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7:00 am
Feb 27, 2013


What Explains the Racial Wealth Gap?

    • It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with so many multi-generation blacks staying on welfare…could it? Naah,,,that would be racist.

    • May I suggest researchers at Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy found exactly what they were looking for.

    • So researchers found that the reason blacks are less wealthy is because they earn less money?

    • Duh….no mention of higher intelligence, a stronger work ethic, intestinal fortitude and the higher prevalence of the traditional two parent family. Of course, these real factors blow up the
      column’s fraudulent, excuse-making premises


      What barriers?

    • The WSJ should balance this propaganda with the truth from Dr. Thomas Sowell or Dr. Walter Williams.

    • Innovation, discovery and academic achievement widens the gap. Japanese Americans were the most discriminated ethnic group in the countries history as they were collectively placed in concentration camps in the 40′s, and yet today they (along with ethnic Koreans & Han Chinese) do well compared to whites economically.

    • 73% of African Americans are born out of wedlock versus 25% of whites. With the financial and moral support of both a mother and father you have a firmer foundation in life and a better chance to succeed both financially and otherwise. These are internal factors not external like the article suggests.

    • I would have believed this article wasn’t racist if it had included Asians, Hispanics, Middle Easterns, etc. The reason there is a wealth gap (with the exception in some cases of inherited wealth) is due to CULTURE or personal philosophy… If you live “in the moment” you will not accumulate as much wealth as those seeking long term security through delayed gratification.

    • Oh my!! Clearly the government must do something about this inequity, this inequality. The Federal Government must step in and take (I mean tax) white people and give that money to black people to ensure that life is fair, that the poor black people are treated equally and compensated for the way the evil white people have held them down for the past 300 years.

    • That is garbage. The Japanese were never property like blacks were for over 200 years. To deny the effect of slavery, institutional racism and discrimination on the Black American population is to be willfully ignorant of the root cause. @ Rev rigt above and the guaranteed ignorant responders to follow, you are pathetic. In spite of the huge obsticles there are many, many highly successful Black people in America. A testament to their steadfastness and intellect.

    • Most white Americans have a legacy of families that were allowed to own property in their own names, to read, to write, and to be masters of their own destinies, all for centuries. Blacks were subject to segregation by law in some states until fifty years ago. Black physicians and lawyers who were the first to attend major state professional schools are just now dying off. Blacks have no trusts funded in the early twentieth century, their parents have no squirreled away money from inheritances. Family financial comfort takes a century or more to foster, paying for college, making down payments on homes, removing the risk of ruinous cut-offs of income being a week away. Add to those factors the social instability of growing up in a string of short-term rental apartments in different school districts with only one parent present and income inequality’s current basis becomes obvious.

    • Blacks are discriminated against, and that is certainly one layer of the problems. However, discrimination alone is not the key to this situation. Asians are discriminated against too, but their economic outcomes are very different.

    • Your comment is garbage. The Japanese were not bought and sold property in this country for over 200 years. Black people, by far, have been the most marginalized and discriminated against group of people in U.S. history. To deny the profound effect that slavery, Institutional racism and discrimination against blacks is to be willfully ignorant to the root cause of the disparity. In spite of these facts, there are many, many highly successful blacks who have high income levels and much higher than average net worths. Yes even higher than most whites in the country. This fact doesnt make headlines. High acheivement by many Black people is a testament to their steadfastness and intellect. To rev right and the all of the other ignorant people who are guaranteed to say something idiotic about this, you are pathetic.

    • Blacks have low IQs, and everything else follows from that.

    • And I can tell from your comment that you have a high IQ….not!

    • Really tired of all the excuses and I just don’t care anymore. The head of Amex is black, the president of the US is half black, the head of Darden Restaurants is black, the head of McDonalds is black and there are many more; you don’t see me whining because I don’t make as much money as they do.

    • Although this study provides startling headlines for readers, it does very little to shed any new information on the matter. On the surface it appears the study is flawed in its concept of looking at all income levels and only segregating based on race for the study. What would be more interesting and provide more food for thought would be to approach it along race and income bands of $50K – $100K, >$100k – $250K and $>250 – $500K. If you have the same amount of wealth variance in this type of study, then the results would be serving a worthwhile purpose to your readers.

    • May I suggest Malcolm Gladwell outliers. First comer advantage has a huge role to play. I thought the same of all the comments when I visited East Africa. Asians and Arabs run most of the businesses. But, I quick history review, revealed that Asians (Indians) and Arabs had better access to credit than Black Africans immediately after, I policy that started from British Colonial Africa.

    • Ah, the inheritence.

    • Home ownership hasn’t exactly been a big wealth generator over the last decade. In some areas it’s even become a wealth destroyer. Income and marketable job skills is where the answer lies. You can’t invest what you don’t earn.

    • Blak people are not the most inteligent.

    • My grandparents fled Poland with the clothes on their backs. They worked in the stockyards to support 8 children without any government assistance. They suffered discrimination as did most immigrants. My parents endured the depression and my dad served in WWII. He was fortunate enough to return. He bypassed college to help support his parents and never made more than $25,000 a year in wages. My mom stayed home and raised the kids. They emphasized education above all and my brother and I graduated with professional degrees. My point to all of the above is that hard work and discipline were emphasized among three generations which resulted in success. The black community must face the fact this work ethic and discipline is lacking in too many black homes. As regards, discrimination, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts are coming up on 50 years of enactment and affirmative action is coming up on 40 years of being in place. Excuses among “black leaders” for the failure of generational progress helps no one in the black community. The sooner this community looks within, the sooner progress will occur.

    • lol…prejudice.

    • There is always an excuse for failure. The truth of the matter is that there is some discrimination but the African American population has been shooting itself in the foot for quite some time via victimhood politics. What would be interesting is to look at Black People who have achieved and extrapolate why they have been sucessful. Then take those qualitiess and promote them. The problem is that an honest exercise would reveal some unpleasant cultural aspects of “Black America” and in today’s PC world were not allowed to talk frankly about problems let alone propose real solutions.

      BTW isn’t the President Black? Didn’t some of racist ole Whities vot for him?

    • @Mihai Eminescu…

      i guess since you are Romanian…you must be a thief and your children!

      ah yes…prejudice works in all directions.

    • I would be happier if the study controlled for things like education, occupation, age, two-parent households, …

      The black middle class actually is growing. Unfortunately the black underclass is also growing, along with the white underclass.

    • Whites are way at the back of the bus for job opportunities, education opportunities, home loan opportunities etc. because of government policies. Whites are the only ethnic group discriminated AGAINST by state and federal law. This article is loaded with confirmation bias. What drivel.

    • Wow, this column reads like a propaganda article from Obama’s perpetual campaign. Culture does play a huge role, as do spending habits. I see lots of black civil servants driving luxury cars that are way above their pay grade. Lack of two parent households is huge. Government programs which have destroyed the black family are huge. The housing crash was caused largely by trying to rectify this “inequality”, and we still have not learned. Better education (failing government schools), good family upbringing will help create family traditions, and pass on wealth.

    • At some point Blacks need to be responsible for themselves. I own a small business and see young Blacks with their pants below their buttocks and say who in their right mind would hire them? Makes me a racist that my eyes aren’t painted on my head.

    • The language used in this article is a bit misleading. It states that Blacks have less access to credit but that is largely a function of significantly worse credit scores. One’s credit score is a direction reflection of that person’s own decisions regarding paying their bills and I would find an argument blaming one’s poor credit score on others spurious. So in effect Blacks’ lack of access to credit is due to their own choice not to pay their bills on time. This is good news for the individual black person as if they pay their bills on time and maintain good credit; they will have access to credit and can build wealth at a rate similar to the average American.

    • With over $15 trillion dollars spent on the War on Poverty since 1964 is it not odd that blacks are worse off today then they were 50 years ago? They are more poorly educated, have far less father figures in the picture, 50+ million aborted children many of them black, sky high out of wedlock births, hideous black on black crime, yet we overlook the facts staring us in the face. The blacks are where they are because we have molly coddled them and looked the other way as they took money and benefits and got lazy and non-productive in the process. We expected nothing from them (the soft bigotry of low expectations) and made excuses for them all along the way. There is plenty of blame to go around, but most of it is rooted in the leftist mantra of Victimhood. It is destructive in the long term. No other series of policies have done so much harm then what the liberal elites have cooked up over the last 50 years.

    • Banks are profit maximizers. They only care about getting the money back. If black people have in average lower credit ratings than white people is because they have average lower credit history.

    • It is probably the concept called natural selection. Europeans (whites) did well (outlived and reproduced more than their neighbors) by excelling business/science/math/law etc and those people came to America. On the other hand in Africa, a tribal culture, the people that had the ability to defend the tribe, hunt etc did well then came to America. Different attribute were selected in different cultures and it is going to take more than a couple generations to change what has been selected.

    • Maybe the problem is the number of Blacks in jail. The racial patterns of crime are never discussed. Blacks commit murder, rape, robbery, and assault far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Why are they so criminal? The left is always crying about the number of incarcerated Blacks but never talk the Black propensity toward violent crime. It is instant career death for an academic sociologist, political scientist, or crimeonologist to touch this subject.

    • yes

    • Other studies suggest that health and wealth are strongly related to getting married and staying married. Instead of moaning about why men can’t legally marry men, liberals ought to be suggesting that blacks get married, stay married and parent their children.

    • Legacy issues play a part. I am surprised that the home value difference is not greater. The great altruistic programs of the GI generation tended to backfire in terms of helping low income people create wealth. I remember a TV program in the mid 60′s where an African American couple had divorced so that she could qualify to rent one of the nice new “Project” homes. I realized then that this was a serious disincentive to marriage and to home ownership. These low income homes that were meant to be so charitable were going to become low income traps for those involved. The mistake is that we should have sold those homes and apartments to the occupants with no strings attached. Maybe even given them the homes. This would have provided an “inheritance” and helped many of the hardworking poor to capitalize those homes and get a leg up. So this whole process, instead of helping as originally intended, really disenfranchised a whole generation because they chose rationally at the time.

    • Minorities have had discrimination from societal authority figures who for generations made it difficult to achieve and display of achievement. That history has crippled their development. Many do escape the ghetto but learning new behaviors that work in the world of business but are items of ridicule in the Ghetto. Look at the majority of minority TV of the last 40 years ghetto values were extolled over wealth building values. Minority members with good manners,deportment were objects of ridicule only the “true ghetto man” was extolled.
      lower income American are in many cases victimized by the legal system. It cost a lot of money to defend oneself in court. Hence the propensity for “plea bargains ” that look good on the prosecutor’s resume but are no true indicators of guilt. The habit of “piling on’ charges makes it difficult for a defendant to win. A wealthy defendant has resources and may have a lawyer on call.
      Lower income also hurts in the newly important credit reports. low income means choosing between paying bills or having you child’s medicine. Putting food on the table or paying a non essential bill late. In years past that was not a problem as there were no tyrannical credit bureaus to deal with.

    • I think a lot has to do with income. i have worked in NYC for over ten years and am intrigued by the fact that although we all work in the same companies, with same level of education, same titles, whites can afford to live in Manhattan and blacks and hispanics overwhelmingly live not just in the boroughs,and not even in the best neighborhoods in the outer boroughs… to me, that says we are not getting equal pay… is this deliberate?

    • I respectfully submit that there are many causes for the disparity. Short of seeing the results of a comprehensive factor analysis, I must remain agnostic on which are the most important and so do not come to the same conclusion that these people did.

    • Are these numbers adjusted for inflation? A dollar in 1984 bought a lot more than it did in 2009.

    • “73% of African Americans are born out of wedlock versus 25% of whites”

      Vinny nailed a key factor, one that has only become worse in recent decades. It’s time people were held more accountable for their poor, personal choices – instead of increasingly rewarding it via cash, housing, food and phones, and then and only then will it improve.

      Yet, it will likely never happen as Democrats know they lose votes when people get truly free from govt’s “helping hand” all of which makes Biden comment that the GOP would put people in chains more comical as its Democrat policies that have further enslaved too many in this nation to govt’s Pavlovian cheese.

    • I’m confused. If Bush is responsible for the housing bubble, wouldn’t he also be responsible for working the hardest to narrow the “wealth gap”? Yet, some racist bigot famously claimed that Bush’s hates black people. It just doesn’t add up.


      This is idiotic. What drives those barriers? Are blacks super academic achievers but universities actively discriminate against them? Give me a break! If all minorities are doing poorly relative to whites, there is a case for barriers, but this is not so.

    • The black culture was DESTROYED by Lyndon Johnson. He replaced the black father and family head with the government.

      Well intentioned but Johnson had no comprehension of the unforeseen results.

      Between Johnson and Kennedy’s starting a war in Vietnam and unionizing the government work force, They both have laid the ground work for the America’s demise.

    • When you read the study brief available at IASP, you realize that from a research point of view the work is unusable, and not statistically significant.

      Note also the lack of adjusting for inflation and the small community of study advisors that work in organizations that boldly state their existance is to abolish racial wealth gaps.

    • I think the survey results would have been more enlightening if only college graduates were surveyed.

    • The author asserts that the cause of the wealth gap is barriers …rather than personal attributes or cultural factors” yet he later points out that “Every dollar of increase in average income…added $5.19 of wealth for white households….69 cents for african-american households.”

      If thrift instead of over consumption is a barrier, not a behavior, I need to reread Orwell.

    • This isn’t really that hard to figure out. Go check out your local paper and see how many black kids dont have a father. The mothers are on welfare, the fathers are complete deadbeats and losers who have no sense of responsibility. Why the heck is anyone surprised.

      Its very rare to see a black couple married with children of their own living a traditional family life. thats why they are falling behind, because its no longer culturally unacceptable to baby-daddy a bunch of children.

      Its become a self destructive culture. My black friends say the same thing.




    • Correlation and causation…

      Owning a home doesn’t translate to wealth… Fiscal responsibility might… I expect much more from the WSJ – this article does this great brand a significant diservice.

    • Why did northern blacks score higher than southern whites in military-sponsored IQ tests during WWII. Look it up. There goes your intelligence argument. POOF!

    • The main factor causing these headlines is the long time (25 years) over which wealth accumulated. If you read the actual study, and do the math (which the authors do not do for you) you will find that the wealth gap grew by 278%, which sounds bad until you realize that both white and black wealth growth outstripped growth in the gap, and by a lot in the case of blacks. Median white wealth grew by 292% while median black wealth grew by 493%. The primary reason the gap keeps growing in dollars is that these numbers always grow over time due to the magic of compounding, but so will the wealth of both groups. While whites started out with more in 1984, and thus have more opportunity to compound their advantage over time in absolute dollars, blacks do appear to be catching up in percentage terms, which, over time, may translate into dollars, too.

    • It doesn’t hurt when you grow up in a community where there are lots of self employed or small corporation owners and you get a chance to work for them during the summer and see how things work and learn some of the secrets of their success. I learned so much from my grandfather going to his business during the summers and my next door neighbor who had a series of successful businesses.

      I not only learned about their successes but they were willing to share with me the mistakes they made and I think I learned more about how to avoid making mistakes from those two men and I give both of them a great share of the credit for my own success and I in turn am sharing with those children and grandchildren that show an interest in learning about being employed for themselves.

    • There was a time when our racist society would systematically terrorize all of the most promising, ambitious, productive black citizens. Maybe if we had encouraged those people instead of humiliating and terrorizing them while placing superficial obstacles in their path of achievement, things wouldn’t be how they are today. What effect do you think that had on the collective conscious of African Americans as a whole? You reap what you sow and this is the poisoned harvest now shut up and eat it.

    • Look at any group. Marriage rates will tell you exactly what families are able to accumulate wealth faster.

      Welfare programs encourage low income folk in this country to have unwed relationships even when there is a father around willing to pull his her weight.

    • We’re all playing games here. Since the rise of the internet and the decreasing relevance of the old “Pravda America,” Whenever the liberal press shouts, “Whites are racists!” whites can finally defend themselves. Not that I’m particularly fond of mentioning that racial differences exist, especially as I don’t necessarily place my own race at the top of the pinnacle. However when racial differences are mentioned by myself and other whites, it is always in the defensive.

      Pushing unproven, extremist positions like whites are more prone to racism than others, only forces the subject of alternate–and perhaps even more plausible–causes of racial inequalities more and more to the surface. Its not pretty but if the media continues to push this meme that whites are somehow meaner, more petty, racist, etc., then we will keep bringing up the multiple studies that have shown that, yes, race does matter as far as IQ is concerned.

      This could get ugly, but we’re finished being the scapegoats connected through the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon to every ill that plaques society. Media, keep up the racist hate-mongering and you have no idea what’s coming back at you.

    • Will this research group’s next task be figuring out why bad things happen to good people? What a crock of sh*t.

      Bottom line: if you work hard in this country, you will succeed. Quit blaming your skin color. Barack Obama came from a one parent household and look what he did.

      But then again his mother was white…. so maybe the problem is that black women can’t raise successful children???? Aw snap son bout time to raise up ummmmmhmmmmm.

      Do your homework. Pay your bills on time. Doesnt matter what color you are, if you do those things, you will be fine.

      Quit blaming other people for your own shortcomings.

    • Um, but I wanna drop out of school, loaf from unskilled job to unskilled job, spend all of my income on frivolous bullsh*t, have unmarried unprotected sex, give birth to children I cannot provide for…. and blame other people for the outcome.

      Can’t I do that? I mean slavery people. Slavery. It has nothing to do with me dropping out of school. Everything to do with slavery.

    • Hahahahaha I get the benefit of being a diversity candidate for jobs and school eventhough I am from a rich family f*ck you rich whities ahahahahahahahaha I got your i-banking internship right here fwaaaah

    • What about me? I am darker than most black people. You americans have it so easy. Throwing away free education. Fools

    • Bill Cosby hit the nail on the head on this whole topic

    • Statistically speaking with the bloiben and the faibleheime we should place a factor of woolheibey on the black people and discount it by a present value of zero because they are terrible workers and they smell bad

    • Can someone please diversify my portfolio? I have a concentrated position in Soul Glo as I was an original investor. Now I am hoping to diversify my bonds. What’s the phone number for Wu Tang financial?

    • Behaviors become genetic. Its like the difference between a border collie and a bull dog. A border collie has brains, bulldogs will eat their own poo if you dont stop them. Bulldogs werent always this way, they were bred down into worthless garbage after the industrial revolution rendered them unecessary.

    • Hi I am a bulldog and I am offended by the above statements. While I do enjoy eating my own feces, I am outraged that I am being considered in the same category as an Africanus. Please remove the above promptly.

      Billy Q Bulldog, III, esq.

    • I got mo money than any of these bleeps i be skewin” the whole statistical distribution, sheeeeeit… my jonk got the excess kurtosis biiotch, might have to demonstrate some negative event risk on these White corrected errors above mothaFEEP.

    • Come on people! I mean- COME, ON. Enough of this! You People make me siiick!!

      Uh oh…I didn’t mean anything by “you people”. Oy my gawd I didnt mean anything by that. OhmygodphmygodohmyGOD i am sorry. I am sorry I am soooo sorry. I voted for obama, my friend frank is black. Ohmygadohmygadohmygad….

    • Who ever wrote this article is an idiot and the people that did the ‘research’ are guilty of poor scientific skills.
      They would have you believe that blacks are poorer because nobody gave them a home or did not help them enough to get a home. I call BS. Look around you. If you are working in an office building with professionals then any one of you has a very good chance of buying a home. Black or White. However, if you ask around you will find that less blacks actually do own a home. This is not systematic racial pressure to keep the black man down. It is product of black culture. They make just as much money as others in your building but choose to spend it differnetly. They do not, in general, save for a rainy day. They , in general, buy expensive cars and expensive clothes. Whites will drive anything that is reliable. Blacks want a cadilac. Sounds like a racial stereotype and it is. However, there is a reason for stereotypes. They generalize just like those ignorant economists.

      If you work in a blue collar job and live someplace that actually has black people in any large number (the South or most big cities) then you learned long ago that if three blacks are assigned to your work team then you can only count on one of them to do any work. They really are lazy. I am sure that will cause an uproar with those that think everyone is exactly the same but it is just a matter of fact. Look around and see who works. It is not brain surgery. Many of those same blacks have a half dozen kids by a half dozen different women and even though they make the same wage as you do, they still draw welfare. The way they pull it off is to never marry. That way all of the women can live on the government dole and never work a day in their lives. The men ‘stay’ at the womens home for free and get all the amenities of home for free. Why in the world would they want to go buy a home and have to lose all of that? Instead, they buy a cadilac of whatever vintage they can afford and spend the rest of their money on drink and other useless endeavors.

      Of course, some of the blacks are good as gold and some of them save money and some of them buy homes. However, most of them are not that responsible. Just telling the truth. I grew up with half my classmates being black and half my workmates being black and saw all this wiht my own two eyes. I earned my college degree after 7 years of study, quting to work to get enough mony for another semester, going back, rinse and repeat. I bought my first home after saving ALL of my extra money for eight years after college just for a down payment. I now own 6 homes and rent 5 of them out. I have worked professionaly in New York, Chicago, DC, Boston, LA, San Fransisco, Mineapolis, Detroit, Atlanta, and Miami. I have seen the same pattern every where I go.

      Blacks are not ever going to be equal to whites in anything until they are treated as grownups instead of children to be taken care of.

      And that is the way it is.

    • No, actually it really is a conspiracy to keep them down. Me and my dad’s friends thought it up.

    • Some of these comments are appalling. The nuggets to glean here are clear. Having a stable family and owning a home are key in building wealth….and leveling the playing field.

    • Hello racist commenter’s, I am an African American male, and I observe people and this is what I have to say. This article is dead on. It is not racism per say, but the legacy of racism. I worked to put myself through college, but my mom could only give me 30 bucks for college, because she had very little money because she spent her years taking care of your little white kids. I saved for my new house by working two jobs. My white neighbor told me he moved into his daddy’s house “rent free” to save for his down payment. At my office job I noticed that all the white workers had boats and nicer cars, and took great vacations. I kept telling myself that they must manage their money better than I do, but through a lawsuit it was disclosed that all the white workers were making 30% more money than the black workers across the board. You add all of these facts up and every step is harder for blacks just to stay even with white people. Black people are not lazy they are tired.

    • As long as we continue with the “fairness” drivel, “disparity” will get worse. Black, White, Hispanic remember the the words of the late great Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” If you took all the money in the economy and split it up evenly, in five years those that had money would have it again, and those that were broke, would again be broke, and the race has nothing to do with it.

    • and “Tuthyness” thats a load of crap

    • Brandeis University producing a laughable research result after 25 yrs of being funded.
      Affirmative action admission or a diversity hiring program affecting the quality?

    • I’m quite surprised to see this piece from WSJ. The world is a bad, awful, oh-so-mean place. But if you take personal responsibility and make sure you’re ready to receive or pursue opportunities, you make your own luck. The deluge of “it’s not your fault” messaging is staggering, and it’s an insult to people of all colors who’ve been dropped onto the planet in whatever circumstances and chosen to make something good for their lives. Lee Shafter is entirely correct. “Leveling the playing field” is a joke that only an adolescent would believe is possible. The field is never level and never will be — nor should it be. What a boring existence that would be. If you don’t struggle and strive, you don’t succeed. If you give up and allow yourself to be “like everyone else,” shun the extra work required to do well, etc., you have no one to blame for your life than yourself. And some people — primarily “progressives” — simply refuse to grasp that concept. I would have loved to have gone to an Ivy League school. Couldn’t afford it, knew that as a teen, and opted for something close and cheap. I’ve had a stronger career than many Ivy Leaguers in my field, and I can tell you for a fact — they didn’t get any better education by paying so much more than I did; in fact, they’re suckers and not terribly bright when it comes to blowing their money. Life is one big barrier; get over it, or it’ll beat you. Simple.

    • Truthyness there is a profound advantage to having both a mother and father at home. You can provide your children with help both monetary and emotionally. Like your neighbor who had a father who allowed him to move into his house rent free. I do the same for my son.

      I congratulate you on achieving what you done in your life, getting an education and buying a house. This proves that persistence and hard work rules the day not racism.

    • Seriously, would it *kill* you guys to realize that there are institutional effects of racism that last generations? From these comments, what I have gleaned is that you people think that all, or even the majority of, black folks are single-parent raised, uneducated, and on welfare. Why is that so easy for you to believe? Is it because it is true? (It’s not, except the single parent thing.) Or is it because beleiving so allows you to ignore the continued existence of institutionalized racism in our country? Institutionalized racism is a very real thing. The authors of the study are reporting – shocker! – that when one group of people is locked out of economic opportunities for most of a nation’s history, future generations will find it difficult to achieve the same levels of economic success as those who did have those opportunities. If you don’t believe what the authors are saying, ask yourself one simple question – Would African Americans be in a better economic position today if segregation had not existed and they’d had the same opportunities to build wealth as similarly situated whites? If your answer is that African Americans are genetically predisposed to waste money (as some have indicated on this board) you are a racist tool, plain and simple. But if you answer is a little more nuanced than that and recognizes that segregation in housing markets, bank lending, and many other things kept African Americans from obtaining wealth (and pasing down wealth) in what was arguably this nation’s most prosperous period (post-WWII), we might start to have an actual conversation about how to rid out nation of the very REAL barriers that still exist.

    • @ JD-degree

      I haven’t noticed anything “nuanced” in what you said whatsoever. You seem to be stating what has been official doctrine since . . . well, since way before I was born (and I’m 50). Your statement says racism is virtually institutionalized without giving any evidence other than to look at the outcome of where blacks are today.

      Let me introduce a little “nuance” into this conversation. To state that it is nothing other than both current and historical racism holding back blacks neglects the fact that other races have persevered and succeeded and continue to do so today. That around the turn of the last century, millions of immigrants arrived in this country most sharing nothing but being dirt poor and within ONE generation ended up sorting themselves out according to IQ and corresponding career. It only took one generation to join in amongst the wealthiest people in the world–at all levels.

      Here’s another bit of nuance: blacks simply score lower on IQ tests. You can say its because of racism, but that is something that you choose to believe and has never been proven with anything other than “doesn’t it seem like . . . ” questions. Well, maybe it “seems” that way to you, but the only evidence we have states that, quite to the contrary, other factors are involved that may make any racism in society far less important to racial outcome.

      What we do know is that this country has taken on institutionalized generational welfare at the behest of liberals. Maybe this might have something to do with some the disparages? We don’t even know how to pull people out of that. Who knows? Maybe its impossible. One other thing those people shared who got off the boats 100 years ago was they had a strong work ethic. Maybe could it be that that might effect outcome and that never knowing a family member to have held a job might cripple a person to the point that they become socially dysfunctional?

      Of course, we’re talking here about averages. Many, many blacks do just fine in society, but its the ones who are at the bottom of the ladder that just seem hopeless. And they’re the ones we’re referring to and the ones who skew the data. Most of my life I’ve spent living side-by-side with this lower category of blacks, and I’m at a loss for having any idea of what to do for them. They are just hopeless. Which isn’t to say that they are shrinking, cap-in-hand in doorways like Oliver. These people are angry (certainly at whites with all the hate they’ve been fed by liberals) but also angry with everyone around them. They are arrogant, completely non-introspective, selfish and many are OBVIOUSLY dangerous. In the city I live now, 70% of black males have committed felonies and are currently in jail or have been or are on parole today.

      Now here is a nuanced conclusion to all of this and it comes from studies and facts. People who are less intelligent–regardless of race–are more apt to commit crimes (for whatever reason). And if you look at the incarcerated population today, one area where blacks are NOT disproportionately represented today is at the IQ level. In fact, studies have shown that blacks with low IQs have no more or less tendency to be in jail as their low-IQ white counterparts. Its not that blacks are more criminal than whites, Its just that there are more of them that fit the IQ perimeters. And the percentage fit smack on. Now that makes sense to me. And its not based on a conclusion that has nothing to do with nuance that, “doesn’t it seem like its all due to RACISM?”

    • Truthyness, if blacks in your office were systematically being paid less than whites then my plan worked. But, it only means that racism held blacks back in your case, not all cases. Not all blacks work for your same company. We tried to get all companies on board, but they didn’t all agree. And our instructions were actually to pay 40% less; so as you can see, institutionalized racism is not a perfect science. Fortunately many black men are prone to dropping out of school and procreating children that they abandon so me and my buddies don’t need to have 100% adoption of the pay-them -less-because-I-am-petty plan; you guys just keep sh*tting where you eat. From my ivory tower though, i’ll tell you, it looks more like a cultural problem, than a racial problem. Blaming black men who abandon their progeny would seem a more appropriate practice than blaming white people in general. But maybe because you are racist against white people that you find it easier to blame whites rather than a dad you never met. I am pretty sure my single parent having white friends didnt blame blacks for their misfortune, they blamed their deadbeat dad thay never met. But yes, to your point, either way it doesn’t matter, I still hate you for how you look.

    • A black man pays Social Security taxes on his wages, but frequently dies before he collects their value in retirement benefits. Unfortunately, this residual value does not belong to his estate.
      The longevity of white women commonly results in their receiving retirement benefits far beyond their Social Security taxes. The residual value of the black man’s wage tax supports this additional benefit of the white women.
      An individual savings account would leave the residual value of the black man’s account upon his death to his family. This has to contribute to the gap of assets between blacks and whites.

    • Rameshwar prasad

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