On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On May 18, 2010, at 10:53 AM, Eric Beck wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On May 18, 2010, at 10:39 AM, Eric Beck wrote:
>>>
>>> A $95,000 question: why are whites five times richer than blacks in the
>>>> US?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Inheritance, mostly.
>>>
>>
>> Really? I wondered if that accounted for it, but didn't dig into it
>> too much. I knew that income differential hadn't increased that much.
>>
>
> It's not just about income differentials - it's a long-established fact
> that even at the same income level, white wealth is far greater than black.
> Here's what I wrote on the topic in After the New Economy:
>
> Unfortunately, the major published reports on the SCF (Kennickell at al
>> 2000; Aizcorbe et al 2003) divide the population is only into "white
>> non-Hispanic" and "nonwhite or Hispanic" (and there's no gendered reporting
>> at all). But there too, the wealth figures are stunningly more lopsided than
>> income figures. In 2001, the average "white" household had an income 76%
>> higher than that of the "nonwhite or Hispanic" household in 1998 — but had a
>> net worth (including residence) over seven times as high. Both numbers are
>> significantly higher than they were in 1992 — broad racial gaps have
>> widened.
>>
>> Wolff (2000) provides a lot more detail. For example, black incomes were
>> 54% of white incomes in 1998 — but black net worth (including residential)
>> was 12%, and nonresidential net worth, just 3% of white. For Hispanics,
>> incomes were 62% of white; net worth, 4%, and nonresidential net worth was
>> 0%. Just under 15% of white households had zero or negative net worth,
>> compared with 27% of black, and 36% of Hispanic. Even at similar levels of
>> income, black households were significantly less wealthy than white ones;
>> black households in the $25,000–49,999 income bracket had net worths equal
>> to 46% of white averages; those in the $75,000+ category, 29% of white.
>> Similarly with stock ownership; 54% of white households had some, but just
>> 30% of black. And average black stockholdings were just 20% of white. The
>> democratization of ownership has a way to go yet.
>>
>> Wealth is an important part of the economics of race in America: it
>> "sediments" privilege and deprivation (Oliver and Shapiro 1995, p. 5).
>> Though blacks in general have much lower incomes than do whites, there's a
>> vast racial wealth gap between households with otherwise similar demographic
>> characteristics (like education and income). The reasons aren't hard to
>> fathom: the first African-Americans weren't merely forbidden to accumulate
>> property, they were property — but even after Emancipation, discriminatory
>> laws and practices prevented blacks from accumulating wealth and passing it
>> on to their children. So even middle class blacks don't have the benefit of
>> spare change in the bank to take advantage of a business opportunity or to
>> survive a bout of sickness or unemployment. This has long been compounded by
>> continued discrimination in mortgage and housing markets — which persists
>> statistically even after income and other demographic factors are accounted
>> for — denying many black Americans access to that major component of
>> middle-class wealth, the owner-occupied house.
>>
>
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-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319