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The Forgotten 15.9 Million People

By Craig J. Cantoni

The rest of the story about race and poverty

You probably won’t be surprised by the following poverty rates by race/ethnicity:

Asians:  8.1%

Non-Hispanic Whites:  8.1%

Hispanics:  17.0%

Blacks:  19.5%

U.S. Average:  11.4%

Year:  2021

Source:  https://www.federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html

You might be surprised, however, by the following absolute numbers of Americans in poverty, especially the last number:

Asians:  1.6 million

Blacks:  8.5 million

Hispanics:  10.4 million

Non-Hispanic Whites:  15.9 million

If the last number surprises you, perhaps the reason is that it is rarely cited by the media or social-justice activists. The number reveals the falsity of the popular refrain that all whites come from privilege.

A cautionary note: Statistics by race are always squishy, because the racial categories are ill-defined, because the categories overlap, because a large percentage of Americans have biracial parents, because the “Hispanic” category is a catchall and not a single race or single ethnicity, and because the “White” and “Asian” categories are also catchall categories, encompassing hundreds of ethnic groups and an array of skin shades and socioeconomic classes. Moreover, there is variation in the numbers depending on the source and the reporting period, a problem compounded by the COVID pandemic’s negative impact on income.

Except for whites, the poverty rates for all four groups have declined significantly over recent decades. To wit:

From 1970 to 2019, the poverty rate for blacks declined from 31.8% to 18.8%. (The decrease in poverty for blacks is even more significant if one goes back to 1965, when the poverty rate for blacks was 40%.)

From 1970 to 2019, the poverty rate for Hispanics declined from 22% to 15.7%, even though a lot of poor and unskilled Hispanics immigrated to the US during this period.

From 1985 to 2019, the poverty rate for Asians declined from 19% to 7.3% (numbers aren’t reliable prior to 1985 for Asians).

From 1970 to 2019, the poverty rate for whites increased slightly from 7.0% to 7.3%.

Note:  The above numbers were interpolated from a graph, so they may not exactly match published statistics.

Source: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html

In any event, regardless of someone’s race, ethnicity or pigment, it stinks to be in poverty.

It should go without saying that poverty varies considerably by locale, but it has to be said because that’s another complexity generally overlooked by the media and social-justice activists. Several examples are below.

The poverty rate as of 2019 was:

32.3% for blacks in Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit),

35.7% for whites in Harlan County, Kentucky,

34.0% for Hispanics in Erie County, New York,

22.0% for Hispanics in my home county of Pima County, Arizona (the county reports a rate of 23.6% for 2021),

32.9% for Asians in Calhoun County, Texas,

8.3% for Asians in Palo Alto, California,

4.2% for whites in Palo Alto, California, and

0.86% for whites in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Source:  https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/acs-percentage-poverty-2015-2019.html

The last two locales above (Palo Alto and Chevy Chase) are populated by progressives who bemoan white privilege and virtue-signal about diversity and inclusion. Whites in Harlan County probably have a different perspective on those topics.

Poverty also varies considerably by the ethnic groups and nationalities within each catchall category. For example, within the Asian category, Hmong Americans and Cambodian Americans have poverty rates of 37.8% and 29.3%, respectively.

For some sick reason, many of America’s intelligentsia and media want Americans to believe that poverty isn’t lowered in two-parent families. They point out the fact that black children with two parents in the household are mired in poverty at double or triple the rates of white children with two parents in the household. But what they don’t point out is that the poverty rate of black children decreases significantly if both parents are in the household. Not only that, but crime decreases and test scores increase. 

Also left unsaid is that it takes generations of stable family life to build social and financial capital. For example, my working-class parents had more income and education than their poor and poorly educated immigrant parents, I have more education and income than my parents did, my son has more income and education than I did at his age, and his kids might have a chance of getting into a prestigious university and joining America’s elites, although having elite status would be anathema to my son and his delightful wife, who, by the way, has a Filipino mother and a Mediterranean father. (What race does that make her?)

A related subject for another day is income inequality, which is indeed a growing problem in the U.S. but not as serious a problem as reported, after all forms of income are included in comparisons; that is, not just wage income but also income from transfer payments (welfare and entitlements), earned income tax credits, and the value of such non-cash benefits as public education and free or subsidized medical care. Incidentally, metro San Francisco, which is one of the most liberal parts of the country, has the highest income inequality of all major U.S. metro areas.

A very serious problem for a fuller discussion on another day is the middle class being under siege, especially the lower half of the middle class. This is an important issue because a thriving middle class keeps the nation, and any nation, from bifurcating into a two-class society of a powerless poor and the powerful wealthy, as is common in Latin America.

In the last 37 years, college tuition has increased 129 percent in constant dollars—this by institutions that profess to care about inequality and social justice while reaping the benefits of sticking students with $1.6 trillion in student loans. Housing costs have seen a similar increase, resulting in a decrease in homeownership, so that nearly three in eight homes today are rentals. As author and commentator Victor David Hanson says, “The result is a new American peasantry, of millions of Americans who own little or no property.” In that sense, they are similar to property-less medieval peasants dependent on property-owning overlords.

The bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie have been hated by the intelligentsia throughout history. America is no exception. After bearing the above costs and the brunt of the downsides of globalization and immigration, America’s lower middle class has been insulted as clingers, deplorables and irredeemables. 

At the same time, as seen at the beginning of this commentary, the nearly 16 million whites in poverty have been largely ignored or demeaned.

This doesn’t make for racial and class harmony but does make for political extremism and demagoguery.