PBS tells it as it is. It should get more respect. In the South, the federal government never followed through on General Shermans Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed slave 40 acres and a mule as reparations. Only once was monetary compensation made for slavery, in Washington, D.C. There, government officials paid up to $300 per slave upon emancipation - not to the slaves, but to local slaveholders as compensation for loss of property. One result of the generations of preferential treatment for whites is that a typical white family today has on average eight times the assets, or net worth, of a typical African American family, according to New York University economist Edward Wolff. Even when families of the same income are compared, white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families. Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of ones home, and how much one inherited from parents. But a familys net worth is not simply the finish line, its also the starting point for the next generation. Those with wealth pass their assets on to their children - by financing a college education, lending a hand during hard times, or assisting with the down payment for a home. Some economists estimate that up to 80 percent of lifetime wealth accumulation depends on these intergenerational transfers. White advantage is passed down, from parent to child to grand-child. As a result, the racial wealth gap - and the head start enjoyed by whites - appears to have grown since the civil rights days. In 1865, just after Emancipation, it is not surprising that African Americans owned only 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States. But by 1990, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, Black Americans still possessed only a meager 1 percent of national wealth. As legal scholar john powell (sic) says in the documentary series Race - The Power of an Illusion, The slick thing about whiteness is that whites are getting the spoils of a racist system even if they are not personally racist. Or we suggest that differential outcomes may simply result from differences in natural ability or motivation. However, sociologist Dalton Conleys research shows that when we compare the performance of families across racial lines who make not just the same income, but also hold similar net worth, a very interesting thing happens: many of the racial disparities in education, graduation rates, welfare usage and other outcomes disappear. The performance gap between whites and nonwhites is a product not of nature, but unequal circumstances. #PostRacialAmericaMyth #MeritocracyMyth #PeopleArePeople pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-02.htm
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 03:40:52 +0000
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