Oakland, Price says, “I’m listening and
nodding my head because what you’re
describing—first-generation college
student, professionally successful, still
struggling to keep yourself and your family
afloat—is so common. It really speaks to
the issue of why race, and not just class, is
so important to understanding financial
stability and well-being.”
Price, now also president of the Insight
Center, points out that more and more
black women are pursuing college
degrees—the most important move we can
make to secure a place in the middle class
(or so we’re told); 26 percent have earned
a bachelor’s degree or higher, up from
20 percent a decade ago. Yet we’re running
into two major roadblocks, says Price:
“The first is that it’s really hard to build
wealth when you don’t have it passed down
to you.” Among college-educated black
families, the average amount of inheritance—
including cash, home, and other assets—is
under $40,000, compared with over
$150,000 for college-educated white
families, according to a 2018 study in the
American Journal of Economics and Sociology.
About 87 percent of those black families
receive less than $10,000, as opposed to
about 59 percent of the white families.
The second roadblock, says Price, is
that black women are more likely to find
themselves taking care of family members
financially. “This strips away about
27 percent of a black family’s wealth,” she
notes. It also forces some hard accounting.
“The choice is, ‘What do I do: Pay off my
student loan? Start to save for retirement?
Put away money for my child’s education?
I can’t do all three and take care of parents
or siblings.’”
My white professional peers don’t really
get this. When I recently mentioned to
one of them that I was considering taking
on a second job as an adjunct professor
to pay for my eventual wedding, she
chided me for doomsday thinking (easy
for her to say when her parents had come
up with $50,000 for her nuptials). Many
of my white classmates have already paid
off their student loans, if they had any, and
are starting to purchase homes. (A white
friend from law school recently lamented
her inability to find a satisfactory New
York City apartment in her budget—which
is $1 million.) Even white people of more
modest means might have parents who
could take out a loan for a wedding, or help
with a down payment on a house, or at
least serve as a guarantor for an apartment.
It’s disheartening to know your family
can’t—as my friend Maya, a black media
professional in Washington, D.C.,
could tell you, “We’re supersmart and
accomplished and have degrees, and yetbecause of its generous financial aid
package. At school, she juggled work-study
jobs at a call center, the library, and
an administrative office. “I didn’t want to
add more tension by asking my parents
for money,” she says. As soon as Hannah
graduated and started working at a
nonprofit, she began using part of her
limited income to help with one-off
expenses, like a new computer. She now
has a better-paying job in media, but
over the past few years, family obligations
have become an even larger percentage
of her monthly budget; since her dad’s
health forced him into partial retirement in
2018, bills have been piling up. Hannah
sends spending money to her siblings, two
of whom are still in college, and pays for
part of her mother’s tuition in a master’s
program. The expense that stresses her
out the most, though, is the credit cards.
“There was a significant period during
which my mom stopped working in order
to care for the four of us, and she usedcredit cards to make up for the shortfall,”
she says. “The interest penalty is really
high, so paying that off has become my
main priority.” Hannah is hoping to save
for a down payment on a home of her
own—after her family’s credit cards are
paid off, after her mom gets her master’s,
after her siblings graduate and find jobs.
The obligation to help relatives as
much and as soon as possible can taint our
relationships with them. An African
American professor I know says she doesn’t
mind providing financial assistance to
her mother, but she does feel uneasy about
the way it’s changed their dynamic. “I don’t
go shopping with her anymore because
I know she’ll ask me to pay for things,” she
says. She also thinks twice before sharing
success stories with her family. “I once
won an award for $10,000, and my mom’s
reaction was ‘How much are you going
to give me?’”
“There is definitely stress associated
with the expectation that you’ll be able to
provide,” explains Angela Neal-Barnett,
PhD, a psychological sciences professorwe’re still doggy-paddling,” she says.
“Sometimes I go on Facebook and look at
the profiles of white people from my high
school, and they’re visibly rolling in dough.
We’re doing good things; it’s just that the
gulf between them and me is so striking.”WAS RAISED BY a single mother
who worked full-time as a secretary
and never made more than $25,000
a year. A heart attack had forced my
grandmother to retire from nursing before
she turned 40, but somehow, through a
combination of loans, credit cards, and
putting in extra hours, she and my mother
managed to cover our bills.
When I received my first law firm bonus
back in 2012 ($10,000 before taxes, a
dizzying amount to me then), I had already
earmarked a portion for my mom, to help
her make a down payment on a new car. I
now keep a separate savings account for
unexpected family expenses and regularlysend money home. Although at 54 my
mom is relatively young and putting aside
money for her retirement, I’m already
worrying that I’ll need to find extra funds
to cover shortfalls. I’m right to be
concerned: Married black women age 60
and older with a bachelor’s degree have
only $424,000 in median wealth (all assets
including cash but minus debts); their white
counterparts have $778,000, according
to researchers from Duke University and
the Insight Center.
Sending money to our parents is
something 45 percent of college-educated
black households do, says a 2017 study
in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Review (only 16 percent of college-educated
white households do the same). Take
Hannah, whose story will sound familiar
to many black women my age. Hannah
always knew her family was working-class:
Her parents had immigrated to the U.S.
from Ethiopia and were raising four
children primarily on her father’s salary.
She was accepted to several prestigious
universities; she decided on DartmouthWe live with the unsettling
sense that with the slightest tug, our
carefully conceived plans for
success could instantly unravel.
116 SEPTEMBER^2019 OPRAHMAG.COM