The financial crisis and recession of 2007 has all but eliminated the black middle class in America.
Economists say the Great Recession lasted from 2007 to 2009. In 2004, the median net worth of white
households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median black net worth had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the EPI.
Algernon Austin, director of the EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, described the current wealth gap this way: “In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.”
Since the end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor.
“I would say the recession is not over for black folks,” Austin says. He believes more black people than ever before could fall out of the middle class, because the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks recently peaked and blacks are overrepresented in state and local government jobs that are being eliminated due to massive budget shortfalls.
Do you want to know why the GOP’s first target after Obama got elected was to eliminate middle-class government jobs at the state and local level? Now you know. Eliminate the road to the middle class for blacks and they lose sociopolitical power. Breed resentment among everyone else. Government workers are “lazy” and “spoiled”. Government jobs are equivalent to “welfare”. It’s jobs where “they” work. Republicans played the class and race cards perfectly and the results have been the virtual elimination of the black middle class in America in just four years.
African-Americans have been crushed by the Wall Street-fueled recession. These numbers are horrifying to the point where I feel physically ill. And the best part is conservatives now want us to finish the job by abandoning the Democrats or abandoning voting altogether while they in turn do everything they can to keep blacks out of the voting booth through Voter ID laws.
Two percent. That’s the percentage of median household wealth the average black household compared to the average white one. This is what Wall Street did to black America, they leveled it with bulldozers, took the money, and then said “Sorry, we can’t afford to help you anymore. Go to hell.”
This is what the last decade of greed and hatred has done. It has literally put the middle-class on the block to be sacrificed to the rich, but especially the black middle class is seeing their world crumble. Gone. And the Republican Party is doing everything they can to make sure we are never heard from again.
And no, I don’t blame President Obama for what happened before he was elected, and I don’t blame him for not magically fixing this issue already. Remember, this happened at the state level. The response was, especially in red states in 2010, that Republicans in charge of states said “We have to cut government spending and that has to start with government jobs.”
Jobs held by a disproportionate amount of African-Americans. You do the math.
Remember that. Remember you have a voice. Use it.
I’m making sure everyone who follows me anywhere online sees this post. It’s stunning.
Outstanding! I have sent a link to this diary to all the people on my email list.
I would also be interested to see some stats on how this recession has impacted Latinos as well. I just know that in my own large family people have lost jobs, lost homes and are basically back to square one after working their butts off for years to get some level of security and a small bite of the so called “American Dream.”
In AZ, a lot of state and municiple jobs are held by Latinos who got laid off in the budget crunch. Another thing that really hurt was slashing DES subsidies to Day Care which meant that some people who were just getting by could no longer work and pay for child care. It has sparked some creative solutions though. For example, I babysit a neighbor’s child 3 afternoons a week and in exchange she helps me with chores around my house.
This is a class and a race war and the latest salvo for Repugnants is the photo ID laws they are pushing. They would be thrilled to cut off all minorities from voting because they know we don’t vote for them.
Does that median net worth amount take black women being only worth $5 into account?
“and blacks are overrepresented in state and local government jobs that are being eliminated due to massive budget shortfalls.”
Which, of course, will be played by Republicans thusly:
“SEE?? We TOLD you Affirmative Action was designed to destroy you….now you’re out of jobs you were never qualified to have in the first place!! Stick to Burger King and KFC,that’s your thing.”
That is the absolute reality, ain’t it?
Brilliant post. Thank you for telling it like it is.
Thank you ABL. On facebook.
Man, you got it dead to rights. I haven’t seen 20k in income per year since 2000. It’s obscene what has happened to the middle class and to the black middle class. I don’t know what more has to be told to working and middle class voters. Have you not realized that this unmitigated disaster of an economy started long before Barack Obama was even a candidate? But no, reality is just an inconvenient pimple.
You knocked that out of the park!
These numbers smack of statistical mischief. What were the controls? Who was compared to whom? HOW did they find their samples and who was sampled? If all people are compared who are both employed and unemployed you would have very different numbers than if you compare similarly situated people. I think this is dangerously misleading and likely intentionally so.
I’m as much of a research methodology hawk as anyone, but to suggest that these findings are somehow surprising or unexpected is to demonstrate some serious ignorance of the economic disparity between black and white people in America.
As a member of a bi-racial family I fully understand the economic disparity, I live it. But that is nonetheless unrelated to the problem with the statistics: For example how do they define “net worth?” Where did they get their samples? urban black and urban white in Alexandria Virginia? Did they compare by occupation? Or did they do the same sort of intentional misrepresentation that created the myth that women earn 77 cents on the dollar for men: Compare all men and all women without controlling for pregnancy and job types and years employed and you merely create bogus chestnuts for media consumption while fundamentally misleading policy makers when it comes to creating policies to remedy the actual problem. This could be no more than a study that demonstrates that black and white save and spend their money in dramatically different ways. All expenses are not investments that are included in “net worth.”