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In fact, the Black-white wealth gap hasn’t budged since researchers started collecting related data more than 50 years ago: The typical white family remains nearly 10 times wealthier than the average Black one. The report also noted that Black households headed by a college graduate have less wealth than white ones headed by a high-school dropout, perhaps an even more egregious disparity. A 2015 study found that, regardless of education level, white Americans have more wealth than Black Americans. Though Smith is banking on education, it might not pay off like she hopes. “I hope I can break the generational curse,” she told me. She believes that education and better financial literacy on her part will help her eventually set up savings for her two children. The one hope Smith holds on to is her degrees. Smith, too, says she “hasn’t seen any wealth” despite the number of hours she works as a personal care provider. “What she passed down to us was that we need to work to survive,” she said. “Although she wanted to be with us all the time, she knew that it was a choice between being home or working to make sure we had a roof over our heads.”įor Smith, there was no passing down of assets or wealth her mother had nothing of the sort to give. Wanting better opportunities and circumstances for her family, Smith’s mother moved them around New Jersey, and in each neighborhood, Smith would compare what her family had in relation to others, particularly white families with greater means.
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Smith’s mother raised her and her five siblings alone and worked as a commercial driver for a bus company, earning less than $40,000 for much of her career and never accruing any savings. She sees her predicament as a “generational struggle” that was handed down to her. Her current degree costs $34,000, which she makes payments on every other week. Striving for better understanding, however, hasn’t afforded Smith protection from the struggle that hinders her the most: At almost 40, the single mother has no savings or assets for either herself or her two young children. “I’ve taken up studies in these fields because there are lessons here that Black families can use to empower themselves and understand that their circumstances are not who they are,” she told me. She is working toward a doctorate in human resource management and a master’s in psychology, adding to the three related degrees she’s already earned. “May we help more than we hurt, may we seek to understand more than be understood and may we love more than we judge.Bodine Smith turns 38 this year, and she has a lot to be proud of. Not with your hand over your heart, but with your hand outstretched to a world that desperately needs your hand, your help, your insights, your creativity, your honor, your courage. “Go out there and swear to this world your oath, not with your words, but with what you do. You have a choice in life, you can just sit back, getting fat, dumb, and happy, consuming all the blessings put before you, or it can metabolize inside of you, become fuel to get you into the fight, to make this democracy real, to make it true to its words that we can be a nation of liberty and justice for all.” You sit under the shade of trees that you did not plant or cultivate or care for.
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You eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for you by your ancestors. “You need to understand something, you drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty and opportunity that you did not dig. “The only thing that weakens worry is work, so I will be working for Marie Corfield”