31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Worthy Successor to Black Wealth/White Wealth, September 28, 2005
This review is from: The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (Paperback)
Make no mistake about it. The snide comment by Washington Post reviewer Michael Hout above indicates a fundamental inability to comprehend what Shapiro is saying. Why would Hout choose to write this in his review?:
"Families and generations are at the core of Shapiro's analysis. So I was surprised that he did not directly address how marriage and family structure fit into the cycles of accumulation, inheritance and investment. Married couples accumulate more wealth than single parents do, according to other researchers. That suggests to me that African-American family issues must play a role in the wealth gap."
Hout obviously is attempting to make a point about the high rate of single parent families within Black America, and is implying that if only Black women chose to marry the fathers of their babies that they would not suffer many of the consequences Shapiro lays out in his book. There is but one problem: Shapiro addresses this lame-ass "culture of poverty" nonsense repeatedly in his book, and convincingly shows that even if Black marriage rates were equal to white rates that African-Americans would STILL have less wealth, educational opportunities, and transformative assets. Moreover, Shapiro does a good job of pointing out the motivations behind WHY whites like Mr. Houst consistenly resort to the same trite culturalist arguments of Black pathology when confronted with the troubling facts: they can't bring themselves to admit that their white privilege was constructed and is maintained at the expense of people of color, especially Blacks, because it shatters their deep-seated need to believe that they "earned" everything that they have instead of having been bequeathed it as a result of generations of racial prejudice and institutional racism.
Perhaps the sublety of Mr. Shapiro's argument was a tad too much for Mr. Houst and his editors at the Washington Post.
If anything, Shapiro's argument can be argued from a left perspective to be an insufficient "liberal" formulation that refuses to engage and critique the structural inequalities of capitalism head-on, substituting a Ford Foundation-esque "asset accumulation" prescription for maladies that require far more radical measures. As authors such as Manning Marable have noted for years, much of American capitalism was structurally DESIGNED to UNDERDEVELOP Black America and continues to operate in this fashion. Thus arguing that Blacks simply need "more" wealth in order to achieve racial parity overlooks many sociological and anthropological insights about race developed over the past thirty years, as well as many Marxian insights about race that have been floating around for years as well.
Still, even as a half-measure, this is a highly enlightening and challenging read. It is sure to make many white families uncomfortable because they will probably see themselves in much of what Shapiro writes. Which is the point.
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34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A BOOK WITH PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS, February 17, 2004
By A Customer
Black people are bringing home bigger paychecks than ever. They face less overt racism on a day-to-day basis. Everything's copacetic, right? WRONG. This book is so important because it shows why African Americans pass along inequality from generation to generation. Most white people who "make it on their own" it turns out, tend to have a little help from their parents in buying their first house. $10,000, $20,000, or more, this means that they can put more money down, get a lower interst rate, move into a better neighborhood, with better schools, so their kids get better educations and all of the priveleges that access to such schools brings. And it all happens again in the next generation.
Shapiro brings this to life by talking to black and white people about how they have made their way in the world. Inherited assets, it turns out, have a lot to do with it.
This is a book that will force black and white people alike to think about how racial inequality is passed down from generation to generation. I myself would argue that it makes the case for at least a more serious discussion of reparations in the form of home buying grants or something of that kind, and an INCREASE in the so-called "death tax".
Read it and think about it!
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The concept of a stakeholder society": A Look at Wealth, Inequality, and Innovative Solutions, June 27, 2005
This review is from: The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (Paperback)
Thomas M. Shapiro's _The Hidden Cost of Being African American_ (2004) is a powerful book that offers a unique look at economic inequality across racial lines. His discussion is not yet part of the mainstream discussion of race and government policy, but it should be, and his book makes an important contribution. His analysis is convincing, and the solutions he offers are worth serious consideration.
Shapiro's methodology is engaging. He uses statistical data aggregated from the longitudinal Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)-an ongoing government funded study begun in 1968 that examines the finances of approximately 8,000 American families. In addition, he and his research team interviewed approximately 200 families in Boston, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, half of whom were black, half were white, with a subset of latino families. Shapiro blends statistical data with the voices of the families he has interviewed. People discuss their salaries, their financial assets, their reasoning for buying and selling homes, and their thoughts about money. This approach makes for a highly readable book.
Based on PSID data and the interviews, Shapiro focuses on the imbalance in asset-share between African Americans and white Americans, and its repercussions. He shifts the discussion from one focused on salaries, where in the last two decades there has been progress toward greater parity between whites' and blacks' wages, to a study of real assets. From an asset perspective, Shapiro argues, the nation's economic picture is very problematic.
Shapiro shows that in general, African Americans' accumulated financial assets are considerably smaller than whites', leading to fewer economic opportunities, greater economic hardship, and less access to wealth creation opportunities. The diminished asset share stems directly from the nation's history of racial oppression when African Americans did not have the same opportunities to amass wealth over generations. Shapiro outlines the real consequences of this difference in assets.
A financial asset perspective offers a global picture of economic wellbeing that includes a family's savings accounts, stocks and other investments, home equity, and inherited wealth through gifts and bequests. One of Shapiro's main points is that white families, in general, have much greater access to "transformative assets"-wealth and gifts inherited from previous generations-which enable families to enjoy opportunities that they have inherited from previous generations but have not earned themselves through merit. Shapiro looks at the types of advantages that come with these "transformative assets" and generational wealth, including down payments on homes and college educations paid for by parents and grandparents, as well as inheritable legacies from grandparents and parents. These "transformative assets" lead to considerable (and often profound) differences in social and economic opportunity and quality of life, even when wages are comparable.
Shapiro offers an illuminating discussion of schools and the housing market, showing connections between race and economics. He looks at how people's individual choices often entrench economic and social inequality, wittingly and unwittingly. At the end of the book, he offers a number of remedies, both market and government-incentive based, to create a "stakeholder" society where asset growth is promoted for the working poor and the middle class.
For example, one proposal is for Children Savings Accounts. Shapiro points out that if a child had an initial bank account of $1,000 and $500 were contributed annually, by the time the child reached 18 years old, he or she would have about $40,000. This is one way to provide transformative assets-for a down payment on a house, education, etc-to all Americans.
This is an excellent book with many important insights.
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