The fifty years since the March on Washington have reshaped the economic landscape of America – for everyone.
For black Americans, the five decades since march organizers lifted up the twin goals of “jobs and freedom” have seen both impressive economic gains and painful disappointments.
The end of Jim Crow and legal segregation opened pathways to public-sector as well as corporate jobs – with many companies and governments embracing racial diversity. Millions of African Americans surged out of poverty, with many achieving the middle class or even affluence.
Nevertheless, the black community still lags national averages for wealth, income and education. Moreover, the pain of recessionary cycles – layoffs, unemployment, debt, foreclosure – has hit black Americans harder than others. The deep recession of 2007-09 wiped out the accumulated wealth of millions of black families, taking an especially grim toll across metro Atlanta.
“If that’s your benchmark – 50 years ago – then we are better off,” said Economist Gregory Price of Morehouse College. “But the trajectory, the next 50 years, it doesn’t look so good. I am less optimistic about the progress from here.”
Rebecca Young’s family is reaping the rewards that come when effort meets opportunity. She is able to stay at home and raise her four children while her husband, Michael, works as a pediatric emergency room surgeon. A graduate of Spelman College, she is also a member of the Junior League, the Links and serves as president of the Atlanta chapter of Jack & Jill, an elite African American family organization.
“We are not independently wealthy by any means. My husband works, but we are blessed. If he were to lose this job tomorrow, the house is not going to foreclose,” said Young, who has a master’s degree from Georgetown University.
“My parents were solidly middle class. And while our house might be a little bigger, my family still has a solid middle-class mentality. What grounds us that we are young and we still have Sallie Mae (educational) loans to repay.”
At the same stage in his life, Corey Harris is struggling just to stay even. He makes about $13 an hour driving trucks. His wife, Cassandra, makes about $10 an hour working temporary jobs. With four kids, including one in college, and the stress of having lost most everything in a recent fire, it’s touch and go.
“This was not part of my five-year plan,” Harris said.
They moved from Mississippi to Atlanta seven years ago with hopes of higher wages and better opportunities. Instead, the recession hit. They moved out of their four bedroom house when they could no longer afford the rent. Their townhouse burned down because of faulty wiring, and they moved into a tiny apartment in Snellville.
“I left a pretty nice job to come here for a job that was nice at the time. But things changed,” Harris said.“Employers don’t want to give out raises anymore. I am going to have to get a trade. I am thinking about getting my commercial driver’s license and driving a school bus. Go somewhere where I can get me some more money.”
Many of the forces at work these past 50 years – both positive and negative – had nothing to do with race.
The nation today boasts an economy that is roughly four times as large as it was in 1963 – now $16 trillion-a-year – with spectacularly better productivity, vastly more wealth and a network of global connections. Much of the growth rode on an explosion of technology that transformed business, work, communication and entertainment. One result: Even many of today’s poor have devices that were science fiction a generation ago.
Other trends have threatened black progress.
The road out of poverty took a major detour when so many urban factories closed. Then, starting in the 1980s, disproportionate penalties for crack cocaine offenses put millions of young black men in prison. That, plus the scarcity of good jobs, is implicated in the dramatic erosion of the two-parent family, a major cause of black economic distress.
And ironically, the end of legal segregation meant trouble for some in the black middle class. With the ability to shop and travel more freely, many in the community took their spending away from neighborhood merchants. Many of those black-owned businesses disappeared.
All in all, how the black community looks depends on the angle you look from. Comparisons to 1963 show progress. Comparisons to national averages now show a persistent gap.
Poverty: In 1963, 42 percent of black Americans lived below the poverty line. That was more than twice the overall national rate.
In 2000, the poverty rate for blacks hit the lowest point on record, 22.5 percent. In 2011, the most recent data available, it was 27.6 percent. The national average for all races was 15 percent.
Unemployment: Over the past 12 months, the national unemployment rate has averaged 7.7 percent. In that same period, black unemployment averaged 13.6 percent, according to an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Employment data indicate that the African American community is still in recession,” said Robert Holmes, a retired state representative and political science professor at Clark Atlanta University.
Over the 41 years that the BLS has kept data on black workers, their unemployment rate has topped the overall national rate by an average of 92 percent.
Income: A disproportionate number of blacks have low-paying work, and those who make at least six figures are rare.
“I remember during the Carter administration that wages for blacks were 58 cents for every $1.00 that whites made,” Holmes said. “I don’t think it’s ever gotten much better.”
Nationally, the median income for American households is $50,054, according to census 2011 figures. For blacks, it’s $32,366. (In Georgia, both figures are lower; the gap is similar.)
On average, all Americans saw their incomes shrink about 6.7 percent as a result of the recession. For blacks, the shrinkage was double that.
“The white working class has been hit hard, and blacks have been a little harder,” said Obie Clayton, a professor of social work at the University of Georgia. The reasons, he said, include “the lack of transportation, historical discrimination and the high rates of incarceration.”
Wealth: The Great Recession robbed Americans of every race of the equity in their homes and the value of their stock portfolios. But blacks took a disproportionate hit, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. The average black family lost 53 percent its net worth, compared to a 16 percent loss for whites.
In consequence, by 2009 the median wealth of white households was 20 times that of black households — about twice the disparity that existed before the recession.
“Economy-wise, we have slowly improved, but we were never given the education on wealth that others were given,” said Lawrence Leek, a social services director for HUD in Atlanta. Because earlier generations of African Americans had little opportunity to build wealth through real estate or stocks, he said, “they couldn’t hand down that knowledge to us, and some of us have suffered.”
Debt: Black Americans are "significantly more likely" than others to have debt: 94 percent owe money through credit cards, student and personal loans, as well as mortgages, according to a recent study by Prudential Financial.
Not including mortgages, the median debt for African Americans is $18,000 – 50 percent higher than the debt for the general population.
And while dramatically more blacks are going to college than in the Civil Rights years, they are almost twice as likely as whites to emerge owing more than $30,500. That’s according to a study several years ago by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center.
Kimberly Whitehead would love to have $30,500 in student debt. She had it all planned out. A bachelor’s degree from an elite black college; a masters in public health, and finally graduation from medical school in 2006.
Instead of taking her boards immediately, she took a break. But by 2010, she was diagnosed with cancer, which has now progressed to Stage 4 breast cancer. She can’t practice medicine, works 16 hours a week in customer service and, aside from medical expenses and a mortgage, is facing $250,000 in student loans.
“It is tough to make ends meet, and the fact that I have cancer doesn’t help,” said Whitehead, 40. “I am grateful that I have job, but it is not the job I went $250,000 in debt for.”
To ensure continued progress for the black community, some activists would like more government action: a stronger social safety net, more help for minority businesses and training for workers.
For example, Clayton of UGA argues for investment in a more cohesive, more extensive transportation system, as well as vast improvements in technical training for workers.
Yet any ambitious program seems politically unlikely at best. So many advocates look to the economy itself – the proverbial rising tide that could lift all the boats.
Certainly the periods of robust black progress – the 1960s, the 1990s – coincided with strong national expansions.
“The best period for blacks was the year 2000,” said Algernon Austin, director of the program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute. “We need much stronger economic growth. It’s the foundation you need to build on to make progress.”
