on the need to advance a next generation of racial and economic justice reforms, building on more inclusive modalities of education and training, community engagement, and allied efforts to better align our nation’s largely disconnected systems of public instruction, civics education, and workforce preparation.
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Shifting the Burden of Proof: Using Audit Testing to Proactively Root Out Workplace Discrimination
A report released in September 2022 recommends the use of audit testing, a tool that can proactively identify discrimination in the hiring process, by public agencies at all levels aiming to combat employment discrimination. The report, produced jointly by the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School and the National Employment Law Project, argues that such audits, performed on a systematic basis, could be relatively easily and inexpensively administered in virtually every sector of the U.S. economy. Almost 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, race-based employment discrimination persists, which is why the report authors call for a more proactive approach to advance racial equity in workplaces.
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Towards an Inclusive Economic Rights Agenda
This project aims to build a learning community and develop innovative ideas and new analyses to advance an economy that benefits all. Sponsored by the Kresge Foundation.
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United Nations & The Institute Partnership For a Human Rights Economy
In August 2022, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Institute announced a global partnership to advance scholarship and economic policy-making towards achieving human rights.
The new “Partnership For a Human Rights Economy” is seeded in a common conviction that economic, social and cultural rights, including the rights to health, education, social security and decent work including a living wage and labor rights, are core to an inclusive economic model.
Economics Reimagined: A Discussion on Building a Human Rights Economy (Aspen Institute January 2023)