Blacks' economic gains wiped out in downturn

MSNBC ^ | 7/10/2011 | JESSE WASHINGTON/ap

[tobyhill]

Growing up black in the segregated 1960s, Deborah Goldring slept two to a bed, got evicted from apartment after apartment, and watched her stepfather climb utility poles to turn their disconnected lights back on. Yet Goldring pulled herself out of poverty and earned a middle-class life — until the Great Recession.

First, Goldring's husband fell ill, and they drained savings to pay for nursing homes before he died. Then Goldring lost her executive assistant job in the Baltimore hospital where she had worked for 17 years. The cruelest blow was a letter from the bank, intending to foreclose on her home of almost three decades.

Millions of Americans endured similar financial calamities in the recession. But for Goldring and many others in the black community, where unemployment is still rising, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty. Some even see a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.

Goldring remembers her mother taping the blinds to the wall so no one could see them stealing electricity. She remembers each time she sat on the curb with her three brothers, surrounded by her family's belongings, waiting for a new place to live. Sitting on those curbs, she promised to always pay her bills on time.

[Chandalier]

My mom grew up in the 30s/40s and was dirt poor; my dad was even worse off than that. Funny thing is they’ve delighted us with stories of their childhood our whole life. Making us laugh and cry at the same time. Some people never appreciate what important in life and you can’t convince them.

[Cementjungle]

Yet many jobless blacks do not blame their plight on the president.

"I have no problem with Obama when I look at what the alternatives are," Wilder says.

Well, they'll still vote for him.

[PetroniusMaximus]

You get what you vote for, fellas.

[Shannon]

From the article:
Goldring doesn't think Obama is doing a bad job either. "The unemployment situation is not the best, but I don't think it has a lot to do with him," she says.

Unbelievable.

[MamaB]

Yep. I have a pinched sciatic nerve and when it is giving me fits, I just put a sheet on the carpet and go to sleep. My friends and relatives think I am nuts but it really helps more than anything else I have tried over the years. Sometimes if I am in a hotel, I will do the same. Nothing wrong with it if it helps me get rid of pain.

[no dems]

So, let me think about this: For 80% of the Bush years, the Black people interviewed in this article were doing well and prospering. Almost 3 years under Barack Obama and they are near poverty level again. I wonder who they voted for in '08? Wonder who they'll vote for again in '12?

[raybbr]

Went to play tennis at a local park in New Haven, CT. All the blacks there (and one liberal white guy) were having a discussion about the evil corporations, how Wall Street is stealing the United States, how republicans are taking away Medicare, republicans are "telling people what they can/can't do", etc.

We are lost. The nation is a collection of people with a sense of entitlement that rivals Rome.

One black said Obama is not doing enough about taxing the rich and closing loopholes.

I couldn't even stand there and have a cogent conversation with them. They believe all the lies they've been told all there lives. Trying to change them is hopeless.

[Jeff Chandler]

Then Goldring lost her executive assistant job in the Baltimore hospital where she had worked for 17 years.

I'll bet there is an interesting story there.

[Jeff Chandler]

So she grew up poor in the 60s and slept two to a bed. My wife grew up poor in the 50s/60s, lived in the country in houses that had no running water, one light bulb and slept with her twin sister. She didn’t live in a house with an indoor toilet until she was 15.

She was lucky.

I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

[no dems]

I am not black, and my economic gains haven't been so fruitful either.
Obama has hurt us all, why should we single out blacks?
For three reasons:
1. 96 percent of the Blacks voted for Obama thinking the Brotha was gonna lead them to Utopia. Instead, along with the rest of the nation, he's leading them to Hell.
2. They will, like lemmings, vote for Obama AGAIN in 2012; you won't.
3. It's just verifying the fact that Blacks would vote Democratic even if it meant their grandchildren would be shot by a firing squad.

[chargers fan]

I was listening to Medved and he said the blacks are the only group who when polled said the country is getting better not worse right now. I don’t get it.

[RFEngineer]

Oh where to start. Should we be angry at “the man” for cutting off the lights, or for making her daddy climb the pole to steal electricity?

Should we be angry at “the man” for making her family pay rent or evicting them when they didn’t?

This is the upbringing this woman had, how could she turn out any different?

It looks like she didn’t turn out any differently.

I don’t believe a word of her hard luck story. Why did she get fired from her job (I’ll be there is a story there)? Exactly how much “savings” are we talking about here that was supposedly drained to pay for her husbands care (or is it a BS story to elicit tears from the reader?)

30 years in a house, yet it gets foreclosed?

The story of achieving “middle class” for blacks is the same as it is for everyone else. If you choose, say, a Lincoln Navigator instead of a 401k, if you choose a designer wardrobe rather than an emergency fund, if you neglect the work that you are paid to do.....all of these things lead to poverty.

That’s the story of this woman. She’d like everyone to believe it’s because she’s black - and that she’s being denied the Middle Class Dream because she’s black.

Nope. She’s done all the things that will ensure she is impoverished should even one slight hiccup occur.

If she wanted to stay middle class, she should have tried - she didn’t, and now she’ll wallow in poverty.

Poverty is not about money - it’s about choices along the way.

[Misterioso]

Not one Freeper has mentioned the obvious reason for the disappearance of the black middle class: the shrinking of the government job base. The BMC was in large part a creation of the burgeoning government agencies and their application of affirmative action hiring policies. The agencies have run out of the money they hand out to their employees, who are now getting food stamps.

[hosepipe]

[ Unbelievable ]

LoL.. exactly.. Goldring is in OZ... on her way to the Wizard.. with the strawman and many tin god like creatures and and ferocious pussys..

[hosepipe]

Nice post.. very short and accurate..
Barry Half-White is doing kabuki dance steps in black face..

[GloriaJane]

Awesome pic!

[hinckley buzzard]

I'm not sure Obama hates real Black Americans, but I do believe he holds them in contempt. He knows he is not like them--he is more White than Black, to this day-- and never will be, doesn't want to be. He looks at his plug-ugly wife and says "shee-it-- what I had to do to get this far."

[hinckley buzzard]

I agree, you can't tell much from that. I have lived in the same house 33 years and still have a mortgage. Large unexpected expenses have a way of doing that to you. No toys, no boats, no summer cottages on the lake. Just crap that cannot be avoided sometimes.

[Fiji Hill]

Economists say the Great Recession lasted from 2007 to 2009.

So what have we been experiencing since 2009? Great Depression II?

[rdb3]

What is so funny about this is that for decades Blacks have been told that the Conservative Boogieman wanted to keep them down, take away eveything and in economic plight, but those same quote unquote Black Leaders, who convince the masses of Blacks that voting for Obama and his former rubber stamp Congress was a civil rights duty have now fallen silent as he has done more damage than the Klan or any other racist could have dreamed of!

Preach!

If you can't appreciate the pure beauty of the violin after hearing this, something's wrong with your ears.

Or you can get raw with these strings. Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.

Do it!