TheLoop21.com

By: Brooklyne Gipson (Add to your loop)
Fri, 02/27/2009 - 19:48

(Read more about Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union 2009)

“When the majority community gets a cold, the black community gets pneumonia.”

At the Nationwide Insurance Economic Survey Press Conference, held on Friday in Los Angeles as a part of Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union events, Smiley admitted that he likes to repeat this old adage whenever people bring up financial woes. He also said that he’s finding himself saying it a lot more now due to the current economic conditions in America.

One look at the unemployment rates in America and you can see that the saying is more true now than ever. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the national employment rate at the end of January 2009 was at 7.6 percent, for blacks it was 12.6 percent. 

The Nationwide Insurance Economic survey, which Smiley said was conducted “to try to get a sense of the attitudes of African Americans in different economic times,” returned some interesting results. It found that there’s a glaring disconnect between what black people are thinking and what they’re doing; in what they believe in and how they behave.

According to the report, 58 percent of the 1,200 African Americans surveyed said that they “expect their financial situation to be better a year from now” however, less than half said that they’re proactively planning for future and two out of five people reported that they’re struggling with credit card debt.

The survey also found that African Americans with children under 21 are “very or extremely concerned about sending their children to college,” yet only one in 20 had a savings account set aside for college funds. Forty-five percent admitted they even avoid having conversations in their families about finances.

Candace Barney of Nationwide stressed that “the decisions that we make today teach the next generation the value of saving and investing in the future” and that it’s for this reason that they conducted this survey which was “designed to start a dialogue between financial planning professionals and the community at large; to spark dialogue around kitchen tables.”

The results of this survey are expected to be used as a springboard for real dialogue about these issues now that the hard facts and data have been provided.

Brooklyne Gipson is The Loop's editorial assistant. She writes the Across the Afrosphere and Post-Race? blogs