Webinar: Feb. 15: MarketWatch - Breaking Down the Racial Homeownership Gap by Barron's Events

Feb. 15: MarketWatch - Breaking Down the Racial Homeownership Gap

About

The gap between Black and white homeownership is wider now than it was even in 1960, before the Fair Housing Act was signed. If homeownership is considered a key component of the American Dream, what does this mean for Black households? Join MarketWatch reporter Emma Ockerman and Mechele Dickerson, law professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, as they discuss the ways in which Black Americans were systemically cut off from homeownership, the structural issues that continue to bar access to housing today, and the pandemic's effects on homeownership among people of color.

Presenters

Emma Ockerman

Personal Finance Reporter, MarketWatch

Emma Ockerman is a personal finance reporter for MarketWatch reporting on inequality and the rising cost of living.

Mechele Dickerson

University Distinguished Teaching Professor, Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy Law and Practice, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

A. Mechele Dickerson joined the faculty in January 2006 and served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2006-2011. She has a courtesy appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and is also the Faculty Athletics Representative for the University of Texas.

Professor Dickerson is a nationally recognized scholar on financial vulnerability, consumer debt and housing affordability. She regularly teaches Remedies and Federal Civil Procedure at the School of Law and has taught cross-listed interdisciplinary graduate-level courses on the American middle-class. Dickerson also designed and taught numerous classes about the COVID pandemic for graduate and undergraduate students.

Dickerson is the author of Homeownership and America's Financial Underclass: Flawed Premises, Broken Promises, New Prescriptions and has recently completed a manuscript on the Neglected Middle Class.

After clerking for Hon. Nathaniel R. Jones, Dickerson practiced law in Washington, D.C. and Norfolk, Virginia before joining the law faculty at the College of William and Mary.

Professor Dickerson is an elected member of the American Law Institute and an elected fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. Dickerson has participated in congressional briefings and has testified before a congressional subcommittee on housing unaffordability.