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No “Economic Anxiety” Excuse For Black Workers

How many times have you turned on the local news and seen a Black person accused of committing a petty crime, such as stealing from a gas station or not paying a parking ticket? How many times have read a piece in conservative media that called Black people “lazy,” or “freeloaders,” or “welfare queens?” How many times have you seen members of the media or politicians go on some extended riff about Black on Black crime? Now think about how many times you’ve heard “economic anxiety” used as an excuse for Black people for any of these things? Zero right?

Economic anxiety isn’t an excuse that Black people (or any other minorities really) are allowed to have. Black people are supposed to be at the bottom of the social caste system, and we’re supposed to be meek and quiet about it. Even supposed leftists talk almost exclusively about the white working class, spending virtually no time speaking to the Black working class or building relationships with them. When they ask us to talk about “workers,” they are talking specifically about white workers in factories in the northeast and the rust belt. They aren’t talking about Black communities in South Carolina, in North Carolina, or in Georgia.

Despite the median Black family having 13 times less the wealth of the median white family, Black people have not turned to racial demagogues who demonize other races and call for attacking them to solve their economic problems. The Black community has not turned to the politics of hate in order to fix our much more pressing and severe economic anxiety. Why isn’t economic anxiety ever an excuse we get to use? You already know the answer. Instead, “economic anxiety” is reserved as an excuse for significantly wealthier white workers who have espoused support for racist politics. Nobody is talking about how the Black working class has very real economic anxiety. They are either ignored or told that that they deserve it.

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