Blacks and Income

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Black household income at bottom of chart
Kristin Collins, Staff Writer
Black households make less money and have higher unemployment rates than any other major racial or ethnic group in the state, census figures released today show.

Median household income for blacks in 2006 was just over $29,000, the data indicate. That's 12 percent less than Hispanics and 40 percent less than white households. It's also slightly less than the median income for American Indians.

Unemployment in 2006 climbed to 7.5 percent among African-Americans -- nearly twice the state unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. The rate among Hispanics, the state's second-largest minority group, was 5 percent, even though fewer than half of Hispanics have a high school diploma.

Some say that the plight of blacks can be blamed on the same forces that have always kept them poorer than whites: a legacy of discrimination that has led to broken families, high rates of imprisonment and lower educational attainment than whites.

"When you look at the number of businesses owned, who runs our major corporations, who makes most of the hiring decisions, it's still vastly white," said Keith Sutton, president of the Triangle Urban League, which advocates for African-Americans.

Others, however, say that a new force -- illegal immigration -- is hurting the job prospects of blacks in North Carolina.

The census shows that less than 8 percent of blacks work in the construction and farming trades, compared with 37 percent of Hispanics.

Dan Coleman, president of the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Organization, a black leadership group, owns a construction company. He said construction jobs once provided a middle-class wage to workers across the racial spectrum.

"When I was a kid, blacks did most of the construction work," Coleman said. "And you saw whites from Down East and Indians coming in from Lumberton. Now, I don't see any of them doing it."

Instead, he said, crews are almost exclusively Hispanic.

In a 2006 study, UNC-Chapel Hill economists found that the influx of uneducated Hispanic workers had depressed wages and had displaced some low-skill African-American workers.

But John Kasarda, one of the study's authors, said it's not clear how many jobs blacks have lost to immigrants. In interviews, Kasarda said, blacks often say they are unwilling to take the jobs Hispanics do -- at any wage.

Sutton, of the Urban League, agreed that many blacks no longer want to harvest crops or work construction.

"Some think that we're too good to take these jobs in the slaughterhouse or as the ditch digger or on top of a roof when it's 100 degrees," Sutton said. "The attitude I've heard is, 'Let the Hispanics do that.' "

Kasarda also said that, for all but the most unskilled workers, Hispanics have improved the standard of living by providing cheaper goods and services.

Census figures show that, even though Hispanics work more than blacks, they suffer from high rates of poverty. Their higher household incomes may be inflated because a typical Hispanic home includes extended family and so might have more workers. More than one-fifth of Hispanic families live in poverty, almost the same rate as for blacks.

Teresa El-Amin, director of the Southern Anti-Racism Network in Durham, said it's counterproductive to blame Hispanic workers for the loss of American jobs. She said the blame lies with corporations, which have always looked to the most desperate group of available workers for cheap labor.

Last month, El-Amin helped stage a black-Hispanic unity conference in Durham. She said blacks should help empower Hispanics to demand better wages, just as blacks learned to do a generation ago.

"Sometimes people scream at me from their cars, 'What are you doing standing up for these Mexicans?' " El-Amin said. "I tell them, 'Their struggle is our struggle.' "