Down and Out<\/a> by Jamelle Bouie in Slate.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> \u201cWe didn\u2019t run from where we grew up. We aren\u2019t afraid to be associated with the people who came up with us.\u201d<\/p>\nThat\u2019s Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks writing in defense of his friend, DeSean Jackson, who was cut from the Philadelphia Eagles amid reports of gang ties. Sherman isn\u2019t trying to litigate the allegations or exonerate Jackson\u2014he doesn\u2019t know the details. But he doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s wrong for Jackson to associate with the men from his childhood.<\/p>\n
And why would it be? Yes, some of them have criminal records\u2014and for some, that includes gang activity\u2014but leaving home is hard, and the social distance of wealth makes it even harder. As Sherman writes, \u201cIn desperate times for people who come from desperate communities, your friends become your family. I wouldn\u2019t expect DeSean to \u2018distance himself\u2019 from anybody, as so many people suggest pro athletes ought to do despite having no understanding of what that means.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if Sherman sees it or not\u2014my hunch is that he does\u2014but in a few sentences, he\u2019s put his finger on the pulse of something overlooked in our discussions of poverty and economic mobility as they relate to black Americans: neighborhood. Sherman\u2019s experience of being pulled back to a poor neighborhood, even as he accumulates wealth, is common among blacks.<\/p>\n
The difference for ordinary black Americans, as opposed to NFL stars, is that this has been a powerful driver of downward mobility. Just a quick comparison of black and white neighborhoods is enough to illustrate the particular challenges that face black families as they reach for middle class, or try to keep their position.<\/p>\n
The key fact is this: Even after you adjust for income and education, black Americans are more likely than any other group to live in neighborhoods with substantial pockets of poverty.<\/p>\n
As sociologist Patrick Sharkey shows in his book Stuck in Place, 62 percent of black adults born between 1955 and 1970 lived in neighborhoods that were at least 20 percent poor, a fact that\u2019s true of their children as well. An astounding 66 percent of blacks born between 1985 and 2000 live in neighborhoods as poor or poorer as those of their parents.<\/p>\n
A recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation affirmed this fact. According to the foundation, only 50 percent of black children live in neighborhoods with a poverty rate below 20 percent, compared to a national average of 74 percent. Of course, the other way to say this is that 50 percent of black children live in neighborhoods with poverty rates of greater than 20 percent.*<\/p>\n
How does this stack up to white families? Here, Sharkey is indispensable: Among white children born through 1955 and 1970, just 4 percent live in high poverty neighborhoods. Or, put another way, black Americans live with a level of poverty that is simply unknown to the vast majority of whites.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tempting to attribute this to the income disparity between blacks and whites. Since blacks are more likely to be poor, it stands to reason that they\u2019re more likely to live in poor neighborhoods. But the fact of large-scale neighborhood poverty holds true for higher-income black Americans as well. Middle-class blacks are far more likely than middle-class whites to live in areas with significant amounts of poverty. Among today\u2019s cohort of middle- and upper-class blacks, about half were raised in neighborhoods of at least 20 percent poverty. Only 1 percent of today\u2019s middle- and upper-class whites can say the same.<\/p>\n
In short, if you took two children\u2014one white, one black\u2014and gave them parents with similar jobs, similar educations, and similar values, the black child would be much more likely to grow up in a neighborhood with higher poverty, worse schools, and more violence.<\/p>\n
This is an outright disaster for income mobility. According to Sharkey, a child with roots in a high poverty neighborhood has a 64 percent chance of moving down the income ladder over the course of his or her lifetime. Given their circumstances, blacks face a reversal of their gains over the last generation.<\/p>\n
Simply put, the persistence of poor neighborhoods is a fact of life for the large majority of blacks; it\u2019s been transmitted from one generation to the next, and shows little sign of changing. All of which raises an obvious question: Why do blacks have a hard time leaving impoverished neighborhoods?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen white families advance in economic status,\u201d writes Sharkey, \u201cthey are able to translate this economic advantage into spatial advantage by buying into communities that provide quality schools and healthy environments for children.\u201d The same isn\u2019t true for black Americans, and some of the answer has to include present and ongoing housing discrimination. For example, in one study\u2014conducted by the Department of Housing and the Urban Institute\u2014black renters learned about fewer rental units and fewer homes than their white counterparts.<\/p>\n
Once you grasp the staggering differences between black and white neighborhoods, it becomes much easier to explain a whole realm of phenomena. Take the achievement gap between middle-class black students and their white peers. It\u2019s easy to look at this and jump to cultural explanations\u2014that this is a function of black culture and not income or wealth. But, when we say middle-class black kids are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods, what we\u2019re also saying is that they\u2019re less likely to have social networks with professionals, and more likely to be exposed to violence and crime.<\/p>\n
This can have serious consequences. Youthful experimentation for a white teenager in a suburb might be smoking a joint in a friend\u2019s attic. Youthful experimentation for a black teenager might be hanging out with gang members. As Mary Pattillo-McCoy writes in her book Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class, \u201cYouth walk a fine line between preparing for success and youthful delinquent experimentation, the consequences of which can be especially serious for black youth.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSean Jackson is still an NFL player, and\u2014as a player for Washington, D.C.\u2019s professional football team\u2014will make a tremendous amount of money. He can keep his connections to his friends, he can live in the same neighborhood, if he wants, and downward mobility won\u2019t be a pressing concern.<\/p>\n
For millions of more ordinary black Americans, however, the opposite is true. Even with more income and more education, they\u2019re stuck in segregated neighborhoods. Yes, there isn\u2019t much mobility for anyone, but that fact is especially true for blacks. Indeed, when someone says that America has a \u201cracial hierarchy,\u201d this is what they mean: Whether times are good or bad, blacks remain at the bottom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Down and Out by Jamelle Bouie in Slate. The Text: \u201cWe didn\u2019t run from where we grew up. We aren\u2019t afraid to be associated with the people who came up with us.\u201d That\u2019s Richard Sherman of the Seattle Seahawks writing in defense of his friend, DeSean Jackson, who was cut from the Philadelphia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n