A new study released by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy revealed that even when African-Americans had a good education and well-paying jobs, they could not achieve the wealth of their white peers in the workforce. As a result the wealth disparity between white and black households has more than quadrupled, regardless of income bracket.
Disparities are driven by racial discrimination because civil rights laws have all but been abandoned over the past decade. I am making a request that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to examine ways to strengthen enforcement of civil rights laws.
For example, Attorney General Holder's initiative -- launched this year to toughen enforcement of civil rights and fair lending laws -- is critical. African-Americans and Latinos have disproportionately been affected by the home foreclosure crisis, with ample studies showing these communities were steered to subprime loans when they qualified for prime rate loans.
The IASP study found that middle-income white families hold much more assets (stocks, bonds, business interests, real estate other than primary residence) than do high-income black families and that many black families hold more debt than assets and at least 25 percent of black families had no assets to turn to in times of economic hardship.
This crisis deserves a White House conference. We vote in record numbers. We serve in the military. We're playing on athletic fields. We're No. 1 in infant mortality. We have lower life expectancy. There's and obvious health gap, but more than that, a broad range of structural gaps that must be addressed. We sing, dance and entertain.
Yet, there's a painful indifference to the reduced life options of African-Americans.
Follow Rev. Jesse Jackson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/revjjackson
"Housing issues are related to a complex web of social justice concerns. Two related concerns that are particularly relevant to housing are white privilege and wealth inequality. In fact, understanding the history of discrimination in America—particularly housing discrimination—is indispensable to understanding contemporary economic inequality. What’s the connection between housing, white privilege, and wealth inequality? Here’s a statistic that might surprise you:
The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth of new housing between 1934 and 1962, but less than 2% of this real estate was available to nonwhite families—and most of that small amount was located in segregated communities."
http://talktostambrose.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/aint-so-simple-housing-privilege-and-wealth-inequality/
The more we draw racial lines - the more racial disparity will continue. We need to stop talking us and them. But, such is human nature.
The majority of racism is built us. Yes, every human being regardless of skin color has the propensity of being a racist. This tendency is largely responsible for the today's "Black Tax" and "White Privilege"; it rarely originates today in conscious and deliberate intent (originates in the part of us we are not consciously aware of is working.)
Fortunately, we are built to be able to reprogram this, and it doesn't take a lot of effort; it just takes the right effort.
We have simply been looking at it from the point of view of the social world we created to explain cause and effect, using the same flawed thinking processes that caused our prejudicing inclinations to take shape in socioeconomic form in the first place.
Albert Einstein was correct when he said we cannot solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
We need to understand the true source of racism and why it remains, and devise a method to educate the "Black Tax" and "White Privilege" tendencies out of every American - and do so without ideological or political tampering.
Reaction, hatred, blaming, etc., not only does not provide solutions, it pushes people away from involvement and reinforces racial social boundaries.
I moved from two bedroom 900 sq ft cottage to an 1800sq ft ranch to a 2800ft home over my lifetime.. each time making sure I could afford it and that I had the requisite equity. I never owned anthying better than a Honda civic until very recently. I now own my house outright!
This problems amongst the younger generation is not a new phenemenon but it is more pervasive today! My two cents is that we have collectively, as a society, lost our willingness to put off gratification in hopes of a secure and brighter future.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_4_35/ai_n7576609/
" Housing issues are related to a complex web of social justice concerns. Two related concerns that are particularly relevant to housing are white privilege and wealth inequality. In fact, understanding the history of discrimination in America—particularly housing discrimination—is indispensable to understanding contemporary economic inequality. What’s the connection between housing, white privilege, and wealth inequality? Here’s a statistic that might surprise you:
The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth of new housing between 1934 and 1962, but less than 2% of this real estate was available to nonwhite families—and most of that small amount was located in segregated communities. "
http://talktostambrose.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/aint-so-simple-housing-privilege-and-wealth-inequality/
I don't deny there is racism and stereotyping at every level of this culture and society....And not just this culture, all cultures throughout the world. Part of it is inherent how the brain works (we stereotype or generalize and make patterns out of particulars as a survival mechanism).
None the less, I can't help but notice that African immigrants do much better in the US than African-Americans. Same skin color. Different outcome. Is that the legacy of current racist attitudes or hundreds of years of slavery, generations abusing generations (i.e. beating the children, verbal abuse) as they were abused by their slave masters, Jim Crow, a hundred of years of being free but being oppressed and being denied access to education, extreme poverty, etc.
Absolutely. However, I never owned slaves, my family immigrated to the US at the turn of the 19th century, so no, I dont' feel personally responsible. Are we as a "nation" responsible? I don't know, maybe. Tough to tell but the whole proposition is kind of absurd at this point in time.
Response:
Adding up Black Losses or The Cost of Discrimination
$1.6 trillion: The estimated economic loss for African Americans as a result of legal segregation for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars).
+ Several trillion dollars: The cost of discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1969, the end of American style apartheid, based on year-2000 dollars.
+ $94-123 billion: The estimate of how much Black workers lose annually from continuing discrimination and informal segregation in employment.
+ 100 billion: The estimated amount that Blacks in this generation have lost in home equity as a result of the racial discrimination they confront when they attempt to secure mortgages for homes and businesses.
= $5 to $24 trillion: The sum total of the worth of all the Black labor stolen through the means of slavery, segregation, and contemporary discrimination in today's dollars.
http://aapf.org/focus/episodes/nov3.php
So your family not only benefited from slavery (without it your family would not have moved here with the same benefits) but from AFFIRMATIVE ACTION for WHITES sponsored by FHA and others,
Certainly, no one denies that people stereotype others. People also have murderous thoughts. The poitn is dealing with the real world effects.
African immigrants do better than AfricanAmericans, but the immigrant comparison has been roundly debunked as invalid for numerous reasons, e.g. comparing the top layer of one group with the mean of another, entrenched and specific prejudice that on some level distinguishes between "other" non-whites and Black Americans, internalized barriers resulting from dealing with racism, etc. I'm impressed that you acknowledge that, in part. We can't even get that far with most; I think because they know the rational and moral conclusion to which it leads.
And, yes, neither you nor your family owns slaves, but the responibility is a collective responsibility based on the moral realization that you benefit disproportionately from a racist system and it's history. I see you also ackowledge this, in part, even if you hesitate in acknowledge it as the responsibility of the "nation."
I understand that many whites are afraid of going down this road because they know that in any other case that reparations, in fact, does have a valid moral, as well as, legal premise. However, ignoring it won't make it go away.
Yet, there's a painful indifference to the reduced life options of African-Americans."
Why is the sentence "We sing, dance and entertain" included in this paragraph?
a.) jeopardizing the prosperity of the successful? In search of the monies to fund this, should we consider garnishing the wages of wealthy blacks--including Shaq, Pippen, LeBron--to 'balance' the needs of the black community? While we're justifying forced payments, here's a very deep well to commandier; surely, they owe it to their poorer brethren. Or,
b.) compounding the poverty of Anglo-Americans, who share the same bracket as the poor blacks who would be getting compensation? or
c.) punishing non-offenders (those who either fought for civil-rights, came to this country after slavery was abolished, never enslaved or discriminated against blacks) simply based on their white skin-color?
In our attempts to right the wrongs of the past (whose repercussions still affect daily life in America), we need to be careful not to allow vengeance to blind us to the true goal of unity..."a more, perfect union.". The bully of racism would just love the chance to simply switch masks and keep raping our country. Let's stop the pendulum of hate before it ruins us all.
I think a solution to non-offenders is to make clear how much all, America, Europe, even Asia benefited from black slavery and Jim Crow.
For instance:
"Adding up Black Losses or The Cost of Discrimination
$1.6 trillion: The estimated economic loss for African Americans as a result of legal segregation for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars).
+ Several trillion dollars: The cost of discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1969, the end of American style apartheid, based on year-2000 dollars.
+ $94-123 billion: The estimate of how much Black workers lose annually from continuing discrimination and informal segregation in employment.
+ 100 billion: The estimated amount that Blacks in this generation have lost in home equity as a result of the racial discrimination they confront when they attempt to secure mortgages for homes and businesses.
= $5 to $24 trillion: The sum total of the worth of all the Black labor stolen through the means of slavery, segregation, and contemporary discrimination in today's dollars."
http://aapf.org/focus/episodes/nov3.php
It may be the answer, but it does represent a way of presenting the "bill".
I remember breaking a neighbor's windows when I was a child. I was very sorry for it. Not only did I pay for the window, but I mowed their lawn for 2 weeks.
I've said this before and it bares repeating today I see how stereotypes are born in the rhetoric surrounding the illegal immigrants. The are portrayed as hardworking with family values but you put blacks in those same jobs we become people with no ambition. And the really sad part is that many of you feel that your intelligence lets you see the world from this position of equity, and you can't see what is right in front of you. I expect to either get no responses to this or angry ones and either response supports exactly what I'm saying.
I will now make some points of my own. There have been many civilizations throughout history where one culture has been enslaved to service another. This has been done in many ages and on many continents. Be proud that you come from a people who have not only survived, but have struggled and died to have a voice. Be proud that Black Americans have the rights to boast of people in their American history like George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., any of the Massachusetts 504th Civil War infantry, any honorable member of the Tuskeegee Airmen, Danny Glover and last, but certainly not least...Warrick Dunn. White folks have nothing to brag about in recent times. Remember Jesse Helms? George H.W. and George W. Bush? Rush Limbaugh?
Be proud of your heritage, stay informed, stay educated, stay positive and true to yourself. Anger leads to weakness and also to excuses.
" Adding up Black Losses or The Cost of Discrimination
$1.6 trillion: The estimated economic loss for African Americans as a result of legal segregation for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars).
+ Several trillion dollars: The cost of discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1969, the end of American style apartheid, based on year-2000 dollars.
+ $94-123 billion: The estimate of how much Black workers lose annually from continuing discrimination and informal segregation in employment.
+ 100 billion: The estimated amount that Blacks in this generation have lost in home equity as a result of the racial discrimination they confront when they attempt to secure mortgages for homes and businesses.
= $5 to $24 trillion: The sum total of the worth of all the Black labor stolen through the means of slavery, segregation, and contemporary discrimination in today's dollars. "
http://aapf.org/focus/episodes/nov3.php
I am a 4th generation Ethiopian American. All four of my grandparents were born in the between 1912 and 1919. They all found good jobs, they all put their children through college, and they were all home owners. Keep in mind they were all my age in the late 1920's-30's when discrimination was very high. Why is it that African Americans have been able to find success in America where many Black Americans have not? In order to be successful you have to value education and a lifestyle that will lead to wealth not deplete wealth.
As for Blacks who make lots of money but don't have wealth there is an old saying that applies to everyone: It's not what you make it's what you save. If you make $1,000,000 a year and you spend $1,000,000 a year then you will have wealth of $0 a year. [Owning stocks and a home does not in and of itself make you wealthy because they are market valued items. They are only wealth if they hold or increase their value, if they fall in value then they are not a wealth but a liability. A home is only "wealth" if you own it in full, not if you carry a mortgage.]
Also, aside from the rather obvious statement that spending all of one's money leaves one with nothing, your analysis of what is considered wealth is off. Wealth is equity, assets minus liabilities. This includes wealth in one's home, even if one carries a mortgage, because there is a way to "get at" that equity, e.g. sell and downsize to take equity in cash. And, yes, you do "own" your home and can do with it what you will, the lender merely has a "lien" against the property, much like a mechanic can place a lien against it if you don't pay him for work done to your home. Both are in the same situation and do not "own" your home, even if you "feel" that they do.
The difference in wealth between Blacks and whites is real, even if it is difficult to comprehend in abstract. The mean white family has nearly 20 times the wealth of the mean Black family. This is primarily due to access to capital (in which to buy large assets and build equity through appreciation of those large valued assets), particularly through loans and stable employment in which to support those loans; both of which are historicallly heavily affected by racism.
" The rise in value of these homes has provided many Americans with the wealth they need to live comfortably and to prosper. African Americans and other members of racial minority groups, however, were, more often than not, systematically excluded from access to these loans. In virtually every city in America, Black neighborhoods were “redlined”, or marked ineligible for FHA loans. Even for those that could afford it, buying a home in a non-redlined market was also barred by government policy. The FHA, fearing that integration would be detrimental to property values, urged lenders to keep white neighborhoods white. The FHA Underwriting Manual stated that "[i]f a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes." It recommended the use of racially restrictive covenants (agreements not to sell, transfer, or rent to, or even allow occupancy by someone from another race) from its inception in 1934 until 1950.
As a result, while white wealth skyrocketed as government funds helped millions of families to achieve the American dream of home ownership, Black families and other communities of color were left behind. Redlining policies were in place until 1977, when they were finally made illegal..."
http://aapf.org/focus/episodes/nov3.php
FANNED!
For fiscal conservatives, Bush is only marginally better than Obama - both are proponents of bigger government, just for different reasons and different ends.
People need to know that there are MANY of us out here who don't like Obama when it comes to spending, and we didn't like Bush either!
When it comes to spending THEY BOTH SUCK!
Tax cuts, another program- did that work?
How about the deregulation program- that one seemed to end all f@&%$** programs from the Right Wing.
Now you're crying about JJ helping people and thus the economy stupid? and that programs are the problem? No, the Right Wing is the problem.
Lets cut Right Wing and solve everything.
I heard about the second bill of rights on the Tom Hartman show.
In that scenario, when one person wants to work very hard, take risk and sacrifice, and another person doesn't want to live this way; they want to work as little as possible and not very hard how does this pan out? Should the person who does not want to work as hard (or as much) have as much material wealth as someone who does?
However, please take a step back, look objectively at our CURRENT economy, not the "ideal" one...and tell me with a straight face that the wealthiest Americans are really there at the top of the food chain because they "work harder." Tell me that the CEO of a health care company or finance company just "works harder" than a construction worker who puts in 14-hour days of manual labor...or a doctorate-level social worker...or an inner-city cop...or a trauma nurse... You get the picture. There once was a time in this country that getting an education, working hard and sacrificing, making good decisions, was a ticket to prosperity for most people. Those things can no longer be counted on. College-educated, hard-working people are losing their pensions, their homes, and their jobs, while those at the very top 2% of wealth are giving themselves 7-figure bonuses for shoddy work and bad business decisions, and using their buying power to influence Congress to keep the laws in their favor. The system is BROKEN...it's not just about "who works hardest" anymore.
And this is somehow a civil rights issue? No Reverend Jackson, it is a "spend less than you earn" issue which speaks to personal responsibility. Why don't you talk about that sometime instead of asking the government to redistribute more wealth.
"The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth of new housing between 1934 and 1962, but less than 2% of this real estate was available to nonwhite families—and most of that small amount was located in segregated communities."
http://talktostambrose.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/aint-so-simple-housing-privilege-and-wealth-inequality/