Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report rightly points out that based on the Brandeis data, African Americans and whites will never gain wealth parity, indeed they are moving further away from it and notes that
Black folks have been integrated long enough to know that the white family didn’t get richer by a quarter million dollars because they were smarter than the Black family. Privilege, especially cumulative privilege over generations, works wonders, like compound interest only better.
Not only does wealth itself function in a strong reinforcing loop (“gotta have money to make money”), especially combined with inheritance, but the power to continually tweak socioeconomic structures is the metaprivilege underneath it all.
It continually amazes me how strong the dominant narrative of “racial disparities were bad, they are getting better, and soon they will cease to exist” is. Despite the fact that in nearly every indicator of wellbeing, racial disparities not only continue to exist, but are in many cases the same or worse than they were 50 years ago. When better, they are either trivially better, or the bar has been moved. (HS graduation disparities are a lot better, for example, but a HS diploma doesn’t get you very far these days) These statistics are there for anyone that looks, yet even fellow white progressives are often shocked at their extent.
Two notes:
Both the United for A Fair Economy reports cited and Mr Ford’s article, often project forward disparities based on the assumption that they will stay on the exact same trajectory. We know, in fact, that this is rarely the case.
While it is true that significant wealth disparities exist even for Black families with incomes equal or greater to corresponding white families, we also know that much of this inequality is disproportionately benefiting a very small portion of the elite class. It would be foolish to assert that the continuing economic downturn would magically result in racial harmony and a class-based consciousness, when in fact we have seen harsh economic storms almost always bring increasing racial antagonism and fierce fighting over smaller pieces of the pie. However, we can continue to organize around the fact that the same socioeconomic structures that disproportionately benefit whites are also resulting in a decimated middle class and intensifying wealth inequality overall.
While I don’t see any hope of a large multi-racial movement for economic justice on the horizon, I do see the gathering storm clouds of a Tea Party populism and anti-immigrant sentiment that has racial anxiety all twisted up with economic fears. Sometimes you gotta work as hard as you can just to keep things from getting worse.
