Posts Tagged ‘Middle Class’
MAYA WILEY ON THE RACIAL OPPORTUNITY GAP
Friday, July 29th, 2011Originally published in What’s Possible: The Tides Blog
The recession that was supposed to have ended in 2009 has become a depression for many communities of color. The Pew Research Center’s astounding report “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics” is the most recent to draw this conclusion. Consider it’s findings. The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households. This is the biggest racial wealth divide this country has seen in the past 25 years. This wasn’t the first news story to highlight the problem. Just a few weeks ago, Jesse Washington’s Associated Press article on the shrinking Black middle class was carried in every major newspaper in the country. …
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MAYA WILEY QUOTED IN AP ARTICLE ON BLACK RECESSION
Thursday, July 7th, 2011Maya Wiley, Executive Director of the Center for Social Inclusion, was quoted in an article on the black recession by Jesse Washington, National Writer on Race and Ethnicity for the Associated Press.
Black economic gains reversed in Great Recession
by Jesse Washington, Associated Press
July 6, 2011
[source]
BALTIMORE (AP) — Growing up black in the segregated 1960s, Deborah Goldring slept two to a bed, got evicted from apartment after apartment, and watched her stepfather climb utility poles to turn their disconnected lights back on. Yet Goldring pulled herself out of poverty and earned a middle-class life — until the Great Recession.
First, Goldring’s husband fell ill, and they drained savings to pay for nursing homes before he died. Then Goldring lost her executive assistant job in the Baltimore hospital where she had worked for 17 years. The cruelest blow was a letter from the bank, intending to foreclose …
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