One of our Christian colleges is convening a panel discussion in February about the moral and ethical side of our current economic challenges.  The specific topic – “West Michigan’s role in avoiding the next fiscal crisis,” will examine “the connection between economics and morality,” “what moral/ethical trends need to occur to sustain improvement” and “how west Michigan can emerge as an economic moral agent.”  I’m not an economist but I think we’re missing something here.

It all sounds reasonable – integrity and honesty are good business practices and could marginally improve the current crisis – but the most important questions are being left out.  What are the ethics and economic impact of segregation upon Michigan, the most segregated state in the union?  What morality is involved in systems and institutions in this community that continue to marginalize and discriminate?  What kind of a future does west Michigan have as any kind of ethical change agent in a global economy that depends on innovation and creativity through multi-ethnic teams?

“Slavery is indeed gone,” Frederick Douglas said, “but its shadow still lingers over the country and poisons the moral atmosphere of all sections of the republic.”  You can see moral economic poison in the endless litany of disparities in west Michigan – jobs, housing, health care, education, wealth, criminal justice.  The overwhelming evidence points to silent, insidious “ethical” codes that sustain “conditions in which unjust power brings unearned privilege.” (Robert Jensen)

“Hard to quantify all this,” my economist friends always say.  Let me try.  The state with the highest number of unemployed people (15% in Michigan) is also the state that is the most segregated.  Detroit, America’s most segregated city, has an unemployment rate of 29%.  It is not hard to imagine the economic impact, a direct cause and effect on virtually EVERY social malady.  Segregation is killing ALL of us, we’re paying for it every day – it is social cancer, a pathological assassin, the cancerous elephant in the room, a constant economic drag on any kind of real recovery!

“Segregation shaped me,” Maya Angelou said. “Education liberated me.”  “To be fully human,” Robert Jensen said, “is to seek communion with others not separation from them.  To be fully human is to reject a system that conditions your pleasure on someone else’s pain.”

Any meaningful discussion about ethnics and economics has to include the fiscal, socio-economic impact of segregation on this community.  Without that we will be like the “Emperor who had no clothes” – something obviously missing that everyone else can see.  What do you think?