Black Middle Class - Challenges of The Black Middle Class

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.

Read more about this topic:  Black Middle Class

Famous quotes containing the words middle class, challenges, black, middle and/or class:

    In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest—usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation—and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.
    —J.M. (John Millington)

    A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    ... contemporary black women felt they were asked to choose between a black movement that primarily served the interests of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women.
    bell hooks (b. c. 1955)

    On the middle of that quiet floor
    sits a fleet of small black ships,
    square-rigged, sails furled, motionless,
    their spars like burned matchsticks.
    Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)

    He has more to impart than to receive from his generation. He is another such a strong and finished workman in his craft as Samuel Johnson was, and, like him, makes the literary class respectable.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)