5 Ways Integration Underdeveloped Black America

December 9, 2013 | Posted by ABS Staff

Black Wealth Stagnated or Declined After Integration

During segregation, Blacks were forced to start and support the businesses in their own communities. Many of these
businesses flourished and even helped made some Black communities, such as the Greenwood community in Tulsa,
Okla., (often called Black Wall Street), wealthier than their white neighbors.
After segregation ended, African-Americans flocked to support businesses owned by whites and other groups, causing
Black restaurants, theaters, insurance companies, banks, etc. to almost disappear. Today, Black people spend 95
percent of their income at white-owned businesses.
Even though the number of Black firms has grown 60.5 percent between 2002 and 2007, they only make up 7 percent
of all U.S firms, and less than .005 percent of all U.S business receipts.
In 1865, just after Emancipation, 476,748 free Blacks 1.5 percent of U.S. population owned a .005 percent of the
total wealth of the United States. Today, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, 44.5 million Black Americans
14.2 percent of the population possess a meager 1 percent of the national wealth.

Black Family Structure Collapsed After Integration

From 1890 to 1950, Black women married at higher rates than white women, despite a consistent shortage of Black
males due to their higher mortality rate. According to a report released by the Washington D.C.-based think tank
Urban Institute, the state of the African-American family is worse today than it was in the 1960s, four years before
President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act.

In 1965, only 8 percent of childbirths in the Black community occurred out of wedlock. In 2010, that figure was 41
percent; and today, out-of-wedlock childbirths in the Black community is at an astonishing 72 percent.
Researchers Heather Ross and Isabel Sawhill argue that marital stability is directly related to the husbands relative
socio-economic standing, and the size of the earnings difference between men and women.
Instead of focusing on maintaining Black male employment to allow them to provide for their families, Johnson
passed the Civil Rights Act with full affirmative action for women. The act benefited mostly white women and created a
welfare system that encouraged removal of the Black male from the home.
Many Black men were also dislodged from their families and pushed into the rapidly expanding prison industrial
complex that developed in the wake of rising unemployment.

The Unemployment Rate of Black Men Quadrupled After Integration

Since integration, the unemployment rate of Black men has been spiraling out of control. In 1954, white men had a
zero percent unemployment rate, while African-American men experienced about a 4 percent rate. By 2010, it was at
16.7 percent for Black men compared to 7.7 percent for white men.
The work force in 1954 was 79 percent African-American. By 2011, that number had decreased to 57 percent. The
number of employed Black women, however, has increased. In 1954, 43 percent of African-American women had jobs.
By 2011 54 percent of Black women are job-holders.
Although the earnings gap between African-Americans and their white peers has narrowed, it still persists, with a
Black man earning about 70 percent of white mans income. In 1960, Black men earned about 60 percent of what
white men were paid.

Myth of a Colorblind Society Propagated After Integration

The Civil Rights Movement pushed for laws that would create a colorblind society, where people would not be
restricted from access to education, jobs, voting, travel, public accommodations, or housing because of race. However,
legislation has been ineffective in eradicating white privilege.
Michael K. Brown, professor of politics at University of California Santa Cruz, and co-author ofWhitewashing Race:
The Myth of a Color-Blind Society says in the U.S., The color of ones skin still determines success or failure, poverty
or affluence, illness or health, prison or college.
Colorblind policies that treat everyone the same, no exceptions for the historically oppressed and disenfranchised, are
often used to argue against corrective policies such as affirmative action. But colorblindness today merely bolsters
the unfair advantages that color-coded practices enabled white Americans to accumulate over a very long time.

Black Community Became Dependent After Integration

African-Americans have appealed to the descendants of our oppressors to right their ancestors wrongs, pay us
sufficient wages to take care of our families, educate our children and police our neighborhoods.
As a result, only 2 percent of all working Black Americans work for another Black person within their own
neighborhood. Because of this, professionally trained Black people provide very little economic benefit to the Black
community.

The Black median household income is about 64 percent that of whites, while the Black median wealth is about 16
percent that of whites. Millions of Black children are being miseducated by people who dont care about them, and
they are unable to compete academically with their peers. At the same time, the criminal justice system has declared
war on young Black men with policies such as stop and frisk and three strikes.
Marcus Garvey warned about this saying:
Lagging behind in the van of civilization will not prove our higher abilities. Being subservient to the will and caprice
of progressive races will not prove anything superior in us. Being satisfied to drink of the dregs from the cup of human
progress will not demonstrate our fitness as a people to exist alongside of others, but when of our own initiative we
strike out to build industries, governments, and ultimately empires, then and only then will we as a race prove to our
Creator and to man in general that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping our own destiny.