Listening to all the rhetoric in the popular media, you would think America is the most unfair, racist nation in the world. You would think that Black Americans are uniformly living in oppression and poverty, with no hope for the future, save the federal government arriving on the scene to their rescue.
Sorry, liberals, to trouble you with facts. But indeed there are facts. And the facts tell a far different story than what we are hearing.
Let’s start with the most recent annual report of the Census Bureau: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019.
According to this report, annual real median household income in the U.S. increased 6.8% in 2019, the largest annual increase recorded by the Census Bureau going back to 1967.
Black median household income in 2019 increased 7.9%, the largest on record and, per American Enterprise Institute economist Mark Perry, “almost nine times the average annual increase of 0.90% over the last half-century.”
Moreover, in 2019, 29.4% of Black households had income of $75,000 or more, compared with 28.7% of Black households that had income of $25,000 or less. This was the first time, ever, that the percentage of high-income Black households exceeded the percentage of low-income Black households.
In 1967, 44.5% of Black households were low-income, compared with 9.1% high-income.
Last September, the Federal Reserve published its Survey of Consumer Finances, published once every three years. The survey covers the three-year period 2016-2019, just prior to the onset of the pandemic.
Over this period, per the report, Black net worth increased 32.1%, Hispanic net worth increased 63.6% and white net worth increased 4%.
Business equity among Blacks increased 138%.
How about other measures of achievement?
Per the Census Bureau, in 2019, 88% of Blacks had a high school diploma, 98% of the national average. In 1950, the percent of Blacks with a high school diploma equaled 50% of the national average.
In 2018, 37.8% of Blacks ages 18-24 were enrolled in college, compared with a national average of 40.9% in this age group.
In the age group of 25-39, 28.4% had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 40.5% of the general population.
The high school dropout rate among Blacks in 2018 was 4.9%, compared with a national average of 5.7%.
Am I trying to divert attention from the many real economic and social problems in many Black communities?
Certainly not. But what I do wish to disabuse is the focus on problems in certain Black communities and using this data to generalize about all Blacks. It’s certainly false and a distortion, and ironic how often this is coming from those who pretend to be fighting racism.
It certainly is true, again according to the Census Bureau, that in 2019, Blacks, who constituted 13.2% of the population, represented 23.8% of those living below the poverty line.
But is this about racism? The data tells us that this is about family breakdown, not racism.
And the problem of family breakdown is afflicting the whole nation. It just happens to be hitting many Black communities particularly hard. Poverty is excessive in households of all races that are headed by single women. Blacks just happen to have a very high percentage of households headed by single women.
But, according to Statistica, only 6.4% of Black households headed by a married couple live in poverty.
So, enough of racist generalizations about Blacks. And enough of the distortions that Blacks have not been gaining ground in our free country and that where we do have problems, we need more government.
Black progress and achievement since the 1960s have been substantial.
Where problems exist, and where progress is disappointing, invariably, government has been the problem, not the solution.
Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.” To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Good article, Star. A blatant irony in the promotion of Black oppression is how successful Blacks such as Oprah, the Obamas, Al Sharpton and the like wish to portray Blacks essentially as slaves to the White man. No doubt, young Black kids coming through school buy into that because they look up to these people who are, in fact, handing them a bunch of lies.
I remember Rush Limbaugh doing an interview with Charlamagne the god (as he calls himself) and Charlamagne, while having achieved success, is still a believer in his race holding the downtrodden trophy. He is arrogant and militant and they are the ones Black kids tend to listen to. The Obamas are multi-millionaires, yet Michelle never misses an opportunity to frame herself as being looked down upon. And to Oprah, the billionaire, us White folks are just too White.
SINCE when has facts mattered to the left!
To Democrats, Truth, Facts, Reality and History are all irrelevant,
if the Democrats do not WANT to believe them.
Democrats will just make up their own Truth, Facts, Reality or History
To fit what they WANT to believe or fits into the Con or Deception that they are running at the time.
These Dishonorable liberal Democrat crusades have little or nothing to do with protecting the sensitivities of Black Americans and everything to do with the Democrats setting themselves up as their saviors. Their practice of patronizing groups cannot yield to the facts that the Democrat Party has a long history of racial discrimination. For their cause is not defending the oppressed or the offended but about making themselves look wonderful with their latest destructive political Con.
Could it be the (so called, self-proclaimed) leaders of the black community feel they were losing their influence as many of the perceived grievances melted away just as the towering leaders like MLK foresaw they would. Too much intermingling was blurring the barriers making their message obsolute and by extension themselves. They created dissent and divisiveness where it had been eliminated. Suddenly it was like Rosa Parks should have her special section on the bus, other blacks a luch counter of their own, and special water fountains, that seems to be the agenda of today’s movement.
That could easily be the case.. Especially after they saw a record # of blacks vote for Trump..
This is such a terrible racist Country, that brown skinned people are crossing our southern border in record numbers. Why would brown skinned people want to come here, if this Country is so, so racist.
To the point of over a MILLION THIS YEAR alone.
Here are few more statistics to consider (with citation as to origin of data). It appears that the biggest problem blacks have is other blacks. Chicago gun violence and murders prove the point.
I.A.W. U.S. Census & FBI (Table 43a)
Black males make up about 6% of the U.S. population but every year commit ~53% of all the murders and ~55% of all robberies in the U.S… Every year in the U.S. there are ~5,000 African-Americans men, women and children killed and 93% of them were killed by fellow African-Americans.
Do you stand by in total amazement at the ” Sea. Change ” that’s taking place under this Sick Joe Biden Administration. There’s nothing that the Biden Administration isn’t open to the Marxists, even our meaning using Sematics to describe “Motherhood ” As a ” Birthing Person ” instead. If a Mother or ” Female. ” The term ” Mother, ” was definitive and excepted, and everyone without thinking, knew that this female, in giving birth was filling her natural role in giving birth to a child. When Semarics have to be used in describing a natural function such as a female giving birth to a child, then not only is the president sick but all of a nation’s society is Sick as well.
I wonder, what all the feminazis thought, when they heard the dems KILL off motherhood like that?!
The Marxists Democrat party alwayneeds ” AVictim, ” Whom it wants to appear to be the strong defenders of. The black race is witnessing the new hire of immigrants flooding across Akers open borders and they see a new “Victim ” For think that maybe it’s time to bai from the Democrat party before the Democrat party leaves them and picks, ” A new Victim class ” to appear to be the great defenders of, Time to a line themselves with another political party before it’s too lare.
The Black racial problem holding them back, it turns out has nothing to do with ” Racial Issues or ” The Greedy White Race , ” Holding The Black Race from succeeding in life ,rather it was the moral static the outcome of a lack of morality in ” A Single Parent House Hold which it has been proven by statics to be the case regardless of Race.
AND the agenda of the dems, for 80+ years.. THAT HAS literally been holding them back, imo MORE than the lack of morality.
Have you ever noticed that when you educate a black person and they get a good paying job . they become middle class and before you know you know it, they become republicans. That why the democrats will never really help the 13%.
So true. AT least the smart ones!