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The Recession As Racial Equalizer (Dean)

What’s going on here? It’s a bittersweet human interest tale with some facts and figures mixed in, not too cloying.

Blacks and whites have encountered one another in increasing numbers recently in the crowded waiting rooms of the welfare office and at the food pantry, where many of both races have ventured for the first time. Struggling black-owned businesses are attracting the attention of white patrons. Neighbors are commiserating across racial lines.

[…]

Across the country, there have been many reports about the recession’s racial divide, as blacks have lost their jobs and houses at far higher rates than whites. But Henry County, about a 30-minute drive south of downtown Atlanta, has a very different profile from the rest of the nation. In Henry, the median income of black families, $56,715 in 2008, approaches that of whites, $69,728 (nationally, the average income gap was $20,000). Blacks in Henry County, many of whom are retirees from the North or professionals who work in Atlanta, are more likely than whites to have a college degree.

That does not mean that Henry County is a perfect laboratory of equality. Blacks made up a disproportionately high number of those seeking government assistance both before and after the slowdown. Since 2006, the number of blacks on Medicaid has more than tripled, outpacing the increase among whites.

But it seems as if a point is being missed when a black man’s preemptive apology—”I’m not racist, but it’s harder for black men.”—goes unremarked, indeed, is used to convey a facile notion of equality, one for which racism is little more than a personal preference. I have a hard time swallowing the notion that the leveling phenomenon of Henry County is a silver lining of the economic cloud. If a bridge is spanning a racial divide, it’s more likely due to a shared oppression than to a sudden recognition of common needs and ambitions. Wealth and power can be wholesomely color-blind when targeting subjects to exploit.

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5 responses to “The Recession As Racial Equalizer (Dean)”

  1. Ruchira

    Sad, isn’t it that it takes economic adversity for people to realize that in the end, everyone is striving for the same things?
    These last few lines are interesting.

    The idea that the recession is an equalizer has become accepted in Henry County. Both black and white residents were hesitant to say that either race had taken a greater hit. But Ms. Taylor, the black woman who dispensed advice at the county food stamp office, said there were some notable distinctions between blacks and whites.
    “They’re a little weaker than we are at handling things like this,” she said, adding without rancor, “but I know they get more sympathy than we do.”

    The woman seems to be saying that it is easier for society to accept that a black person might seek assistance (because that is what is expected?) whereas a poor white person feels more shame and gets more sympathy when receiving public handouts because they are then behaving like “the minorities.” This is a bit like single fathers getting more sympathy, even from women, when straddled with child care and housekeeping, than single mothers, because those are “women’s work” after all.
    So if the recession is the equalizer, does it mean that when things turn around again, the races will go back to their insular lives, never crossing paths in food pantries, public health facilities or in the neighborhood washeterias?

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  2. Dean C. Rowan

    Those closing lines are rich. For one thing, there is the fair assumption that “notable distinctions” do not compromise equality, even if the gist of the story conveys the sense that as a result of the economy everybody acquires a homespun community-wide sameness. Secondly, your reading of poor whites being reduced to acting like minorities seems right, but I also think Ms. Taylor means a whole range of behaviors when she refers to “handling things like this.” We handle adversity not only through seeking assistance, official or otherwise, but by pulling together, sacrificing, reorienting ourselves, and so forth. Despite their former wealth, the white Duncans are perhaps weaker, less able to handle (financially? cognitively? emotionally?) their plight than the black families envisioned by Ms. Taylor.

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  3. Ruchira

    Yes, I too read the same additional meaning in Ms Taylor’s statement – not just that society accepts the reality of a black person needing help but also that a black person in America can draw from a greater reservoire of equanimity and resilience when faced with the sudden down turn of life’s circumstances.

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  4. razib

    it’s just a local story due to local particular dynamics, the reality of black internal migration to parts of the “new south.” overall, lower SES people are getting torn apart by the recession. granted, inequality is declining because the rich and super-rich are losing their “paper wealth,” but it doesn’t have a quality of life impact on these people that unemployment or foreclosure does further down the SES scale.

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  5. Sital341

    The recession or its remnants are going to be with us for many years as far as job creation is concerned. Many employers lost their job due to economic slowdown. But now recession and crisis has been slow down. The job industry is back in recruiting candidates. I came to known one job portal which is totally dedicated to female job seekers http://naukriforwomen.com According to me it’s a good step towards women empowerment.

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