Here’s why:
“Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. When financial calamity strikes—a medical emergency, divorce, job loss—the fall is precipitous.” [emphasis mine]
And:
"The academic achievement gap or income gap may get the headlines, but for sheer outrage, you can’t beat the racial inequity of America’s wealth gap.
That’s because wealth — the total value of assets, from houses and cars to bank accounts and investments — barely exists for black families in the United States. The median wealth of non-Hispanic black households dropped by more than one-third between 2010 and 2013, to $13,700, according to the Pew Research Center, citing Federal Reserve data. Meanwhile, in 2013 the average white household wealth was 13 times greater — $141,900 — than that of black households, up from eight times greater than black households in 2010, Pew reported.
Wealth is crucial for mobility. A family with a house and investments gives its children a good start in life — a boost up the ladder, as it were. Wealth also means there is property, real and financial, to leave to those children through inheritance. This is how white parents help their children “do better” than they did on the wealth meter. Not so with black families. The number of black families with negative wealth — more debt than assets — vastly outnumbers the Oprahs of this world: Approximately 35 percent of African-American households have a zero or negative net worth, according to Pew. A few months of unemployment can wipe them out. As a consequence, black children are unlikely to earn and own more than their parents, greasing their slide down the wealth ladder." [emphasis mine]
You always wonder why someone chooses the particular authorities to cite that they do. For example, when discussing matters concerning economics and race, why do conservatives so often rely on the works of Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams? While both are perfectly respectable economists, neither has done anything in the field to warrant the sort of lopsided attention they receive. Makes ya wonder…
Likewise, they would ask themselves why conservatives insist on cherry-picking correlations and inferring causation from them.
Another ‘agree to disagree’ impasse.
I beg to differ. Tolerance in no way requires either respect or trust. I tolerate many people for whom I have not a shred of either, and would be willing to bet the same is true for you.
Again, while I agree progress has been made, I think you are way overestimating where race relations currently stand on what might be called the ‘Kumbaya’ scale.
Forgive me, but, you can’t be serious–you’re going to claim that, despite offering nary a shred of supporting evidence, your hypothetical concerns are more valid than someone else’s hypothetical concerns?
Reparations are not about punishment. So rather than unbeatable, this argument is actually not an argument at all.
