Why are most African Americans socially disadvantaged?

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Why are most African Americans

Socially disadvantaged?

African Americans have come a long way since the days of slavery, however they are still socially disadvantaged in ‘the land of the free’. The core of the problem as to why most African Americans are socially disadvantaged comes down to wealth inequality. If they had a relatively equal share of the wealth that white America has, African Americans would not face the social problems they do today. The fact is they don’t and this essay will investigate why African Americans don’t share more of Americas vast wealth, which they ironically helped build. There still exists a racial undertow in American society that dates back to the slave trade. This often transparent force has transcended many of America’s institutions and has contributed to most African Americans being socially disadvantaged. The Emancipation Proclamation was the catalyst in abolishing slavery from the American way of life, but most African Americans are still slaves of the American system. The policies involving property, credit markets and education that have been adopted by the white power system in America have made it hard for civil rights to be equal between blacks and whites. This has resulted in most African Americans being systematically woven into the lower class fabric of America, making it almost impossible to escape. These reasons along with the well documented fact that the gap between the middle and lower class America dramatically increased during the technological boom era of the 1950’s and 1960’s, and continues to increase, contributes to African Americans being socially disadvantaged. As a result of these reasons African Americans exist within America, but they are not part of America.

The main reason why African Americans are socially disadvantaged is because of the inequality of wealth ownership. “Wealth ownership is the socioeconomic measure that displays the single greatest racial disparity in America today” (Conley, D, 1999/2000, p 595). Whites own twelve times more property than that of blacks, and the gap in property value is ever widening (Conley, D, 1999/2000). This wealth ownership problem stems from a few main reasons including, the wealth generation gap, ghetto life and the flawed welfare system.

The wealth generation gap that socially disadvantages African Americans spans back to America’s colonization. Land and consequently resources were given away to the early settlers, and this was the foundation of asset accumulation in America (Bailyn, Dallek, Davis, Donald, Thomas & Wood, 1985). When African Americans were brought to the country as slaves they didn’t have any rights to the land and were given no opportunity to claim any for themselves (Conley, D, 1999/2000). By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, where the African Americans started being released, all of the free land in America had been taken by the European settlers. A theology behind a capitalist, free market economy is that the more money you start off with the more money you can potentially make. In the case of the African Americans, they started off with little or no money at all, which disadvantaged them from the start. As African Americans share less of the countries wealth than the whites, the amount of inheritance passed down to the next generation is significantly less, which makes their plight to lessen their social disadvantage harder.  The racial wealth gap that exists, which derives from generations of wealth inequality between blacks and whites isn’t easily fixed (Conley, D, 1999/2000).

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The small elements of entrepreneurial affluence which exist in predominantly African American areas contribute to why they are socially disadvantaged. Particularly in ghettos where the numbers of blacks who own businesses are small and they generally only employ a few staff, it is difficult for these types of businesses to help raise the whole community economically (Conley, D, 1999/2000. Ghetto type areas need medium and large scale businesses to help raise their African American economic prospects. However, these types of businesses can’t succeed in the ghettos and the numbers of other business types that don’t exist in the ghettos ...

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