Good morning, Inequality Insights readers. I’m CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry.

By now, you’ve probably seen the standout Grammy moment from last Sunday when Tracy Chapman performed her 1988 hit “Fast Car” live with country singer Luke Combs. It’s a song about escaping poverty. Thirty-five years after winning a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance, Chapman returned to the stage with her poignant narrative about someone looking to break free from low-wage jobs, family issues, addiction, and unfulfilled dreams:

“You got a fast car / I got a plan to get us out of here / I’ve been working at the convenience store / Managed to save just a little bit of money.”

It was her first performance since 2020, and before that 2015. The standing ovations and viral replays show the song still resonates as much today as it did three decades ago.

Maybe some things haven’t changed much since Chapman’s song was first released in 1988. Back then the U.S. poverty rate was about 13%. Today that rate has slightly decreased to around 11.5%. 

Chapman lives in the Bay Area but grew up in a predominantly Black low-income neighborhood in Cleveland, the daughter of a single mother. Already a gifted musician, she got a scholarship to a small, private, K-12 prep-school through a minority-placement program called A Better Chance. 

Founded in 1963, the national scholarship organization has provided some 18,000 students of color and other disadvantaged youth with access to competitive middle and high schools, steering them toward college. "Our mission is to increase substantially the number of well-educated young people of color who are capable of assuming positions of responsibility and leadership in American society," its website states.

Last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to gut affirmative action thrust into jeopardy programs like A Better Chance that feed into the college admissions process.

But in California, a group of lawmakers wants to amend the state’s Constitution to allow the state to fund programs “for the purpose of increasing the life expectancy of, improving educational outcomes for, or lifting out of poverty specific groups based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or marginalized genders, sexes, or sexual orientations.”

The proposed constitutional amendment is part of a slate of bills to implement ideas from the state’s landmark reparations task force. Read our in-depth coverage of their years-long work. 

We’ll be covering their efforts in the coming weeks. 

Stars like Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey jumped out of their seats as Chapman and Combs sang the chorus “I had the feeling that I could be someone, be someone, be someone” in perfect harmony. 

It's an emotion that resonates across generations, income levels, and races. That feeling of possibility and belonging is exactly what we aim to cover here on the California Divide — the only team of reporters dedicated to covering inequality across the state.  

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