Downward Mobility among the Black Middle Class?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

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“High numbers of black children have fallen from the middle to the bottom of the income distribution,” concludes a study by Julia B. Isaacs done for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project. This is quite a startling finding.

In absolute terms, the black real median family income has increased since the 1970s. This increase has been driven largely by increases in the percent of black women working and by increases in women’s earnings. This picture is basically the same for blacks and whites.

When one examines where children from different class backgrounds end up then the story for blacks and whites is remarkably different. If one looks at the children of white families that were in the middle fifth of the U.S. income distribution 40 years ago, 68 percent of those white children now have a real family income higher than their parents. For blacks, only 31 percent have a higher family income. In other words, a majority of the children of the black middle class are doing worse economically than their parents, but a majority of the children of the white middle class are doing better.

“A startling 45 percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle income end up falling to the bottom income quintile, while only 16 percent of white children born to parents in the middle make this descent,” Isaacs reports.

Although blacks who grew up in the poorest fifth were most likely to end up in the poorest fifth as adults, among blacks it was the poorest group that showed the greatest improvement relative to their parents. Seventy-three percent of them earned more than their parents.

Are These Findings Correct?
There aren’t many longitudinal studies with which to examine these issues. But Isaacs reports that another dataset has similar findings. Thus, this downward mobility finding appears to be true, but it would be nice to have other datasets to examine.

No one has a very good explanation of what could be going on here. Black families who were in the middle fifth of the U.S. income distribution in the late 1960s were likely quite well-off for blacks in the pre-Civil Rights era. Note these families are not in the middle fifth of the black income distribution, but the middle fifth for all U.S. families. If these families became so wealthy during Jim Crow then maybe the end of Jim Crow led then to experience rapid downward mobility. This is admittedly a wild guess.

Anyone with knowledge of a family with parents who were fairly wealthy in the late 1960s whose children ended up relatively poor, please e-mail me that story at contact@thorainstitute.com. What happened? What were the occupations of the parents and children? This is a real mystery.

If the finding of the downward mobility of the black middle class is correct then it seems that the American economy exerts a strong downward pressure on black family income. The downward pressure seems to increase as black incomes increase so that the children of the black middle class have less upward mobility that the children of the black poor.

This research is yet another piece of evidence that the pundits who have been beating up on the black poor are getting it very wrong. The poor from the 1960s were upwardly mobile to a fair degree. It is the black middle class of the 1960s who did not perform up to expectations.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2008 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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Who Supports Racial Integration?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

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Blacks still show the strongest support for a racially integrated America. Whites and Hispanics are much more ambivalent about integration. Sixty-two percent of blacks would like to see more residential integration according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Fifty percent of Hispanics and 40 percent of whites felt the same.

When asked whether it is more important “to have students go to racially mixed schools even if many of the students don't live nearby, or to have students go to local community schools even if it means most students are of the same race” blacks again show the strongest commitment to racial integration. Fifty-six percent of blacks chose racially integrated schools. Forty-four percent and 23 percent of Hispanics and whites respectively felt the same.

Sixty-five percent of whites favored local schools. The choice by whites for local schools and predominantly-white schools appear to be a big factor in why America’s schools and neighborhoods remain highly segregated. Until whites develop a strong commitment to integrated schools, we will likely continue to see high rate of neighborhood segregation.

Libertarianism and Segregation
Data from the General Social Survey suggests that libertarian values could provide support for segregationist policies. Respondents were asked to choose between two laws:

• A. One law says that a homeowner can decide for himself whom to sell his house to, even if he prefers not to sell to African- Americans; and
• B. The second law says that a homeowner cannot refuse to sell to someone because of their race or color.

The first law received a surprising amount of support.

After pooling data from 1994, 1996 and 2004 to increase the sample size, one finds that 34.6 percent of whites felt that an owner should be able to discriminate against black homebuyers. 19.2 percent of blacks felt the same. However, only 15.5 percent of whites (1994 and 1996 data) agreed that “White people have a right to keep African-Americans out of their neighborhoods if they want to, and African-Americans should respect that right.” So, segregationist policies may receive more support when they are couched in libertarian language.

Most Americans generically support integration. For many whites this support does not appear to be very strong. Support for integration declines when it is put up against libertarian values or local schools. Black Americans continue to be more strongly committed to integration. But integration, like the tango, takes two, and only one group seems to really want to dance.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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What Future for Black Racial Identity?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
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[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
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The Pew Research Center report Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class raised many issues but did little to get to the root of them. One of the most intriguing was the finding that 37 percent of blacks say that blacks cannot be thought of as a single race because of the diversity of population. This finding could cut against many common and long-held assumptions about race and collective identity among blacks. The question raises many possible startling interpretations, but ultimately the wording is too ambiguous to be certain what the respondents who agreed were agreeing to.

I argue in Achieving Blackness that people define race in a variety of ways including culturally. Slaveholders in the eighteenth century knew about race, but nothing about DNA. Culture was an important part of their understanding of racial difference. The “Asiatic” racial category used by the Nation of Islam is a good example of an early twentieth century cultural definition. Cultural definitions of race were more common in earlier historical periods, but they have never gone out of existence.

When blacks agree that “Blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race because the black community is so diverse” it is not completely clear what they are endorsing. If we knew what their definition of race is and what they meant by “diverse,” this response would be much more meaningful. If blacks are agreeing because they are seeing more Northeast African immigrants, who can often be distinguished by physical appearance from multigenerational black Americans, that would be a distinction within a biological conception of race. If the diversity referred to a perceived values diversity among multigenerational black Americans then that would be a cultural definition of race.

If we assume that the distinction is based on cultural values then that would suggest a weakening of the sense of collective identity and linked fate among blacks. Collective identity and linked fate have historically been strong among blacks.

On related but different issue, Juan Williams accused blacks of engaging in “self-defeating black politics” because, in November last year, they supported Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama. I am still trying to figure out how supporting a white woman is “self-defeating black politics,” but I guess this made sense to somebody. Now black voters are overwhelmingly in support of Obama.

Will Williams declare that the era of “self-defeating black politics” is over because blacks are voting for a black man? We'll see?

Blacks’ support for Obama is likely due in part—in part—to feelings of collective identity and a sense of linked fate. If this is the case then, again, we need more information to understand what is going on with black collective identity. Is it weakening generally or are blacks just distancing themselves from blacks who they see as having bad values. Is blacks' collective racial identity becoming more selective or just weaker? Further research is necessary.

On another related but different issue, the media needs to stop trying to foster black-Hispanic conflict. As I mentioned above, just a few months ago most blacks were for Hillary Clinton. If large numbers of Hispanics are for Clinton, it is mainly because they like Clinton. These folks in the media see race everywhere except when the issue of institutional racial discrimination is raised. Then we are told we live in a color-blind society, and that we need to give up our “self-defeating black politics.”


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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What Public Opinion Is and Isn’t

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
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[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
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A few years ago, I overheard a man telling his friend that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the planning of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. This idea has been discredited, but how did this man come to this conclusion? None of the terrorists involved in executing the attack were from Iraq? This idea is counterintuitive to the facts of the attack. Many Americans believed this to be true because government officials stated or insinuated that Hussein planned 9/11. The point here is that authoritative figures who have easy access to the media can shape public opinion.

Last year, the Pew Research Center released a report showing increased pessimism among blacks and increased negative views among blacks toward the black poor. Many of the pundits have assumed that the negative views of the black poor and the pessimism about black America validate their claims of a cultural crisis, but they fail to consider that the black public may be simply repeating ideas that black pundits have been spreading for more than a decade. There is a little bit of evidence in the Pew Survey suggesting that this might be the case.

When asked a factual question about black America, most blacks answered incorrectly. The survey asked respondents if the living standards of blacks were worse or better off relative to whites today compared with ten years ago. By median income, blacks are about at about the same level that they were ten years ago. The correct answer therefore is no change but only 9 percent of blacks said no change.

This is a difficult question for anyone to answer correctly without looking at Census data. How would one know the median income of millions of Americans? It is therefore incorrect for the pundits to treat these responses as facts about the state of black America. They are public opinion. Opinion and facts are different animals.

About 40 percent of blacks believed that blacks were worse off relative to whites, about forty percent believed that blacks were better off. Whites and Hispanics were about equally likely to answer this question incorrectly, but blacks were the most likely to say that blacks were worse off.

Why are blacks most pessimistic about black America? If blacks paid more attention to the cultural crisis claims about blacks that have been circulating for more than a decade then one would expect blacks to be more pessimistic than other groups. Blacks’ responses on the survey seem to support this view.

There are other possibilities. Over the 1990s, rap music became more violent and more obsessed with alcohol and marijuana. Black America experienced less violence over the 1990s and black youth have relatively low rates of substance abuse, but if people fail to appreciate that rap music and videos are fictional then they might see blacks as declining culturally. This view could lead to increased pessimism.

The year 2000 was the heyday for black incomes. The black median income reached its highest point relative to whites and the black poverty rate reached its lowest point on record. The fact that things have been getting worse relative to 2000 could lead to pessimism.

All of these things could be occurring simultaneously. Or other factors may be the real causes. I will be exploring some other factors in my presentation “Understanding the Strange Class War in Black America” at the How Class Works 2008 conference later this year. After the conference, I will report some of my findings here. I encourage other researchers to try to understand the “strange class war in black America” too.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2008 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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