Still Tough to Be Black in the US

The latest research has revealed a very sad truth: Although slavery in the U.S. was abolished 150 years ago, the gulf between whites and African Americans is increasing at an alarming rate. Broadly speaking, the conclusions drawn by scientists from Brandeis University in Boston came as a huge shock, although the problem of the growing wealth discrepancy between the two groups is already known.

It is the scale of the phenomenon the scientists describe that is appalling. Over the last 25 years — between 1984 and 2009 — the difference in wealth of an average white family and its black counterpart soared from $85,000 to $237,000.*

In 2009, an average black family boasted a $28,000 in wealth, while the average white family’s possessions were worth $265,000. As the authors of the report point out, “The gulf is widening because the system is still heavily biased; life prospects white Americans receive are much brighter when compared to blacks.”**

From the historical perspective, the very conclusion seems outrageous. It comes 150 years after the abolishment of slavery and 50 years after blacks, under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., successfully fought for equality and put an end to racial segregation.

The main advantage of the whites stems from the capital amassed by previous generations. “Because whites are far more able to give inheritances or family assistance for down payments due to historical wealth accumulation, white families buy homes and start acquiring equity an average eight years earlier than black families.”

The educational system has added to the black families’ predicament as well, even though so-called affirmative action, thanks to which blacks had to score fewer points on tests than their white peers to get to college, was implemented for years in schools all over the country.

The most prominent universities, which once were open almost only to white Americans, tend to give preferential treatment to graduates’ children. On top of that, tuition fees at the best universities (e.g. Harvard and Yale) are often more than $50,000 per year. It is hardly surprising that an average black family, the wealth of which is two times lower, cannot afford it in most cases.

“We need a total alteration of the social policy so that everybody would have equal chances,”** claims Thomas Saphiro, one of the authors of the reports.

Admittedly, there are scholarships for the best students. Barack Obama managed to graduate from Harvard despite having come from a poor family. Nevertheless, few black children are top of the class. Last year, the Virginia Board of Education announced new, shocking performance standards each school had to meet. The standards were differentiated by race: The math test had to be passed by 82 percent of Asian students, 68 percent of whites, 52 percent of Latinos, 45 percent of African Americans and 33 percent of the disabled. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the standards. It seemed that if a “good” (according to educational officers) math teacher let more than half of his black students fail the test, those children were written off. The board explained that the standards were in line with the real and current school performance of the ethnic groups in Virginia.***

If teachers are satisfied with such low, hardly ambitious figures, it is no wonder that most of their students are unlikely to make it to a good university.

On the other hand, African Americans find it very easy to go behind bars. Although they constitute only 12 percent of the U.S. population, they have managed to account for 40 percent of all prisoners.

It appears that African Americans are born drug dealers; half of federal prison convicts are doing their time for drug-related crimes. There are three times more blacks aged from 18 to 24 in prison than in dormitories. There is one more, even more appalling, finding: Each young African American entering his adulthood has a 33 percent chance that he will go to prison at some point of his life!

The discussion about the hard start to life for the majority of African Americans has been going on for years in the U.S. There are opinions that they have made their own bed as the young generations emulate the cultural patterns of rappers and stars of black pop music. Judging by music videos, their only ambition is to wear a ton of gold jewelry, show off with a big, shiny cabriolet or sip champagne in a Jacuzzi with a few voluptuous girlfriends at a time.

“It is high time we stopped blaming the whites for our fate and look in the mirror,”** said popular black comedian Bill Cosby a few years ago, a remark which resulted in him being accused of racism.

*The study, which can be found here, examined a set of black and white families, so these numbers refer to averages from that set, not to averages from the American population as a whole.

**This quote, while translated accurately, could not be verified in English.

***Translator’s Note: The excerpt about the math test has been changed. The original version contained errors and was counterfactual (the author claimed that the percentage values relate to requirements each student of the specific group had to meet to pass).