All Things Being Equal

Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time

February 29, 2008, 12:00pm – 1:30pm

About This Event

While polls show that 80 percent of Americans believe it is still possible to work your way up from poverty to wealth, in fact the American ideal of opportunity for all is at a crossroads. Class mobility is at an all-time low, racial and gender wage gaps are through the roof, and unequal access to health care threatens the health and economic security of millions of Americans. Yet we have it in our power to expand opportunity for everyone in our country. This and other critical ideas about the state of opportunity are documented in All Things Being Equal, the first book from The Opportunity Agenda, an important new voice for reform and improvement across the social spectrum.

Half critique, half road-map-for-the-future, All Things Being Equal includes eight original essays by top-notch thinkers pointing to areas in American life where opportunity is missing and showing us how to instigate it. Please join the Center for American Progress for a provocative discussion around the themes of this groundbreaking book.

Featured Panelists:
Jared Bernstein, Senior Economist at Economic Policy Institute; co-editor, All Things Being Equal
Brian Smedley, Research Director and a co-founder, The Opportunity Agenda; co-editor, All Things Being Equal
Margery Turner, Director, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center, The Urban Institute; contributor, All Things Being Equal

Moderated by:
Cassandra Butts, Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy, Center for American Progress

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Resources

Watch the Event Video:

Biographies

Jared Bernstein is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. He is the author of the new book, Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries). His last book was All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy and he is also the co-author of eight editions of the book The State of Working America. He has published extensively in popular and academic venues and is a frequent contributor to the cable station CNBC. He holds a Ph.D. in social welfare from Columbia University.

Cassandra Q. Butts is the Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining CAP, she was a senior advisor to Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-MO) and served as the policy director on his 2004 presidential campaign. Butts coordinated the formulation of policy on Rep. Gephardt's presidential campaign that included a universal health care plan. In her seven years of work for Rep. Gephardt during his tenure as the House Democratic Leader, Butts was a principal advisor on matters involving the judiciary, financial services, and information technology. She provided counsel and strategic advice to the Democratic Leader on a range of major proposals that came before the U.S. Congress including the 1998 presidential impeachment and legislation related to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which included drafting the groundbreaking September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Butts most recently served as a senior advisor to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) in 2004-2005.

Prior to her service at CAP, Butts was an Assistant Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, where she worked on civil rights policy and litigated voting rights and school desegregation cases. She also served as Legislative Counsel to Sen. Harris L. Wofford (D-PA). Butts also served as an international election observer to the Zimbabwe parliamentary elections in 2000. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Brian D. Smedley is Research Director and a co-founder of a new communications, research, and policy organization, The Opportunity Agenda (www.opportunityagenda.org), where he focuses on linking social science and public health research with communications and advocacy strategies to center equity in public discussions of health policy and health care reform. He is also co-editor, with Alan Jenkins, of a book, All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time, published by the New Press. Formerly, he was a Senior Program Officer in the Division of Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), where he served as Study Director for the IOM reports, "In the Nation's Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce" and "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care," among other reports on health disparities, social and behavioral influences on health, diversity in the health professions, and minority health research policy. Smedley came to the IOM from the American Psychological Association, where he worked on a wide range of social, health, and education policy topics in his capacity as Director for Public Interest Policy. Prior to working at the APA, Smedley served as a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among his awards and distinctions, in 2004 Smedley was honored by the Rainbow/PUSH coalition as a "Health Trailblazer" award winner; in 2002 he was awarded the Congressional Black Caucus "Healthcare Hero" award; and in August, 2002, was awarded the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest by the APA.

Margery Austin Turner directs the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities policy center. A nationally recognized expert on urban policy and neighborhood issues, Ms. Turner analyzes issues of residential location, racial and ethnic discrimination and its contribution to neighborhood segregation and inequality, and the role of housing policies in promoting residential mobility and location choice. Much of her current work focuses on the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, investigating conditions and trends in neighborhoods across the region.

Ms. Turner served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 through 1996, focusing HUD's research agenda on the problems of racial discrimination, concentrated poverty, and economic opportunity in America's metropolitan areas. During her tenure, HUD's research office launched three major social science demonstration projects to test different strategies for helping families from distressed inner-city neighborhoods gain access to opportunities through employment and education.

Prior to joining the Clinton administration at HUD, Ms. Turner directed the housing research program at the Urban Institute. She has co-authored two national housing discrimination studies, which use paired testing to determine the incidence of discrimination against minority homeseekers. She has also extended the paired testing methodology to measure discrimination in employment and to mortgage lending. Ms. Turner has directed research on racial and ethnic steering, neighborhood outcomes for families who receive federal housing assistance, and emerging patterns of neighborhood diversity in city and suburban neighborhoods.