The African American Struggle to Sustain Wealth

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Introduction

After three centuries of slavery, almost one hundred years of Jim Crow, and decades of racial segregation, yet America has still a long way to go regarding the economic equality of its White and Black citizens. It is exceptionally for African Americans to climb the wealth and prosperity ladder. Thus, millions of those of African descent are subjected to restrictions and limitations. There is little to no disagreement regarding the fact that financial inequities, particularly those related to an individual’s or a community’s racial identity, are a complex issue. Despite that, there seems to be a rise in the popularity of public debate surrounding the origins and implications of such an imbalance. Economic inequality among Whites and Blacks has become an especially heated topic of current discussions about race, discrimination, and generational wealth. The following essay focuses on the reasons why it is challenging for the Black community in the United States to accumulate wealth and move upwards on the economic ladder. Systemic structural barriers in the form of government policies and discriminatory regulations serve as the cornerstone of the issue of racial wealth disparity in America.

The Myth of Economic Mobility

In the United States, there has been a prevailing misconception about economic mobility shared by millions of people. The very notion of the American Dream posits that everything is possible on the U.S. land as long as one works hard and shares American values. Thus, for decades now, the majority of the U.S. population has regarded economic mobility in America as the norm. However, this is certainly not the case for the Black community. Research demonstrates that it is extremely hard for African Americans to move up the ladder in terms of wealth accumulated over generations (White para. 6)., according to Katz and Krueger, “there has been a large decline in the rate of upward mobility across successive U.S. birth cohorts” (382). This statement reveals that the Black community has not been the only one affected by the challenges associated with economic mobility. Even for White and Asian households, which are considered some of the most prosperous in the nation, building wealth and passing it on to the next generation is increasingly hard. Therefore, economic mobility stopped being the norm in the United States long ago, despite common misconceptions and beliefs.

Current Realities

Before investigating the reasons behind the lack of economic mobility in the Black community, it is crucial to examine its direct outcome. Difficulties in accumulating and passing down wealth generation-to-generation result in low monetary inheritances for African Americans. Such inheritances serve as the foundation of all the current wealth Black people have in their possession nowadays. McIntosh et al. indicate that the most recent statistics demonstrate that “median net worth for white households has far exceeded that of Black households through recessions and booms over the last thirty years” (para. 4). In bringing up this evidence-based claim, the authors highlight that, as of 2020, Black family wealth is a lot lower than that of White family. According to Schermerhorn, the race-based wealth gap continues to expand as, currently, “the typical black family has just 1/10th the wealth of the typical white one” (para. 2). Despite the commonly-held assumption that there has been much progress in regards to the economic prosperity of African Americans since the Civil Rights movement, this is simply not the case.

The Government Is the Issue: The Quest to Uncover Complicit Actions and Regulations in Racial Economic Disparities

Primary Damages

The end of slavery seems to be only the beginning of the Black community’s struggle to overcome the legal barriers on the way to economic mobility. The authorities have simply replaced blatant theft in the form of slavery with institutional discrimination in the form of sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and social security schemes. Furthermore, despite the progress in social mobility gained by the White population as a result of industrialization in the second half of the 19th century and 1900s, the Black population still faced various disadvantages. For instance, as industrial employment opportunities started to push the population towards cities, rents were disproportionally higher for those of African descent.

The Impact of the GI Bill

Apart from the challenges throughout the industrialization era, it is important to note the sham, which was the promise of GI benefits to Black veterans following World War II. This directive was following Jim Crow, which meant less well-paid employment and high-quality educational opportunities for African Americans (McCardle 122). Schermerhorn equates “the disadvantages of missing out on GI benefits” to “negative interest compounding in each generation” (para. 11). From this passage, it is evident that education and employment were the primary forces behind the mobility of the White population. Lessening the number of such opportunities and limiting the access to them for Black people affected the community’s overall potential to accumulate and transfer wealth.

The Politics of Prejudice

Apart from a variety of aforementioned mistreatments and discriminatory acts at the hands of the U.S. government, there has been a prevailing culture of racial prejudice in American society. Most alarmingly, it has transferred into politics and policing, resulting in mass incarceration. Contrary to popular belief, the trend of higher incarceration rates among Blacks is on the rise (Pettit and Gutierrez 1153). Schermerhorn notes that the likelihood of Black men going to prison has increased almost three times between 1980 and 2020 (para. 16). Thus, it is crucial to acknowledge that mass incarceration is the inescapable reality of the Black community.

On the one hand, this might have nothing to do directly with the economic immobility of African Americans. On the other hand, in the case of wealth accumulation and generational prosperity, incarceration rates do okay a big part. Incarceration often serves as the ultimate barrier for Black families to build wealth and transfer it generation-to-generation. Prison is rarely not synonymous with numerous missed opportunities associated with education, employment, family, and even voting. In summary, the mass incarceration of Black people in America is partially caused by a combination of the aforementioned historic challenges as well as an overall culture of resentment towards the Black community. Moreover, it is yet another example of structural failure to uplift the African American population on the way to economic mobility.

The Root Cause of Economic Immobility among African Americans

All of the government failures and discriminatory policies played a significant part in preventing the Black community from prospering. Most importantly, they served as a limitation to African Americans to transfer all the accumulated wealth over decades to the next generation. None of this can be applied to Whites, both in urban and rural areas who continuously passed down their wealth, creating a net of financial security and opportunity for their offspring. As a result, nowadays, according to the data provided by Schermerhorn, 20 percent of Black families “have a net worth of $0 or below; 75 percent have less than $10,000 for retirement” (para. 19). This demonstrates the severity of the racial economic divide between Black America and White America. Thus, it becomes apparent that the challenges the Black population faces on the way to economic mobility are systemic structural discrimination and racist prejudices, rather than individual factors. Unless the government learns from past mistakes and initiates solutions to alleviate barriers to racial economic equality in the U.S., there is little to no hope that the Black community will prosper and succeed in the long run.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is crucial to recognize that there are numerous challenges, which limit the ability of Black people throughout the United States to accumulate and transfer wealth generation-to-generation. The main issue lies in the historic background shaping the current reality of the Black community in the United States. Segregation, discrimination, and the overall government support of the narrative of inequality between Whites and Blacks have all contributed to the politics of racial economic disparity. As a result of the U.S. authorities’ complicit actions and initiatives, African Americans are now facing an impending threat of moving even further down the economic ladder. Despite the common misconception that the end of slavery and the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century have eliminated the possibility of Blacks and Whites being unequal on an institutional level, the opposite is true. Structural, and not individual, factors are the driving force of the limitations and restrictions, which rob the Black community of any opportunity for building wealth in the long term.

Works Cited

Katz, Lawrence F., and Alan B. Krueger. “Documenting Decline in U.S. Economic Mobility.” Science, vol. 356, no. 6336, 2017, pp. 382–383, Web.

McCardle, Tom. “A Promise Deferred: Black Veterans’ Access to Higher Education through the GI Bill at the University of Florida, 1944–1962.” Educational Studies, vol. 53, no. 2, 2017, pp. 122–134, Web.

McIntosh, Kriston, et al. “Examining the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Brookings Institution, 2020, Web.

Pettit, Becky, and Carmen Guiterrez. “Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 77, no. 3-4, 2018, pp. 1153–1182, Web.

Shermerhorn, Calvin. “Why the Racial Wealth Gap Persists, More than 150 Years after Emancipation.” Washington Post, Web.

White, Gillian B. “Why Black Families Struggle to Build Wealth.” The Atlantic, Web.

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