The Weird and The Wacky Meet

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Income Inequality

                 Throughout American history, Blacks and Hispanics have been treated as inferiors to whites.  Pressure from civil rights advocates has breakdown in discriminatory practices.  The 1960’s civil rights movements saw overturned segregation laws, opened voting booths, new job opportunities and renewed hope for racial equality.  By the current century, many minorities had gained educations and used them to enter the middle class.  In 1999, 28% of African Americans and 25% of Latinos had family incomes over $50,000.  They did this by taking advantage of fair-housing laws, moving to the suburbs for “better schools, safer streets and better services”.

                 Despite more economic equality, discrimination remains, in the form of hostility and small insults.  Examples of this include being watched in stores, receiving sub-standard service and being targeted by police while driving.  Nor was segregation corrected, because as some people of color became richer, many more became marginalized.  The most recent census shows high levels of racial segregation, with increases in larger cities.  The average Black person lives in a neighborhood that is 33% white and 51% Black.  In comparison to a decade before that, Blacks were more likely to have Hispanic and Asian neighbors, but not any more likely to have white ones.  In the same time, Asian and Hispanic populations, which include many new immigrants, were somewhat more isolated.

                 Racial income disparities have remained unchanged over time.  In 2000, the medium income of Black families was $34,192, as opposed to $56,442 for whites.  Hispanics have a medium income of $35,054, but that slight difference over the Blacks is somewhat counteracted by larger family size.  Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro define wealth as “the command over financial resources that a family has accumulated over its lifetime along with those resources that have been inherited across generations”.  Historically, a key to gaining wealth has been home ownership.  While more minorities are buying houses, because of discrimination in employment, housing and insurance, they are still less likely than whites to own the homes they live in.  In 1995, the home ownership rate was 47% for African Americans and 44% for Latinos, which are about two thirds the rate for white households.

                 It’s important to note that most poor people are white, but only because most people are white.  However, only 7.5% of whites are poor, compared to 22% of Blacks and 21% of Hispanics.  On the whole, being Black, Hispanic or Native American means having three times the chance of being poor, as compared to whites.  Even though Asian Americans have a higher average income than whites, they’re still more likely to live in families below the poverty line.

                 The numbers are worse for children.  In 1999, 13% of white children lived in poverty, along with 33% of Black children and 30% of Latino children.  Among single mothers, those in minorities are more likely to be unemployed, especially among minorities.  However, many children in two-parent families are in the lowest income tier: “two in ten White children, three in ten Black children and four in ten Hispanic children”.

                 Some of this can be accounted for by the fact that these minorities are concentrated in the south and southwest, where incomes are lower for everyone.  Another factor is that they are younger on average, largely due to having more children and not living as long.

                 Inequality begins with children, but actually increases after the teen years and becomes greater still in peak earning years, reflecting the consequences of a lack of the education and skill levels required to get better-paying jobs.

                 Even though segregation has been illegal since 1954, in n 1995, when minorities made up 1/3 of public school students, they still completed high school at a lower rate.  88% of whites, 85% of Asians, 77% of African Americans and 56% of Hispanics received their high school diplomas.  This is a terrifying problem because most new jobs “in the new century will require education beyond high school”.  We all know this, which is why we’re here at HCC.

                 Some factors that cause the education gap for minorities are language differences, unequal education opportunities, and families that don’t support education.  Despite these factors, the most pressing problem is the simple fact that, when it comes to minorities, schools fail to retain students and provide them with marketable skills.  Residential segregation leads to segregation in schools, and Latino students are even more segregated than Black ones.  Those schools in urban areas, which have the highest segregation, have inadequate funding and cannot attract and keep the best teachers, much less counteract the consequences of social problems that impair education.  The movement towards “tax relief” disproportionately deprives school in lower-income areas.

                 In 1999, 70% of the campus population was white, 11% was African American and 8% was Latino.  These numbers are worsened by the greater tendency of minority students to drop out.  In addition to the problems that face all students, minorities are more likely to fell alienated and to be segregated from the mainstream, as well as to suffer from outright discrimination.

                 As shown in this table, a college degree does not give parity to minorities.  I think it speaks for itself, so I urge you to examine it closely.  I do want to point out that a white male high school graduate makes more than a Black or Latino with some college.

                 These are just the figures for what a minority person can expect if they get a job.  Like so much else, unemployment varies with race.  For the last 30 years, Blacks have had twice the unemployment rate of whites, with Latinos somewhere in between.  However, in the past four years, the unemployment rate among Latinos has risen to nearly that of Blacks.  The unemployment rates are 8.1% for Latinos, 9.8% for African Americans and 5% for whites.

                 Keep in mind that these official figures are substantially lower than the real numbers because they count only those who’ve been unemployed for less than 6 months.  The real unemployment rate isn’t 6%, it’s more like 10%, and it’s gone up 4% in the last four years.

                 Minorities are more likely to work in low-skilled occupations and less likely to work in managerial and professional ones.  In the last decade, there has been improvement in their occupational status.  Between 1990 and 1998, the percentage of Blacks in managerial and professional occupations increased from 17% to 20%, 13% to 15% for Hispanics and 16% to 20% for Native Americans.  However, despite these gains, there’s still a huge gap and there are still glass ceilings that keep them out of the highest levels of management.

                 The job market for unskilled labor is decreasing with time, so this education gap will result in an even larger income and unemployment gap in the future, unless we do something about it.

                 32% of Hispanics, 18% of African Americans, 18% of Asians and 12% of whites were not covered by private or government medical insurance in 2000.  Two thirds of the Hispanics without insurance were born outside the country.

                 Due to residential segregation, there is a disproportionate exposure to health risks for minorities.  “Race is the strongest predictor of hazardous waste facilities in the country, even after adjusting for social class.”

                 Race affects which kinds of medical facilities people have access to and their longevity.  Hispanics have a 700% higher rate of visits to community health centers but a 35% lower rate of visits to private doctors’ offices.  For Blacks, the numbers are 550% more clinics and 48% lower private offices.  Death rates for African Americans for all causes are a 160% higher than for whites.  White men and women live 5 and 7 more years, respectively, than black men and women.

                 The medical disadvantage starts from before birth.  Less than 72% of African Americans, 68% of Native Americans and 74% of Hispanic women reported receiving pre-natal care during their first trimester of pregnancy.  This lack of pre-natal care translates to higher infant mortality.  Black babies are nearly twice as large as white ones to die in their first year.

                 The premise of conflict theory sociology is that different groups compete for access to power over social resources, and racial disparity fits this theory.  One aspect of this is racism and violence.  Minorities are often scapegoated by whites for the lack of jobs, housing and other resources.  For example, in Florida and many parts of the west and southwest, there is the perception that Hispanics are responsible for job loss, and this can spark violence.  Hate crimes against Hispanics increased during the 1990’s, as perceptions of them as un-American sparked vigilantism among people trying to stem to “flood” of foreigners into the country.

                 In 1999, there were 457 documented hate groups in the US.  By 2000, there were 602.  The use of the Internet by these groups to promote their beliefs has shifted hate crimes to younger offenders, who now commit more than half.  Racism on college campuses is also on the rise.

                 The first comprehensive study of crimes involving Native Americans shows that they’re more likely than any other racial group to be victimized by violent crime.  I’d like to point out that this study was done in 1999, which is about 500 years after we first got here.  It took that long.

                 Nor are the police always seen as protectors of minorities against crime.  The policy of racial profiling systematically results in Blacks and other minorities being targeted by the police as suspects and routinely stopped, whether driving or on foot, when they stray out of their own areas.  Moreover, minorities stopped by the police are more likely to be mistreated and denied their rights.

                 Social structure is what causes the problem of economic polarization in the inner city.  It is not because of a troubled or deficient culture.  Changes in technology have removed jobs and other opportunities from urban residents.  Furthermore, the movement of Black professionals away from the inner cities has left a concentration of the most disadvantaged segments of the population.  This is not a cultural problem, economic forces are forcing further segregation.  The focus must be on social conditions, not immoral or deviant people.

                 In the 1960’s the civil rights movement took America forward in attempts to end racial bias.  The government stepped in, ending segregation, opening voting booths, creating new job opportunities, and bringing hopes of racial justice for all minorities.  By the 1980’s, economic restructuring dislocated both blacks and whites.  This fostered an imagined White disadvantage, and exacerbated racial tensions.

                 Despite the fact that racial discrimination continues, policies to fight that discrimination are under attack.  Programs like affirmative action, school desegregation, and even the right to vote all have strong opponents.  All the different forms of discrimination that LaToya and I have highlighted are on-going problems, that need very specific solutions such as multiracial organizations devoted to fighting the causes of racial injustice, and fighting to keep government laws preventing discrimination in tact.

Copyright 2004

 

Works Cited

 

Eitzen, D. Stanley, and Maxine Baca Zinn. Social Problems. 9th ed. : Allyn & Bacon, 2005.

by Amanda Evans

Date: 10/20/04