1142 ★ CHAPTER 28 A New Century and New Crises
those who kept their jobs remained extremely high. The fastest- growing job cat-
egories, however, were those that paid low wages. Indeed, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics in 2012 projected that over the next decade, the largest areas of job
growth would be in office work, sales, food preparation and service, child care,
home health aides, and janitors— every one of which paid less than the median
annual wage. The median income of a male full- time worker in 2010 was lower,
adjusted for inflation, than in 1973. Rising income inequality afflicted coun-
tries across the globe, but among industrialized nations the United States had
the highest rate of all.
African- Americans suffered most severely from the recession. Unlike other
Americans, blacks tended to own few if any stocks, so did not benefit when the
stock market recovered many of its recession losses. All their family wealth
was in their homes, and so the collapse of the housing bubble devastated their
economic status. In 2012, the median family wealth of white families was
$110,000, that of black only $6,300. Black unemployment remained nearly
double that of whites, as did the poverty rate. Two- thirds of all black children
lived in low- income families. While the civil rights movement had produced a
dramatic increase in the number of well- paid black professionals (like Obama
himself, a lawyer), ordinary African- Americans had achieved economic gains
by moving into jobs in manufacturing and government (the latter account-
ing for 20 percent of black employment), the two sectors hardest hit by the
recession.
Postracial America?
Despite this grim reality, Obama’s election spurred discussions among politi-
cal commentators and ordinary Americans that the nation had finally put the
legacy of racial inequality behind it. Talk proliferated of a new, “postracial”
America, in which racial differences no longer affected public policy or pri-
vate attitudes. In 2013, the Supreme Court employed this very logic in a 5-4
decision that invalidated the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a mile-
stone of the civil rights era. Since states identified in the law, most of them
in the Old South, no longer discriminated on the basis of race, the majority
declared, they should no longer be required to gain permission from the Jus-
tice Department before changing their election laws. The decision unleashed
a flood of laws, such as limits on early voting and requiring voters to possess
state- issued identification. These measures were intended to limit the right to
vote for poor people of all races, many of whom do not possess driver’s licenses
or other official IDs.
A series of events involving the death of unarmed black men at the hands of
police or other authorities also suggested that any self- congratulation about the