Class divides

 

THE University of Missouri, which opened in 1840 and admitted its first female students in 1867, began accepting blacks in 1950. Racial tensions are still all too evident, however. Student protests at the poor handling of a series of racist incidents led to the resignation earlier this month of the university’s president, Timothy Wolfe.

The row unfolded against a backdrop of black frustration: with police violence, such as the shooting last year of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri, but also with the persistence of black economic underperformance. The unemployment rate for blacks is twice that for whites. A larger share of whites than blacks work in skilled jobs; even within well-paid professions whites earn more per hour than black workers. The typical white household has more than ten times the wealth of the typical black household.

Blacks do worse than whites on every rung of America’s educational ladder (see chart). A smaller share of black students completes high school, a smaller share attends university and a smaller share graduates. Black students are heavily...Continue reading

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