The Great Example.
Recently, my interest in all things politics has spawned many insightful conversations about politics and its relationship to economics. This in turn leads into a discussion about race and economics. Overlooking the impact race has on economics should be unavoidable, but that is simply not the case. Many of us grow up with the notion that if we work hard we will be successful. We are taught that hard work is rewarded.
A statistic at the National Civil Rights museum stated as recently as 1998 only 14.7% of blacks made $50,000 or more. So, that talented tenth Dubois was going on about in the early 1900’s didn’t exist until the 1990’s. Let’s go further. The Black employment rate is 16.5%, which means 68.8% of blacks are working for less than $50,000. The debate about why black people aren’t successful or why black people are poor is because they’re lazy, they want welfare or they don’t work. Yet, majority of blacks do work but they don’t make a lot of money!
Now to my title, the great example. One-way of motivating people, especially black people is to use the success of one successful black person. It’s like if he or she could make it then you can too. Don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating not motivating people but this overlooks something rather important. Why tell people to work extremely hard to overcome adversities and not address why those adversities exist. We should praise the success of black people but not at the expense of discussing why majority of black people are making less than $50, 000. It can’t be because they’re lazy.
The use of the great example angers me. The success of one black person doesn’t mean its possible for all black people. That’s not being pessimistic but rather realistic. Some people have more opportunities than others and there are many factors to be considered. The success of Oprah hasn’t improved the lives of black women. Yes, I’m happy Oprah’s successful, but what about everybody else? More importantly, the mere fact you have to point out individual success stories should make it apparent there’s a larger problem at hand. We don’t sit around and discuss the few successful white people because as a whole they’re more successful.
Let’s look at it another way. If you ran a school and only 15% of students passed state tests, would you be happy. Would you go yay! Look at these 150 students out of 1000 that passed. Would you tell the students that failed look at Student B he/she got a 100, you could too. No, you would examine the problem. It can’t possibly be an individual problem if 85% is doing poorly.
So, the argument of black people not doing well because they’re lazy needs to stop being made. What about the millions of working class blacks who toil away at jobs for forty hours or more and barely make ends meet? When are we going to examine a system where blacks are disenfranchised and come up with solutions to solving the problem? Yes, I want you to use one of those great examples that inspire you to be successful and at the time I want you to question why you’re working so hard to achieve something that comes so easily to others?
