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Opinion

Black America has made major progress since the 1960s; liberals just don’t want to admit it

Jan 11, 2022

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While the Democratic Party continues to cry racism and rail about oppression against blacks, they are ignoring basic facts that show Black America is not just surviving, but thriving. Of course, most liberal lawmakers know this but will never admit it. Why would they? It would fly in the face of their mission to push government overreach and perpetuate a system that handcuffs minority families to federal assistance.

This is not my opinion, by the way. Data from the latest annual report from the Census Bureau, Income and Poverty in the United States, bears this out: 

Annual real median household income in the U.S. increased 6.8% in 2019, the largest annual increase recorded by the Census Bureau going back to 1967. Black median household income in 2019 increased 7.9%, the largest on record.

Moreover, in 2019, 29.4% of Black households had income of $75,000 or more, compared with 28.7% of Black households that had income of $25,000 or less.

In 1967, 44.5% of Black households were low-income, compared with 9.1% high-income. 2019 was the first time, ever, that the percentage of high-income Black households exceeded the percentage of low-income Black households.

In 2019, Business equity among Blacks increased 138%.

I bring these numbers up to show that the oversimplification of the state of Black people in the U.S. is an ingrained part of liberal messaging. It distorts the true picture of what is happening, which is that the problems that still impact blacks — and there are absolutely problems that persist — have less to do with systemic racism and more to do with the breakdown of the family unit.

But that’s the part of the message those on the left don’t want you to hear.

Listening to all the rhetoric in the popular media, you would think America is the most unfair, racist nation in the world.

You would think that Black Americans are uniformly living in oppression and poverty, with no hope for the future, save the federal government arriving on the scene to their rescue.

Sorry to trouble you liberals with facts. But indeed there are facts.

And the facts tell a far different story than what we are hearing in the left-wing dominated news.

Let’s start with the most recent annual report of the Census Bureau: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019.

According to this report, annual real median household income in the U.S. increased 6.8% in 2019, the largest annual increase recorded by the Census Bureau going back to 1967.

Black median household income in 2019 increased 7.9%, the largest on record.

Moreover, in 2019, 29.4% of Black households had income of $75,000 or more, compared with 28.7% of Black households that had income of $25,000 or less.

In 1967, 44.5% of Black households were low-income, compared with 9.1% high-income

2019 was the first time, ever, that the percentage of high-income Black households exceeded the percentage of low-income Black households.

In 2019, Business equity among Blacks increased 138%.

How about other measures of achievement?

Per the Census Bureau, in 2019, 88% of Blacks had a high school diploma, 98% of the national average.

Compare that to in 1950, the percent of Blacks with a high school diploma equaled 50% of the national average.

In 2018, 37.8% of Blacks ages 18-24 were enrolled in college, compared with a national average of 40.9% in this age group.

In the age group of 25-39, 28.4% had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 40.5% of the general population.

The high school dropout rate among Blacks in 2018 was 4.9%, compared with a national average of 5.7%.

Am I trying to divert attention from the many real economic and social problems in many Black communities?

Certainly not.

But what I do wish to disabuse is the focus on problems in certain Black communities and using this data to generalize about all Blacks.

It’s certainly false and a distortion, and ironic how often this is coming from those who pretend to be fighting racism.

It certainly is true, again according to the Census Bureau, that in 2019, Blacks, who constituted 13.2% of the population, represented 23.8% of those living below the poverty line.

But is this about racism?

The data tells us that this is about family breakdown, not racism.

And the problem of family breakdown is afflicting the whole nation. It just happens to be hitting many Black communities particularly hard.

Poverty is excessive in households of all races that are headed by single women.

Blacks just happen to have a very high percentage of households headed by single women.

But, according to Statistica, only 6.4% of Black households headed by a married couple live in poverty.

So, enough of racist generalizations about Blacks.

And enough of the distortions that Blacks have not been gaining ground in our free country and that where we do have problems, we need more government.

Black progress and achievement since the 1960s have been substantial.

Where problems exist, and where progress is disappointing, invariably, government has been the problem, not the solution.

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