Over at the mothership, Eli Day points out that blacks still earn a lot less than whites and have way less wealth. That’s bad enough, but it’s actually worse than that. Here are working-class black earnings since 1979 as a percent of white earnings:
Black men have made essentially no progress in the past four decades, while black women have fallen considerably further behind. Since 2000, both men and women have fallen further behind their white counterparts. Here’s median household income:
And here’s family wealth:
Black households made income and wealth gains up through about 2000, but since then have gone backwards. Any way you look at this, the gap between blacks and whites has gotten worse throughout the entire 21st century. Anyone who doesn’t understand why the African-American community has seemingly become more despairing of racial progress lately should take a look at this. Sure, much of it is because of Ferguson, and much of it is because of Trump. But it’s more than just that, and it didn’t suddenly come out of nowhere in 2014.
