By Lauren Sue May 11, 2022
People of color and those who live in rural communities are struggling amid soaring food and gas prices with no end for price hikes in sight, researchers have found. But met with record inflation worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Black-owned nonprofits are doing what they have done for decades: helping those in need. Elizabeth Omilami, chief executive of the Atlanta-based, Black-owned nonprofit Hosea Helps, told NBC News more than 600 vehicles got in line for the organization’s food distribution program for Easter. “The rent has increased so much that people don’t have a place to live,” Omilami said. “And the rise in food prices has caused our numbers of people asking for emergency food to almost triple.”
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William Darity Jr., a public policy professor at Duke University, told NBC News inflation hits Black communities so hard because the net worth of white households is already more than $800,000 more than that of Black households. “One of the key indicators of this is the virtually permanent two-to-one ratio in unemployment rates between Blacks and whites in the United States, which I view as a prime index of the degree of discrimination in American labor markets,” Darity said.