Senator Bernie Sanders thinks every American “who wants or needs" a job should be able to have one. In fact, his office says they are proposing a federal job guarantee plan that would enable all citizens to have a $15-an-hour job with health care. Sanders says the plan will help reduce racial inequality. On the other hand, some conservatives have boasted that black unemployment is at its lowest rate ever.

So who is right?

While the unemployment rate for African Americans is going down, it has remained almost twice that of whites over the last five decades years; and this does not include those who have given up on the prospect of employment, as is the case within impoverished communities. Further, one in four African Americans suffer in poverty as opposed to one in ten white Americans. Clearly, there remains a searing inequality in this so-called land of opportunity.

One in four African Americans suffer in poverty as opposed to one in ten white Americans. Clearly, there remains a searing inequality in this so-called land of opportunity.

But while proposals like Sanders’ are a good step, truly stamping out inequality will require a holistic approach that looks at all the different factors that contribute to the problem. Two of the biggest are housing and educational disparities. According to Stanford’s Center on Poverty and Inequality, less than half of black and Hispanic families live in owner-occupied housing as of 2014. For white families, that figure is 71 percent. The Center on Poverty and Inequality also reports that roughly one in six black households spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, leaving them with fewer resources to devote to their children’s education, health care and other basic needs.

Perhaps what is most frustrating about this crisis is how long it has been going on. After protests in over 100 American cities in 1967, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders released a report noting that, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” At the time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed the findings of the commission — known as the Kerner Commission, after its chairman, Gov. Otto Kerner of Illinois. Shortly after, King was murdered.

Now 50 years later, it seems clear that America still has a long way to go — but at least we have built up much more evidence on what works. And on what doesn’t work.

The past few decades have seen an expansion of black and Latino political power, as well as an expanding middle class. Yet neo-Nazis have emerged in places like Charlottesville, Virginia, and new videos of police brutality surface seemingly every day. Zero tolerance policing against people of color has failed. Sentencing laws remain racially biased. About 200,000 people were incarcerated in 1968. In 2016, the prison industrial complex held about 1,400,000 — and they were disproportionately people of color. In many ways, mass incarceration has become our housing policy against the poor.