The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (z-lib.org).epub

THE REDUCTION of discriminatory barriers in the labor market that began in
the mid-twentieth century did not translate easily into African Americans’
upward mobility. Movement from lower ranks to the middle class in the
national income distribution has always been difficult for all Americans.
This reality challenges a fantasy we share: that children born into lowincome
families can themselves escape that status through hard work,
responsibility, education, ambition, and a little luck. That myth is becoming
less prevalent today, as more Americans become aware of how sticky our
social-class positions are.
Imagine that we lined up all American families in order of their incomes
from highest to lowest and then divided that line into five equal groups. In
discussions of mobility, it is usual to call the richest fifth the top (or fifth)
quintile, the next richest fifth the fourth quintile, and so on. If we were fully
an equal-opportunity society (and no society is), children whose parents
have incomes in the bottom quintile of the income distribution would have
equal chances of having incomes as adults anywhere in that distribution. In
other words, of children in the bottom quintile, one fifth would remain, as
adults, in that bottom quintile. Another fifth would have incomes in the
fourth quintile; another fifth would have climbed to the middle, or third
quintile (we can call this the “middle class”); another fifth would rise to the
second quintile; and another fifth would land in the top quintile, having the
highest incomes.
In fact, however, the United States has less mobility than many other
industrialized societies. Of American children born to parents whose
incomes were in the bottom income quintile, almost half (43 percent) remain
trapped in the bottom quintile as adults. Only 30 percent of children born to
parents in the lowest-earning quintile make it to the middle quintile or
higher.
African Americans have even less mobility. For those born to parents in
the bottom income quintile, over half (53 percent) remain there as adults,
and only a quarter (26 percent) make it to the middle quintile or higher.
Considering the disadvantages that low-income African Americans have had
as a result of segregation—poor access to jobs and to schools where they can
excel—it’s surprising that their mobility, compared to that of other
Americans, isn’t even lower. Two explanations come to mind. One is that
many African Americans heed the warning that they have to be twice as