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This chapter and case study examine how and which structured elements of an employee-owned business contribute to building the economic security and asset wealth of the lowest-wage and skilled employees of the firm. It paves the way for greater understanding about how intentionally structured workplaces can address wealth inequality and economic security through income and non-income opportunity systems.

The study draws upon qualitative interviews with four members of management, two plant managers, and 12 low-income employee-owners. Company documents and confidential employee data were provided for direct research analysis. Interviews took place at company locations, and covered employees from all shifts.

Employee ownership structures provide an important tool for advancing policy support and management practices to rebuild the wealth building benefits of work for low-income workers.

To ensure confidentiality, the study is anonymized and does not directly draw on the worker-owner interviews. This limits the opportunity to demonstrate the effect of structure on workforce; nonetheless, the empirical data tell an important story.

Expanding wealth inequality and economic precarity among low- and moderate-income workers has raised broad debates about how shifts in the structure of work, through new business, capital, and ownership structures, may be contributing to these social problems.

The employee benefits of employee ownership are not fully studied. This case contributes to understanding how employee ownership may reduce gender and racial wealth gaps, build family well-being, and become a model for structuring opportunity for those traditionally left out of the economic mainstream.

This chapter offers insight on how existing paradigms within Black Studies, specifically the ideas of racial capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition, can advance sociological scholarship toward greater understanding of the macro-level factors that shape Black mobilizations. In this chapter, I assess mainstream sociological research on the Civil Rights Movement and theoretical paradigms that emerged from its study, using racial capitalism as a lens to explain dynamics such as the political process of movement emergence, state-sponsored repression, and demobilization. The chapter then focuses on the reparatory justice movement as an example of how racial capitalism perpetuates wide disparities between Black and white people historically and contemporarily, and how reparations activists actively deploy the idea of racial capitalism to address inequities and transform society.

Many African Americans cheered the election of President Obama in 2008 with the hope he would cause an easing of the pain of economic and political barriers to collective black progress in America. This chapter assesses the role of President Obama in addressing these issues.

The Presidential Bully Pulpit is presented as a framework for addressing racial inequities. Properly used it can bring keen attention to issues a president deems important for consideration by the American public. Socio-historical texts and secondary data are used.

Data are presented to show how racial discrimination continues to affect African Americans during the age of Obama. These include housing discrimination, employment discrimination, and racial profiling. This chapter shows Mr. Obama has not used the office of the presidency as a bully pulpit for addressing these racial inequities. Rather he has tended to use the bully pulpit to chastise blacks, especially black males.

Also discussed are some promising developments challenging racism that have emerged from his administration, primarily from the Department of Justice, and how President Obama could use the bully pulpit more productively.

This chapter presents a contradiction in the actions of President Obama. While he seldom uses the bully pulpit to push his own legislative agendas or to push toward solutions to relieve racial inequities in society, he does use the bully pulpit to criticize black males.

I find that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand from 2007 to 2010, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. In fact, the average debt of the middle class actually fell in real terms by 25 percent. The sharp fall in median wealth and the rise in inequality in the late 2000s are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families in 2007 and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummeled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010.

This chapter explores the concept of allyship in social justice struggles. It provides a road map for self-reflection as well as acquisition of skills necessary for effective allyship. It describes appropriate roles for allies in dismantling systems and structures that protect the privilege of the majority in various contexts – privilege often unseen, unacknowledged and/or actively denied. This chapter will examine unique roles of allies in exposing, challenging, and dismantling privilege and white supremacy. Concrete examples of benefits that have accrued to white Americans through privilege – both conscious and unconscious, are assessed. The reader will be encouraged to explore personal areas of privilege and marginalization and acknowledge multidimensional identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, etc.) of individuals and unique lived experiences. Those seeking authentic positions of allyship are challenged to root out embedded privilege/white supremacy through direct action.

Scholarship on America’s K-12 economics curriculum reveals an inattention to many harmful economic realities, specifically wealth inequality. Critics of the present curriculum posit that its emphasis on out-dated concepts and models ignores crucial elements of reality that impact economic interaction and identities. In response to the dominant economic paradigm and methods, this practitioner-focused paper discusses an economically pluralist, pedagogically critical approach to interrogating destructive economic realities. It details how three social studies classroom simulations based on the board game Monopoly may be integrated with certain informational texts to explore economic factors that contribute to America’s unique form of wealth inequality.

This paper describes wealth inequality in America and rationalizes the need to make this social problem a focus of study in the secondary social studies classroom. First, I survey the present curricular apparatus of K-12 economics education and then argue for a pluralist approach that expands the curriculum’s dominant neoclassical paradigm. Connecting economic pluralism to critical citizen education, I draw upon emerging critical economic citizen education scholarship to explain attendant pedagogical and instructional approaches. The described lesson builds upon a tradition of Monopoly simulations, is rooted in critical citizen education pedagogy and aligns with Soroko’s (2023) critical economic literacy framework.

This paper progresses the curricular movement of economic pluralism through its critique of America’s current K-12 economics curriculum that does not focus on immediate, lived social problems. It further defines critical economics, citizenship and pedagogy, then details an instructional practice that employs critical disciplinary tools to investigate contributing factors of American wealth inequality.

This paper contributes to the growing field of pluralist economic perspectives and pedagogies. Specifically, it enriches understanding of critical economics citizenship education by further defining attendant pedagogy and explaining Monopoly as an instructional tool for critical economics citizen education. Previous works have discussed Monopoly’s utility for teaching various concepts within the social studies disciplines. This simulation lesson is unique in its instructional approach that merges simulation experiences with certain informational texts to cultivate critical economic knowledge of American wealth inequality and critical economic skills for critiquing and transforming oppressive economic realities.

The inequalities in health and economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in communities of color and the racial uprising that followed the death of George Floyd have forced organizational leaders to confront their own shortcomings and those of their organizations regarding ways they prioritize stakeholder issues related to employees, local communities, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitment as it relates to organizational infrastructures. This chapter examines the impact of institutional racism on the ability of PR practitioners to engage with and manage social responsibility (SR) in relationships with communities of color and impact on their discourse. I use the lenses of critical race theory, stakeholder theory, and situational crisis communication theory to illustrate some organizations' communication strategies employed in response to COVID-19 and antiracism protests supporting prioritization of Black and Brown communities' needs. My central argument is that the concerns of communities of color are generally ignored because Black and Brown people often are invisible to organizations and the PR professionals that are supposed to represent them because of institutionalized racism and the sociocultural environment in which PR professionals operate.

To locate and assess the significant variables in Obama’s victories and provide a theoretical framework of racism and the racial problematic that explicates why the Obama presidency has been animated by racism and the race problematic.

A demographic profile of Obama’s election is developed in order to assess the results, how different cohorts voted, and explain the critical nuances of why Obama won. A theoretical framework of racism and the race problematic is developed in order to illustrate how racism and the racial problematic function and situate the Obama phenomenon within the critical processes of the American discourse on racism and the fallacy of a post-racial moment. An examination is also made of some of the current trends in how racism continues to define the responses to the Obama public policy agenda.

While Obama was elected and reelected with broad-based support from nearly every voting cohort, racism and the race problematic played out in the campaigns and the general elections, and opposition to Obama’s public policy agenda has been animated by racism.

This assessment argues that a post-racial moment is a fallacy and calls for a rethinking of the theories and approaches to the study of Black politics.