Black/White Income Gap

Hey everyone, I'm doing a paper on Racial/Ethnic Differences in the U.S. for my Social Psychology class and I wanted to ask you all a question in order gain some new perspectives on the topic. My question is why is there such a huge income gap between black and white people in the U.S? For the record, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (page 12), in 2003 white households had a median income of $45,631 while black households had a median income of $29,645. So white housholds made an average of $15,986 more than black households.

I think it has some to do with people staying where they start. My family is white, we lived in an almost all black neighborhood that was very poor, and my brothers aren't doing much to move up. Me and my mom have both met people that make enough money for us to try and move up. It's difficult to move up when you are busy trying to support yourself.

Also alot of people do what they are use to, like my brothers. They are just doing the things they have always done. not changing is easy.

The general answer I believe is we got a head start.

Look up numbers on single-parent households, broken down by race.

Also look up numbers on percentage of people with a university degree, broken down by race.

[Edited on Feb 03, 2005 by Shalome]

Bill O'Reilly had a great answer for this.
See, most black people live in the SOUTH where incomes are lower because the economies in southern states are predominantly AGRICULTURAL.

He actually said this to a black guest he had on his show a while back..

What a dick. I don't want anyone thinking I actually LIKE Bill O'Reilly here...


Now that we have that out of the way...

Yeah I think his answer was a bit simplistic, but I bet iif you looked at some population density charts separated by racial groups it might offer some clues. Just a thought.

[Edited on Feb 03, 2005 by CoreOfSelf]

I bet there are more black people in Detroit or Chicago or New York than there are in all of rural Alabama. I also bet there are more black people in Atlanta than there are in all of rural Georgia.

PS - Bill O'Reilly is a tool.

Did you just cite median figures then interpret them as means?

The way to interpret the medians presented here is as follows. (I'll round the figure for ease.)

Where 50% of the black population (counted by households) earned more than $29,500 in 2003, more than 50% of white households earned more than that.

In fact, half of the white households actually earned more than $45,500 in that year.

Proportionally, white kids have a more privileged upbringing. (They certainly have a better life expectancy.) Proportionally more whites get high paying jobs. Etc etc.

The "why" question that you ask could inspire whole books and journals to be devoted to the various micro issues, from racism to drugs to crime to discrimination to welfare to ghettos to education to the legal system to....

How long you want to spend on this?

*ahem*
Yes, I know Bill O'Reilly is a tool, the thread topic just made me remember that.
And you're probably right about larger percentages of black people living in urban areas....I was just saying I'd be curious to see some hard data.


Come to think of it, I should have added a "/sarcasm" thing or something to my above post for clarification. Perhaps I'll do that now....



[Edited on Feb 03, 2005 by CoreOfSelf]

You're talking about a meaure of difference between a specific stratum of the middle class.

A study of this was published by the Lancet, a British science journal. No American science journal, nor paper would publish the study. I don't have the book in front of me but this comes from one in the seriers by Noam Chomsky, Secrets Lies & Democracy, Profits over People, & What Uncle Sam Really Wants.

In any case, it shows that the biggest differences lay in the actual classes themselves, rather than the individuals. Of course (wink) we don't (wink) live in a class system, so this type of (wink) reasoning can't be right.

[Edited on Feb 04, 2005 by sadisticmika]

that was my first thought.

the numbers are merely manifestations of many very complex issues, histories, variables. Maybe you'd be better advised to research how a certain issue contributes to the disparity, instead of the other way around.

Link
18.1%-Northeast
18.1%-Midwest
55.3%-South
8.6% -West

Excellent.
Thank you!


[Edited on Feb 03, 2005 by CoreOfSelf]

I guess Bill O'Reilly has never heard of the Great Migration. When hundreds of thousands of black sharecroppers, during the late 1800's until after WWI, began migrating up North for better jobs and quality of life. But then again Bill O'Reilly is a douche-bag Not to mention there are a lot of mixed people who choose to not consider themselves of any particular race so it maybe difficult to get an accurate census of which race populates what regions more.

Why would you want to quote Bill O'Reilly? I guess he is to enlightened for me

[Edited on Feb 04, 2005 by zenobia]

HaHa Yes I did, I was hoping no one would notice that. My Statistics teacher would not be proud.

My family came to the U.S. a lot later than the average African American family. We suffered a lot fo racism..."Help Wanted, Irish Need Not Apply." Not sure I buy the head start argument.

I suspect your family came to the US under significantly different circumstances than most Africans, and while the Irish in America weren't always considered white, they eventually became so (There is an excellent book on the: How the Irish Became White); the racism and discrimination the Irish faced in the US was nothing like that of Black folks.

[Edited on Feb 03, 2005 by smithers_jones]

I don't quite understand what you're saying here.

I was trying to make the question as open-ended as possible but I'll be more specific now. Is 50 years a long enough time for blacks to overcome the after effects of segregation? Also, according toMSNBC Exit polls 88% of blacks voted for Kerry. Do you think the black/white income gap would have become smaller if Kerry was in office?

*Edited for clarity*

[Edited on Feb 04, 2005 by RadioPortishead]

I don't know the exact statistics on this but I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that within each region blacks still make significantly less than whites.

That's my suspicion as well, but I don't have specific data either.
But again, these are the questions I have on the subject. When ever I hear the question posed it's always in the manner above i.e. "blacks make X percent less than whites" but I'm still not sure if that means that blacks are getting payed less for the same work, or are being passed over for better paying jobs, etc. And for that matter, the distribution of what "whites" are being payed is pretty huge when you count high payed CEOs and so forth. I wonder if you removed the 10 highest payed whites and the 10 highest payed blacks from the list if the difference between averages would shrink appreciably?
I freely admit that I don't know the answers. I just have a general posture of skepticism that makes me inclined to ask first if what we're pondering here is a statistical phenomenon that misrepresents a sociological problem.
Or, maybe all these questions lead to dead ends. I don't know.

Bump

Your question is based on the presumption that it was only de jure racism and discrimination that was the problem and that racism magically disappeared in 1964.

No.

How the Irish Became White is a good book to read on the subject of our ancestors. My family is also Irish, and many people just see us as white today. Back in the day though, we were made fun of.

I guess the point is that we are seen as white, so we are lumped in with the head start group.

Damn you! I guess I should have read down the thread.