The official unemployment rate is 15.8 percent among Blacks and 13 percent among Latinos; Blacks earn only 57 cents for each dollar of White family income, Latinos earn 59 cents; and Blacks have only 10 cents of net wealth while Latinos have 12 cents to every dollar of net wealth that Whites have.
As documented in the report “State of the Dream 2011: Austerity for Whom?,” this is the precarious state in which Blacks and Latinos find themselves as the nation, still struggling amidst the Great Recession, paused in January to remember the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was gunned down while leading the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968.
The eighth annual “State of the Dream” report from United for a Fair Economy analyzes the policy positions of the new House majority–shrinking government and cutting taxes for those at the top– and their implications on communities of color.
“Austerity measures based on the conservative tenets of less government and lower taxes will ratchet down the standard of living for all Americans, while simultaneously widening our nation’s racial and economic divide,” said Brian Miller, executive director of United for a Fair Economy and co-author of the report.
Original analyses in “State of the Dream 2011” show the clear beneficiaries of the top-end tax cuts included in the December tax deal. Whites are three times more likely than Blacks and 4.6 times more likely than Latinos to have incomes of $250,000 or more, and thus receive a disproportionate benefit from the extension of the Bush tax cuts for top-tier earners.
