Joblessness, Discrimination, and Black Poverty

Don't miss the One Nation Working Together march on Washington D.C., October 2, 2010.

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The African-American poverty rate rose to 25.8 percent in 2009. That the poverty rate would increase from 2008 to 2009 was not a surprise. Black workers lost jobs in 2009. When blacks lose work black poverty increases. Alternatively, when blacks find work poverty declines. The highest employment rate for African Americans on record was in 2000 and the lowest African-American poverty rate on record was in 2000.

If we want to lower the black poverty rate we need (1) strong job creation like we had in the late 1990s, and (2) we need to make certain that blacks truly have equal employment opportunity. It is necessary to do more to ensure equal opportunity because researchers still find that employers show a strong preference in favor of white job applicants. When white and black “testers” apply to the same jobs presenting equivalent qualifications, the white testers receive more interviews and more job offers.

While job creation and anti-discrimination as anti-poverty prescriptions for African Americans may strike many as basic and commonsensical, they are rarely mentioned these days in discussions about reducing black poverty. One hears just about everything other than calls for more jobs and more equal opportunity.
Take for example, the soon-to-be-former mayor of Washington D.C., Adrian Fenty. When asked during his recent primary election campaign what his top priority for addressing poverty in D.C. is, Fenty’s answer was education reform. He stated, “I believe that education is the great equalizer,” and that higher educational achievement would allow people to “be able to overcome barriers that perpetuate poverty.”

D.C. has a high poverty rate and about 3 out of every 4 poor residents are African American. But Fenty’s answer did not demonstrate a good understanding of black joblessness and poverty.

While improving educational outcomes for blacks is a valuable and important goal, it is a very weak anti-poverty program. At every educational level blacks are more likely to be unemployed and to earn less than whites. Blacks with college degrees are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as whites with college degrees. Thus, even if blacks had the same educational profile as whites one would still expect blacks to be plagued with a higher rate of joblessness and consequently a higher rate of poverty.

Another misdiagnosis of the problem of black poverty is to see it as simply due to the high rate of female single-parent households among blacks. James T. Patterson argues that female single-parent households ultimately lead children in these families to joblessness and poverty. Patterson and others making this argument fail to mention that we have seen declines in the black poverty rate as the share of female single-parent households have increased. There was a large drop in the black poverty rate from 1990 to 2000 but no reduction in the share of female single-parent households. Now, that we’ve had two presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and one Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who spent at least part of their childhood in fatherless households we should begin to be more careful and critical in our thinking about these families.

Along with female single-parent households, there are other arguments that suggest that it is the values and behaviors of blacks that cause high black poverty rates. A different Patterson, Orlando Patterson, claims that the problems facing young black men lie in their addiction to “hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture.”

Orlando Patterson’s assertions are driven more by popular stereotypes than serious data analysis. We can find more reliable data on youth from Daniel Kuehn and Marla McDaniel of the Urban Institute. These scholars analyzed data from a nationally-representative survey of youth. Contrary to Orlando Patterson’s assertions, they do not find a greater rate of “adolescent risk behaviors” among blacks; they find less. They report, [PDF] “Low-income African American youth engage in fewer risk behaviors during adolescence (3.1 cumulative risks) than low-income white youth (3.9 cumulative risks). Low-income African American youth are less likely to use alcohol by age 13, sell drugs, steal less than $50, destroy property, or run away than low-income white youth.”

Despite engaging in fewer risk behaviors than white youth, black youth have more difficulties in the labor market, and they will grow up to have a higher rate of poverty. The reason for their high poverty rate is because they cannot find work. One reason why they cannot find work is because they are black.

It is time for the country to face the facts. Blacks have a high rate of poverty because of their high rate of joblessness. Their joblessness stems from the fact that there are not enough jobs and not enough of a commitment to equal employment opportunity.

The Rich Get Richer While the Pain Trickles Down

Top group takes large slice of income growth: "38.7% of all of the income growth accrued to the upper 1% over the 1979-2007 period: a greater share than the 36.3% share received by the entire bottom 90% of the population."

The Pain Trickles Down: Washington D.C.Street Sense writer, Jeff McNeil (September 1-14th issue), points out that when unemployment rises and people's weekly wages fall they give less to the homeless. Even those who are surviving on the margins of society find themselves living on even thinner margins.

Lost Income, Lost Friends - and Loss of Self- respect: The Impact of Long-term Unemployment [PDF]: Black workers have higher rate of long-term unemployment--being unemployed for more than six months--than whites or Hispanics. Consequently, blacks report more personal and interpersonal problems stemming from long-term unemployment.

Another challenge for the unemployed: Public library budget cuts: "Public libraries around the country are facing budget cuts that are forcing them to reduce hours, scale back book purchases, or close altogether. Such cuts will make it more difficult for millions of unemployed workers to access the resources and technology needed to find jobs."

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Courtland Milloy Gets It Right

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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Which of the following countries has the highest murder rate according to the most recent United Nations criminal justice data?

a. Costa Rica
b. Sri Lanka
c. Estonia
d. Thailand
e. United States

If you guessed the United States you would be wrong. The countries above are listed in rank order from highest homicide rate to lowest. Of the five, the United States has the lowest homicide rate.

It would be great to live in a society where there were no murders and no violence. Unfortunately, that society does not exist. Even the safest countries have a murder from time to time.

It is not realistic to expect the United States to go overnight from the 53rd highest homicide rate on the UN ranking to the 153rd, the bottom of the list of countries with available data. A more realistic goal is for the country to experience declines in the homicide rate year after year.

For the most part, this slow and steady decline has been occurring, yet one regularly hears commentators screaming that crime is out of control. These commentators never put crime in its proper context.

Recently, there was an unfortunate melee involving 70 people on the Washington D.C. subway system. The typical reaction was that everything is completely out-of-control, but Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post pointed out that as scary as the event was there were few serious injuries and no deaths. A decade or two ago, a similar event in D.C. would have been more likely to end with deaths.

In 1990, there were 472 homicides in Washington D.C.. By 1999, the number of homicides was basically cut in half to 241. By 2009, it was cut again to 143. Although there are fewer murders, the media covers each one more intensely that they did in the past, fueling hysteria.

Milloy also stated something that is never reported in the mainstream media:

H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, made an observation about black youths some years ago that stuck with me: "From the age of 18 to 25, our kids go from being below the national average when it comes to crime and substance abuse to being above the national average," he said.

"There are certain things in our community that seem to be working until that kid reaches 16 or 17. Then, all of a sudden, their involvement in crime and substance abuse shoots up. So what happens? What in our community suddenly disappears?"

One answer is that other youths make a relatively smooth transition into the labor force but black youth do not. Marc Mauer addresses this in Race to Incarcerate.

While there are no dramatic differences in the degree to which black and whites become involved in violent offending at some point, there are significant differences in how long these violent behaviors persist. The NYS [National Youth Survey] data reveal that black males are nearly twice as likely as white males to continue committing violent offenses into their twenties and nearly four times as likely to be involved by their late twenties.

. . . The primary reason why young offenders cease their criminal activities, whether they be occasional or frequent, is essentially because, as they reach their twenties, many of them get married, go to college, find jobs, and generally take on adult roles, which they come to find more rewarding that street life.

But, for large numbers of young black men, these more positive lifestyle options are limited or more difficult to attain. . . . An analysis of the NYS data finds, for example, that among 18-20-year-old youth who are employed or living in a stable relationship with a spouse or partner, there are no significant differences in the persistence of offending by race, but that among black males who fail to attain this status, violent offending is more likely to continue. Thus, a key question becomes the degree of access to legitimate employment among males in their late teens and early twenties. (p. 181)

The labor market is not friendly to black youth. The figure below shows the findings of a report from the Center for Labor Market Studies. For all racial groups, teens from poorer families are less likely to be employed than middle class teens. Hispanic teens, however, are less likely to be employed than white teens, and black teens are less likely to be employed than Hispanic teens. The race effect is so strong for blacks that black middle-class are less likely to be employed than poor white teens. This data is for Illinois only, but national data is very similar. What this means is that for teens, if you wish to find a job, it is better to grow up in a poor white family than a middle class black family.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.


Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Still Not Post-Racial Yet: White Men Still Better Off than Asian Americans in U.S. Labor Market

The blog 8asians recently posted an article stating that Asian men have the highest salary. This statement is both correct and misleading at the same time. It is correct that Asian American men have the highest median wage. But to the extent that it suggests that Asian Americans are economically advantaged relative to whites, it is incorrect.

As I pointed out in my examination of Asian American unemployment over the recession, Asian Americans experience hidden disadvantages in the U.S. labor market. To see this disadvantage, one must disaggregate the data by education level. The Asian American unemployment disadvantage appears upon examining those with a bachelor's degree or higher level of education. In 2009, the annual unemployment rate for Asian Americans with a bachelor's degree was 6.7 percent. For whites with a bachelor's degree is was 2.1 percentage points lower at 4.6 percent.

A larger share of Asian Americans has a college degree than other groups, including whites. People with college degrees are more likely to be employed and, on average, have higher earnings than people without college degrees. The high educational attainment of Asian Americans means that their aggregate statistics, like the overall unemployment rate or the median income for the entire group, looks better than the aggregate statistics for whites. But the picture changes when one compares Asian Americans with whites of the same educational level.

The wage report discussed on 8asians.com does not allow one to disaggregate the data by sex, race, and education level. But the Census Bureau does provide this disaggregation in its detailed income tables. We can compare white and Asian American full-time, year-round male workers with each other by education level. The median income for non-Hispanic white male high school graduates in 2008 was $42,234. For Asian American male high school graduates it was 21 percent lower at $33,358. Comparing individuals with bachelor's degrees, white males earned $71,672 and Asian males $63,172, or 12 percent less. When one disaggregates by educational level, the apparent Asian American advantage turns to an Asian American disadvantage.

One comment in response to the 8asians.com piece (on the New American Media re-posting of the article) stated that since Asian American men work harder, they deserve to have the highest salary. There are a number of problems with this statement, but if one assumes that Asian American men work the hardest, the disaggregated income data suggests that they are not being rewarded for their hard work.

Asian American "success" stories are often used to argue that the United States is a post-racial society where anyone can be successful provided that they are willing to work hard. The reality is, of course, more complicated than that. The Asian American "success" stories sometimes do not look at all like success stories when one disaggregates the data. And while hard work matters, and there are a great deal of opportunities for people of all races in this society, the playing field is still not level. In 2010, it is still easier for one to be economically successful if one is white and male.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.


Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Fourteen Examples of Racism in Criminal Justice System

Bill Quigley dissects blackness and the criminal justice system:

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is - are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?

Read more.

America Becomes a Little More Like Paris

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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In Paris, the central city is wealthier and whiter than the suburbs.* In the United States, the demographics have been the reverse. Our central cities have been poorer and browner than the suburbs. In the twenty-first century, the United States has begun to look a little more like Paris.

A majority of all of the major nonwhite groups now live in the suburbs reports the Brookings Metropolitan Program in it's State of Metropolitan America. In 2008, 50.5 percent of blacks lived in the suburbs. About 60 percent of Hispanics and Asians lived in the suburbs. Blacks only just became majority suburban, but Hispanics and Asians were majority suburban in 2000.

While nonwhites have been moving to the suburbs, some "chocolate cities" have been becoming whiter. Atlanta, Washington D.C., and New York are all whiter in 2008 than they were in 2000.

And poverty is also becoming more common in the suburbs. The authors of the State of Metropolitan America tell us that "suburbs are home to the fastest growing and largest poor population in the country." The poverty rate is still higher in America's cities than suburbs, however. Since the suburbs have a larger population than the central cities, they can have more people in poverty and still have a lower poverty rate.


* In Paris, housing projects for low-income people are located outside of the central city in the "banlieue."


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.


Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Republicans Attack the Deceased Justice Thurgood Marshall

From Dana Milbank, "Kagan may get confirmed, but Thurgood Marshall can forget it," Washington Post, June 29, 2010:

As confirmation hearings opened Monday afternoon, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the unusual approach of attacking Kagan because she admired the late justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked more than two decades ago.

"Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl -- the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event -- was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said.

Stephanie Jones comes to the defense in "Thurgood Marshall's legacy deserves cheers, not sneers," Washington Post, June 30, 2010:

It was Marshall who, with Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, his mentor, conceived and then painstakingly effectuated the jurisprudence that led to the striking down of the odious "separate but equal" doctrine that threatened to destroy this country. While many decry "activist judges" (by which they seem to mean judges who uphold civil rights for minorities and women), those judges who undermine civil rights often demonstrate the most extreme forms of activism. Judges such as those who declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation was constitutionally sound turned the Constitution on its head and made a mockery of equal protection. Those activist judges subjected an entire segment of Americans to more than half a century of state-imposed degradation, subjugation and humiliation.

Black College Enrollment Up Because of the Recession

The Pew Research Center has found a significant increase in college enrollment from 2007 to 2008. It attributes this increase to primarily to a surge in minority enrollment. The enrollment of first-time, full-time, first-year college students increased 15 percent for Hispanics, 8 percent for blacks, 6 percent for Asians, and 3 percent for whites.

This increase is only apparent with data from postsecondary institutions on first-time, full-time, first-year college students. Other data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the broader category of 18- to 24-year olds enrolled in college finds a decline in college enrollment for blacks. It is possible that the numbers for first-year students are up while the total enrollment numbers are down.

Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom

College Enrollment Hits All-Time High, Fueled by Community College Surge

Metropolitan Unemployment by Race

African American unemployment rates

"The black unemployment rate in both the Detroit and Minneapolis metropolitan areas was just over 20% (see Table 4). These were the highest rates for blacks. Washington D.C. had the lowest black metro unemployment rate in 2009, 8.1%. Fourteen of the metro areas had black unemployment rates that exceeded 11.3%. None was less than 7.3%. By contrast, in 11 of the 18 metro areas analyzed for blacks, whites had unemployment rates below 7.3%.

"The black-white unemployment ratio was highest in Minneapolis and Memphis. In these metropolitan areas, the black unemployment rate was three times the white rate. In both of these cities the black-white gap was also over 10 percentage points. The black-white ratio was lowest in Detroit, but blacks were still 1.5 times as likely to be unemployed as whites. On average, blacks were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites."

--From Algernon Austin, "Uneven Pain: Unemployment by Metropolitan Area and Race," Issue Brief #278 (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2010).

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Hear Algernon Austin and others discuss the 3-to-1 black-white unemployment disparity in the Minneapolis metro area on Minnesota Public Radio.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Hispanics Now Lead in Teen Births

Of the major racial/ethnic groups, black teens used to have the highest teen birth rate. Between 1990 and 2008, however, the black teen birth rate was nearly cut in half. Hispanics experienced a much smaller decline which left them with the highest teen birth rate.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that roughly 1-in-4 Hispanic 19 year old females are mothers, but 1-in-5 black 19-year-old females are mothers. The comparable white rate is about 1-in-10.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.


Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Moynihan and Patterson Get It Wrong

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
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com
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One would have hoped that the fact that two presidents (i.e., Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) and one Supreme Court Justice (i.e., Sonia Sotomayor) spent at least part of their childhoods in fatherless households would lead to a more careful and critical examination of female single-parent families. Unfortunately, this has not occurred.

James T. Patterson's New York Times op-ed, "The Moynihan Future" is built on the presumption, taken from the “Moynihan Report,” that a female single-parent family is a bad or dysfunctional family. From there, Patterson presumes that the problems facing blacks are to a large degree due to the fact that a large share of black families are female single-parent families. Patterson is wrong in both presumptions.

The share of black nonmarital births has risen dramatically since the 1960s. Patterson observes that nearly three-quarters of births among blacks today are out-of-wedlock. But while the rise in nonmarital births is real, the decline of black America has not occurred.

The lowest black poverty rate on record, 22.5 percent, occurred in 2000, 35 years after the “Moynihan Report.” The black poverty rate was twice as high the year Moynihan wrote his report. In 1970, 58.4 percent of blacks 25 to 29 years old obtained a high school diploma or GED. In 2009, 88.9 percent of blacks in this age group completed high school. In the 1970s, black communities were almost four times as violent as they are today. Black nonmarital births have increased and the black poverty rate has declined, black educational attainment has increased, and the black violent crime rate has decreased.

Moynihan and Patterson's claims fail utterly when one looks at these simple metrics. Nonmarital births have increased and negative outcomes have decreased for blacks. A number of more sophisticated studies also reject the implicit stigmatization of black female single-parent families in Moynihan and Patterson's arguments.

The most convincing one that I have found is based on a longitudinal study of children in Chicago.¹ The children studied are almost all poor and almost all black. The statistical analysis conducted by the researchers allows one to compare two-parent and single-parent families across eight outcomes based on different aspects of education, employment, income and incarceration.

In none of the outcomes is there a negative effect on children from being raised by a single parent. None.

Moynihan was right that nonmarital births would increase, but he was wrong about everything else.

Of course, it is true that blacks are still much worse off than whites. But focusing on female single-parent families is a distraction from the real issues.

Patterson needs to ponder why is it that blacks with college degrees do so much worse in the labor market than similarly educated whites. And, why does the United States have the most brutal and socially destructive criminal justice system in the West with black men as its main target?

When Patterson finds answers to these questions he will not only understand the cause of black socioeconomic inequality today, he will also understand why black nonmarital birth rates are so high. Unemployed or incarcerated black men are not good marriage prospects.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Notes
1. See Suh-Ruu Ou, Joshua P. Mersky, Arthur J. Reynolds, Kristy M. Kohler, "Alterable Predictors of Educational Attainment, Income, and Crime: Findings from an Inner-City Cohort," Social Service Review (March 2007): 85-127.

For some additional research showing that female single-parent families are not the cause of black-white inequality, see Juan Battle, Wanda Alderman-Swain, and Alia R. Tyner, “Using an Intersectionality Model to Explain the Educational Outcomes from Black Students in a Variety of Family Configurations,” Race, Gender & Class 12(1), January 2005: 126-151; Thomas DeLeire, and Leonard M. Lopoo, Family Structure and the Economic Mobility of Children (Washington D.C.: Economic Mobility Project 2010); Keith Finlay, and David Neumark, "Is Marriage Always Good for Children? Evidence from Families Affected by Incarceration," Working Paper 13928, (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research 2008); Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., Thomas D. Cook, Jacquelynne Eccles, Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Arnold Sameroff, Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1999); Donna K. Ginther, and Robert A. Pollak, “Family Structure and Children’s Educational Outcomes: Blended Families, Stylized Facts, and Descriptive Regressions,” Demography 14(4), November 2004: 671-696; Gary Painter, and David I. Levine, “Daddies, Devotion, and Dollars: How Do They Matter for Youth?” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 63(4), October 2004: 813-850.



Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

What Obama Did Not Say at Hampton University: Education Alone is Not Enough

And first and foremost, your education can fortify you against the uncertainties of a 21st century economy. . . .

Jobs today often require at least a bachelor’s degree, and that degree is even more important in tough times like these. In fact, the unemployment rate for folks who’ve never gone to college is over twice as high as for folks with a college degree or more.

--Remarks by President Barack Obama at Hampton University Commencement, 2010

While it is imperative that the educational attainment of black Americans be increased, education alone is not enough for black economic security. It is true that the more educated are more likely to be employed. But when looks at the issue conscious of race, the story changes.

The figure below shows the annual average unemployment rates for blacks and whites in 2009 by education level. More educated blacks are more likely to be employed than less educated blacks. The same is true for whites.

But when one compares blacks and whites with each other, it is clear that whites have a distinct advantage. Blacks with high school diplomas have unemployment rates that are equivalent to white high school dropouts. Blacks with college degrees only do modestly better at finding work than whites with high school diplomas.

More education is necessary but not sufficient to secure equal opportunity for blacks in the labor market. A strong commitment to ensuring racial justice is required across the nation. As the Tea Party becomes stronger, however, America's already weak commitment to ensuring equal opportunity will get even weaker.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Understanding Poverty in America

Listening to the popular American conventional wisdom on poverty, one would assume that high rates of poverty are a unique American disease caused by the supposed dysfunction of the black American population. One does not hear that, in fact, most rich countries have high rates of poverty--before taxes and transfers.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides data that allows one to compare poverty in the United States with other countries. For international comparative purposes, I define the poverty rate as the percent of the population that has to live on less than 50 percent of the median income. This definition is common in comparative analyses.

By this definition, before taxes and transfers, the United States’ poverty rate does not standout. The United States falls in the middle of the pack among rich countries. Examining 23 rich OECD countries, the United States was the 12th highest.

In the United States, in the mid-2000s, 26.3 percent of the population was in poverty before taxes and transfers. In Italy, Germany, Belgium and Greece about a third of the population was poor before taxes and transfers. France, Australia, Sweden, and Japan all had higher rates of poverty. The United Kingdom tied with the United States.

Where the United States stood out was in the poverty rate after taxes and transfers. In most countries, people understand that capitalism produces inequality, that the rich have advantages over poorer citizens, that poverty is damaging to people's lives, and that more equal societies have better social outcomes. In these societies, people use taxes and transfers to produce a more equitable and better functioning society.

After taxes and transfers, the United States had the highest poverty rate among rich OECD countries. After taxes and transfers, the U.S. poverty rate was 17.1 percent. Japan was the next closest with 14.9 percent. Although the United Kingdom had exactly the same poverty rate as the United States before taxes and transfers, the UK poverty rate dropped to 8.3 percent after taxes and transfers--half the U.S. rate. Sweden which had a higher before-taxes-and-transfers poverty rate than the United States, dropped its poverty rate to 5.3 percent after taxes and transfers--tied for the lowest with Denmark.

The United States has such a high poverty rate after taxes and transfers because we choose to. We are far richer than nearly all of the other rich OECD countries, but we are also far stingier. We like our capitalism brutal. As the Tea Party gains more power, expect an even more brutal country, with more poverty.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

America's Upside Down Politics

One group is managing pretty well despite the Great Recession, and many of them benefit from big government social programs like medicare and social security. This group, however, is angry as hell and rails against "big government."

Another group is being hammered by the Great Recession, and they are being disproportionately hurt by cuts in government spending, yet, they are relatively quiet and convinced that everything is going to be alright.

This is the upside-down world of American politics. The former group is the Tea Party movement, and the latter group are blacks.

A New York Times/CBS poll finds that the members of the Tea Party movement are more likely than the general public to be doing well financially. They also tend to be white and over 45 years old.

Perhaps the most illuminating finding of the New York Times research into the movement is this:

Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.” 
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

For Tea Partiers, "big government" does not refer to the biggest government programs--the military, social security, and medicare--it refers to any program that might disproportionately benefit people who are not white and well-off--no matter how small the program.
In a word, when they say they want to take back "their" country, they mean it. In their view, the government is supposed to be for the white middle class and the white middle class only. All other people need to find some other country to live in.

Blacks are being hammered financially by the Great Recession. They are experiencing massive job, income, home, and wealth losses. The government programs that they would turn to in these times of need are being cut or eyed for cuts. Instead of protesting so that politicians are motivated to do something to help them, blacks are still stuck in Obama-euphoria land. They are more likely to say that things are better off now than five years ago, when this is clearly not true.

Because the screaming wheel gets the oil, the well-off and white Tea Party folks will shape American politics and the quiet black masses will not. The government will do more to help and to appease the white and comfortable while enacting policies that neglect or harm people of color.When will blacks wake up and see that they are being hit hardest by the Great Recession?

Will Obama be Arrested in Arizona?

Please change your bookmarks to the new URL: http://thorainstitute.blogspot.com.

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A law enforcement officer, without a warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.
--State of Arizona, Senate Bill 1070

Come August, in Arizona, anyone who doesn't look “American” can be subject to arrest if they do not have papers indicating that they have permission to be in the United States.

Do black Americans look “American”?

Twenty percent of Americans think Barack Obama was born in another country, and, presumably, that his birth certificate from Hawaii is fraudulent. If someone believes these things then she could also believe that Obama is an illegal immigrant, since in her eyes, Obama is not a citizen but is pretending to be one.

Do any of these “birthers” work for Arizona law enforcement? Would they try to arrest Obama if he enters the state? The movement seems to have people crazy enough to attempt it.

The Arizona law, “SB 1070,” could be applied to blacks generally and not just to Obama. There are black immigrants in the United States. Many of them are here legally, some are not. Does this mean that any and all blacks in Arizona are subject to arrest until their legal residence in the United States can be established?

Yes, there are white immigrants too, but I’m doubtful that Arizona law enforcement will expend too much energy chasing after illegal white immigrants. I’m not sure what they will do about blacks with atypical names, dress or accents. Will they assume that these blacks are illegal until proven otherwise as SB 1070 seems to encourage?

Blacks in Arizona should keep track of whether this travesty of legislation is being applied to blacks. If it is, there should be protests and lawsuits. (Of course, even if it isn’t applied to blacks, it should be repealed.)


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Thora Institute Re-Engineering

There will be some changes made to the programming of this site this week. With luck, everything will proceed smoothly.

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Take from the Poor, Give to the Rich

We have “reformed” our welfare system based on the assumption that everyone who wants to obtain a job that can lift themselves and their family out of poverty can obtain one. These are flawed assumptions. In 2007, when we had a moderately strong economy, more than one-in-four people with jobs did not earn enough to keep a family out of poverty.

The current economy is extremely weak. We have an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. There are over 5 job seekers for every job opening. No matter how hard people try to find work, there simply are not enough jobs. As Timothy M. Smeeding has remarked, today “we have a work-based safety net without any work.”

But this reality has not stopped the engines of “welfare reform.” The New York Times reports that “Rhode Island has the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate, but the welfare rolls here continue to decline because of the time limits and stringent work requirements.” Nationally, “Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of Americans receiving benefits under the main federal-state welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, has increased less than 10 percent, even though unemployment has nearly doubled and the number of people receiving food stamps has grown more than 40 percent, to 39 million.”

The authors of Battered by the Storm report:

The percentage of poor children receiving temporary assistance under the main federal “welfare” program has fallen from 62 percent in 1995 to 22 percent in 2008. TANF benefits in 2008 averaged only 29 percent of the money needed to reach the official poverty line.

We should not be surprised to see further declines in aid to poor families.

Not everyone is suffering however. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the richest 400 families have seen their tax rate decline by 10 percentage points and their income has quadrupled since 1992. These families have a median income of $345 million. In a separate Economic Snapshot, the Institute states:

In 1979, the top 10% of families received 67.0% of all income generated by assets such as stocks, bonds and real estate. By 2006, that share had risen to 81.3%. By contrast, the share of capital income that went to the other 90% of families has fallen from 33.0% in 1979 to 18.7% in 2006. The portion of capital income going to the top 1% of families has gradually increased from 38.0% in 1979, so that by 2006 this small group received more than half – 57.7% -- of all capital income.

So, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer.


--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.


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Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

The Fluidity of Racial Classification

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
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com
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Many people are upset with the Census Bureau over the race question. Although 50,000 people told the Census Bureau that they wished to be identified as "Negro" on the 2000 Census, some other blacks are upset that "Negro" is on the 2010 Census.

Many Latinos and non-Latinos think being Latino is a race, but it is not a race according to the Census Bureau definition. Latinos who look "white" are supposed to check "white." Those who look "black" are supposed to check "black." Those who identify as American Indian are supposed to check "American Indian." Latinos, like everyone else, also have the option of checking "white" AND "black" AND "American Indian" or any other racial combination that works for them.

Some Arabs are upset that there is no Arab race and that they will in many cases be compelled to check "white." They are calling for Arabs to write-in "Arab."

And, then there are other folks who are upset that there even is a race question. They say we are all human beings, so why don't we just stop talking and thinking and classifying based on race.

What a mess.

What all of this confusion indicates is that race is not biology in any simple, direct or definitive way. It is not skin color--no matter how many times people say "skin color" to mean race. If it were skin color then Latinos and Arabs would have no problem classifying themselves as white if they were light complexioned. And the many Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who have a darker skin complexion than Barack Obama would classify themselves as black and not as Asian.

Race is sociological, cultural, psychological and political, much more than it is biological. Take the example of Barack Obama. What race is he? Well, it depends to a degree on who is answering the question. The Pew Research Center finds that 53 percent of whites say he is "mixed race" while 55 percent of blacks say he is black. Hispanics are even more likely than whites to say the Obama is mixed race with 61 percent classifying him so. So, the perception of Obama's race varies by sociological, cultural, psychological and political factors while his biology, of course, remains the same.

Obama classifies himself as black, though he clearly could say that he is biracial or mixed race. His decision on his race is due to sociological, cultural, psychological or political factors.

Obama is not unusual. On the same Pew Research Center survey about perceptions of Obama's race only 1 percent of the people surveyed identified racially as mixed, yet 16 percent say that they are, in fact, racially mixed.

There is a difference between one's identity and one's ancestry. Obama's ancestry based on the race of his parents is black and white. But his identity is black. Similarly there are lots of people who have parents, grandparents and great-grandparents with racial identities that differ from their own. From an ancestry standpoint they are mixed, but in their day-to-day lives they may not interact with people based on the racial identities of all of their known ancestors. So, for example, a black person can claim to be racially mixed because of an American Indian grandparent, but still identify only as black on the Census.

Race is a complex and continually changing phenomenon. Because society changes, race changes. Because people can change psychologically over their life-span, individuals' racial identities can change over their lives also. Obama may one day decide that he should identify as biracial and not as black, for example.

U.S.-born Americans are not culturally uniform in their thinking about race. The foreign-born population brings even more radically different thinking about race. The Census Bureau has to reduce this complex issue and all of these conflicting ideas into one single multiple choice question. It can't be done. Since we probably don't want them asking us 20 questions about the meaning of race in our lives, we should probably cut them a little slack.

(For a more detailed discussion of the meaning of race, see my book Achieving Blackness.)



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

Chronic Unemployment in Black America

"In recent testimony before the Congressional Black Caucus, EPI's Algernon Austin focused on jobless rates in Illinois to illustrate the major difference between unemployment rates for black and white workers. He estimated that even before the recession started, black workers in Chicago were almost four times as likely as white workers to be unemployed." Read more.

Update on Hate

A New Lecture: “Anti-Black Discrimination in the Age of Obama” by Dr. Algernon Austin

The simplistic idea that impoverished African Americans have only themselves to blame for their poverty, due to their poor cultural values—a notion advanced by many, including black public figures such as Bill Cosby—is believable only if a blind eye is turned to those inconvenient things social scientists like to call “facts.” Algernon Austin soundly refutes the “culture of poverty” argument by paying careful attention to macro-economic data about long-term poverty trends and sociological case studies about persistent discrimination. In other words, unlike the glib punditry, Austin actually looks at the “facts.”
--Dr. Andrew Hartman, professor and audience member, Illinois State University

Contact Dr. Austin to arrange a speaking engagement.
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Sensational individual acts of racist violence or hatred too often serve to obscure the far more common and pervasive impersonal acts of institutional racial discrimination. We do seem to be experiencing an upsurge of racist violence and hatred by individuals and organized groups. This significant upsurge is worth noting.

Chip Berlet on “Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence”:

We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in US history as illustrated by the Tea Party and Patriot movements. Will religious and progressive activists provide a voice and outlet for populist fear and anger or will these dispossessed voices find a home among the potentially violent elements of the far right?

Mark Potok on “Rage on the Right”:

[Last year] Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

Bob Herbert on the recent ugliness:

A group of lowlifes at a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio, last week taunted and humiliated a man who was sitting on the ground with a sign that said he had Parkinson’s disease. The disgusting behavior was captured on a widely circulated videotape. One of the Tea Party protesters leaned over the man and sneered: “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong end of town.”

You might be a racist if you have a swastika tattoo:

Mr. Brunjes, 18, said he first gave his friend a lightning-bolt tattoo in May 2008, and then a star, using ink, a needle and thread. About a month and a half later, he said, he gave him a third one on his right upper thigh: a swastika. The two friends did not discuss why.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.