New research shows that black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, reports The New York Times. A new study traced the lives of millions of children, and found that white boys who grow up rich tend to stay that way. But black boys who grow up rich are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy during their own adulthood. In 99 percent of America, even when children grow up next to each other with parents who earn nearly identical incomes, black boys fare worse than white. These gaps get larger in the kind of neighborhoods that promise low poverty and good schools. The study was led by researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the Census Bureau. They write that income inequality between blacks and whites is driven entirely by what is happening among these boys and the men they become, The Times reports. “You would have thought at some point you escape the poverty trap,” said Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and an author of the study, to The Times. But the study shows that you cannot assume that, even with rich black boys.
“One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea,” said Ibram Kendi, a professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, told The Times. “But for whatever reason, we’re unwilling to stare racism in the face.”
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