Black middle class losing income, wealth
Ashahed M. Muhammad/Special to the NNPA from The Final Call
Issue date: 3/29/09 Section: Cover
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According to a Chicago Urban League report, the failure of White firms to hire Black workers or Black firms for professional services, and unequal treatment of Blacks in the industry is already costing the city's Black community some $1.2 billion in lost income.
The report, "African-Americans Navigating Chicago's Professional Services Sector: Facing Challenges, Seizing Opportunities," noted that the professional services sector represents "high level, high wage earning jobs."
Institutional barriers create obstacles to future acquisition of Black wealth and could be the death knell for many Black professionals still employed, it warned.
"Blacks have not recovered from the recession of 2001 which cut Black by about two per cent and income declined about two per cent. Blacks only have about 15 per cent of wealth of White Americans with a disproportionate amount of wealth in home values. These facts have led to projections that almost a third of the Black middle class could fallout of their middle-class status," observed Dedrick Muhammad, a senior organizer and research associate for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute of Policy Studies in an e-mail to The Final Call.
"Black businesses nationwide are some of the least capitalized so the tightening of the lending market and the decline in consumer spending disproportionately put Black businesses in jeopardy," Muhammad said.
In his Saviours' Day 2009 keynote address on March 1, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said that Blacks earn $744 billion annually, and must unite to survive America's severe economic trial.
Instead of seeking economic benefits from a system that is falling, Farrakhan said Blacks should sacrifice some of a reported $2.7 billion spent on leisure and entertainment, some of the $2.8 billion spent on harmful vices such as tobacco products, and on the $2.5 billion on alcohol.
"All our artists, entertainers, and sports figures are doing something to give back . But if we were a part of a national pot and everybody put in what they could afford to sacrifice, we would have $30 million, $40 million, $50 million, $100 million, $200 million, $500 million, a billion dollars? America is for sale but how much of it do we own?" Farrakhan asked.
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