White economic privilege is alive and well despite its perceived loss

Washington

IS the white working class losing economic ground because of policies intended to improve the lives of black people? Anxiety and resentment among some white voters about those policies certainly seemed to benefit Donald Trump's campaign last year, with its populist, ethnonationalist message.

The problem with this belief is that it is false. The income gap between black and white working-class Americans, similar to the gap between black and white Americans at every income level, remains every bit as extreme as it was five decades ago. This is also true of the income gap between Hispanic and white Americans. In 2015 - the most recent year for which data is available - black households at the 20th and 40th percentiles of household income earned an average of 55 per cent as much as white households at those same percentiles. This is exactly the same figure as in 1967.