Quoted: Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammed on the Destruction of the Black Middle Class
Excerpted by Latoya Peterson
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 percent 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 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. 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 percent, 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 percent 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.
—”The Destruction of the Black Middle Class,” Barbara’s Blog
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Barbara wrote:
We need to make sure this is reported on the news. It will help some of the crazy folk at the townhalls understand that White people are still on top.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 1:02 pm ¶
12xu wrote:
What about these connections to the decline of the black community?
While 42 percent of Black men were now married, just 31 percent of Black women were married when Census 2000 was taken. The LOWEST PROPORTION FOR WOMEN OF ANY RACE or origin groups. The 10 percentage-point difference in the percentage of Black men and Black women who were now married was the largest difference between men and women in any of the groups.
(source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-30.pdf)
The vast majority of black children are born out of wedlock and without a father figure in the home. Combine that with black women being 3 times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner and the rapid spread of HIV- You begin to see a pattern emerging.
Combine all this with the decline of manufacturing (a former key to black prosperity) and none of this should be a surprise.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 1:29 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:
I would also add as a corollary The Creation of the White Middle Class post WW2 through FHA & the GI Bill.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 2:27 pm ¶
A.G. wrote:
gatamala wrote:
“I would also add as a corollary The Creation of the White Middle Class post WW2 through FHA & the GI Bill.”……………………………Gatamala, I am having a hard time, deciphering your point. If you look back in history, WW2, FHA and the GI bill occurred also during the time of the great migration. In my opinion, despite the time period, and climate there was also a creation of a black middle class. Many of those people bought homes on the GI Bill, paid them off and purchased other homes. There was a totally different work ethic, and level of responsibility within that generation. Many of our grandparents from that era are dying out but if you take a comparison, they worked, had good credit and saved.
Our generations X and Y, too good for certain jobs, won’t pay bills or pay them late, and then get ripped off by people who will give away cars and houses with 50% interest rates. If people are unemployed, then they are working just to pay bills, or they are skipping them to have a few creature comforts. Credit is the only life line you are going to have, if you are underemployed or considered the working poor.
I am pretty sure, some self-righteous apologist will jump on my case for this. But, many of our problems economically are due to poor fiscal responsibility. That is the problem. It is something that becomes a repetitive cycle and they need to start teaching it in schools. With good credit, you can open your own businesses, get lower interest rates, and pay 120 per month for a car. It’s a problem with us, and it needs to be addressed.
The Vietnam era started many of our problems, the crack epidemic made it worse, many years later predatory lending took over.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 4:28 pm ¶
Kmoney wrote:
right, exactly, gatamala. black servicemen were being denied the right to buy homes in new subdivisions due to race, thereby negatively impacting the accumulation of wealth in black families.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 4:29 pm ¶
A.G. wrote:
I meant to say, if people are underemployed, they are working just to pay bills.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 4:31 pm ¶
ashlynn wrote:
It’s called single parent homes. Mothers who have to work low paying jobs to support their children, while fathers take little if any responsibility in financial support and more importantly, emotional, physical, and moral support. No one to actually RAISE children anymore. So now kids are dropping out of school, unable to find employment, don’t even care to try sometimes. As much a I oppose the institution of marriage, it is one of the large factors that keep families together, thus enabling them to build a financial foundation- after all, two incomes are better than one- and create an environment that nurtures ambition, creativity, self determination, and self esteem. Do not misquote me as saying only marriages can do that, ho, to the contrary, many do the exact opposite- but the literal binding of two people by the law, especially when a child is involved, can be a viable and useful tool to staving off the negative trends in the black community.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 8:18 pm ¶
DivergentDana wrote:
“The 10 percentage-point difference in the percentage of Black men and Black women who were now married was the largest difference between men and women in any of the groups.”
That’s just outright false. The disparity between Asians is much larger. The “problem” is that the overall black marriage rates for men and women are low in comparison with other groups. Economic instability is the cause of this, not the result (there is usually added childcare, but not necessarily consistent additional income if an additional parent is in the home… the sky-high unemployment rates for black people of both genders prove this. A spouse may, in practice, mean another mouth for the sole breadwinner to feed and back to clothe.) If adults are taking the jobs that are usually relegated to teens and attempting to live on them in lieu of the unionized, high paying manufacturing jobs with benefits that non-college educated people are eligible for, they’re not going to see themselves as ready for marriage/settling down as soon or as often as their parents and their parents parents did if they use similar standards and markers (can I afford a desirable wedding, can I afford a home in my area or a desirable area, does my employment stability/occupation make me an attractive marriage prospect, am I living on my own currently), because the job market isn’t as conducive to that kind of lifestyle as it once was for younger blue collar workers, and black people have endured that occupational pattern in greater numbers and for a more extended period of time than most other groups.
Posted 12 Aug 2009 at 11:45 pm ¶
cvalda wrote:
@ashlynn
Without jobs, there’s only so much social stability you can expect.
The basis of the modern nuclear family is economic; families as independent, mobile units dependent on wage-labour. In fact, single parent families are the logical extension of this, because “traditional” nuclear families are honed down versions of old-school extended families.
The Civil Rights movement was enabled by the post-war boom, which allowed for a degree of social stability and economic power. Basically, a unionised blue-collar worker could provide for a family. As profit rates in the first world started to fall, attacks on the working class hit black workers particularly hard. The ’80s were a major setback; although integration and affirmative action had allowed the formation of a middle class, the economic basis of black independence was undercut. Bush & co just opened the floodgates.
Family structure, like population, is a part of wider society. It’s not purely causative.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 7:34 am ¶
DivergentDana wrote:
“As much a I oppose the institution of marriage, it is one of the large factors that keep families together, thus enabling them to build a financial foundation- after all, two incomes are better than one- and create an environment that nurtures ambition, creativity, self determination, and self esteem.”
But there aren’t always two-incomes, and that isn’t always of the family’s own volition.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 8:25 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
AG~ I just threw that out there
The GI Bill was a help in part. The trick was (is) getting the actually pay out. My grandpa was a GI Bill recipient.
Kmoney was right about FHA and neighborhoods. What I meant was that whites had an actual Federally-subsidized and orchestrated head start to being boosted into the middle cass or being safely esconced in the middle class.
In all fairness, I get your point and agree. But on the other hand, it worked for us because we were literate AND educated coming out of slavery. Not everyone starts at the same point, with the same financial acumen and not everyone will receive the same institutional support (FAIR loans) when they falter.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 9:43 am ¶
12xu wrote:
The ’80s were a major setback; although integration and affirmative action had allowed the formation of a middle class, the economic basis of black independence was undercut. Bush & co just opened the floodgates.
The black family was coming apart by the 1960’s, it’s right there in the moynihan report.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 11:34 am ¶
calichica wrote:
“The black family was coming apart by the 1960’s, it’s right there in the moynihan report.”
Family stability or not, it’s funny when whites suffer economically through downturns, no one cites the 50% national divorce rate (which is comprised primarily of whites) in their assessment of white people’s livelihood. Yet, with black families, the automatic answer is their morality.
It’s become quite the norm to question black people’s values in things that are structurally rooted and policy-based.
Further, that Moynihan report of which you speak was based largely on national statistics of single-parent families (which were mostly white) and were not centered on black families. His assessment of black families was what he gathered from looking at trends in white families.
Studies that actually have black families as subjects have found that what really affects the success of a child were proper support networks (of which many black mothers have in extended relatives such as grandmothers, aunts, and close friends) and parenting, not the parent’s marital status. In fact, because many blacks individually are of lower income, sometimes bringing the two economically disadvantaged families together leads to more conflict and less peace at home.
This idea of a standard nuclear family, in the first place, is a paternalistic one that places more relevance on a father than has really shown to affect black homes. These studies (which are unfortunately a paltry few, as most science and social science studies ignore people of color) are swept under in favor of the easy answer: find a husband and then all the problems will go away!
Things like the proliferation of durgs and disparate targeting of black men and women in drug wars (which, go figure, also began in the late 60s early 70s when black families started to “unravel” ), the tracking and excessive criminalization of black youth in the school system, and discriminatory employment policies and wage rates, have far more impact on children’s well being, and ultimate adult success than anything related to family structure for black children, as studies have shown time and time again.
The reality is, while black families should and could be improved, the issues of morality are more often in conversations of black well-being than any other race while the larger policy issues are ignored. This is a double standard affected by our own prejudicial attitudes of black people, and that hypocrisy has got to stop.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 3:18 pm ¶
ashlynn wrote:
“Family structure, like population, is a part of wider society. It’s not purely causative.”
Agreed. Though I could certainly debate the signifcance in that I grew up with two other siblings in a single parent home, living in the projects, eating free lunch and getting by, and then having my mother find a partner(and here is where I’d like to add to my original comment that it’s not marriage that’s actually needed, it’s a stable partnership; however, many people need the legalities of marriage to ensure they stay together, at least for some decent period of time), and in a matter of a year, we were living in a house, and certainly solidly entered the middle class.
I can also agree that extended family plays a role in creating stability as well, though I couldn’t really expound on how.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 6:06 pm ¶
DivergentDana wrote:
Um, perhaps because extended family can and often does serve the same purpose that an employed spouse can if they share a household, with ties that are nigh impenetrable in comparison to marriage, especially modern marriage. You can be on bad terms with your (rhetorical your) mother, but she’s still your mother, and may still perform grandmotherly duties in regards to the household and young children therein, despite a “falling out.” On the other hand, if spouses have a particularly big row, the customary thing to do is often to split the household.
Posted 13 Aug 2009 at 6:16 pm ¶
Donald wrote:
The extended family has lots of benefits over the nuclear family. It’s not merely a matter of grandmother helping with the kids. You have multiple income earners so the loss of any one to accident or unemployment is nothing like as damaging. Multiple carers means that all can take a break and because much caring involves presence rather than actual work the efficency is better. Grandpa may be at risk if left on his own all day but he can still keep an eye on the toddler while the main carer does some shopping.
Probably the biggest disadvantage is all those additional people who have to get along with each other adequately.
The nuclear family is an experiment of the afluent in the 19th and 20th Centuries and the indications are that it does not work that well without plenty of money.
Posted 15 Aug 2009 at 7:15 pm ¶