Previously, I had looked at the proportion of young folks who live fully among the anchors of mainstream society: employment, homeownership, marriage, children. This combination made the foundation of the sitcom family, and I think it’s fair to say that these were anchors of a “normal” or “mainstream” life, at least at the end of the 20th century.
In the last post on this topic, I showed that for young white Americans, this combination of mainstream anchors has declined, resulting in a polarization of “normal” young people: those with all the former pillars of mainstream attainment and those with just employment.
What do racial differences look like? If you’re reading this blog, you probably are pretty aware of the fact that racial inequality has been pretty darned central for American society.
Below are the trends of [i] black individuals [ii] between 25 and 34 [iii] from 1960 to roughly today [iv] who have each of the anchors of “mainstream” life: employment, marriage, children, and homeownership.
Black respondents: Census/ACS data, aged 25-34
And a quick comparison to similarly aged white respondents below
White respondents: Census/ACS data, aged 25-34
A few things are going on here.
I just cannot get over the differences in homeownership between young white and black people. At least for middle class levels of wealth, that’s such a massive source of inequality and lack of opportunity.
The decline of rates of parenthood is quite similar across these two groups of young people.
For both groups, in the most recent era, employment ends up sticking out from the other anchors. The absolute gap in employment between young black and white folks remains at about 10 percentage points over time. Oh great, all young people get to exist in a neoliberal dystopia of just work.
What’s going on with their combinations? Below are results for young black individuals.
Black respondents: Census/ACS data, aged 25-34
And for a quick comparison, results from white folks below
White respondents: Census/ACS data, aged 25-34
A few big contrasts stick out to me right away:
Having all mainstream anchors was just about the most common outcome for white individuals through 1990. But for black individuals, “having it all” was as common as “having none.” That is such a massive contrast that, IMO, nicely highlights the barriers faced by black Americans to mainstream society.
Wow, look at the comparison of “has three,” “has all,” and “has none” in the most recent waves. There are higher proportions of young black individuals with “none” than all or all but one. That is a serious problem.
For young black people, it looks like “has most” anchors of mainstream society was about as good as one could reasonably expect for a typical outcome through about 1980. In recent years, “has one” or “has two” are by far the most common outcomes.
Which combinations are rising and falling for young black people? Below I take the most common combinations from 1960 and 2018 and plot their trends over time.
Yeesh. Again, barriers to home ownership was a massive barrier to mainstream society in the 1960s and 1970s. As I noted above, homeownership has been critical for middle class wealth.
The lonely neoliberal reality of young people, nothing but work, emerges as the frontrunner in recent years. Work is important for people’s sense of self and meaning, but by itself I doubt that this acts well to incorporate young people into mainstream society.
None is troublingly more common than many other combinations from the 2000s onward. This is a massive exclusion. My hunch, though I can’t see this in the census data, is that this is a downstream consequence of the highly racialized incarceration machine humming in the background of these trendlines.
General conclusions
In a lot of ways, these results are utterly unsurprising. Racial inequality is a massive barrier to a broadly shared, broadly attainable, reasonable mainstream society.
Many of these characteristics of mainstream society have had pretty significant racialized barriers more and less formally established over the period of study: many sociological studies have discussed the discrimination surrounding access to home ownership, employment, and family stability. At least for me, though, it’s useful to see the start contrasts.
It seems like the ability to get access to mainstream society is becoming harder for both black and white young people today. But the two groups started at pretty different baselines. I guess the million dollar question is: does the shared fall unify, or do the persistent gaps prevent solidarity?