EDITORIAL: Cheated: Blacks Left Out in Cold: Blacks Left Out in Cold

By The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

Mar. 30–DO YOU realize that the average white American family has $67,000 net worth, while a typical black household has just $6,166 in assets — less than one-tenth as much?

Did you know that more black U.S. men are in prison (791,600) than in college (603,000)?

Or that the jobless rate for blacks (10 percent) is more than double the white rate (4.4 percent)?

Or that blacks depend on public transportation four times more than whites do?

Or that the black infant mortality rate is double that of white babies?

All these depressing statistics are in the latest State of Black America report issued by the National Urban League. It concludes glumly that blacks are making little progress — or even slipping backward slightly — while gains go chiefly to elite whites.

“The economic status of African-Americans is 56 percent that of white Americans, 1 percent worse than in 2005,” the report says.

News coverage of hurricane-shattered New Orleans enabled the world “to see the gaping chasm between white and black America, the haves and the have-nots,” it says. But promises of relief soon evaporated, as the Republican-controlled Congress returned to cutting “safety net” programs for the poor and handing bigger tax giveaways to the affluent.

It is profoundly tragic that inequality still grips U.S. life. When a major segment of the population is subtly excluded, relegated to the bottom, it hurts not only the outcasts but also the entire society.

Poverty damages America, breeding crime, illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic breakdown, welfare costs, medical costs, prison costs and other losses. Efforts to lift people out of poverty make good business sense, reducing taxpayer expense.

Giving people hope for better lives is a blessing to the whole populace. Instead of showering more tax breaks on the rich, Congress should invest in programs helping underdogs climb up the ladder.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

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