Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad, Institute for Policy Studies, August 4, 2009
Left out of the commentary on race and class over the Gates affair has been talk of the increasing impoverishment—or, we should say, re-impoverishment—of African Americans as a group.
To judge from most of the commentary on the Gates-Crowley affair, you would think that a “black elite” has gotten dangerously out of hand. First Gates (Cambridge, Yale, Harvard) showed insufficient deference to Crowley, then Obama (Occidental, Harvard) piled on to accuse the police of having acted “stupidly.” Was this “the end of white America” which the Atlantic had warned of in its January/February cover story? Or had the injuries of class—working class in Crowley’s case—finally trumped the grievances of race?
Left out of the ensuing tangle of commentary on race and class has been the increasing impoverishment—or, we should say, re-impoverishment—of African Americans as a group. In fact, the most salient and lasting effect of the current recession may turn out to be the decimation of the black middle class. According to a study by Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy, 33% of the black middle class was already in danger of falling out of the middle class at the start of the recession. Gates and Obama, along with Oprah and Cosby, will no doubt remain in place, but millions of the black equivalents of Officer Crowley—from factory workers to bank tellers and white collar managers—are sliding down toward destitution.
For African Americans—and to a large extent, Latinos—the recession is over. It occurred between 2000 and 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4% and incomes declined by 2.9%. During the seven-year long black recession, one-third of black children lived in poverty, and black unemployment—even among college graduates—consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment. That was the black recession. What’s happening now is a depression.
Black unemployment is now at 14.7%, compared to 8.7% for whites. In New York City, black unemployment has been rising four times as fast as that of whites. Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that 40% of African Americans will have experienced unemployment or underemployment by 2010, and this will increase child poverty from one-third of African-American children to slightly over half. No one can entirely explain the extraordinary rate of job loss among African Americans, though factors may include the relative concentration of blacks in the hard-hit retail and manufacturing sectors, as well as the lesser seniority of blacks in better-paying white-collar positions.
But one thing is certain: The longstanding racial “wealth gap” makes African Americans particularly vulnerable to poverty when job loss strikes. In 1998, the net worth of white households, on average, was $100,700 higher than that of African Americans. By 2007, this gap had increased to $142,600. The Survey of Consumer Finances, which is supported by the Federal Reserve Board, collects this data every three years—and every time it has been collected, the racial wealth gap has widened. To put it another way: In 2004, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African-American family had only 12 cents. In 2007, it had exactly a dime. So when an African American breadwinner loses a job, there are usually no savings to fall back on, no well-heeled parents to hit up, no retirement accounts to raid.
All this comes on top of the highly racially skewed subprime mortgage calamity. After decades of being denied mortgages on racial grounds, African Americans made a tempting market for bubble-crazed lenders like Countrywide, with the result that high income blacks were almost twice as likely as low income white to receive high interest subprime loans. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, Latinos will end up losing between $75 billion and $98 billion in home-value wealth from subprime loans, while blacks will lose between $71 billion and $92 billion. United for a Fair Economy has called this family net-worth catastrophe the “greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern U.S. history.”
Yet in the depths of this African-American depression, some commentators, black as well as white, are still obsessing about the supposed cultural deficiencies of the black community. In a December op-ed in the Washington Post, Kay Hymowitz blamed black economic woes on the fact that 70% of black children are born to single mothers, not noticing that the white two-parent family has actually declined at a faster rate than the black two-parent family. The share of black children living in a single parent home increased by 155% between 1960 and 2006, while the share of white children living in single parent homes increased by a staggering 229%.
Just last month on NPR, commentator Juan Williams dismissed the NAACP by saying that more up-to-date and relevant groups focus on “people who have taken advantage of integration and opportunities for education, employment, versus those who seem caught in generational cycles of poverty,” which he went on to characterize by drug use and crime. The fact that there is an ongoing recession disproportionately affecting the African American middle class—and brought on by Wall Street greed rather than “ghetto” values—seems to have eluded him.
We don’t need any more moralizing or glib analyses of class and race that could have just as well been made in the 70s. The recession is changing everything. It’s redrawing the class contours of America in ways that will leave us more polarized than ever, and, yes, profoundly hurting the erstwhile white middle and working classes. But the depression being experienced by people of color threatens to do something on an entirely different scale, and that is to eliminate the black middle class.
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Original article
(Posted on August 5, 2009)
Comments
Most of this is totally false. White men are the biggest victims of this recession. Most of the black “middle class” have affirmative action jobs in government or some semi-safe private industry that’s afraid to lay them off.
The part about the net wealth gap between blacks and whites of the same income is true. The reason is that blacks have a tendency not to save money, therefore they don’t accumulate as much wealth.
I seriously doubt that Marxists are as concerned about black welfare as they are about exploiting disparity. Indeed, disparity is the little motor that has been powering their movement for over half a century. To think some ivory tower activist is making his livelihood on the backs of poor blacks. Sad, but true.
“The recession is changing everything. It’s redrawing the class contours of America in ways that will leave us more polarized than ever,”
Yes, that’s true. A society can’t get more polarized than a civil conflict, breaking along lines of race, ethnicity, and ideology, which is what is in store for this nation.
When that is over, the reporter above won’t have to worry about such things as class struggles, racism, oppression, etc. He’ll be too busy trying to find something to eat.
Well, she did get one thing correct:
“…when an African American breadwinner loses a job, there are usually no savings to fall back on…”
According to Larry Elder:
“…A survey by the Charles Schwab organization found that when blacks and whites earn the same money, whites save 20 percent more. And a black person earning $100,000 a year had less than $5,000 in retirement savings…”
The article’s authors also claim:
“…with the result that high income blacks were almost twice as likely as low income white to receive high interest subprime loans…”
Again from Larry Elder:
“…Don’t differences in savings and debt in black households versus white households account for blacks’ higher rate of interest?
And if the….claims of discrimination are accurate, where are the entrepreneurial blacks, eager to start and run banks to cater to black borrowers getting ripped off by non-black banks?….”
Here are a few notes on writer Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote, ‘Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America’:
”..a book, which is purportedly about the plight of the working poor… replete with references to race, class, religion, and Communism. Ehrenreich bona fides are in the field of Marxism…When not writing…she is the Vice-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. Her theoretical Marxism is mentioned in the text itself; she mentions reading Mao before going to sleep…”
http://tinyurl.com/lwvano
It is unfortunate that her viewpoints which are spewed in lefty rags such as Harper’s, Time, The Nation and New York Time Magazine receive wide recognition and praise, usually without refute. The book ‘Nickel and Dimed’ has also been required reading in some colleges and universities, taken at face value, I’m sure.
My middle daughter has been assigned to read, by UC Berkeley, ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals’. I haven’t had time to read or research the book—I suspect it’s a lefty tome?
Bon
The Institute for Policy Studies is a Marxist outfit through and through. So of course blacks are “oppressed” and their condition has nothing whatsoever to do with their own chaotic behavior.
Interestingly, the black middle class, which is primarily a welfare class, since its “work” is white taxpayer funded government boondoggling for the most part; this black government employed middle class is far more protected from the ravages of the depression we are in than is the primarily private sector white middle class.
“33% of the black middle class was already in danger of falling out of the middle class at the start of the recession.”
What, as many as 33% of the black middle class were not affirmative action gov’t employees holding sinecure jobs? That IS surprising.
“The share of black children living in a single parent home increased by 155% between 1960 and 2006, while the share of white children living in single parent homes increased by a staggering 229%.”
This is a bit of SHAMELESS CHICANERY with numbers, that depends on the fact that the white number was much lower to begin with:
According to the report cited here,
http://tinyurl.com/ljb8d5
a whopping 47% of black children in the U.S. between the ages of 10 and 14 lived in a single-parent household in 1990, while the number for white children that age in 1990 was only 15%.
So, if “The share of black children living in a single parent home increased by 155% between 1960 and 2006…”, as the super-lefty Institute for Policy Studies says above, that means that the percent of black children living with one parent increased from a whopping 47% to a super whopping 73%.
Whereas, “white children living in single parent homes increased by a ‘staggering’ 229%” means that those white children increased from 15% to 34%.
These figures accord at least roughly with the ones below:
Children in single-parent families by race (Percent) – 2007:
Black or African American 65%
http://tinyurl.com/m4m67g
The figures for both races are sufficiently staggering for me, but the ones for black children indicate that for blacks as a group in this country, the standard meaning of “family” is almost ceasing to exist.
This is an observation not about the black elites but about the affirmative action government employee black lower middle class.
They are rapidly being replaced by hispanics. It is as major a replacement as was the replacement of Whites by blacks in the 1970’s and 80’s.
Everywhere I go I see this. It’s not just government agencies. It seems that private employers instead of the 80 percent black of 1990 now hire just enough blacks, maybe 5-10 percent to keep the EEOC off their backs.
At one time National Review did some research about the black “middle class.” They found that a whopping 92 percent of blacks who were employeed worked either directly for a government agency or a quasi government agency such as the local school district or college.
Those jobs are nothing more than alternative to welfare. And I am glad to notice that the affirmative action blacks are rapidly being replaced by hispanics and asians.
I agree. The black middle class is dying because of the economic crisis. Also dying because the kids of the middleclass don’t study, want to emulate rap artists, and are far more illiterate than their parents. Good. Black “power” in the future will be nonexistent. Whites will be free to deal with the more serious Latino grab for power. We don’t have to be a numerical majority. We do need to control the levers of power; industry, education, media, and tech innovation. The blacks are out of the game even more than they were 40 years ago. Now let’s give away video games and ipods to hispanics, pass them in high school and then slam them down with tough college requirements. Our kids need to get cracking academically, or they will be drowned in a black and brown sea of ignorance.
New Jersey’s black population is 13%, yet 25% of state employees are black. That is NOT counting local government employees (county & municipal gov.).
I guess the black middle class was not helped by the importation of millions of Latinos.
“had the injuries of class—working class in Crowley’s case—finally trumped the grievances of race?”
A policeman of Crowleys stature is surely ‘middle class’ and not working class.
The U.S. Post Office is going to consider shutting down many post offices, nationwide. In cities like Chicago, where postal workers are about 75% Bantu, the mugabedung is really going to hit the fan.
To a large degree, the burgeoning Black middle-class was always at best but one step out of the ghetto and perhaps more accurately an outright illusion all along. Sure there are successful, hardworking Black folks who have made a good life for themselves and their families - but this is not new and is but a small minority of Blacks. Blacks don’t magically stop being Black because they have a cushy(if tenuous) Affirmative Action career, live in a suburb, drive an expensive automobile, wear fashionable togs, etc.
More than likely, this Black middle-class never put away a penny, spent all their cash on flashy symbolic “bling” and such, and/or ran up credit bills they will almost certainly NEVER pay back. In fact, the latter is still waiting to fully reveal itself(this article is just the beginning)as did the mortgage meltdown, and the American economy will be rattled afresh!
“Most of this is totally false. White men are the biggest victims of this recession. Most of the black “middle class” have affirmative action jobs in government or some semi-safe private industry that’s afraid to lay them off.”
Most of NYC HRA workers are semi-literate Eastern Europeans and South Americans looking for a free ride.
Our middle class is declining. No new manufacturing jobs are being creating to make up for the loss of others. And yet, our government continues high levels of mostly Third World immigration. Immigration should be linked to unemployment. In other words, in periods of high unemployment immigration should be reduced to a few thousand wealthy or academically gifted immigrants.
Affirmative action was meant to help and advance American blacks (ie. descendants of slaves) not anyone and everyone who crosses the border.
Instead of two positions going to blacks, one goes to a black and other to an hispanic, asian, or other. Blacks have put themselves behind the eight ball.
If middle class blacks truly find themselves unemployed at greater rates than do whites, I would imagine that this is because whites have wearied of trying to ‘find jobs’, but instead have begun to MAKE their jobs. These self-created jobs are hardly as cushy as those that were available to white men in the Sixties and Seventies. For one thing, many self-employed whites find themselves uninsured and uninsurable. And the deconstructed workplace is a difficult place in which to stay focused and motivated. But the point is that we stay employed.
I made the mistake of reading Nickel and Dimed, and was impressed with how very much Barbara Ehrenreich was impressed with herself. We are treated to several references to her upper-middle-class status. Reading between the lines suggests that this status came about, in part, because she looks really good, and married really well. We are treated to many references to her good looks and in-shape body. Her father came up from a lower-class background to become a labor union executive, and I have to assume that his exceptional ‘talent’ was that he also looked really, really, good.
In Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich admits to having smoked a controlled substance (she was to be drug tested, and that posed a problem). And her Marxist leanings were buried deep enough within the book that I did not catch on, when I read excerpts on Amazon (quite cunning to hide the parts that would have kept me, and many others, from buying the book….). But then, Ehrenreich’s cunning is again displayed in her paragraph here, describing blacks’ single-parent situation. Instead of quoting the percentage of blacks versus whites in single-parent situations, she declares absolute percentates unimportant, and instead compares rates of increase in percentages.
As an aside, I have to wonder whether Hispanics are being counted as whites, explaining the increase in ‘white’ single parents. Too, would the many white women abandoned by the black ‘fathers’ of their offspring not account for much of the rate of increase in white single parents?
As to the lower net worth of Middle Class blacks, I have to laugh. I have never made much money. So, when I bought my house, I sought the very cheapest dwelling in our (very nice) town. I would have settled for less, had less been available. I have never had a pet, or subscribed to a newspaper. In contrast to blacks, who have fabulous televisions and sound systems, I have a small, cheap TV (did not bother to get a convertor…tired of media lies…now it’s just for DVDs), and a twenty-dollar portable CD/Casssette/Radio from ‘95.
When I replaced my ancient Volvo, I bought the cheapest new Lexus, without options. Would have bought plainer if they had offered plainer. How many blacks do this? And because my earnings were even less in earlier years, I never considered myself a viable spouse/provider. Marriage and family were out of the question, because I knew I could not provide adequately for a middle-class family. I was taught that the lowest thing on Earth was a man who could not provide for his family. I dared not risk becoming one of those. How many blacks forego reproduction, as a response to their foreseen inadequacies as a breadwinner?
Blacks buy or rent entire house-fulls of furniture, and replace things, en-masse, when they wear out. My furnishings are things I’ve cobbled together over decades; generally left-on-the-curb-as-trash/junk-shop/damaged-sale finds. Recently, I bought a chest of drawers, and realized it was the first piece I’d bought in a quarter-century, and the first flawless and new piece I’d ever purchased.
I notice blacks sending me contemptuous looks, as I rummage through the day-old bread and closeout stock at the grocery. I see their carts piled high with expensive, ultra-processed foods in fancy containers. I’m generally out the door having spent under forty. Blacks spend much, much more.
So, if my savings (however inadequate and imperiled) are several times greater than those of blacks who earn double what I do, who is to blame?
I have also read Nickel and Dimed. While there is some truth to it, Ehrenreich fails to address a lot of causes of poverty. Such as, being a single parent, illegal aliens depressing wages, that kind of thing. It’s like she addresses a lot of symptoms and ignores the causes.
And, if you have welfare, too many people would rather fall into that safety net than fend for themselves.
(Granted, if I were wealthy and living in one of those McMansions, I’d actually treat the cleaning people as human. My husband and I, when we went to Niagara Falls or whatever place, not only left a tip, but a can of pop for the maid—my mother once worked as a hotel maid and I heard a lot about how hard it is.)
Poster # 9 says “We don’t have to be a numerical majority. We do need to control the levers of power; industry, education, media, and tech innovation.”
Most of the so-called black middle class works for the government in protected jobs. As a former civil servant, I know how difficult it is to get terminated from your job, and if your black, forget it. They stand a better chance of getting struck by lightning, indoors. You would be amazed at how many of these jobs don’t produce anything meaningful and were created solely to put a minority quota in. Since I don’t believe they’re getting layed off is it possible that they’re breeding too fast to accomodate everyone?
“Most of the so-called black middle class works for the government in protected jobs…They stand a better chance of getting struck by lightning indoors.”
A very good observation! I have to agree. Thus, I don’t see how the black middle class is facing destruction. Nonsense! Just more hysterical screeching about the sky is falling, the sky is falling!
In truth, they (those in civil service jobs) will be the last to be touched, along with Affirmative Action promotees in private industry who will be equally untouchable for political reasons. Companies will be able to lay off a white employee, without having a picket line out front, or a riot, or a lawsuit. Which will be easier?
As one poster mentioned above, most of these middle-class blacks work for government agencies. The age of government-as-Santa Claus is over, however. The state of California is bankrupt, for instance. How long will California government agencies their be able to retain their bloated staffs, all top-heavy with affirmative-action hires? Not long, I’ll wager. Moreover, on the federal level, government can’t simply print more Monopoly money to pay these folks. In order to put additional money into circulation, the Federal Reserve has to sell Treasury Bills to investors (like China). These T-Bills are rapidly assuming junk bond status, however, and China’s ability to buy them has been damaged by the recession in their manufacturing sector (caused by reduced spending on the part of Western consumers.)
I’ve said this before, but I just can’t feel sorry for blacks getting shafted by hispanics. They’ve called us “racists”, have demanded entitlement programs that are bankrupting this country, have forced us to assocaite with them (yet they are free to discriminate against whites), and have forced generations of whites since the 60s to feel sorry for them and give away all our rights and power. Now, they see the hispanics don’t much for them. I’ve felt more comfortable being around a group of hispanics than I ever had blacks. At least they don’t gang up on me call me “cracker!”
