Having him express these opinions in a racial diversity/sensing session was probably the closest I ever came to dying in a racial incident while in the Army, but most of the participants were, I think, just too confused by it all to grasp what was going on. Totally surreal experience.

Real estate markets are an obvious factor as well–both being hoodwinked into buying houses “on contract” and the tendency to buy in “ghetto” areas going downhill. Anecdotally, a lot of Black families owned the brownstones in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I’m not sure if that’s still true.

Also, there is the fact that many Black Americans have been in the urban cash economy only two or three generations. But yes, fecklessness and lack of fiscal restraint will take their toll.

If you read Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s memoir, he discusses being trained in consumer restraint by his grandfather, who would jingle the coins in his pocket and say “I’ll have these same coins in my pocket at the end of the week.”

Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. wrote of being from Black American ancestors who were market savvy and middle-class or with aspirations to be so by the 1880s. He says they had a horror of debt, and avoided it like the plague.

NOT on a track. Have been on a track for some time and have surpassed whites a long time ago.

1. Japanese-Americans.
2. Chinese-Americans.
3. Indian-Americans.

The safest place in the USA to live is a neighborhood where the predominant population is Japanese-Americans.