Republic file photo United Way of Bartholomew County President Mark Stewart speaks at a past event.
Even one of the community’s most veteran social service leaders had to learn later in life the often-shocking background of what some see as the basis for much of the racial wealth gap in the United States today.
Mark Stewart, president of United Way of Bartholomew County, and one who has worked in similar posts for 30 years helping the disadvantaged, participated in a Racial Health Gap exercise from Bread For the World’s materials about three years ago online during the pandemic.
Like many other local residents, his formal schooling omitted such racist U.S. government laws as President Andrew Johnson’s land policies and sharecropping practices that kept wealth-building property from most Blacks after the Civil War.
The exercise included Stewart getting the chance to hear minority resident’s stories directly of wrestling with issues of financial injustice and prejudice.
“When you hear someone’s story firsthand rather than just reading about it, you relate to that person as a human, and that makes a really big difference (in perception),” Stewart said. “I was largely blind to this topic.”
When the exercise presented him with facts about everything from seizure of land from Blacks to housing measures that legally refused home loans to Blacks, Stewart was stunned.
“I was overwhelmed,” he said. “I definitely had my eyes really, really opened. And it impacted me on a very personal level.”
