The divide

By Rev. Jesse Jackson
TriceEdneyWire.com

When I checked in late at night at a Hampton Inn in Indiana last week, we were greeted by the night desk officer, a young woman with a noticeable limp. She said she had stepped in a hole, ripped up her leg, had three operations, but it still wasn’t right. She was working full time to help support her parents: Her mother who had suffered an aneurism and was bed ridden and a father suffering from disability also. None of them could afford health insurance, so she just had to keep going.

While Congress is exhausting itself over a totally artificial, politician invented fake crisis about lifting the debt ceiling, many Americans are struggling to keep a ceiling over their heads, to afford food, gas, and health insurance. Tuition debt now exceeds credit card debt, as more and more understand the importance of a higher education or training that they can’t afford. Once the theater is open and the Washington drama is over, the debt ceiling will be lifted, but holes in the floor are expanding. Growing poverty among the formerly employed, exworkers and exhomeowners are seen as colleteral damage in this war at home as they continue to fall through the cracks of the floor as others are watching the ceiling rise protecting their privileges.

This disconnect is blinding. In Washington, Speaker John Boehner and his conservative colleagues insist that cutting spending will create jobs by increasing business confidence. In Indiana and Chicago and across the country, the business people I talk with say they aren’t hiring because they lack customers; they are selling less and earning less. They struggle to remain profitable by trimming costs, laying off workers, cutting back on benefits, or shortening up hours. They see the pending layoffs of teachers and police, the exhaustion of unemployment insurance or the payroll tax cut as a threat, not a promise – one that will cost them customers, not give them confidence.

Dr. King used to warn that Blacks are last in line for prosperity and first in line for pain, last to be hired and first to be fired. We’ve made immense strides on ending segregation and opening up locked doors. Today, when the Chicago Bears play the Indianapolis Colts in football, whites from Chicago wear their Hester jerseys; Blacks from Indianapolis wear their Manning jerseys – and both have Black head coaches. When Barack Obama was elected president, Europeans marveled, knowing how impossible it would be to elect a minority president in their countries.

But even with these strides, racial economic inequality is worse than when Dr. King left us. And in this crisis, Blacks have suffered the most. African-American communities were targeted by the subprime mortgage operators, who aggressively peddled mortgages that they knew their customers could not afford, and in many cases, did not understand. Houses represent virtually all of middle-income families’ wealth. They’ve lost nearly half their value in many communities, erasing wealth that many thought might help pay for a college education or a decent retirement.

The result is tragic. In 2004, the median wealth of white families was $134,280; for Blacks, it was a tenth of that, $13,450. But a new Black middle class was growing, stretching to buy homes, starting to feel greater security. Then came the Great Recession. By 2009, white families had lost nearly a fourth of their wealth, down to little less than $98,000. Blacks had lost 83 percent of their wealth, down to $2,170. That rising middle class had been more than decimated. And no surprise, with Black male employment at record lows — only 56 percent of Black men over 20 are working — families are exhausting savings, facing foreclosure, losing hope.

And while the white unemployment rate has declined marginally since the economy started to grow again, Blacks have continued to suffer rising unemployment. And it’s likely to keep rising as state and public employees, disproportionately minority, face steep layoffs.

As the young desk manager at the Hampton Inn demonstrates, while African Americans may have suffered the most, working and middle class families of all races — -brown, Black, red, yellow and white – are struggling. Blacks are not bearing this pain exclusively, though disproportionately, Blacks are the canary in the mine. But, there are many more birds in the mine choking on gaseous fumes of economic desperation. They have neither the time nor the patience to follow the convoluted politics of Washing­ton. They do know their interests are not being served, and while politicians seem deaf to them now, they are likely to hear from them in the 2012 elections.

This article was originally published in the August 1, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper