Dr. Boyce Watkins; Racial Wealth Gap, Worse Than it’s Been in 25-Years…

(ThyBlackMan.com) A new study presented some disturbing, yet expected news about the sad state of economic affairs within the African American community. According to the study, the wealth gap between white and black Americans has become the widest that it’s been in the last 25 years. As it stands, whites have a wealth level that is 20 times greater than blacks, and 18 times greater than Hispanics.

Much of the drop in black family wealth is due primarily to the decline in home values and heightened unemployment during the great recession of the last three years. African Americans currently have the highest unemployment rates in America, with the most recent data listing the rate at 16.2 percent.

The wealth gap is the largest that it’s been since officials began tracking the disparities back in 1984. At that time, the gap was merely 12-to-1, implying that African Americans are worse off than they were in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan promoted trickle-down economics, which destroyed black communities everywhere.

“I am afraid that this pushes us back to what the Kerner Commission characterized as ‘two societies, separate and unequal,’” said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau. “The great difference is that the second society has now become both black and Hispanic.”

read more at the link: http://thyblackman.com/2011/07/26/dr-boyce-watkins-racial-wealth-gap-worse-than-its-been-in-25-years/