Rep. Jamaal Bowman talks energy poverty, African American History Act, and Green New Deal

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss calling on ConEd over electric prices in certain communities, the African American History Act to help teach diversity and inclusion of others in the NY education school system, and the Green New Deal.

Video transcript

- Quite the change, indeed. Thank you so much, Emily. Now, as part of our ongoing coverage for Black History Month, we explore some of the policies that have been shaping economic and the educational future of the Black community.

In fact, just recently, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen highlighted the systemic inequities in the US economy and what her department needs to do to narrow the wealth divide. Well, I'd like to now bring in Congressman Jamaal Bowman, who represents New York's 16th congressional district. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Now, obviously, we're in the middle of winter and in the middle of a pandemic. And we're seeing natural gas prices in some cases doubling or even tripling. Talk about your actions on so-called energy poverty, who it affects, and the sort of action being taken on it.

JAMAAL BOWMAN: Well, energy poverty impacts everyone, particularly those who do not earn the prevailing wage in the workplace and those who struggle with overall poverty. And unfortunately, that always disproportionately impacts people of color, Black people, and particularly women who, unfortunately, are often single moms. So it's important for us, not just the US government, to ensure that we are providing resources for people who struggle with poverty to cover their energy costs.

It's also very important for us to hold energy companies accountable for price gouging that continues to be pervasive and prevalent in the energy and utilities sector. I mean, just recently, we saw ConEd prices double and even triple in parts of my district here in New York 16.

And their sort of explanation for that is the market-- well, we're responding to the market. These are aspects of our economy that continue to contribute to inequality overall and continue to hurt working families and families that struggle with poverty.

- And, obviously, this isn't something that happens overnight. There are systemic inequities, as the Treasury was saying. Now, you introduce the African-American History Act Bill that invests $10 million over five years in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Now, that goes to support African-American history education programs. As an educator yourself, how important is this bill and the initiatives it funds, not just to the Black community, but also students, parents, and educators?

JAMAAL BOWMAN: Well, it helps all students to understand the impact of racism and systemic racism on all aspects of American institutions. You know, oftentimes, we think about and talk about racism as it's one individual racist to another. And that is obviously part of it.

But it's also systemic. It's in how we think, it's in how we behave, and it's in how we legislate. And the African-American history Act helps to curate and consolidate resources from across the country and around the world that schools can use to teach African-American history accurately. And as a nation, if we don't be honest and look back at our history and look at how we got to a place where we have mass incarceration that disproportionately impacts Blacks, wealth inequality, health inequality, housing inequality, education inequality-- the only way we get to a place where all these things are happening is because of systemic problems. And the African-American History Act will help us to analyze and understand those systemic problems so we don't repeat them going forward.

- And shifting gears to a related policy here, the Green New Deal for Public Schools-- your ambitious proposal to invest $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years in Americans' public K through 12 schools. So how much of that climate agenda, though, since it was trimmed from Biden's bipartisan infrastructure deal to get it passed, where does that leave, then, some of these schools and these students who do tend to get overlooked?

JAMAAL BOWMAN: It's a shame, because our schools, particularly our schools in communities that have been historically redlined, have also been historically underfunded. So if you live in a wealthy community, your students, the students in our community, receive twice as many funds per student then are received in title one communities.

So that is inequitable and that is completely unacceptable. In addition, we have to end our dependency on fossil fuels by the year 2030, some are pushing even to 2035, because as we have seen, the frequency of severe storms and drought, and hunger, and everything related to the climate catastrophe we are currently living in will become more consistent.

So the Green New Deal is about ensuring our schools end their dependency on fossil fuels, our schools will finally fully invest and equitably invest in our children. And we will create pipelines work pipelines for workforce development in the areas of clean energy, but also in the areas of teaching, and learning, and teacher assistants.

And finally, we want to put students in the driver's seat of their own learning. No more sitting in rows and teaching to a standardized test. We need our students to be creative, innovative problem solvers so that they can be prepared and conquer the challenges of the 21st century.

- And you really are taking a holistic approach to this. I mean, you wear a number of hats, including being the commissioner of the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys. And you're really investigating the potential civil rights violations and how they affect them-- and some of these disparities, whether it's in education, employment, fatherhood, et cetera. What does this holistic approach mean not just for how Black men and boys progress economically, but also access to some of these opportunities to build generational wealth?

JAMAAL BOWMAN: So when I worked in education as a middle school principal, we saw all of the inequities in inequality land at our doorstep each and every day. So a child cannot learn and cannot thrive in school if they are hungry, if they're housing insecure, if they have trauma from a family member being caught up in the criminal justice system, or if their schools are underfunded, and if we haven't dealt with the historical trauma, the intergenerational trauma, and the epigenetic trauma that many in the African-American community struggle with.

We have to deal with it all. We have to deal with the present and the past in order to get to the future we want. But we also have to deal with all of the things that impact a child's learning in our schools. Because once that is internalized, once the inferiority because you are Black, or inferiority because you are a woman, or inferiority because you are different sinks in, that becomes your lived reality.

We have to look at our history, right? After slavery, you know, we did not get our 40 acres and a mule. As a matter of fact, the Homestead Act gave millions of acres of land to everyone except Black people. There haven't been investments in Black banks in a way that allowed us to build wealth in our communities-- and the list goes on and on and on.

So it's about a holistic, both present and past look. But it's also about as we deal with the present, let's deal with, for example, violence. Let's not just deal with the crime after the fact, let's stop people from committing crime in the first place by dealing with the issue of poverty.

- Indeed. A tough subject to tackle, but we're glad to see you doing the work. Thank you so much-- Congressman Jamaal Bowman who represents New York's 16th congressional district. Thank you for your time.