Challenges of The Black Middle Class
Empirical evidence demonstrates that blacks have less upward mobility than whites. A report done by the Pew Research Center in 2007 says that of the sons and daughters of the black middle class, 45% of black children end up "near poor", and the comparable rate for white families is 16%. The trend of downward mobility has caused the overall majority of middle-class-black children to end up with lower incomes than their parents. While 68% of white children earn incomes above their parents, 31% of black children earn incomes more than their parents did. The lower rate of upward mobility could be caused by the lack of married blacks, and the number of blacks born out of wedlock. In 2009, 72% of black babies are born out of wedlock, compared with 28% of white women.
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Famous quotes containing the words middle class, challenges, black, middle and/or class:
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—bell hooks (b. 1955)
“A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.”
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“When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of Godlike lambs we joy,
Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee;
And then Ill stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.”
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—Frederick Douglass (c. 18171895)