Friday, August 28, 2020

BLACK LIVES MATTER

 


            It is apparent from the sheer size and fervor of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that African Americans are demonstrating in response to more than the vicious murder of George Floyd by callus policemen. Although they demand that police stop killing young black men, they are really crying out for much more. They desire to change the whole culture of race in America. They want to change the system in which they are the lowest class in America (or, as the scholar, Isabel Wilkerson would say, “ the subordinate caste”), the poorest Americans with the lowest paying jobs, the residents of the poorest slums, the recipients [JEL1] of  the worst education and the worst medical care, the people with the highest proportion of prison incarceration, and the victims of the most police brutality. They get no respect from White Americans.

            While elimination of these disadvantages would be wonderful for Blacks, and wonderful for America, achievement of these goals in the near future is very doubtful. Over the eight decades of my lifetime there have been many similar demonstrations and riots in every major city in America. They  have accomplished very little. Just look at what African Americans have to overcome.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, African Americans are paid less than whites at every education level. While a college education results in higher wages—both for whites and blacks—it does not eliminate the Black-White wage gap. Since 1979, the gaps between Black and White workers have grown the most among workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher. On average, Black men earn 87 cents for every dollar White men earn.

               As a result of the wide financial gap between Whites and Blacks, the entire life and culture of the two races is dramatically different. According to Forbes, African-Americans have only a fraction of the wealth that whites have. At the median in 2016, non-retired African-Americans had $13,460 in wealth or only 9.5% of the median wealth of $142,180 that whites had at that time. This huge discrepancy in income and wealth affects everything in the lives of Black Americans.

Lack of income and wealth dictates the kind of neighborhood Blacks can afford to live in and the public schools they attend. Children of color are frequently afforded less educational opportunities. According to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Black children often attend schools with less qualified and lower-paid teachers. Teachers (particularly non-black teachers) have lower expectations of black students. That can send children the message that they're unable to perform as well as children of different skin tones.

Black children are less likely to be ready for college. For example, 61% of the black high school students who took the ACT in 2015 met none of the four ACT college readiness benchmarks. That's almost twice the rate of all students who took the ACT that year.

Often, Black people cannot afford to live in predominantly White neighborhoods. They are relegated to areas where housing is marginal (in other words--the slums). The neighborhoods Blacks live in account for many of the other problems of African Americans including gangs, drugs, crime, arrest, and incarceration.

It would be nice if White people changed their attitudes toward African Americans, if large employers started giving Black employees the exact same wages as white employees, if police stopped profiling Black drivers, and stopped all brutality toward Blacks. It would be nice if we suddenly had real equality in America. But that is not going to happen. For hundreds of years Blacks have suffered at the hands of Whites from slavery, segregation, discrimination, hatred, prejudice, racial profiling, police brutality, and other things. On a daily basis ordinary middle-class and poor Blacks confront nasty little acts of racism. These acts by Whites are frequently subtle and even unconscious.

I have a modest proposal. Because so many of the problems of African Americans come from low income and lack of wealth, one partial solution would be for the government to pay the less affluent Blacks substantial reparations. After the hell they have been through they deserve it. Local reparations won’t cut it. This is a job for the federal government in Washington. I’m thinking from $500 thousand to $1 million for each adult person, paid in large installments over a period of a few years. You think that’s impossible? Well, financially, it should be possible. A government that can pay trillions of dollars for the CARE Act, including stimulus checks to over 200 million Americans and billions for bailouts to thousands of businesses, with another round of stimulus checks and bailouts to come, should be able to come up with reparations for its approximately 24 million Blacks.

On the other hand it may be impossible to get the benighted people in Congress and the Government to even consider something that has a chance to partially solve the problems of Black America. Yes, this would be only a partial solution. There are so many things that have to be done..


 [JEL1]Very n

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