Question

what social economic and material gains did African Americans make after the Civil Rights era? Why did some black Americans do better than others doing this period?

Answer 1

Answer, Today, we live in a time where outwardly intentional discrimination, whether it be social, economic, or political discrimination, isn’t legal, which has led to some really significant social, economic and material gains within the black community. Economically, pushing down the barriers keeping black Americans out of the white-collar market has allowed the black middle class to grow exponentially, as well as the visibility of successful black powerbrokers. Such law has made social discrimination much more politically incorrect, and hate crime laws have significantly raised the penalty for violence that stems from personal discrimination. Essentially though, what has happened since the civil rights struggled of the 60s is that the black middle class has grown, but also the gaps between the black middle class and black poverty have widened significantly. Especially after the Reagan/Bush policies of the 80s (which essentially stripped the black poor of the possibility of upward mobility), black poverty has increased really quickly. While the conditions that the poor live in are less dangerous and inhuman than those experienced by sharecroppers and others in the past, but essentially inner city conditions have created a violent and hazardous environment (environmental racism has placed low-income housing, where many people of color are forced to live, in areas near freeways and toxic dumps) due to the way the black poor have been neglected in the government budget.I think a lot of this has to do with the Horatio Alger American dream kind of dialogue that happens surrounding black politics. Both white conservative and liberal politicians, and even some black politicians, are very tied up into the myth of meritocracy, the idea that success is directly correlated to the amount of effort a person puts in. The black poor has been cast as the “welfare queen,” while government tax dollars go to support their extravagant lifestyle.