Median wealth of Black Americans 'will fall to zero by 2053', warns new report

[Skrilla]

And honestly even if we ever DID get reparations, we're not but IF WE DID, do you REALLY think most black men in 2017 would put it towards building a black infrastructure anyway? I'm not against reparations at all, but what i'm saying is, even if we did get them, most dudes would still not build with it, because there is an overall FLEXING culture among black men now. It's like flexing > building. There is also a lack of financial literacy (it can be fixed but dudes have to be willing to learn).

Why do so many black men idolize rap nikkas or athletes and can tell you all about them but don't even know who black billionaire Robert Smith is? I don't think men should "look up" to other men, but it seems like if you were going to view someone as inspirational in some way, it would be a billionaire business mogul, not some barely literate entertainer blowing his checks on chains, shoes, clothes, strippers, still a white guy's employee instead of an entrepreneur etc

There was even a thread on here asking what bros would do if we got reparations and only like 1 or 2 said start their own business. That whole thread was full of dudes saying they'd buy a Lambo, Rolies, make it rain on hoes, etc. They'd just flex. The lack of financial literacy is a big issue, i even saw it throughout this thread, dudes are intellectual experts on why everything is impossible, but these same guys probably can't even explain the difference between index funds and mutual funds

Save, and invest what you can afford to invest. Stop giving all your money away esp on things that DEPRECIATE. Stop acting like it's rare, MANY nikkas are doing that. It's like the guns and butter shyt all over again. Dudes still haven't learned GUNS and BUTTER.

Black men should be focused on having multiple streams of income (if you only have one and can't find anymore, CREATE another one). Preferably at least ONE form of PASSIVE INCOME. Right now while i'm typing this post, i'm making money WITHOUT LIFTING A FINGER TO DO IT. Problem is most black men are stuck in an archaic mindset and will say i'm on some shyt, they don't even think it's possible. I have my main source of income, but outside of that i have 2 others. One is passive, the other 2 aren't.

Money should be used as a TOOL TO MAKE MOREY. Dudes blow all their money they make from their "job" on depreciating assets instead of using that money to make more money. Stop wasting your disposable income on shyt that depreciates as soon as you walk out the store

Feed a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish he'll eat for a lifetime. Boss Man giving you a job can feed you and your kids for every day that he decides to keep you on the payroll. But knowing how to create your jobs/income, can feed you AND your kids for a lifetime, more than one lifetime if you do it right

 

[ogc163]

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day
TEACH A MAN TO FISH, he'll eat for a lifetime"

Time to teach ourselves how to fish, black men, instead of depending on white employers to feed us meals

Better learn to create jobs, instead of depending on other races of men especially WHITE MEN for jobs

Yall are in here saying you're "tired of the bootstraps talk". So if WE'RE not supposed to "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps", WHO are you expecting to come do it? White Daddy?Yeah thats been going REAL WELL hasn't it.

Better learn to fish, black men, instead of depending on Mr. Charlie for the meal everyday.

nikkas better take this economic game serious. How many streams of income yall got? Probably just 1, but in here talking about "when are reparations coming we won't make anymore money until we get reparations!!!!"

Where did I say I was against self-employment or being an entrepreneur? I didn't nor did I see any posters stating such a thing, you can point me to the posts that explicitly did if I happen to miss something.

The issue with the bootstraps rhetoric is that often fails to take into consideration relevant institutional variables which may impact outcomes. Variables such as access to credit, access to education so that skills can be acquired in being a entrepreneur, and access to capital whether byway of inheritance or intervivos transfer. The notion that Black folks simply lack character to be entrepreneurs is misguided when family wealth is more relevant.

The condescending rhetoric might make folks feel good, and there are some specific instances where it is actually warranted. But we must be careful and not think that anecdotal evidence is representative of what is prevalent, especially when there are studies that showcase on a macro level that our experiences don't represent what is typical.

 

[OfTheCross]

Median wealth of black Americans 'will fall to zero by 2053', warns new report

Growing up in the projects of Baltimore in the 1980s, things like savings accounts, stocks and bonds were completely foreign to Mysia Hamilton. Asked if her parents could have passed along some money to help her buy a car, go to school or put into a house, she can’t help but chuckle.

“No, that wasn’t there. There was no wealth. My mother was working, she was providing – we weren’t on the street begging – but there was no money in terms of ‘here you go’. No money to pass down.”

Three years from now, white US households are projected to own 86 times more wealth than black households

Now 48, Hamilton is on the path to a different reality. Working as a medical office manager and earning her college degree, the mother of five manages to squelch away $50 a month by furiously clipping coupons and being “extremely frugal”.

“$50 is definitely not my goal, but it’s all I can do with the money that’s going out,” Hamilton said. And it’s working: a decade after she began working with a financial coach, she is on track to have a positive net worth by March 2018. “I’m so driven to do that. It’s important to me.”

But Hamilton is in the minority, in execution if not intention. A new report calculates that median wealth for black Americans will fall to $0 by 2053, if current trends continue. Latino-Americans, who are also experiencing a sustained downward wealth slide, will hit $0 about two decades later, according to the study by Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies.

“By 2020, median black and Latino households stand to lose nearly 18% and 12% of the wealth they held in 2013 respectively, while median white household wealth increases by 3%,” the report states. “At that point – just three years from now – white households are projected to own 86 times more wealth than black households, and 68 times more wealth than Latino households.”

With the US set to become “majority minority” by 2044, researchers say this spells major economic peril for the nation. “If the racial wealth divide continues to accelerate, the economic conditions of black and Latino households will have an increasingly adverse impact on the economy writ large, because the majority of US households will no longer have enough wealth to stake their claim in the middle class.”

The authors cite the legacy of discriminatory housing policies, an “upside down” tax system that helps the wealthiest households get wealthier, and the economic effects of mass incarceration as among the root causes for the discrepancy.

“The middle class didn’t just happen by market forces, and the whiteness of the middle class didn’t just happen by market forces. Both were intentional,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, a senior fellow at Prosperity Now and one of the report’s authors.

African-American households are making ‘middle-income money’ – but have the wealth of a white high-school dropout

Take homeownership, which has long been the primary means by which Americans of modest and middle-class income are able to build generational wealth. After the broken promise of “40 acres and a mule” to newly freed slaves, virtually nothing was done to endow black Americans with a share of the wealth generated by centuries of slave labour – the same labour that, directly or indirectly, helped to build most of the wealth enjoyed by white Americans.

So black Americans started off generations behind, only to encounter the redlining and racially restrictive housing covenants of the early-to-middle 20th century, which prevented the sale of many homes to black Americans, and isolated them together in communities that lost value as white residents fled to the suburbs.

“The majority of white Americans weren’t middle class until the 1930s or 40s,” Asante-Muhammad told the Guardian. “Then there was mass investment to create an American middle class – but it was a white American middle class.”

Programs such as the GI bill, which offered returning WWII veterans generous lending terms to buy houses, helped turn the US into a home-owning middle class society – from which black Americans were functionally excluded. In his 2005 book When Affirmative Action was White, Ira Katznelson notes that of the first 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI Bill, fewer than 100 were taken out by non-white people.

Recent economic crises have widened this wealth gap, according to the report, as communities of colour took the brunt of the economic hit. Black median wealth has never recovered from the 2001 recession, nor Latino median wealth from the 2008 financial collapse. White median wealth, on the other hand, was left unaffected in 2002, and began rebounding just two years after the speculative housing bubble began to implode.

“Unfortunately home values don’t come back in the same way in black communities when things happen,” said Althea Saunders-Ranniar, a financial coach and advisor in Baltimore, Maryland, where about 95% of her clients are black.

One of the things Asante-Muhammad and his co-authors found extremely important was focusing on inequality of wealth as opposed to income, because they felt it was a more accurate test of middle-class status.

“You find first-generation, even second-generation African-American and Latino households that have professional jobs and are making ‘middle-income money’ – but they have the wealth of a white high-school dropout,” Asante-Muhammad said. “They’re not truly part of a middle class – which would mean financial stability, money to weather challenging economic situations, or money to invest in the economic opportunities of their children.”

The solution, he said, is to “invest in a 21st-century American middle class. We need to make sure, for the first time, that we are investing in a middle class that includes communities of colour. This generally hasn’t been done before.”

Despite all the institutional and historical barriers, Hamilton remains determined to make the lift – even if those investments never come. “I’m mad because I didn’t start 20 years ago, but it’s OK. I dare not be selfish and not pass this knowledge down to my kids – ones who I know have a chance.”

She hopes to pass more than simply knowledge down, and is on track to come up with a down payment for a modest home by late 2018. “In 20-30 years, even if they still have to pay the mortgage, I can tell them: ‘It’s yours. This is yours.’”

nikkas should be buying back the block.

Legacy legacy legacy....

 

[Dzali OG]

Why doesn't this happen with Asians?

Because they have a homebase to draw upon for support and resources. Also, they weren't chattel slaves.

 

[Dzali OG]

Stop trying to live like cacs!

They excel in this system because they made it for them.

As a group we need to create our own system.

 

[EndDomination]

I wouldn't expect us to be "caught up" to whites, for obvious reasons, but we are at a point where even LATINOS have surpassed us (and a lot of that is because of entrepreneurship)

I said on here back when I first joined, back in like 2015, that Latinos were surpassing us, I had data and nobody wanted to believe it, they thought Latinos were still just focused on those little fast food jobs. Meanwhile they were using the money from those construction jobs they "took" to start Mexican restaurants n shyt

So I don't expect us to to be where whites are at, but we should at least be ahead of Latinos economically

My biggest gripe with other black americans is that we celebrate stuff too soon/have low standards for ourselves. Dudes are deep in the "22% black poverty rate, avg black household of 4 is 39k" thread posting the smileys

We are DEAD LAST as a group

Black ownership is still looking bleak

What are nikkas celebrating?

Then these dudes ask why I encourage entrepreneurship and group economics on here, like I'm just making shyt up

Blacks now have even less wealth than Latinos do. But nikkas are in the other thread celebrating and shyt like its a win

A large chunk of Latinos immigrate to the US legally, and legal immigration usually means college education, some wealth/net worth, connections, and a goal.
Do you think a lot of the undocumented immigrants are coming here without resources? If you're a refugee from a semi-established country, you're likely coming from stability at some point in time. Same reason why West African and East African immigrants out number African-Americans in college, in top-tier schools, and in median income.

 

[EndDomination]

Lol the housing crisis nearly knocked it down to zero. But nikkas think Obama was cool when he let Wall Street slide

He couldn't make "Wall Street" give AAs the overinflated value of their homes back
The issue was bigger because its fed by us not having money.
Less money = cheaper homes purchased/rented = property values cannot be maintained = less funding to go to schools in area = less chance of going to college/higher rate of going to prison = lower paying jobs = less money
The cycle continues, and it started long before 2007.

 

[EndDomination]

You completely missed the point of the article.

It's a virtual impossibility for blacks to build wealth (not income) in this country because that's the way the system is designed, and opening a business will not fix that.

Even if you do "beat the system" and open a successful business, chances are that your children or their children will have to start back at square one where you started.

Latinos have more wealth collectively because they are allowed to, simple as that

The idea isn't just to sustain a "successful business," White independent businesses that were barely making a profit equivalent to a middle-class salary died out in the late 1900s too; the idea is to keep making more each year, partner-up, either sell off or jump to new markets.
Latinos have more wealth collectively here in the US because they have home countries.
AAs literally do no, if we don't have property protection here in the US, we don't have it anywhere at all.

Why doesn't this happen with Asians?

East Asian immigrants are far more likely to come to the US with an undergraduate/graduate education, a career having already started, land and resources back in their country, connections to people back in their country, and because of where they immigrated to mostly heavily (California the prototypical "liberal" state) they enjoyed the benefits of a better public education system, direction from their parent's traditional parenting style, and a cultural phenomenon that helped them develop closely with their own communities here in the US.

 

[EndDomination]

After Slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, War on Drugs, and the serfdom that is Higher Education?

Many strong brothers and sisters who were top earners of the home were lost along the way...just like the article stated, a person that is a product of a fractured environment will have an uphill battle for financial normalcy.

Most wealth is generational, White Boomers were able to get great rates and properties dirt cheap and their grandchildren are reaping benefits.

Millennials got next in this (80s Babies) and hopefully we can try to curb the damage this wealth disparity is causing.
- Teach our young about going into trades or starting an independent business rather than expensive colleges
- Use the money earned from work/various job to invest in your own business if you can't get a loan or immediate start-up capital.
-

This is not the solution. We don't just need businesses (whatever that actually means, vagueness is useless), we need more Black doctors, more Black lawyers, more Black engineers, more Black architects, more Black accountants, more Black hedge-fund managers and investors, more Black programmers and developers, etc. We are underrepresented in education, less education is not the solution: equitable education is a part of it.

 

[villain]

He couldn't make "Wall Street" give AAs the overinflated value of their homes back
The issue was bigger because its fed by us not having money.
Less money = cheaper homes purchased/rented = property values cannot be maintained = less funding to go to schools in area = less chance of going to college/higher rate of going to prison = lower paying jobs = less money
The cycle continues, and it started long before 2007.

Who said anything about giving money back? Sit down for a minute and collect your thoughts before you respond to me next time. You're all over the place.

Obama didn't prosecute any of the major Wall Street players for their role in the housing crisis even though he had ample opportunity to do so. The housing crisis reduced black wealth to virtually zero.

Black victims of the housing crisis didn't cause or "feed" the crisis any more than a rape victim "feeds" her rape by being a woman.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

This is not the solution. We don't just need businesses (whatever that actually means, vagueness is useless), we need more Black doctors, more Black lawyers, more Black engineers, more Black architects, more Black accountants, more Black hedge-fund managers and investors, more Black programmers and developers, etc. We are underrepresented in education, less education is not the solution: equitable education is a part of it.

Controversial - but if the US ever allowed more skilled migration from Africa, that may help Af-Ams communities. I've noticed that the power of white supremacy has made these African immigrants, over time, become part of the Af-Am fold. Most of their children marry Af-Ams (or their own cultural group). Associate with black people (incl. Af-Ams). Pick up the cultural mannerisms of Af-Ams etc.


However, this is just a stop-gap band-aid.

 

[kayslay]

We really need to consider a mass exodus from this country. Even if we don't go to the same place. The United States is never going to actually help us financially. Keep your citizenship, in case you do end up coming up, though. We need to start using this system as a tool with setbacks instead of viewing it as something that views us. We can't fight it, but we can try to reap the benefits, even if they are slim to null.

There are already African anericans that live in the continent.
Why can't we link with them and invest in their businesses?

 

[kayslay]

Controversial - but if the US ever allowed more skilled migration from Africa, that may help Af-Ams communities. I've noticed that the power of white supremacy has made these African immigrants, over time, become part of the Af-Am fold. Most of their children marry Af-Ams (or their own cultural group). Associate with black people (incl. Af-Ams). Pick up the cultural mannerisms of Af-Ams etc.


However, this is just a stop-gap band-aid.

That's not true in the slightest.
AFricans don't consider themselves African Americans they consider themselves what ever tribe their families is descendant of.
It's 40 million of us.
We don't need more people we need money wealth.
A bunch of classist Africans moving here and maintaining their tribal mindsets it's just as harmful as the immigration of any other group.

 

[An ashy lil fap hand]

There are already African anericans that live in the continent.
Why can't we link with them and invest in their businesses?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't. Why haven't we already?

 

[kayslay]

I'm not saying that we shouldn't. Why haven't we already?

That's my question.
Why try to to fierce another group to identify with you when we have all the pieces we're looking for.
Their are already Caribbean and AAs living on the continent we need to link with them first!