Pew Study: Wealth Gap Between Whites And Non-Whites Widens; GOP Make Gains Among White Voters

All politics is local, and it doesn’t get any more local than your own wallet. A new Pew study that shows record wealth gaps between white people and black and Hispanic people is getting some air in today’s news cycle, but another recent Pew study, which shows Republicans making large gains among white voters, deserves attention alongside it. Is this a case of knowing on which side your bread is buttered?

That’s a temptingly simplistic takeaway, but a closer look at Pew’s wealth gap study reveals that not only is there no bread, people in all of these groups can’t even get a schmear of Country Crock. While the wealth gap between whites and others has widened, all three of the groups in the study saw their net worth decline during President Bush’s second term. The study is based on a comparison of newly-released figures from 2005 and 2009.

During that timeframe, Pew notes that “inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households.”

As if that difference wasn’t stark enough, take a look at where they started. In 2005, black households had a median net worth of $12,124 , Hispanic households $18,359, and white households $134,992. In 2009, black households had a median net worth of $5,677, Hispanic households $6,325, and white households had $113,149 in median net worth.

Pew’s party affiliation study shows that, while black and Hispanic support for Democrats has remained basically flat, there has been a 13-point swing among white voters in favor of Republicans. The consistency of minority support for Democrats, particularly among black voters, is likely due, in large part, to historic alienation of these groups by Republicans. At a glance, it appears that white voters are doing fine, and are much readier to roll the dice on the GOP.

Appearances can be deceptive, though, as Republicans made their biggest gains among young, poorer (less than $30k) white voters, a nineteen point swing. Embedded in the wealth gap study is the fact that those median net worth figures for white households are horribly skewed by the fact that almost all of the richest people in America are white (Oprah Winfrey clocks in at #130). Bill Gates and I have an average net worth of $28 billion. The average white person isn’t actually doing twenty times better than the average black person.

However, the appearance of economic opportunity clouds the mind. It appears that some of the same voters who were willing to jump into the Obama frying pan in 2008 are now ready to fling themselves back into the fire. They are blissfully unaware that there is a class war, and they have lost. The rest of us know that these guys are never going to let us into the club no matter how much we protect their tax breaks, and they’re just one tax deduction away from not letting us build their mansions anymore. Unfortunately, “our” party is always one Republican hissy fit away from caving in to them.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.