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:
“Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“A black pall, you know, with a silver cross on it, or R.I.P.—requiescat in pace—you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression—I like it much better than ‘He is a jolly good fellow,’ which is simply rowdy.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)