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Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by btsilver
huh.
Black professionals are a part of the black middle class. I think you need to differentiate between upper-middle, middle, and lower-middle class. And then working working class.
Exactly, and whatever part of that black middle class that's shrinking is not just in DC, all over the country people are settling for more working class/non professional jobs. That's not just something specific to this region. I'll reiterate, when it's all said and done, DC overall has the best balance for blacks meaning (income, COL, QOL, etc) than any metro area i've been to. NY and ATL are next.
Black professionals are a part of the black middle class. I think you need to differentiate between upper-middle, middle, and lower-middle class. And then working working class.
So what category would you put the following people in?
Analyst at Office of Management and Budget ($65,000 salary)
Assistant U.S. Attorney ($68,000 salary)
Owner of small construction firm w/o college degree ($300,000)
FBI forensics examiner ($80,000)
Senior Paralegal ($70,000)
Master Electrician ($130,000)
MD/PhD researcher at NIH ($90,000)
Dentist ($150,000)
Tenure-track Professor at GMU ($60,000)
Violinist for National Symphony ($65,000)
Web Designer w/o college degree ($38,000)
Freelance journalist ($55,000)
Successful local chef ($180,000)
I wonder how "accurate" it is to compare % stats like these between the Washington, D.C. metro and a much larger metro like New York City. Obviously, a megacity like New York is going to have a much greater socio-economic diversity than Washington, D.C.
So, when you have such vast differences in population, is it more accurate to compare actual numbers instead of percentages?
I wonder how "accurate" it is to compare % stats like these between the Washington, D.C. metro and a much larger metro like New York City. Obviously, a megacity like New York is going to have a much greater socio-economic diversity than Washington, D.C.
So, when you have such vast differences in population, is it more accurate to compare actual numbers instead of percentages?
You can compare both. I provided both percentages and raw numbers (for Hispanics anyway).
The Hispanic community in DC is very different from the Hispanic community in the Tri-State. For starters, the Hispanic community in DC is much newer. In 1990, Hispanics made up 4.25% of Montgomery County's population. In 2012, they made up 17.04% of the population. In Fairfax County, Hispanics were only 3.84% of the population in 1990 but now make up 15.48% of the population there. The District was only 2.24% Hispanic in 1990 and didn't even have a majority Hispanic census tract. The heart of Adams-Morgan was only 7% Hispanic in 1990. In 1970, it was 11.44% Hispanic. So you're talking about a relatively nascent Hispanic community that's been largely suburbanized for the past 30 years (7.3% live in the District).
New York was very different. By 1960, Hispanics, overwhelmingly Puerto Ricans, made up pluralities and majorities in several census tracts in Harlem, on the Lower East Side, the Upper West Side, in the South Bronx and Brooklyn. Many of them were attracted to New York after World War II by jobs in manufacturing and other industries. Compared to the DC area, the Hispanic population is extremely urbanized. 54% live in NYC alone. Once you throw in Newark, Jersey City and Yonkers, that number rises above 60%.
So the economic and educational disparities between Hispanics in DC and NYC don't surprise me. On the one hand, you have a Hispanic population that mostly came to the DC area after the Civil Rights Movement, after redlining, etc., and was able to move right away into suburbs with access to some of the best and most affluent school districts in the country (and also UVA, UMD, GMU, etc.). On the other hand, you have a Hispanic community that was redlined into communities alongside African Americans, and suffered the pains of a collapsed manufacturing base.
In essence, I think Hispanics in the DC area have had more pathways to a middle to upper middle class life than Hispanics in many other cities. The average Hispanic kid attending Richard Montgomery, Einstein, T.C. Williams or BCC is going to have much better odds than the kid going to South Bronx HS.
I'd be curious what Los Angeles numbers are comparatively.
Los Angeles MSA (10.6%/$47,535)
L.A. is another place with barrios and the accompanying poverty and low educational attainment. Back in 1970, East Los Angeles was between 90 and 95 percent Hispanic. Much of Central LA was Hispanic then and it's still Hispanic now. In the 2000 Census, you don't have to look very hard to find tracts all over L.A. County that are 85%+ Hispanic.
In the 2000 Census, the most Hispanic tract in the DC area was in Langley Park (79.86%). Langley Park, Wheaton and Columbia Heights/Mt. Pleasant (DC) are the closest thing DC has ever had to El Barrio. But if you've ever been to East L.A., Spanish Harlem, the Bronx, North Philadelphia and vast swaths of Chicago, you know how inapplicable that label is to those areas.
Analyst at Office of Management and Budget ($65,000 salary) - middle
Assistant U.S. Attorney ($68,000 salary) - middle
Owner of small construction firm w/o college degree ($300,000) - upper class/ upper upper middle
FBI forensics examiner ($80,000) - middle
Senior Paralegal ($70,000) - middle
Master Electrician ($130,000) - upper middle
MD/PhD researcher at NIH ($90,000) - middle
Dentist ($150,000) - upper middle
Tenure-track Professor at GMU ($60,000) - middle
Violinist for National Symphony ($65,000) - middle
Web Designer w/o college degree ($38,000) - lower middle
Freelance journalist ($55,000) - middle
Successful local chef ($180,000) - upper middle
That's interesting. It seems you put more weight on money than I do when thinking of class.
That said, I don't have a set formula in my head for distinguishing the upper middle class from the regular middle class. In the examples I provided, the Assistant U.S. Attorney and NIH researcher would most certainly be upper middle class. DC's U.S. Attorney's Office is probably the most competitive in the nation (either tied with or just behind the Southern District of New York). You need to top flight credentials to work there and most people will move on to high paying jobs once they leave. The same is true for the NIH researcher. Even if they stick with government jobs for their entire life, a physician (particularly one with a doctorate), is by default upper middle class in my book.
In my mind, class is not so much about how much you actually make as it is about how much you could potentially make. A lot of Yale Law School graduates go into academia, government and the non-profit sector where they earn significantly less than a lot of government contractors in DC. Yet all it would take is sending their resume to a Wall Street firm to have a $225,000 salary and matching 100% bonus within a month. If they have the drive, they could end up making millions per year (or better yet, a President or Senator).
The electrician, on the other hand, has a much lower earning ceiling. There's only so much an electrician can charge per hour for his services. Even if he opens up his own business with 10 locations all over the metro area, that's not really the same as being able to charge more for his particular service. At that point, he's a small business owner.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 03-20-2014 at 09:04 AM..
That's interesting. It seems you put more weight on money than I do when thinking of class.
That said, I don't have a set formula in my head for distinguishing the upper middle class from the regular middle class. In the examples I provided, the Assistant U.S. Attorney and NIH researcher would most certainly be upper middle class. DC's U.S. Attorney's Office is probably the most competitive in the nation (either tied with or just behind the Southern District of New York). You need to top flight credentials to work there and most people will move on to high paying jobs once they leave. The same is true for the NIH researcher. Even if they stick with government jobs for their entire life, a physician (particularly one with a doctorate), is by default upper middle class in my book.
In my mind, class is not so much about how much you actually make as it is about how much you could potentially make. A lot of Yale Law School graduates go into academia, government and the non-profit sector where they earn significantly less than a lot of government contractors in DC. Yet all it would take is sending their resume to a Wall Street firm to have a $225,000 salary and matching 100% bonus within a month. If they have the drive, they could end up making millions per year (or better yet, a President or Senator).
The electrician, on the other hand, has a much lower earning ceiling. There's only so much an electrician can charge per hour for his services. Even if he opens up his own business with 10 locations all over the metro area, that's not really the same as being able to charge more for his particular service. At that point, he's a small business owner.
Well my post was from a strictly financial standpoint. You can fake it all you want but if you don't have it at the end of the day it does mean anything.
Now if you wanted to attribute class to socially instead of financially, then that is totally different. For example, there are a ton of highly educated liberal arts majors that work in non-profit in DC that won't make about 35K a year in their careers and they rub elbows with the "elites" in the DC metro area. I don't think that they would call themselves working class.
Asians are at 60 percent with college degrees but Hispanics and African Americans are at about 30 percent.
Nice to see progress more is needed. would like to see graduation rates higher for hispanics and african americans.
DC attracts college educated people of all races since its is the nations capital. Not a surprise these numbers
Asians are more likely to have college degrees because immigration is very selective to which Asians can relocate here to the States. The East Coast doesn't really have significant concentrations of impoverished ghettoized Asians like California does in cities like Oakland, Fresno and Long Beach. This is because California is often the lowest entry point in America for many types of Asian and Latino immigrants. Asians on the East Coast tend to be business owners or college-educated professionals. The East Coast is physically as far away from Asia as you can get in America, therefore only Asians with money and or proper education and job skills can afford to move here to begin with. The sons and daughters of Asian immigrants are more likely to be educated as well because their parents set that example for them. Asian and African immigrants are similar in that regard. Although the DC Area is often one of the lowest entry points in America for African immigrants seeing as poorer African immigrants from places like Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone etc. are historically likely to relocate to the DC Area and start from the bottom living in the ghetto scraping by doing low-paid menial jobs before getting better job skills and education and moving to the suburbs.
With native born American blacks, it is often an uphill battle. DC has one of the largest concentrations of black poverty in the United States. The problems caused by generations of ghettoization, lack of investment in black neighborhoods, giving people the disincentive to work through shutting down factories and establishing intergenerational welfare dependence as well as decades of flooding these areas with hard drugs and guns aren't going to completely disappear with ten or more years of gentrification and federal government expansion.
Native born blacks in DC have been left out of the great economic expansion happening in gentrifying DC. If you don't know the right people in DC, you are looking from the outside in. It doesn't help that DC is very culturally divided along racial and economic lines. Blacks and Latinos are expected to assimilate to a white cultural standard to even be accepted in predominantly white social, educational and or workplace environments despite the fact that an overwhelming percentage of blacks and Latinos are raised in areas completely devoid of white people and white culture. Even the slightest hint that a minority person might favor their own culture is met with tons of annoying patronizing homie talk from white people when a said minority person is outnumbered in a very white environment. A disproportionate amount of blacks and Latinos are born in socially disorganized crime-ridden environments with poor schools. And you expect native born blacks and poverty class Latinos, who come here to do jobs that white people refuse to work, to compete with carefully selected cream of the crop East Coast Asians in terms of educational attainment? GTFOH. If you ask me, blacks and Latinos have done an excellent job getting education, job skills and better jobs thereby moving out of the hood or barrio in much of the DC Area. The massive amount of black wealth in much of PG County is a testament to this.
Last edited by LunaticVillage; 03-22-2014 at 08:31 PM..
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If you ask me, blacks and Latinos have done an excellent job getting education, job skills and better jobs thereby moving out of the hood or barrio in much of the DC Area. The massive amount of black wealth in much of PG County is a testament to this.
