Race and the Recession

“We’re already used to poverty; they’re really not.”

That's how one woman summed up the inclination of the black community in McDonough, Georgia, to help out their white neighbors who are struggling in the recession. In this town, part of historically segregated and racially tense Henry County, the effects of the recession have helped build a bridge across racial lines, according to this New York Times article.

If Henry County can be taken as a case study, it would seem the recession's good news for race relations. Even Eugene Edwards, the president of the Henry County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People acknowledged that, “there used to be a lot of racial tension here, but everybody knows that we need each other to survive this recession.”

But be taken as a case study it can't. Even the author of the times article acknowledges that Henry County has a very different profile from the rest of the nation. There, black people are more likely than whites to hold college degrees, and the income gap between white and black families is less than half what it is elsewhere. In McDonough, where lately, "women in Jaguars pull up to the local food pantry, and former millionaires hunker down in grand, unsellable homes" the recession has been widely accepted as a great "equalizer." In this construction town, a large percentage of both races are uneducated and so the historically fundamental privilege gap between the two races is diminished.

There's been much talk about the racially unequal nature of the recession. In a recent New York Times Op-ed, Dedrick Muhammad and Barbara Ehrenreich argued that, "racial asymmetry was stamped on this recession from the beginning." A, if not the, major catalyst of the recession was predatory sub-prime lending, and the victims of this practice were black families twice as often as they were whites. Even high income black families. Even when they qualified for prime mortgages. And they offered down payments.

Another reason that blacks have suffered more this recession is that, "thanks to a legacy of a discrimination in both hiring and lending, they’re less likely than whites to be cushioned against the blows by wealthy relatives or well-stocked savings accounts."

Recent reports, such as this one put out by the Acton Institute, this by the Applied Research Center also note the recession's racial divide. Even in Henry County, blacks made up a disproportionately high number of those seeking government assistance both before and after the slowdown. Since 2006, the number of blacks on Medicaid has more than tripled, outpacing the increase among whites.

So while black people rush to the aid of their privileged neighbors in McDonough, Georgia, the question remains: why does sympathy abound for those suffering from the recession when they are simply swelling the ranks of a demographic that has always existed, and in plenty large numbers?

And will this warm and fuzzy feeling of general equality and good will disappear when the circumstances aren't so dire for those in power? Or those who look like those in power?

Ms. Taylor said it best, in the New York Times article. Of her struggling white neighbors she said, “they’re a little weaker than we are at handling things like this, but I know they get more sympathy than we do.”