Black Guy Asks Nation for Change
This 2008 headline from the satirical newspaper the onion captures just how remarkable Barak Obama’s presidential candidacy was for the US.
The play on words highlighted the contrast between the stereotype of a black man as a freeloader (beginning for small change) and Obama as an inspirational leader (asking for cultural change).
It is easy to forget there were fewer than 45 years between the freedom march and the election of the first African American president.
Much has changed in race relations in the years since the civil rights movement, a lot for the better.
This made it possible for the country to elect Obama, just as the president and the prime minister of India in 2019 were from the erstwhile backward castes, something
On the other hand, while the African American population today is much better educated than it was in 1965, the income gap between white and black men with similar education
has been growing and is now as much as 30 %, more than that between the SC (scheduled caste) and the other castes in India.
Black Americans have substantially lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than whites.
This clearly is related to the much-discussed large gap in incarceration rates between black males and everyone else, but it is also related to persistent segregation in neighborhoods and schools.
Despite the fact that white male seems to have no reason to feel economically threatened by African American, there is evidence of rising (or at least more open).
References:
- Good Economics for hard times- Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo
