{"id":37980,"date":"2011-07-29T01:00:46","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T06:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=37980"},"modified":"2012-02-20T16:19:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T21:19:12","slug":"a-recession-for-white-americans-a-depression-for-black-and-latino-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/07\/29\/a-recession-for-white-americans-a-depression-for-black-and-latino-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"A Recession for White Americans, A Depression for Black and Latino Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Ms.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

A new study from the\u00a0Pew Research Center<\/a> reports staggering racial gaps in median wealth<\/a> — a person\u2019s accumulated assets minus her debt — between whites ($113,149), blacks ($5,677) an<\/strong>d Latinos ($6,325). That\u2019s a 20-to-1 white-to-black ratio of wealth and a 18-to-1 white-to-Latino ratio.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Essentially, all of the economic gains made by people of color since the Civil Rig<\/strong>hts Movement have been erased in a few years by the Long Recession. Whites experienced a net wealth loss of 16 percent from 2005 to 2009, while blacks lost about half of their wealth (53 percent) and Latinos lost two-thirds of their wealth.<\/p>\n

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Media outlets reporting on the Pew study point to housing loss as the primary culprit, since the net worth of blacks and Latinos is heavily reliant on\u00a0home ownership<\/a>, while whites are more likely to have retirement accounts and stock.<\/p>\n

While this is certainly accurate, it obscures the core racism at play. Public policy decisions have been responsible for the speedy recovery of the financial market and the slow recovery of the housing market. From the start, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) favored Wall Street recovery over homeowner recovery, with only $12 billion of the $700 billion bailout spent on\u00a0foreclosure programs<\/a>. (To be fair, most of the\u00a0Wall Street\u00a0money was eventually\u00a0paid back<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So prioritization of corporate interests disproportionately assisted whites in the recovery — but (perhaps) not intentionally. The same cannot be said for actual lending practices.<\/p>\n

Rampant\u2013 — and racist — fraud in the home loan industry was a primary contributor to the collapse, with\u00a061 percent<\/a> of sub-prime loan holders actually qualifying for prime loans that would have been easier to maintain. Blacks and Latinos were\u00a0especially targeted<\/a> for sub-prime loans, a practice\u00a0called \u201creverse redlining<\/a>.\u201d Wells Fargo loan officer-turned-whistle blower Elizabeth Jacobson admitted that\u00a0her company\u00a0specifically went after African Americans<\/a> for sub-prime loans through \u201cwealth building\u201d conferences hosted in black churches.<\/p>\n

The employment gap between whites and blacks is also a contributor to the wealth gap. While white American are suffering through the Long Recession with 7.9 percent unemployment, blacks are experiencing\u00a0Great Depression-like<\/a> figures of 16.1 percent unemployment. This figure jumps to\u00a031.4 percent<\/a> for blacks ages 16 to 24, and black Americans have consistently had the higher rate of unemployment compared to white Americans since 2007.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the employment gap, too, has racist origins. The Center for American Progress analyzed unemployment data from the last three recessions and found that black unemployment starts earlier, rises faster and lingers longer. Explanations include the concentration of black workers in the stumbling manufacturing sector, the cutting of public sector jobs — and racial discrimination. This last finding is no shock given that employers are more likely to\u00a0call back a white job applicant with a criminal record<\/a> than a similarly qualified black man without a record.<\/p>\n

The role of racism in poverty is important to keep in mind at a time Washington politicians are\u00a0manufacturing crises<\/a> that will slash the entitlement programs that 1 in 6 Americans\u00a0rely on.<\/a> It\u2019s ironic that we\u2019re cutting safety nets for the poor just as we\u2019re experiencing the\u00a0highest poverty rate since 1960<\/a>, with blacks and Latinos\u00a0three times as likely<\/a> to live in poverty. Public policy is supposed to\u00a0knock down\u00a0racial and other non-meritorious barriers\u00a0to\u00a0pursuing life, liberty, and happiness, not jack them higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Ms. A new study from the\u00a0Pew Research Center reports staggering racial gaps in median wealth — a person\u2019s accumulated assets minus her debt — between whites ($113,149), blacks ($5,677) and Latinos ($6,325). That\u2019s a 20-to-1 white-to-black ratio of wealth and a 18-to-1 white-to-Latino ratio. Essentially, all of the economic gains made by people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,12498,778,304,285,1760,1754,1757],"class_list":["post-37980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-intersectionality","tag-the-state","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37980"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45111,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37980\/revisions\/45111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}