The Racial Divide

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I don't know. It's a good question: how broad and sweeping the gulf? So long as we have drastic differences in such measures as income and incarceration rates, I suppose the chasm would have to remain fairly wide, even if you do have a more racially diverse mix at the top of the social order.

Comments

[catlin.livejournal.com]

The problem comes in when you know how much that number is skewed by the people at the highest end. If you cut out ALL the 1% of any race, and probably the very top 10%, so you are only looking at the income of working America, it changes the median for white america by a great deal. More or less half that figure. So yes, the figures still favor whites, but I have also not seen a recent figure that shows the number for the medians for blacks and Hispanics that showed that amount either, unless the Hispanic is including the reported income for illegals, into the figures. Most Hispanics have jobs, even if they are low income. A full time minimum wage job (Such as housekeeping) hits about 14,000 a year after taxes. This is household income, so it includes things like both partners working, which even if they work part time should hit that 14k margin.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Does the median figure not make up for the distortion of the extreme top figures? I understood that is why we use median figures when we talk about incomes rather than the average If you use 'average' then than really does distort everything terribly.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

The mean, not the median is skewed by outliers. The median is the 50% mark. As in, 50% of households have more, 50% have less. Medians are not skewed by the vast wealth that some people have

In short, you are wrong.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It's net worth, not income.

My read is that blacks and hispanics are more likely to have unsecured debt (car loans) than whites (house loans).

It's definitely saying something, but it's looking beyond more than merely income (access to debt and inherited wealth, for example).

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, yes, that would explain the particularly low numbers on the minorities, which did strike me as too low for even minimum wage jobs. This seems to make for an even more powerful argument. Just the income figures are bad, I imagine, and it only looks worse when you take more into consideration.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking, the whites are building intergenerational wealth, the blacks and hispanics are breaking even.