While there are many definitions for the “middle class,” this report will use the Brookings Future of the Middle Class Initiative’s definition: the middle 60% of households on the income distribution. We also examined their careers and presence in metropolitan areas. Using American Community Survey 5-year Estimates for 2013 to 2017, this report adjusts the income quintiles in combination with the Tax Policy Center’s Household Income Quintiles to get the most accurate yearly income accounting for the Black middle class. If these voters are recognized on a map, then maybe some of their political needs can finally be met. Presidential hopefuls need to know the kinds of jobs that the Black middle class holds, where they live, and their homeownership rates. Stumping on the middle class should sound different in areas where Black middle-class voters are concentrated. This, in turn, furthers the racial biases that have kept the Black middle class from achieving the American Dream.Īs the candidates continue on the campaign trail to the Super Tuesday primaries, they need to know who they are talking to. On today’s political stage, only the white middle class is receiving policymakers’ dedicated attention. Reeves and Camille Busette pointed out in a 2018 report, “the term ‘American middle class,’ while not historically and intentionally located in a discourse about race, has always inherently been about race, specifically about white Americans.” When politicians proselytize on the needs of the middle class but don’t mention the racial wealth gap or homeownership rates-issues interrelated to Black voters’ class status and political interests-they are signaling they are only talking to the white middle class. This huge gulf in wealth warrants a distinct policy agenda for Black families who, even if they have the same income as their white peers, don’t have the same financial cushion. That number was $17,600 and $20,700 for Black and Latino or Hispanic families, respectively. The median wealth for a white family was $171,000 in 2016, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent numbers. mayor Pete Buttigieg said, “Let’s put forward somebody who actually lives and works in a middle-class neighborhood, in an industrial Midwestern city.” Five days earlier, Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted, “The labor movement built the middle class and is key to reviving it today.” Senator Elizabeth Warren’s health care plan is explicit that taxes need not increase for the middle class: “We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All.”īut do these pledges to the middle class include Black voters? But even with all the talk about the importance of Black voters, Democrats still haven’t strayed from their conventional stump-speech focus: the middle class.ĭuring February 19’s Democratic debate, former South Bend, Ind. Likewise, Trump only needs a sliver of the bloc to put the election out of reach. The eventual nominee has little to no chance of winning in November without an enthusiastic Black voting base. The Democratic presidential candidates’ courtship of the Black electorate has received significant attention, as it should.
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