When this column debuted in October 1992, Bill Clinton was on his way to winning the White House, where he would balance the federal budget for the first time in three decades while being impeached as a result of purely private behavior.
Closer to home, the 38.3% of Black Buffalonians in poverty was more than double the 17.9% rate for white people in the city, while the 52% Hispanic poverty rate was nearly three times the white rate, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The per capita income for Black people in Buffalo was less than two-thirds the $12,148 received by white people in the city, while Hispanic per capital income was less than half that of white Buffalonians.
The home ownership rate – one of the keys to building wealth – for Black Buffalonians back then was just 33.19% and just 22.14% for Hispanics, compared to 49.12% for white city residents. Given that it’s hard to buy a house without having a job, the fact that the Black and Hispanic unemployment rates were more than double the 8.2% rate for whites no doubt contributed to those gaps.
Today, as I file my final column some three decades later, Donald Trump might well be on his way to setting up the Oval Office in a prison cell, after having increased the deficit every year he reigned the first time around, and being impeached twice plus indicted for essentially trying to overthrow the American government.
In Buffalo, the Black and Hispanic poverty rates are still double the 15.25% rate for whites, while Black and Hispanic per capita income is still less than two-thirds the $41,149 that white Buffalonians take in.
The Black home ownership rate has inched up slightly, to 38.56%, while the Hispanic rate has held stagnant at 22.38% – both still well below the white rate of 49.29%.
Just as disappointingly, 2022 Census Bureau surveys – the most recent available – had the Black unemployment rate still nearly double the 6.15% white rate at the time, while the…
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