By popular demand, Professor Melissa Harris-Perry's segment on the race gap in income. With the median white family now almost 20 times richer than the median black one, we've got a problem. MHP holding class:
As people of color become a proportionally bigger part of the American population, our national coffers will rely on them even more. We cannot pay off the national debt if households cannot pay off their personal debt, and if they are in debt, then you can't cut enough to ever make it possible to fix our government's debt problems, and particularly not if you refuse to tax that one group whose wealth is still tick, tick, ticking up.
As she explained last night, you'll find the roots of the income gap in choices by our government. Slaves began their lives in America as property, so of course they couldn't buy property and accumulate wealth. Later, federal programs to help people buy homes shut black and brown people out of desirable neighborhoods. That shut them out of building wealth, which grows over time. As anyone who has ever dragged around a burdensome student loan, the effects of having less grow, too.
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Congratulations Melissa. Loved your coverage, tone and depth of analysis. Wish Scarborough and friends would raise their intellectual bar to a fraction of yours and Rachel's
I agree! I've watched MH-P ever since she first appeared on Rachel's show. She brings a different perspective to the conversation and is always interesting. I'd love to see her with her own MSNBC show.
I've watched since she was on Countdown and I read her in the Nation. She rocks!
For years I have tried to explain to many of my caucasion friends that they have benefited from racism even as they were not themselves active practitioners of racism. It is a very complicated notion and one that I have rarely been able to effectively articulate. Now I need only point them to this segment. Thank you Professor Harris-Perry.
Me too... I've tried and tried and tried to explain it.
I'm usually called hyper sensitive and told to get over it.
If I started a business today and didn't have to pay for labor, insurance or taxes then I would be a very rich man inside 2 years. Imagine what would happen in 20 years or 200 years? My entire lineage would have wealth unless I decided to leave it all to my slaves. I doubt that ever happened.
How convenient to leave out a graph of Asian Americans. Asians are minorities aren't they?
Trotsky, can you name some of those 200 year old Asian businesses that put them on par with whites in this study?
@eap, I think you miss part of the points - the ones Prof. Harris-Perry made, and the ones made in this thread too. It's not just that slavery happened, it's that the continuing institutional racism that existed directly until the 1970s and indirectly to this day was directed primarily at black and brown people, and the impacts of that are demonstrated through that graph and in that segment.
I am not suggesting that Asian people have never experienced racism, though I will say that whenever oppressed people complain about who had it worse, only the oppressor wins that argument.
Not for nothing, but we can look at adoption habits to bolster this point. A black baby (from this country or another) can be adopted in about the amount of time it takes to get through a Starbucks line. However, people in this country will wait in years long lines, and spend tens of thousands of dollars to adopt an Asian child.
Whats your explanation for the preference of an asian child over a black child?
Asians are valued over blacks. Duh.
Duh? That's worthy of a duh?
Since it's so obvious please explain how "Asians are valued over blacks."
well, it seems like in studies i've seen in education, black and latinos are generally in the closely watched, potentially "needs help" category, while asians and whites are lumped together in the "generally higher acheiving" category. it's about the stereotypes too. i went to a school pretty evenly divided between whites, black and latinos, and who was validictorian? an asian guy.
I went to a Magnet middle school. I was one of one three white kids in my entire grade, not many more hispanic kids. I tested in the 97th percentile nationally. There were several kids, black kids, who tested about as high and nearly all were more motivated than I was. Take a wild guess as to my opinion regarding racial stereotypes.
pht...racial stereotypes might make for good comedy material but they don't hold up once you're around people. I spent 20 years in the military, around men and women of every "color"...guess what, they are all people, just like the rest of us, with quirks and personality and goodness and badness. For every person that "fit" a stereotype, there was one that didn't.
So yeah, I'm with Don.
i'm not saying that the racial stereotypes are always or even usually right, but in some ways they did develop for a reason. i'm just saying that's probably the reason that asians weren't included in this pew research. the "higher" acheiving "majority" juxtaposed with the two biggest, and often times most in need minorities. i think the way mhp described the growth and shrinking of wealth is a very, very accurate picture. i was just trying to point out the ways that groups can be viewed, not necessarily that i think it's right.
Asians did not come to America to pick fruit or be slaves on plantations, though the Chinese did help build the railroads. China Town in San Francisco would have been considered a ghetto if it wasn't so exotic. The fact that there IS a China Town points to their insularity. The Japanese in America were rounded up and imprisoned during World War 2. The Vietnamese constitute a fair representation in gang membership today.
Where we talk about "model minority" today our grand-parents spoke of "Yellow Menace." None of which as zip to do with the point Melissa was making.
Their histories are not the same as blacks or hispanics, nor are the outcomes the same. Screw the popular view and stereotypical assumptions!
It'd be harder to track, but I wonder if the same gap exists between unmarried men and women considering marriage for so many years operated under the premise that the wife, for all practical purposes, the property of the husband, due the *coverture*.
Take out the top 5% of individual white wealth and I wonder what the gap would be? I suspect substantially lower. The issue, however, is not simply race.
No Al, the statistics use the Median not the Mean, thus you would be wrong.
Exactly. Mean Median Mode - what are we actually talking about here? It is a fact the the minorities are crushed by this mess. But the target of the "Powers that Be" is the nearly dead White Middle Class. So take the top 5% out of WHITE earners (and I do not mean Adjusted Gross Income) and the whole bell curve changes drastically. Think of it this way: 1000 earners, 995 making $75K and 5 making $500 Million and the average pay is $2,574,625. Yet not one of these earners actually makes that. So using the Average reduction will work the same way. The Billionaires and Millionaires lose millions and skew everything, causing even more social unrest and strife. It is NOT the lower 95% of whites who are doing just fine, but just as has always been the case, those top 5% have no interest in minorities AT ALL unless they can stir up anger against each other and against the perceived well - off.
I am so tired of these intellectual gymnastics about statistical analysis. Let's just put say "figures don't lie, liars figure" and leave it at that. No matter how you look at it the vast majority of Americans are nothing more than a support system for those at the very top of the economic pyramid. Most of those at the top are not there because they are racists, they are there because somehow at some point in the past their ancestors managed to use the rules in place at the time to acquire the wealth of others. Now the fact that a lot of this wealth acquisition was done through violence, theft, fraud or manipulation doesn't matter at all to those who have it now. They have it, they mean to keep it, they mean to use it to maintain their positions of power and privilege and history has shown us that for the most part they are pretty successful in accomplishing their goals.
The only people practicing intellectual gymnastics about the statistics are the people who aren't explaining them. Median is ONE statistical number, without the remaining statistics about the data, it's nearly meaningless. Mean, standard deviation, data curves, etc that represent ALL the wealth information would give a real picture of what the median actually represents. That all that information ISN'T included in the pew report makes me suspicious of what all that data would tell us.
That is not to say I deny the impact of our racist past as a country, or that the recession has hit minorities harder. Nor am I denying anything that MHP had to say about it last night.
But how statistics are presented matters a great deal, as does the methodology of who the stats are generated. I would love to see the underlying data and assumptions of the Pew Report, as well as all the other stat data they generated. Then I could make an evaluation of what the median means for myself.
THEN I could decide for myself where I fit in the picture, and what I can do to improve not just myself, but what I might do to help other people, too.
I understand what statistics mean, I did get my eduction before it was privatized and statistical analysis was one of the requirements to obtain a BA in my field. If you want to delve into the methodology etc, no one is preventing you from doing it. My point was simple, all that those numbers provide is a reference point, the meaningfulness of those numbers comes from what they represent and regardless of the methodology, the validity of the techniques, etc. minorities in this nation haven't made a whole lot of economic progress in the last 50 years. That is not a sustainable situation for any society.
Statistics is a tool that is used to examine complex problems. While valuable they are just as easily manipulated as any other tool. Tool are used to manipulate things.
Any good argument should be supported by facts. Statistics can be used to provide that foundation. Facts do not win arguments however.
Persuasion is what wins arguments. We persuade others that we are correct. Marketing is the application of this activity. How do marketers persuade? Certainly they often provide a foundation of facts that support their claims but that is not how they sell products.
To win the argument we need to appeal to the emotions of our opponent. We need to make them feel the pain that the problem causes. We need to make them feel that we offer a solution to that pain.
The left consistently misses this point. They themselves feel the pain of the poor. That is what drives them to try and effect change. It is not the numbers that drive them but the pain of the people hidden behind those numbers.
Why should they expect these numbers to change the minds of the opponents?
Perhaps instead they need to say to the farmer, "Look at these poor who cannot afford to buy the food you grow. Will the tax cuts to the rich help them afford it?"
To the auto worker we can say, " Will tax cuts for the rich help people to buy the cars you build?"
To the business owner we can say, "How many rich people walk into your store everyday? Will cutting their taxes help your business?"
The statistics support these ideas but they also hide what they mean to the individual.
I think statistically the numbers pan out. What you are saying is take out the top 5% of European Americans and the numbers would change? What if we took out the bottom 5% of African Americans? Would the numbers change? I suspect they would.
What about taking out the top 5% of African Americans?
Point being this. Statistically, the numbers most likely pan out. The top 5% probably employ the top 60% of Americans. And we all know minority unemployment is historically double or triple that of the majority.
On my Facebook page I have a HR professional who is arguing that tax cuts for her boss are necessary and appropriate because without the boss there will be no workers and the more comfortable the bosses are the more comfortable the workers will be. I am to the point of just shaking my head. I guess with some people, kool-aid can't be "undrunk".
hahahaha, that's called, I'm having sex with my boss, talk. If not, then she has lost her damn mind. Did you look to see how brown her nose was? I hear a boss in the background whining that he can't give raises cause his Yacht is in repair and without the tax cuts he is struggling to make payments on his jet.
Shame on us! Let's have a pity party for her boss.
True, but I didn't need this study to tell me that. Nor is that how this report is being presented. Nor does the report adequately, in my opinion, place the "median wealth" statistic to establish it's meaning.
@rolf-558427: Scarborough and friends can't compete intellectually with a Rhodes scholar with a DPhil (Maddow) and a PhD in Political Science (Harris-Perry). The brain power just won't match.
Professor,
I would like to echo some of the previous comments, and say what a wonderful job you did last night filling in for Rachel… I could sit and listen to you for hours… Indeed you should have your own show… Congratulations!!!
GREAT JOB, Melissa! Be careful. - You know what happened to Rachel and Lawrence after their "fill-in stints..." :)
Great reporting Professor. I wish it were 2008 and we needed to be warned about this. Like so much I see and read, these things are (or should be) obvious to anyone. It is especially obvious to the top 5% of the wealthy (corporations and individuals). This is not a result of bad plans and policies. This is the desired result of a carefully crafted, long term plan and a group of intertwined policies. Many of the obvious schemes, but under reported or completely avoided are crafted to eliminate a middle class because a functioning middle class has time to notice what is going on and protest. A middle class has some disposable income and can donate that. A middle class can get educated. And a middle class produces "Upward Mobility" outside of the standard boys club. We simply can't have that. SO - destroy the economy and buy up the stocks and bonds at fire sale prices. Eliminate as much of the safety net as possible, or privatize it so it can be controlled. Lower Wages and eliminate any sense of security in employment by keeping unemployment high, then artificially lowering it once in a while with Wars or Low-Wage short term "insourcing" of service jobs. And rid Unions of any further input. In all of this, the minority population is not the object of the plan. They all are irrelevant. It is the (now) White, ex-middle class that needed to go for Corporations to institute a Corporatist-Fascist coup. Obama is exactly the type of man to be snookered into aiding and abetting, and even promoting the process because he is reasonable. Once this plays out in the next two weeks, it will show that Obama was either complicit or naive. Just as in Hitler's Fascist Government or Mussolini's Italy, minorities are to be discarded and the poorer they are now, the better and easier it will be to subjugate them. Sorry... If this wasn't the plan, how could this debacle about the Debt Ceiling be mixed up with the deficit so easily on every network, in every paper, on every radio report. It has nothing to do with it. The mess is DESIGNED to cause a bankruptcy of the US (and World) economy. It will be a boon to the very few at the very top and put everyone else in the position of being totally reliant on the whims of the Mega Corporations and their Private counterparts.
It makes FDR foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor to drag us into WW 2 look downright benevolent by comparison.
Primary source proof please.
http://www.nypress.com/article-4183-fdr-knew-pearl-harbor-was-coming.html
Alexander Cockburn is a regular contributor to the Nation "Beat the Devil" and I consider him a reliable source, even if I disagree with him on occasion.
Many people will not understand this. Studies in environmental education have shown that most folks don't get multi-step or multi-variable problems. It is related to a lack of scientific literacy and the inability to properly evaluate evidence.
Note that the same group that doesn't get global climate change tends to not get complicated economic problems either. We have simplified and spoon fed the public through school with fragmented bits that fit into a multiple choice test, which does not require critical thinking. We have created a generation of non-thinking, non-reflecting sheeple.
and for that, we have, in many ways, the bush no child left behind plan to thank for it. for anyone interested in the state of education in america anymore, go read the works of diane ravitch. she's knowledgeable and capable of building a strong narrative about the direction we are headed as a nation, education-wise, and why it's so hard to change politically
Jas51
I don't agree with your comment' "It is related to a lack of scientific literacy and the inability to properly evaluate evidence."
I believe it has more to do with the lack of attention. We cannot all be Renaissance men in this age. There is too much complexity involved in all the problems that need solutions.
We all think that our focus is the correct one. Personally I find it crazy that we are not paying more attention to the energy policy in this country and in the world. If we could only make progress on this one issue it's benefits would cascade through our society. Of course I have invested a considerable amount of time researching this issue.
I'm sure Science teachers agree that the problem is scientific literacy. But what about all the English teachers?
We shouldn't downplay the intelligence of the American people, we should concentrate on focusing them on the correct problems
I remember one of my own frustrations in middle and high school was the disconnect between one grade level to the next of what we were learning. I still remember 7th grade science class, we had half a year of Biology and half a year of Physical Science. We lerned about the Scientific Method in both classes (I look back now and think about what a waste of time-teach it once and make sure you teach it well and then MOVE ON!) and in Biology our teacher was great for helping us to use memory aids, she taught us that the steps for the Scientific Method was OQHECC-Observe, Question, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclude, and Communicate. When the Physical Sci teacher taught us the steps, he had DIFFERENT steps that we had to then-re-learn!
The same thing happened in 8th grade: new steps to the Scientific Method. Every class I took in high school also taught the Scientific Method, but it had different stepsand we had to go through the process of unlearning what we had learned in the previous class and learn NEW steps to the Scientific Method!
This is one, very basic, example of how we have this extremely frustrating disconnect and failure to BUILD on previous knowledge. If students are being forced to UNLEARN information, THERE IS A PROBLEM!!! What a huge waste of time, too! Teach the concept, teach that what you name each of the steps is less important than the concept of the Scientific Method and that it is a process, but that is hard to test in a multiple choice test.
I loathe NCLB for many reasons, but I do have to say that I can't blame that for the kind of education that I experienced since I graduated from high school in 1990. I will say that the results of NCLB in the education of my children has left me even more frustrated and disgusted.
Pat, I wasn't trying to say Americans are not intelligent, they just aren't trained for critical thinking skills. And math/science is an effective way to give students opportunities to hone those skills. And I don't mind them going to English class-how else will they learn to effectively communicate their findings. :)
And I do feel that high-stakes testing brought on by NCLB does affect teaching practices. We try to be efficient instead of effective.
And to Skewtergirl, I teach pre-service science teachers and I encourage them to not even teach the "scientific method" as a list to memorize. It is taught in a linear fashion, but it is not a linear process. You learn science by doing science.
And lastly, thanks for the great discussion. It is fun to have an intelligent debate with intelligent people.
The people that NEED to see this won't see it (as in childish "fingers-in-ears yelling NA-NA-NA-NA!"). I still think the whole 'willful ignorance' on this issue is best evidenced by Barbara Bush's comment on seeing poor Katrina refugees in the Houston Astrodome:
Great segment, I agree. But isn't is embarrassing that we're so blind to systemic racism and the legacy of slavery that this still has to explained in 2011?
No surprise at all. Why examine, much less challenge, anything that has worked out so well for you for so long?
Loved the Owney the Post Office dog segment and particularly how you plugged Pebbles TWICE! Does Pebbles have her own blog and twitter account? Will we see Pebbles have any political opinions? Just saying that sometimes dogs have more to say if we just listen a little more intently...
Oh, and you were good too, Melissa... :-)
http://www.dogwalkblog.com/the-us-post-office-mangled-their-good-news-again.html
I've been impressed with Dr. Harris for years and one of the more interesting things I've learned from her over the years is that the explosion of African slavery in the 17th century was a direct result of Europe's demand for sugar. The development of modern capitalism (global trade) itself was one of the unintended consequences of this explosion. The only thing that has changed in the meantime is that those human beings who were once owned are now leased from time to time, but you still need that exploited base at the bottom to support that little bitty point at the top. Until some way is found to effectively regulate a capitalist economy to promote a wider redistribution of wealth, nothing is going to change.
How to make things right? Redistribute the wealth. Listen to Professor Perry. Thank you for a wonderful presentation of a very complicated subject.
I have known hundreds of successful people who have escaped their oppressive environment, as individuals, and enjoy a high standard of living. Any group of people that are surrounded by negative forces can only expect to perpetuate their situation. The disproportionate poverty and joblessness cannot be separated from the disproportionate crime, low education and single teen mothers. A person of color, who is raised (???) by a single teen mother, in a poor neiborhood, has a very low likelihood of economic success. A person of color, who is raised by a cohesive family and works hard in school, has a high likelyhood of success. The issue is not color, it is upbringing. Those who focus on color will continue to not recognize the real problem and will therefore not solve the problem.
The issue is all of it. To deny that race has been and continues to be a determining factor in American society is ridiculous. The "I have known" is crap, the fact that a few individuals somehow have "escaped their oppressive environment" while the vast majority hasn't proves nothing either way. Of course a strong cohesive family environment and all that comes with that makes all the the difference in the world, that holds just as true for whites as for minorities. I've lived long enough to have learned a few things and one of those things I've learned is that in order to have the opportunity to succeed you have to be somewhere where those opportunities exist and the fact is that in a lot of places in the supposedly greatest nation on earth there are too many places where that opportunity does not exist.
Hey there, Restaurant Refugee. Time Wise has some assume videos about white privilege. There's also a good segment about it on The Young Turks. Search for "white privilege" on YouTube. :)
Whoops! "TIM Wise has some AWESOME videos..." (DOH! ;)
I'm going to have to disagree with that poll, it suggests that if you're white you somehow get some magic hand up, LOL, coming from poor white trailer trash, I can safely say that is a laughable assumption at best, poor whites are just as bad off as poor blacks, it's beyond a race thing here, it's about the haves and the have nots.
I agree its about the haves and have nots, unfortunately minorities are disproportionately represented among both groups. I also have to point out that there has been one thing and one thing only that the United States Congress has been successful at in the last 30 years and that is increasing the total number and percentage of the population that are now included among the have nots.
On an additional note: Seldom do I spend a lot of time reading the comments for any given blog. However, I had to read all of the ones posted here. Again Melissa, you raise the level of discussion and invite really intelligent people to your debate. You should have your own show.
@George H, what you say is clear to me. I just mentioned it because of how frustrating it is to listen to JS repeat the same talking points over and over without ever going into any kind of deeper analysis of circumstance, cause, effect of any subject he discusses with his panel. Not to mention his republican guests or Mika who is simply unbearably dumb and superficial.
If you had said that Mika deliberately dims her brightness or that she is too sheepish in defense of her arguments or that she makes shallow-as-a-hair-root points because she rarely has (takes?) the time to make deeper ones, then I could have agreed with you. However, calling her "unbearably dumb and superficial" strikes me as mean spirited and even a touch misogynistic.
Respectfully, why misogynistic? I never mentioned gender. I simply find her comments usually stupid and shallow. Her father, on the other hand, is an incredibly thoughtful, insightful and knowledgeable man –and well worth listening to. He even called JS "superficial" not so long ago on his own show, and for good reason.
I'm 42. Jim Crow laws ended 3 years before I was born. My older brother was the first African American to attend our local high school. Before that, they went to school at a run down gymnasium. Racism, discrimination, sexism, and whatever-ism are not ancient history in this country. I remember my 5th grade teacher making all the black kids sit in the back of class. So there was still some systematic racism that existed well beyond the end of Jim Crow.
We got some work to do because that systematic discrimination is still with us. People who say its not were never told to move to the back of the class.
The first step in solving problems is to admit we have a problem. Same with the debt crisis. However, its not a spending problem. Its a revenue problem. If I'm spending within my means then all of a sudden decrease revenue then that's a revenue problem. Reagan decreased our revenue some 30 years ago. Its been like that ever since.
Amen. Reaganomics didn't work then, nor will it ever unless of course you are already one of those who are already "more equal than others." Republicans believe, fervently, that all history began with Reagan. We won't start getting right as a nation until we turn back to the Great Society Initiatives - ESPECIALLY in Education - and begin a domestic Marshall Plan. Which means undoing the trade agreements President Clinton negotiated. Because "its the economy stupid" and the labor movement IS social justice!
MHP was/is a good stand-in for Ms Maddow, she is, understandably, a bit up tight!
Hopefully, she will warm to the task. After all she did/does face a crowd of students every work day.
I do think the basis for her argument is based upon a belief in something that is a smoke and mirrors pipe dream; The American Dream
You can all own your own house, if you borrow from the banks and pay premiums to insurance companies (to protect the banks).
You can all have two cars if you borrow from the banks and pay premiums to the insurance companies (to protect the banks)
You can renovate your kitchen, if you borrow from the banks.
You can go to university, if you borrow from the banks.
TAD is a dream created by the banks, insurance companies and universities!
Most people living in cities in Europe rent their homes. People living in rural areas tend to buy.
City properties are worth more than most people can afford, so they rent. The city remains occupied day and night and thereby thrives.
In America the same is true, except, people are caught up in the notion that renting bears a stigma and therefore they HAVE to own a house. To do this they have to move to a close to the city suburb and buy. Then to a not so close suburb etc.
The city dies after work is finished. The worker spend 1/3 of his life in a transportation mess. Develops stresses and strains.
TAD sounds a consummation devoutly NOT to be wished.
I am not saying that if America had followed the European tradition racism would not have existed. Everybody, whether they admit it or not, is racist and prejudiced in some way. That is only the result of upbringing and human nature!
Americans, goaded on by their government lackeys, have at various times tried to eliminate: the British government's influence, the Indian nations, the negroes, the jews, the Muslims and now the working class, schools and social services.
The only solution to this destructive propensity is to attempt to govern as a democracy.
America is not and has never been a democracy, in the true sense of the words. Maybe it's time to try it.
If only the senators and nobles rule, the plebians are usually screwed. To quote "5 or 6 of 9" has that going for you?
Thank you, Professor Harris. Thank you.
And to underscore the point made by MHP:
Wells Fargo faces lawsuit for allegedly preying upon African-American borrowers http://t.co/Imnc8tA
People can't understand how someone like Hugo Chavez got elected in Venezuala. Well, the way things are going in our country, we will have our own Hugo Chavez and you know what? We will deserve it. Cut the programs that protect the most vulnerable (they call them entitlement programs) but refuse to raise the taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
Look, I believe hard work and risk deserves its benefits, but we still have an obligation to provide a safety net for those who need it and there are those who have no problem cutting the net down so it collapses.
Great perspective, Professor, thank you. I don't usually feel excited about watching TRMS when Rachel is not on(even though I admire all of her substitute hosts), but I don't want to miss a thing this week.