Fantastical illlusions are also a tool that is deployed to cope with the humbling realities of an often marginalized existence. The “Bow Wow Challenge” that took over social media earlier in the month was a reflection of a daily pattern of illusions for many. Some aspect of Bow Wow fronting like he was traveling on a private plane instead of his actual reality of flying coach on a commercial airline is frequently in operation for Black people in this country.
For all of the trips, fancy purses, and Jordan-brand shoes the truth is that the vast majority of us are barely scraping by. Credit, celebrities, and trinkets have given many of us the illusion that we are doing much better economically than we actually are. We have been bamboozled by Facebook likes, hoodwinked by Instagram comments, and led astray by Twitter retweets Social media has a tendency to tell you a lot of things that aren’t true.
The data suggest that the majority of African Americans are not in a great place financially. A prime example of this is a finding from the “The Color of Wealth in Boston” report that found that the median net worth of White households in Boston is $247,500 while the median net worth of Black households is $8
The average net worth of a single Black woman with a bachelor’s degree is $-11,000 and the median wealth of a single Black woman without a bachelor’s degree is $0 according to a research brief entitled “Women, Race, and Wealth” by Khaing Zaw, Jhumpa Bhattacharya, Anne Price, Darrick Hamilton, and William Darity, Jr. This underscores the sad reality that getting a college degree may actually be a hindrance in some cases to a person’s wealth position because of the frequent need to go into large amounts of debt in order to obtain higher education.
Most of the racial wealth gaps that exist are a result of the lack of intergenerational wealth transfers available for Black families based on a host of different reasons ranging from Federal Housing Administration policy, slavery, Jim Crowe laws, employment discrimination, denial of access to capital, and the list goes on and on.
The larger point in citing these figures is that we are economically struggling because we began a figurative 100 meter dash 50 meters behind. There is an economic disadvantage for Blacks that is built into the fabric of American society.
Black men are the most unemployed and incarcerated group in the country per capita. The jobless rate for Black men between ages of 20 and 34 in many cities including Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore is above 45% according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
The psychological impact on men who haven’t been able to overcome the reality of the labor market is a story that is seldom told. Many are suffering from broken dreams and delusions of grandeur that have not been fulfilled. An argument can be made that many Black men have been suffering from a secret depression for years as a result of this financial crunch. A great deal of it probably has its roots in an economic struggle.
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