Institutional racism is also a good concept to
look at racial disparities in wealth and income.
And the racial wealth gap is something that
has received a lot of attention recently because of
the great recession and what it meant for people who had attained some wealth,
attained some stability and extent to which it was wiped out.
But this is an issue that has been persistent for a long time.
In an article by Fryer and Pager and
Spenkuch on Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages,
they actually concluded that the wage gap has been persistent over
50 years and shows virtually no sign of being eliminated.
It also shows that the earning is by household.
There are a lot of racial disparities in household earnings and that
they are pretty much the same today as they were in 1967.
This was an area where we assumed that we were making more progress than what has been
discovered and studies that have been published in 2015.
The more recent studies tell us that we've got
a lot more work to do in closing the income gap.
The wealth gap is different from the income gap,
and we are more likely to pay attention to income as a measure
of equality or as a measure of the progress that we made.
And we have made some progress but not nearly as much as we thought
as indicated in the studies that we just cited,
but the wealth gap has something that has widened over the time period.
And it's just not something that is a consequence of the great recession of 2007 to 2009.
They were actually writing about this in 2004 when there was another recession,
more mild than the Great Recession,
but yet its impact was just as important.
And so in 2004,
there were studies being published showing that the wealth gap
had widened as a consequence of the recession in the early 2000.
Point of fact, it said that as of 2002,
delayed this year for which there was data available,
the median Hispanic household had a net worth of 7,900,
almost $8,000 and the median black family had
a household net worth of almost $6000
meaning that half of the households in those groups and less and half as had,
also pointed out that they had dropped in terms of net worth.
The median white family, by contrast,
had more than 10 times of the net worth.
Now, the net worth of Hispanic and black households fell 27 percent from
1999 through 2001 as a consequence of that recession in that time period.
And the losses erased much of
the gains that had been made during the boom of the late 1990s.
Now, this kind of institutionalized impact is really
critical because even when the gains are made,
whether they are gains in net worth or they are gains in income,
what these authors are telling us is that something like a recession,
even a minor recession,
can wipe out gains that have been accrued over a decade or so.
And so, it reminds us that there are different,
significant difference to the extent that groups
cannot withstand recession even when they have made gains over a certain period of time.
Now, the second studies and the second focus on
the racial wealth gap
has developed since the great recession started in 2007 and ended in 2009.
And that wealth gap,
the wealth gap has widened.
That recession had a major impact on net worth along racial and ethnic lines.
The great recession of 2007 and 2009,
if we look at what incomes or net worth was like in 2005 versus 2009,
it shows that the net worth of whites in 2005 was 134,000,
almost $135,000 but it had dropped to 113,000 in 2009.
That was a significant impact on net worth among the white population and that
was a significant drop in net worth as a consequence of the great recession of 2007.
For Hispanics who had a net worth of 18,000,
a little over, in 2005,
it dropped to 6,000 in 2009.
They lost almost two thirds of the net worth as a consequence of the great recession,
and African-Americans had a net worth of 12,000,
little over 12,000, in 2005.
It had dropped to 5,000 in 2009.
And so, here's another example of
where something happened among our dominant social institution,
in this case, employment or wealth.
And it's not really intended to affect people because of their race or ethnicity,
but the consequences are such that because of their situation historically,
because of the accumulation of wealth or the lack of accumulation of wealth,
because they have less of a portfolio,
a more narrow one,
to withstand something like a recession,
the impact on them is more adverse and also more disproportionate.
What these studies concluded for each group,
looking at Hispanics, blacks,
Asians, and whites, is that Hispanics,
the net worth of Hispanic households decreased by
66 percent from 2005 to 2009.
The net worth of African-Americans declined 53 percent from 2005 to 2009 and
the net worth of Asian Americans decline was a drop of 54 percent from 2005 to 2009.
Whites also suffered a drop in net worth,
a drop in overall wealth,
but the drop was much smaller,
that it's fallen 16 percent from 2005 to 2009.
And when they continued to do these studies from 2007 to 2013,
they found similar kinds of drops as well.
James D. AndersonEdward William and Jane Marr Gutsgell Professor of Education
