Racism, Alive & Well In America

Via Altercation, go read the whole thing, we get:

Forty-five percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle class in 1968 -- a stratum with a median income of $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars -- grew up to be among the lowest fifth of the nation's earners, with a median family income of $23,100. Only 16 percent of whites experienced similar downward mobility. At the same time, 48 percent of black children whose parents were in an economic bracket with a median family income of $41,700 sank into the lowest income group."
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This is true across the board, but it is at the bottom rung where the failure of the American system is most apparent. In the Nordic nations, for instance, three-quarters of those on welfare had moved up and out of the system by the time they reached their 40s, but barely more than half of their American counterparts had. As the editors of The Economist (subscription required) put it, "In other words, Nordic countries have almost completely snapped the link between the earnings of parents and children at and near the bottom. That is not at all true of America." In Britain, too, fully 70 percent of those enmeshed in the welfare system had moved out within a single generation, again -- a higher percentage than in America. The magazine points to the generous tax and welfare provisions for families as "the obvious explanation for greater mobility in the Nordic countries ... especially when compared with America's."
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Author Andrew Hacker notes that in studies of black and white job-seekers with identical résumés who apply for publicly advertised jobs, we find incontrovertible evidence of "systemic discrimination that cannot be attributed to differences in skills between comparably educated blacks and whites."
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All of these problems contribute to the horrible situation in which we find ourselves, in which black ghettos constitute a permanent underclass and breeding ground for social pathologies that are then exploited by the likes of Murray, Peretz, Sullivan, and Podhoretz, together with the Glenn Becks, the Imuses, the Rush Limbaughs, etc., to ensure that our society remains one where the poorest are the victims of the poor and near poor -- and vice versa, while the wealthy live behind gated communities, retaining all available privileges for themselves, all the while preaching the virtues of hard work and "playing by the rules."

I have never believed that racism is simply a way to excuse bad behavior, racism is a real thing, a real existential problem for the U.S. & we continue to ignore it at our peril. My emphasis.