Last Call

Last July I talked about how the financial crisis and recession had all but destroyed the middle class for African-Americans and Latinos.  2009 numbers were heart-stopping:  the average median household worth among whites was 18-20 times greater than black or Latino families, and Asian-Americans had seen their average household wealth cut in half from 2005.

Unfortunately, the new 2010 numbers based on the Census are even worse.

White Americans have 22 times more wealth than blacks -- a gap that nearly doubled during the Great Recession.

The median household net worth for whites was $110,729 in 2010, versus $4,995 for blacks, according to recently released Census Bureau figures.

The difference is similarly notable when it comes to Hispanics, who had a median household net worth of $7,424. The ratio between white and Hispanic wealth expanded to 15 to 1.

The gap between the races widened considerably during the recent economic downturn, which whites weathered better than blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

The latter three groups saw their median household net worth fall by roughly 60% between 2005 and 2010, while the median net worth for white households slipped only 23%.

The subprime mortgage scam may have hurt most of America, but for African American and Latino communities, it was absolutely devastating.  And the GOP budget plan isn't just to pull the ladder up and cut the net out from under minorities, it's to burn them ashes and forget we ever existed.  We talk, and rightfully so, about the GOP war on women and the LGBT community, but they are absolutely conducting a scorched earth campaign against minorities:  against schools, health care, food stamps, housing, social programs, unionization and our right to vote.  Anything that you would consider necessary for the maintenance and growth of a middle class is being phased out by Republicans who have decided that America's poor (and increasingly that means America's minority population) needs to be jettisoned as dead weight to save the country.

Literally decades of progress have been wiped out in the last several years, and all I hear from Republicans is that "those people" at the bottom of the pyramid have to sacrifice even more to pay for the financial crisis because "we can't afford it" anymore.

Tell me this isn't war, a strategy with the intent of crushing minorities and putting us in our place.  Austerity for the austerity god!  Tax cuts for the tax cut throne!