The Great Recession has increased the wealth gap between the races, but the racial wealth divide is nothing new.
Hispanics and blacks have historically had lower income rates, less education and higher unemployment rates.
In 2005, whites only had 12 times more wealth than blacks and eight times more than Hispanics.
While I could make the argument that the article is racially biased, the numbers are hard to refute.
Are these numbers historically based? Yes, but we also must realize that these figures are 21st century figures.
Many irresponsible American whites also got involved in the housing crisis as well. What many media outlets fail to realize is that the number of poor whites in the U.S. is twice that of poor blacks, and dwarfs the number of poor Hispanics just through the number of people in each ethnic group in this country.
Martin Luther King Jr. attested to this fact himself in 1967 in his book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” to back up his claim that poverty is not just a black or white issue that stems from racial discrimination, but rather an issue that affects all races alike.
Just when many thought the class gap had lessened over the past several years, the latest CNN numbers reminds us that we still have much work to do. We must bridge not just the inequity of wealth gap, but the attitude towards fiscal and monetary responsibility in our nation country.
Minorities may have less net worth than the overwhelming majority of American whites according to these numbers, but that does not mean that minorities can’t quickly change their financial and social habits to close the aforementioned statistics of the media.
• Armstrong Williams is sole owner/manager of Howard Stirk Holdings and executive editor of American CurrentSee online magazine.
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