Prometheus 6

This article gave me enough information to track down something I'd heard previously, the Quote of Note:

When sociologist Dalton Conley analyzed educational outcomes, he found that family net worth, not race, was the best predictor of high school graduation and college enrollment. At a given level of assets, black students are actually slightly more likely to graduate from high school than white students. The drop-out rate for black students has declined 44% since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I'd heard this but lost track of where before I could get details. Being Black, Living in the Red - Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America by Dalton Conley is what I was looking for.

Anyway…

The Balance of Barack Obama and Bill Cosby
by Dedrick Muhammad
August 2, 2004

I’d like to invite Barack Obama and Bill Cosby over for dinner, and listen to them hash out their differences about the causes of black poverty. By the end of the evening, I think we’d come to an understanding.

In his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, the Senate candidate from Illinois had a healthy balance between public and individual responsibility – a balance that eluded Mr. Cosby in his tirades against African American parents and youth.

As Mr. Cosby referred to black schoolchildren as “dirty laundry” and belittled their names and their clothes as the cause of their limited economic success, he was not just disrespectful, he was factually wrong. He overlooked the signs of black progress, and he overlooked the structural causes for the racial income gap.

Barack Obama did call for holding up high expectations for our children, decrying “the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.” But as he told his family story, he also affirmed the government role in creating the ladder of opportunity. His white grandfather went to college on the GI Bill and got an FHA mortgage, programs that weren’t open to his African-American father at the time.

Mr. Cosby reinforced stereotypes used ever since enslaved Africans were first brought to the shores of the United States, that white Americans were more prosperous because they worked harder and upheld better moral standards. He claimed that low-income African Americans are not taking advantage of the opportunities the Civil Rights movement brought them.

Yes, some people, in particular low-income teenagers and young adults, make harmful choices such as dropping out of school, crime and drug abuse. But these youth come in every color. Studies show that illegal drug use is slightly higher among white Americans.

When sociologist Dalton Conley analyzed educational outcomes, he found that family net worth, not race, was the best predictor of high school graduation and college enrollment. At a given level of assets, black students are actually slightly more likely to graduate from high school than white students. The drop-out rate for black students has declined 44% since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

African Americans with graduate degrees are two to three times more likely than whites to engage in the rough-and-tumble world of entrepreneurship with small business start-ups. Employed black workers work more hours per week and per year than white workers.

Yet African Americans have not been rewarded for all this effort. For every dollar of per capita white income, black families had 57 cents in 2001, up from 55 cents in 1968. The racial wealth divide is even worse: the typical black family has less than one-tenth of the median white net worth of $120,000.

In the decades when white income and wealth soared, it was not only due to hard work and talent. Those factors are present in every race and every era. It was because of public investment in a ladder of opportunity. The New Deal and the generous post-WWII veterans’ benefits largely excluded people of color.