Race inequality between US Whites and African-Americans by the Numbers (Again)
With regard to employment, African-Americans got hit harder by the Bush Depression than did whites, and jobs have not come back for them at nearly the same rate. [graph above]
This vast difference between Euro-American and African-American rates of employment holds true regardless of educational level; college-educated African-Americans are also twice as likely to be unemployed as whites with the same level of education:
Among Americans born in the US, nearly 40% of all tuberculosis cases are in African-Americans. They are only about 13% of the US population:
On the other hand, although African-Americans are disproportionately likely to be poor, they are only a quarter of Americans living in poverty; whites make up about 41% of the poor. (If the distribution were proportional, whites would be 70-some percentage of the poor and African-Americans would be 13%). Those white Americans who don't want to help the poor because they'd be helping people of another race are actually screwing over white people big time.
And here are some other unfun facts from a posting I did earlier this year:
Most death sentences are handed out for killing white people, even though African-Americans make up 50% of murder victims (they are only 12% of the population).
So if an African-American male had fired ten shots into the SUV of some white suburban kids playing their music too loud, killing one of them, I think we all know there would have been a murder conviction and almost certainly a death penalty imposed.
In case of conviction for murder, African-Americans are 38% more likely to be handed the death penalty than members of other racial groupings.
88% of African-Americans in a 2013 Pew poll said that there was "a lot" (46%) or "some" (42% ) discrimination against them.
Only 57% of whites agreed, and only 16% of whites said there is "a lot" of discrimination against African-Americans:
Average household net worth of whites: $110,000.
Average household net worth of African-Americans: $5000
The wealth gap between white and African-American families tripled between 1980 and 2009, according to the Century Foundation:
1 in every 15 African American men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men
[Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent work is The New Arabs: How the Wired and Global Youth of the Middle East Is Transforming It (Simon & Schuster, June, 2014). He has been a regular guest on PBS's Lehrer News Hour, and has also appeared on ABC Nightly News, Nightline, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, Anderson Cooper 360, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, the Colbert Report, Democracy Now! and many others. He has a regular column at Truthdig. A bibliography of his writings may be found here.]