The Economic Fallout Has Decimated the Black Middle Class

(yea, I know - this is no news to a lot of us but still a good read and pass-around article)
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By Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad, Barbaraehrenreich.com
Posted on August 10, 2009, Printed on August 10, 2009


To judge from most of the commentary on the Gates-Crowley affair, you would think that a "black elite" has gotten dangerously out of hand. First Gates (Cambridge, Yale, Harvard) showed insufficient deference to Crowley, then Obama (Occidental, Harvard) piled on to accuse the police of having acted "stupidly." Was this "the end of white America" which the Atlantic had warned of in its January/February cover story? Or had the injuries of class -- working class in Crowley's case -- finally trumped the grievances of race?

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.

MORE...

http://www.alternet.org/story/141825/

But when it was happening in the black community no one cared or they blamed the person for not reading well enough or for not living within their means or said it was the breaks for having less then stellar credit even when these loans were being targeted to black and brown people. And when it started to hit the fan for white folks all of as sudden it's a massive problem. The banks have literally stolen wealth from the black community but of course folks around here can't be bothered to muster up enough energy to give a shit.

I don't see that changing any time soon truth be told.

that the predatory loans weren't an issue till they affected whites. Doesn't mean they weren't happening - but it's easy to just ASSume blacks or hispanics are too stupid to read or irresponsible to care - no one assumed that about white people. IntereSTINK.

1) Heck no, this isn't news.
2) It is still an excellent read.

Thanks for posting. :) Talking to my friends back home in Atlanta, this is most definitely not news to me.

But this article will come in handy when we are dealing with whites who say "of course blacks are doing great! Look at Oprah!"



DAMN. And I mean, DAMN.