Hi Doug!
I'm not sure who makes it into the count of Black households, and so I ask
this as much out of ignorance as I hope, to be of some help on directing
the inquiry on income and race in a positive direction (as I can be no help
in providing a packaged answer, besides idunno.)
Is it true that inmates incarcerated in prison are NOT counted as
households in your data?
If so then the 1986-1997 "War on (Black American men mascarading itself as
a War on) Drugs" might account for a dilution/removal of the most
employment vulnerable from you statistically pool.
If prisoners don't count, then those Black men who would have been most
likely to have "driven down the average" by being unemployed the households
by being listed as the most poor households of your Black community are
simply not on your ledger at all.
And if indeed, the majority of the prison growth which has been astonishing
in the years of your inquiry has been directly largely against the most
economically vulnerable of the Black men, prehaps the mass incarceration
movement known as the war on drugs can be spotted through your income data.
Asuming the Black prisoners are absent from your statistical pool of Black
households. (I believe the U.S. now has more African Americans incarcerated
per capita then the DeKlerk administration of South African apartheid.
The white poor are still with us, but the Black poor are in the slammer.
Thus whites are poorer, the (free) Blacks are (statistically) thriving
economically under the Reagan-Bush-Clinton administrations.
If prisoners ARE counted in your U.S. income figures, then as they say on
Saturday night live, nevermind.
In an effort to be helpful,
Ellen Starbird
>I've just been looking at the 1996 U.S. income figures. Median incomes of
>black households have risen from 58.2% of white ones in 1992 to 63.2% in
>1996, the highest on record. The black poverty rate is also the lowest on
>record. Obviously the gap is still very wide, but has anyone else noticed
>this trend? What's happening?
>
>Doug
>
>--
>
>Doug Henwood
>Left Business Observer
>250 W 85 St
>New York NY 10024-3217 USA
>+1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax
>email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
