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I'm curious because I travel a lot for my job and most of the locations I visit blacks are living in the "rough" neighborhoods. I know it's not only blacks, but for some reason it seems many people don't know. Is it due to education or just a lack of opportunity?
I'm sure there are multiple reasons. Many. One I'm sure is institutional racism. One is the change in Black-American culture since the 1950s or '60s. There are many other reasons I'm sure.
I wish I was never born in the United States. I really do.
There are a lot of opportunities in the United States (or were more so in the '50s and '60s than today) and the country has good infrastructure even in the inner-cities. But I've slowly discovered and become more aware of something the older I get. Something I was blinded to all those earlier years of my life.
Black-Americans--and Americans in general--are impoverished in other ways that are not monetary or material. An African or Asian family can be materially and monetarily impoverished overseas but be rich in other ways. Their strong family and community bonds. Where gangsterism and greed are not fundamental moral principles underlying the whole of its society. Where being "cool" isn't deified.
I'm not Republican but the older I get the more convinced I become from observations, that you could give a billion dollars to most of us ethnic Black-Americans in the central city of our cities, and it would do little to change most (not all) of us for the better.
I wish I were born somewhere like... Cape Verde. It's hard for me to imagine life as an 18 or 25 year old black male not having to compete with drug dealers in expensive cars with necklaces and watches that cost more than a lot of working class peoples houses, to get the attention of a young woman. It's hard for me to imagine a society where mean mugging, hatred, and jealousy were not status quo. The worship of money in the U.S. has more faithful and hardcore jihadists than any religion I have ever seen. But not "honest money." Even among the "legit" in the big cities its about tell lies and scamming others in some shape or form.
Even for those not into crime they bow and serve a political party. That political party trumps their own family.
So, I think an Asian or black from Cape Verde arrives to the U.S. with a different spirit and different values. Often. But not always. And because they usually do they don't praise and honor what we do. They'll get ahead backed by strong families and a community that would rather see pulling each other up rather than tearing down and exploiting each other. Rather than crabs in a bucket.
Lack of education plays a big part. That being said, it is not the only part. This problem goes far back. The average net wealth of a middle class African-American family is often less than that of a working class White family. History plays a big part in this. Blacks didn't have as much opportunity to build as much wealth as White were able to build. Today, there are more Blacks in the middle class than ever, more Blacks with college education than before. Black owned businesses are on the rise. Ironically, Blacks have higher rates of unemployment than anyone else.
Historical housing discrimination is a huge part of it, and part of the unsavory history we don't learn in school. The post-WWII suburban White middle class was pretty much a construct of the FHA and VA. These homeowners rode a decades-long housing boom to build substantial wealth, much of which has been inherited by their baby boomer children. Blacks who were excluded from this FHA largesse didn't buy suburban houses and therefore didn't enjoy the housing boom and the corresponding wealth. Some bought city or rural homes which did not enjoy anywhere near the price appreciation in the suburbs, others continued to rent and built negligible (if any) wealth.
Substantial intergenerational differences in wealth hinge on owning or not owning a home.
haha this is cute. im very familiar with many of these people. i assure you that many of them are poor and with low income and no wealth. their children grow up speaking english and attend public schools. by the next generation, they have at least surpassed their parents and you can see many of them go on to professional careers.
No doubt as a child of African immigrants I can attest to this but conparing the relative success of immigrants to American Blacks can't be done simply. There is a self- selection factor and much of African-Anerican culture has simply broken down.
I'll take a stab at the OP's question from a regional basis.
In the first half of the 20th century, millions (six million according to wiki) of black people moved from the south to the industrial north for jobs. Cities like Detroit and Flint (I live just north of Flint) were major industrial/automotive hubs and tens of thousands of people without privilege or education - both black and white - were able to make a very good living.
Fast-forward to the late 20th century when plants started closing. Now you have rust-belt cities with majority-black populations and almost no jobs, poor schools and support systems because of dwindling tax revenue and yes, generational welfare. This happens to both white and black people but many of these cities remain majority-black, hence the prevalence of black "ghettos."
For the record I also know many black people who are doing very well and have educations, solid careers, nice homes etc. I work for quite a few of them.
The information starts with FDR's New deal, which, of course, applies to the mid 1930's. At that time black women were excluded from what we now call welfare.
My comments are meant to point out how black society was destroyed by public policy. It was policy that meant well, but ended up burying the very class of people it was meant to assist.
Put another way, there was absolutely no chance of black society succeeding before the New Deal; the New Deal pushed them back further by excluding them, and the overturning of the "man in the house" rule dealt black society a possibly fatal blow.
More importantly, the labor legislation and social security of the New Deal did not extend to domestic workers or agricultural workers, the two top professions for black females and black males respectively, at the time. This was done totally on purpose to appease racists in the South.
Southern members of Congress also blocked an anti-lynching bill in 1938, a time when thousands of black men were being lynched.
It's kind of hard to go from saving your hide, and just trying to survive, to amassing savings and building fortunes. Going back in their ancestry, many whites owned land and houses, whereas blacks did not for a long time.
It's curious why red neck rural whites live hand to mouth also...it's not the race- In my experience I have seen poverty spread out equally among all areas of humanity and through all races. The people who assume that poverty is a black thing - are usually white people who like to "help" poor black people...Much like say the Catholic Church that need poverty to justify it's existence _ Progressives and some conservatives like to talk about social injustice and the imbalance of wealth..and make a cause of it---BUT ask them to hand over 500 dollars to a family in need and they go deaf.
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