Are You Willing to Give Up Your Privilege?
In a powerful opinion piece in The New York Times, Darren Walker argues that capitalism must be reformed if we are to save democracy and challenge inequality in the US.
Published in The New York Times | JUNE 25, 2020
Are You Willing to Give Up Your Privilege?
By Darren Walker
I have lived on both sides of American inequality. I began life in the bottom 1 percent but found my way to the top. And I know, all too personally, that the distance between the two never has been greater.
Last winter, at a black-tie gala — the kind of event where guests pay $100,000 for a table — I joined some of New York’s wealthiest philanthropists in an opulently decorated ballroom. I had the ominous sense that we were eating lobster on the Titanic.
That evening, a billionaire who made his money in private equity delivered a soliloquy to me about America’s dazzling economic growth and record low unemployment among African-Americans in particular. I reminded him that many of these jobs are low-wage and dead-end, and that the proliferation of these very jobs is one reason that inequality is growing worse. He simply looked past me, over my shoulder.
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