VivirLatino

African-American and Latino Families in Danger of Falling Out of Middle Class

15:16 H | Topics: Controversia - Labor - Race - US Presidential Race 2008

Showing that Latin@s and African Americans are certainly connected in more ways than their mutual love for Obama, a new report states that the Latin@ and African American communities are both in danger of "falling out of" the U.S. middle class:

The vast majority of African-American and Latino families who have entered the middle class are either borderline or at high risk of falling out of the middle class altogether. The 2008 study by the policy center Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University shows that one in four African-American and fewer than one in five Latino middle-class families in America are financially secure.

This makes me wonder if the historical tension between Latin@s and African Americans (that was vastly over played during the early stages of the election by the media) is about something deeper and more complex than "you hate us and we hate you."

Tension has a way of getting pretty intense when two groups are battling it out over the same resources. Elle at Elle, PhD really hits home when she points out that each of the businesses in her small town have the unwritten rule that only one person of color will be hired and how that rule has lead to tension between Latin@s and blacks:

1. When each bank hired one black teller and stuck to that quota until they merged a few years ago, that was just the way it was.

2. The owners of the only store that stays open after 10 p.m. are southeast Asian. While the relationship between the owners and primarily-black customers seems mutually antagonistic, I have seen black customers treat them in a way I've never seen white store owners treated--yelling at the store owners and making threats, for example. I've heard black customers disdainfully call them "A-rabs" and "Julios."

3. The bank has finally hired it's first Latino teller, and he has had to deal with backlash from black and white customers who question his hiring or who initially didn't want to be helped by him.

Although some of the tension that Elle talks about in her post may be related to learned racism of each community against the other, I'm willing to bet most of the tension is there because there are so few opportunities for any community of color to 'advance' in the U.S., or, as this report demonstrates, actually stay in high economic positions once they get there.

Some more of the worrying statistics the report discovered:

* Only 2 percent of African-American and 8 percent of middle-class Latino families have enough net financial assets to meet three-quarters of their essential living expenses for nine months if their source of income disappeared. * About 95 percent of African-American and 87 percent of Latino middle-class families do not have enough net assets to meet three-quarters of their essential living expenses for even three months if their source of income were to disappear. * Only 26 percent of African-American and 37 percent of Latino middle-class families spend less than 20 percent of their after-tax income on housing -- both are below the national average of 40 percent.