Reports last week from the Pew Research Center documented extensive downward mobility among the sons and daughters of the black middle class: 45% of black children from those families end up “near poor,” Pew reported. The comparable number for white families is 16%.
It would be hard to overstate the significance for blacks or for society generally. It means that the expansion of the black middle class ”” the key to attaining racial equality since legal barriers were removed 40 years ago ”” is in jeopardy.
On a personal level, it gives blacks reason to doubt the assumption that America is a place where each generation will surpass the previous one.
African-Americans sense this slippage. Pew pollsters sampling black America found the greatest level of pessimism since 1983. Just one in five says things are better now than they were five years ago. Looking ahead, fewer than half say they think life for blacks will get better.
[url=http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=387]The one thing this article overlooked is that the US middle class in general isn’t doing as well as it has in the past.[/url]
Material progress of a family is not inevitable. At any stage of life, drug use, alcoholism, divorce & illegitimacy can provide a greased chute downward, both spiritually & economically.
Vulcan, I’m sure you are right, but the fact still remains, African-Americans are behind, and apparently getting ‘behinder’.
As a black person from the Caribbean (is that Afro-Caribbean American, or Caribbean African-American?), happily married with three kids, I find these statistics dangerous, not just for the African-American community but for ‘non-African-American’ America as we are all impacted on many levels – economic, security, social, etc.,
I know there are as many theories and fixes as there are persons with opinions, but I still struggle with a cohesive approach from a Christian standpoint. In other words, what is my response, what should US Christianity’s response be? Is a response necessary, after all, (tongue-in-cheek) Jesus did say “the poor you will always haveâ€. I know there are millions of Christians attacking this problem in their local community, but it is so multi-sided, is there any cohesive thinking on this urgent issue?
As a member of a church under a non-US Primate, I have a gut reaction that many persons want to go on ‘mission’ to another country, and that certainly is a good thing, but what about the ‘mission’ in our backyard? I know that it is not as exotic, but the persons in my backyard need Jesus too – “Be ye warm and filled†(Jas 2:16) is not an option.
I don’t know the answer, that’s what I am struggling with.
There was an item on a recent TV news program about a group “100 Men in Suits” who spent the day at a local predominately black school. Each was assigned a boy as the children arrived and went to the classes and lunch with their “buddy”. The idea was to develop male role model relationships for kids that didn’t have them. Many of these kids had little or no contact with a man who lifestyle included suits and professional or executive type employment. There is nothing like a live, visible example to set aspirations a bit higher than they were. If even 10 more of those boys are motivated to finish high school and think of college, than would have been previously, that is a step forward for their community.
If the service group can make this an annual thing, studying and making decent grades might even become “cool” in that school.
One statistic that USA Today left out of its take on the PEW Survey was the dispairity in wealth formation. Pew found that the median invome level of blacks was 58% that of whites but that the wealth gap was much larger with black wealth accumulation being only 10% that of whites. If the black middle class in the survey had significantly less weath accumumlation then the black parents had much less ability to shape the children’s destinies. Trust funds/educational funds – loans/gifts to buy first homes all enable middle and upper middle class families to remain so.
Marie at Rez wrote: “Many of these kids had little or no contact with a man who lifestyle included suits and professional or executive type employment. There is nothing like a live, visible example to set aspirations a bit higher than they were. If even 10 more of those boys are motivated to finish high school and think of college, than would have been previously, that is a step forward for their community.”
Marie, I think you are missing a very important part of the article/issue: the “extensive downward mobility among the sons and daughters of the black middle class: 45% of black children from those families end up “near poor,””
What we are witnessing is a failure of children from the black (and some white, as well) middle-class. These children are, generally, not matching or surpassing their parents’ efforts and successes – in spite of the fact that these parents had a much rougher, more unjust/unfair, and more demanding/challenging situation/world growing up. But they (the parents), in spite of all the challenges achieved and excelled.
This debate is meaningless without confronting the elephant in the room: the doubling of the black American illegitimacy rate in the last 40+years. Otherwise we just chase our tails in an endless chicken-egg debate.