Being married to or cohabitating with a black man raises the median net wealth of black women by 31X.
The actual multiple is 310x since single black woman's median wealth was posted as $100 and married/cohabitating black couples are at $31,000. So 310 x 100 == 31,000. The body text has been changed to reflect the correct numbers]
Last week during the epic black male privilege and porn argument I suggested that people read my old post Note To The So Called POC Revolutionaries
which contains this relevant piece of advice:
3) Spec-i-fic-i-ty: This is the exact opposite of the Generalization problem. I recall Professor Fluker of Tuskegee University saying that one needed to be specific. I didn't quite catch on until some years after. Some months ago I was in court on a speeding ticket and overheard a lawyer advising his client. He stated that the law said "xyz AND..abc" The "and" being the critical statement in the case. Specificity allows you to control a conversation by defining the terms. Your ability to make a clear and specific argument is going to be your "trump card" in most arguments. It is almost inevitable that those that oppose you will fall into pitfalls 5 and 7 above in an attempt to smear you. But because they are stupid enough to fall into pitfalls 5 and 7 you will be able to counter them with little energy on your part. At best you want terms defined in a manner that is clear to everyone AND that can be universally agreed upon. Avoid making up new terms or defining terms with contradictory words It would be best if your defined word can be broken up etymologically and still stand or you may find yourself playing the word game which is not only a distraction but will cause you to waste time defending to anyone but your "yes friends."
and
7) Mistaking what you want to be the case for being the case: I think this is a huge problem. So many people think that what they would like to be reality is in fact reality. For example, with the Duke issue. If rape is defined legally as involuntary vaginal intercourse don't have a discussion on the subject as if rape was legally defined as anything else. If you want to have a hypothetical discussion in which rape is legally defined as something else then have that conversation, but don't get mad at people who are having a conversation with things clearly defined. Another example, Islam allowed for slavery. So did Christianity, Judaism and just about every other religion. There are all kinds of people who get all bent out of shape because they choose to wish such things away. Don't be one of those people. The road to changing systems or even replacing them, is understanding what they are.
This is not a porn discussion though. This is about an article and the tweets it inspired.
On Tuesday a twit arrived in my twitter client proclaiming: "Study finds Median Wealth for Single Black Women at $5". I was immediately skeptical. I read the long article where this statement was made and looked for a link to the original academic paper. It wasn't there. Just a chart taken from it. After a quick search I found the piece and you can find it here:
http://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/LiftingAsWeClimb-InsightCenter-Spring2010.pdf
Reading the paper I discovered something important. The headline claim was never stated in the paper. The paper said:
Single, Non-white and/or hispanic women between the ages of 36 and 49 have a median net worth of $5 (their male counterparts have $1,100). Now that's a bad statistic and doesn't need spin in order to make an impact. But a few things need to be discussed:
1) Non-white and/or hispanic includes Black women, Hispanic women of any racial group, Native-American, etc. Nothing in the paper breaks out black women for this particular statistic.
2) Median vs. Mean: a lot of people mistake median and
-10,-9,-7,-6,0,5,10,11,12,13,14
The mean is 3.
The median is 5.
In this case the average is lower than the median. In reference to the report the median wealth of single Black women in particular could be less than $5.
we could look at this differently. lets look at this example:
Three people. One is $40k in the hole 'cause they have an expensive car note. The second has $0 net wealth cause they have a small income and equivalent debts (hand to mouth). And the third has a net worth of $100k due to their owning a home and having paid for their vehicle.
-40,000, 0, 100,000
The median net worth of this group is $0.
Alarming.
The mean for this same group is: $20,000.
Not so alarming....maybe.
Clearly no one in the group has an actual net wealth of $20k but arithmetically that is the average and it is way higher than the median.
Now in these kinds of papers there is weighting and other things that I'm not at all proficient in, but it still stands that looking at the report you have to be careful about what overall conclusions one extrapolates from the data.
Another way of looking at this is this: Say there is a report that crime in NYC is down 50%. Great! But what if you live in a part of NYC that has high crime? That drop in crime may not mean much to you when there is still have random gunfire going on in your neighborhood. Hence we have to realize that statistics are only valid for the group it studies.
So that's my first issue with how this report has been presented. My next issue has to do with the conclusions drawn and is more opinion than anything else.
Page 4 of the report has a chart that shows the net median wealth of people by household type and race. That chart shows that single Black women have a median net wealth of $100 ($5,000 if vehicle is included. I wouldn't). Single Black men have a median net wealth of $7,900 ($12,600 if vehicles are included). A stark difference indeed. The next group is highly instructive though.
Black men and women who are cohabitating or married have a median net wealth of $31,500 ($46,900 if vehicles are included). This is something that I believe ought to be front and center of this discussion. Being married to or cohabitating with a black man raises the median net wealth of black women by 310X.
That. is. HUGE.
By not being married to, or cohabitating with a black man, black women are being deprived of $31,400 in wealth. I cannot fathom how anyone who advocates for black women to "do them" and how they "don't need no man" is even tolerated since it is statistically clear that getting with a black man "medianly" has an extreme economic benefit to black women. So rather than headline the report that "single black women have five bucks" which wasn't even written in the report, the headline ought to have been:
marriage increases black women's wealth 310X!
But that is a headline that would promote black families and would *gasp* link financial wealth of black women with that of black men; something taboo in certain quarters.
Which brings me to my third issue with the report and it's journey around the internet. While the statistics look pretty bad, it also shows a number of things:
1) Half of single Black women in the study have a median net worth over $5.
2) Promoting marriage (or at least cohabitation) between black men and women should be promoted as a means of increasing the overall median wealth of black people in general.
3) Since childcare is possibly the second or third largest expense for single parents efforts ought to be made to
a) Keep black parents together.
b) Increase the income of the male partner so that childcare expenses can be eliminated for the family unit. This is not going to be popular among a set of black women because they believe that they should be a career woman and mother, even though they leave the majority of "mothering" to other people. Of course we have stay at home fathers as well. However; according to the statistics here, a stay at home father is a waste of wealth.
Now looking at those who are at or below $5 we have to ask how this can be the case. Go back to my example of the person with the $40k car. They are in the hole because of their debts. There are a lot of people rolling around with debt that they really don't need to have. We covered child care. That is a huge burden on any family and negatively affects net wealth.
Since Black women are entering and graduating from institutions of higher education at a rate higher than Black men, we have to take into consideration the cost of that education. If you've taken out loans to cover 4-5 years of undergrad, it is likely you have 20, 30,40 thousand or more in debt at age 23. That debt isn't going to up and disappear in 2 years either. A lot of people enter their 30's with university debt and add to that automobile debt, credit card debt, Rent, etc. So for even educated black women, the debts start early. Should they decide to "go it alone" with a child early on as well, then that only adds to the wealth problem.
If a smaller proportion of black men are not going to expensive university, but instead less expensive trade school then it stands to reason they enter their adult years with less education debt to service. On the other hand if black men are able to get paid more in the workplace because they are men or that the jobs available to them are higher paying, then that also affects the wealth gap.
So what are some take away lessons here:
1) Black people need to be aware of their finances. Black girls and boys ought to be taught early on how to deal with their money. How to project income and expenses and how to do long term financial planning.
2) College graduates ought to have 2 things at the top of their minds. 1) paying off student loans as soon as possible, 2) Securing a life partner.
By doing these two things black people would see exponential wealth growth.
Of course there is always the route of blaming black men and complaining about white people.