16 - Insights and a Valedictory

Summary

Income or wage mobility and wealth mobility is not the same phenomena. Wealth often generates income, while income, especially low-wage income, does not generate wealth. Upward economic mobility is made up of both wealth and earnings and political power. While the average white earning power and household wealth have increased over the last four decades, the vestiges of enslavement have meant protracted inequalities and inequities in black earnings and wealth, leading one black Mississippian- a Sunflower County resident- to exclaim, “Most women are like me here, it takes two in a recession, and I have been in a recession all my life.” The long-drawn-out economic contraction Rebecca alluded to as a constant in her life had its roots in the enslavement of her ancestors and the failure of the nation to redress and make whole those it had enslaved, exploited economically, and politically subjugated.