According
to a 2011 study by the Pew
Research Center, the average white household�s
wealth was 20 times that of the average black household.
How
do such things happen? Jeannette Wicks-Lim, an assistant
research professor at the Political Economy Research Institute,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, writing in the January-February
2012 issue of Dollars and Sense, said, �It�s important
to remember wealth�s special role in supporting a household�s
economic well-being. Even though income forms the stream
of money that collects into a household�s pool of wealth,
wealth and income are crucially different.�
As
she points out, income pays for everyday living expenses,
the groceries, clothes, and gas. A family�s wealth, or
net worth, includes all the assets they�ve built up over
time (e.g., savings account, retirement fund, home, car)
minus any money they owe (e.g., school loans, credit-card
debt, mortgage). �Access to such wealth determines whether
a layoff or medical crisis creates a bump in the road,
or pushes a household off a financial cliff,� wrote Wicks-Lin.
�Wealth can also provide families with financial stepping-stones
to advance up the economic ladder, such as money for college
tuition, or a down payment on a house.�
There
many reasons for this disparity in wealth, which is a
part of the general disparity in wealth between the 1
percent at the top and the other 99 percent, but the black-white
disparity is in a category of its own and needs to be
examined, keeping several aspects of American history
and life in mind. This disparity has its roots in slavery
and its aftermath, a century of Jim Crow and, in recent
decades right into this new century, what is called the
New Jim Crow.
Another
report quotes a Canadian psychological study that shows
a link between lower intelligence and conservative political
views. Is it possible that the one could have an effect
on the other? Some might say that the latter study, from
the Canadian journal Psychological Science, is
a no-brainer, but it�s worth examining a little more closely,
because it doesn�t say that conservatives are less intelligent.
Rather, it says that �conservatism thrives on low intelligence
and poor information.�
Writing
in the Feb. 12 issue of the British newspaper, The
Guardian, George Monbiot wrote of the Canadian study,
�It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty
of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood
predicts greater prejudice towards people of different
ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness,
flexibility, trust in other people: all these require
certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting
others � particularly �different� others � requires an
enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.�
In
the current state of the U.S.
economy, a primary problem for black Americans is an economic
one, which is exacerbated by other issues, such as difficulty
in participating in the nation�s politics, which is commonly
seen in a democratic society as a way to provide equality
and equitability in both the political and economic system.
Upward
mobility for most of us has been through both education
and the organized labor movement. For those who have been
fortunate enough to be able to afford education, there
has been movement into the middle class. For the working
class, however, unions have been the traditional way to
a decent standard of living and the means to provide future
generations with a good education. Something bad has happened
along the way to a better life. It�s almost a clich� that
today�s younger generation will not do as well as their
parents� generation and that has come about through constant
downward pressure on wages, income, and accumulation of
wealth, at every level.
In
addition, there have been increases in tuition and other
costs of higher education, as well as the financial starving
of public schools in the places where good schools are
needed most, in the city ghettoes and in the rural enclaves,
in both of which there is less and less economic activity
to pay for good schools and other services of a good society.
As well, the relentless assault on American workers and
their standard of living has resulted in an ever-dwindling
union movement, unions being the engine of working class
success, from one generation to another. The rights of
workers to form unions and improve the lives of millions
of families have been thwarted.
For
black Americans, the public sector has been one of the
most dependable sources of well-paying jobs, especially
where public workers have the right to form unions. In
the hostile climate of 2012, the country�s right wing
politicians, from Governor Scott Walker, R-Wisconsin,
to Governor Mitch Daniels, R-Indiana, other governors,
and big business organizations, have zeroed in on public
workers and their unions. They have targeted for elimination
the very source of jobs for black workers and for their
unions, which have brought their pay and living standard
up to match many in the middle class. This is a fight
that has just begun.
Where
does support for the right wing agenda come from? Basically,
it�s from Corporate America and a sizable proportion of
wage working men and women who should be able to see what
side of their bread is buttered. It was this element in
the country that supported the Tea Party movement and
was, essentially, a rightist populist movement. It was
easy to manipulate them into attacking Barack Obama as
an alien, someone not born in this country, not a Christian
as he had said, and, even, possibly a Muslim! It rather
supports the Canadian study about low intelligence and
bad information making for a mass of people who take conservative
positions and have a biased view of the �other.�
Voter
suppression is once again in the news, even though it
was evident in Florida (the key state)
in the 2000 presidential election, in Ohio (the key state in the 2004 presidential election), and is a big
issue in the presidential contest this year. Some states,
under the wildly erroneous claim that there is massive
voter fraud, are calling for photo identification and
other ploys to keep as many away from the polls as possible.
The right wing business groups (most of them), right wing
politicians, Republicans, and others have made the claims,
but there is little evidence of voter fraud, and still
they push for what can be seen as the equivalent of a
modern day poll tax. They know that most black voters
and other minority voters, as well as low-income voters,
in general, vote Democratic.
Even
though the Democrats have not done much to overcome the
onslaught of money that has been dumped into the political
system and have been reluctant to stand up against Corporate
America and for policies that lift up the working class
and sustain the middle class, people still have more confidence
and hope in the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, than in
the party of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. There really
isn�t any other party that attracts the average citizen,
so the GOP is busy trying to suppress the minority vote
and the votes of low-income citizens (in places where
they are likely to vote) for Democrats.
It
is true that there have been other movements that have
sought to shine the spotlight on the vast disparity in
wealth between the richest 1 percent and the rest of us,
the most recent being the �Occupy Wall Street� movement.
Because they were making inroads into the hearts and minds
of millions of Americans, their encampments had to be
removed or destroyed and, with no small amount of violence,
the removals had to serve as a warning to anyone else
who might criticize the takeover of our national life
by faceless, nameless corporate interests. The encampments
may not be there, but the Occupy young people have continued
their work and they are making common cause with other
organizations that seek peace and social and economic
justice, especially including unions.
Right
wing populists who want to �take back America�
from the likes of Obama are doing the bidding of their
mentors (or masters) in Corporate America and the people
who are on the right fringes of American politics. The
pity is that they cannot see that what they are professing
is directly against their own interests and that of their
families. They see anyone who is not like them as the
�other� or the alien, both of whom are �the enemy.� These
people are easily molded, because they have been victims
of an educational system that is the captive of commercial
interests and which serves those interests. They have
been duped and they enjoy playing the role they�ve been
given, largely because they�ve been made to feel important.
For
most of these unfortunates, they cannot see that their
financial and economic difficulties are part of the same
plan as that which puts white wealth at 20 times that
of black wealth in 2012 America.
This has been an all-out assault on the living standards
of every person in America. There�s
a small army of politicians that will do what is necessary
to ensure that the 1 percent keeps both its income and
its wealth, while the other 99 percent pays in so many
ways, including dying in the wars not of their making.
The cost of our endless war-making is borne by the 99
percent, in blood and treasure. To pay for war, every
social and public program will be reduced or eliminated
to pay for tax breaks for the rich and for the wars and
weapons systems that are breaking us.
When
he was assassinated in Memphis
in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was in the process of
transforming a highly successful civil rights movement
(that had spread across the entire country in less than
a decade) into a poor people�s movement. The reality of
that possibility must have washed over the powers that
be like a tsunami.
What
if such a movement was as successful as that which resulted
in passage of civil rights laws and a voting rights act?
That broke down racial barriers and made other profound
changes in society? It was, indeed, a possibility. If
it had been successful, we would have seen the debate
about the disparity between rich and poor four decades
ago. Now, we can only speculate about it, for it did not
happen.
We
are in a different time and 40-plus years have given the
1 percent adequate time to consolidate their wealth and
their political power, which their wealth has given them.
We are in a time of so-called instant communications,
a time when the government (more likely though, corporate
interests) can keep tabs on every one of us and keep files
on people who might threaten their hegemony over not only
individual citizens, but over the entire country. And,
it is a time when our own Supreme Court has ruled that
money is speech and corporations are human beings.
In
this time, the real human beings need to stand up and
be counted. What we need to know to accomplish the goals
of the founders, as indicated in the Declaration of Independence
and in the U.S. Constitution (with the warts and flaws
included), is there for us to see and learn. It will take
leadership, inspiration, work, study, and solidarity to
accomplish what needs to be done. Rulers anywhere can
have only a limited time to exercise absolute control
over a people.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former
union organizer. His union work started when he became
a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early
1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in
New York
State. In addition to labor work,
he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay
on the land under enormous pressure from factory food
producers and land developers. Click here
to contact Mr. Funiciello.
