American Minorities Have Been Here Before

Posted on Jul 31, 2011

Flickr / brizzle born and bred

Black American soldiers walk down a street in Bristol in England during World War II.

Blacks and Latinos suffered disproportionate losses of wealth and social standing, compared to whites, during the George W. Bush economy. But, of course, that’s merely a prelude to what unfolded next, and what’s to come.

In the article below, Vijay Prashad, a professor of South Asian history and director of international studies at Trinity College, takes us on a brief economic tour through the loss of minority dignity over the last few decades and the role America’s military and corporate establishments have played in the fall. He also shows us a future that looks remarkably like the past. —ARK

CounterPunch:

... Between 2005 and 2009 every “racial” group lost wealth, but the losses were largest amongst Hispanics and Blacks. Inflation-adjusted median wealth of white households fell by 16%, but Hispanic households lost 66% and Black households lost 53%. As of 2009, the typical white household had wealth (assets minus debts) worth $113,149, while Black households only had $5,677 and Hispanic households $6,325. The myth of the post-racial society should be buried under this data.

The most dazzling fact is not this decline. It is what is to come. The National Urban League Policy Institute’s latest study finds that unemployment for Blacks with four-year college degrees has tripled since 1992, and overall unemployment is near 1982 levels, namely 20%. Such numbers have not been seen since the Depression. Langston Hughes wrote that the 1930s “brought everybody down a peg or two,” but that those on the darker side of the Color Curtain had not much to lose. That is no longer the case. The thirty years since 1965 provided a boost to the Black and Latino middle class, largely thanks to employment at the various levels of government (and salutations to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees for its battles to hold public sector wages). With unemployment on the rise, it will be difficult to build back those assets.

The shuttering of the U. S. industrial sector and the attack on public sector jobs hit the Black and Latino workers very hard. Rather than tax the rich and use these public funds to build up a different kind of economy (such as to make public rail networks), the Clinton administration harshly developed a massive prison archipelago and hacked at the modest social welfare system in the country. In the name of balanced budgets and supply side economics, a generation of young people of color lost access to decent education. It is difficult to try and get a job if your resume includes a stint in prison, often for non-violent economic crimes (such as employment in the drug economy, one of the few places to get a job in neighborhoods of the disposable class). The other place for employment, of course, was the military.

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