If Youre White You Dont Know What Its Like to Be Poor
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Bernie Sanders incorrect to say, 'When you lot're white ... you don't know what information technology'south like to exist poor'
During the Democratic contend in economically distressed and racially diverse Flint, Mich., CNN's Don Lemon asked both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders the same question:
"In a spoken communication well-nigh policing," Lemon said, "the FBI manager, James Comey, borrowed a phrase saying, 'Everyone is a little bit racist.' What racial blind spot do y'all have?"
When information technology was Sanders' turn to answer, he began by talking about several specific examples of racial discrimination. He and so drew a contrast with what whites experience.
"When you're white, yous don't know what it'south like to be living in a ghetto. You don't know what it's like to be poor. You lot don't know what it's like to be hassled when yous walk down the street or you get dragged out of a machine," Sanders said.
Several readers asked us to take a closer look at Sanders' annotate that "when you're white ... yous don't know what it'south similar to be poor."
Sanders' signal was that white people oasis't had to contend with racism based on skin color. Only when he moves into the subject area of whites' feel with poverty, he's on weak basis. Sanders' suggestion that white Americans oasis't experienced poverty is undercut past statistics calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since the 1960s, the Census Bureau has tracked the numbers and percentages of Americans by race who have an income level that puts them at the poverty line. Hither's the almost contempo data, for 2014:
| Category | Number in poverty | Poverty rate |
| Americans of all races | 46.seven million | 14.8 percent |
| White | 19.vii million | 10.1 percent |
| African-American | 10.viii one thousand thousand | 26.2 percent |
| Hispanic | xiii.1 million | 23.6 percent |
| Asian-American | 2.one million | 12.0 percent |
By this measure, Sanders was certainly wrong to advise that whites haven't experienced poverty. In 2014, there were actually more than white Americans in poverty -- 19.7 million -- than members of any other group.
Part of the reason, of class, is that there are more white Americans than there are members of minority groups overall. (Whites business relationship for 62 percent of the population.) Even so, even though whites have a lower poverty rate than other groups -- roughly x per centum -- even that percent is inappreciably trivial.
The numbers are similar if you enhance the income level slightly. At 125 percent of the poverty level, the number of white Americans rises to about 26.5 1000000. That's a lot of white people who are in or nigh poverty.
"This was a misstatement. A lot of white people know what information technology'southward similar to be poor," said Julia Isaacs, a senior boyfriend at the Urban Institute.
If you lot expect at the poor as a group, minorities are disproportionately represented. Notwithstanding, the white population is large enough that the majority of the people in poverty are white. That's been the case since at least 1970.
Nosotros calculated the racial and indigenous makeup of the population at the poverty line in roughly x-year intervals, using data for the four categories above. Census data is available back to 1990 for all four groups, and they be for all simply Asians dorsum to about 1970.
| Twelvemonth  "And just like that, your $fifteen/hr doesn't buy you as much as $7.50/hour did a yr agone."  | Percentage of people in poverty who were white | Pct of people in poverty who were black | Percent of people in poverty who were Hispanic | Percentage of people in poverty who were Asian |
| 2014 | 54 | 19 | 23 | 4 |
| 2010 | 54 | 19 | 24 | 3 |
| 2000 | 56 | 21 | twenty | 3 |
| 1990 | 57 | 25 | xv | 2 |
| 1980 | 62 | 27 | eleven | NA |
| 1970 | 64 | 28 | nine* | NA |
* Data is for 1972
It'southward easiest to grasp the scope of white poverty when using the following graphic, which was provided to usa past Christopher Wimer, a research scientist at the Columbia Academy Population Research Center. It's similar to the nautical chart to a higher place, except that it uses a more than precise, though still experimental, measurement of poverty that is adjusted for geography, government benefits and other factors not captured in the traditional poverty measurement.
The share of whites in the population of Americans in poverty is shown in regal. Every bit the chart indicates, the white share has fallen, merely it's notwithstanding the largest of whatsoever of the four groups studied.
Sanders said the solar day later the debate that he misspoke, telling reporters, "What I meant to say is when you talk about ghettos traditionally, what you talk about is African-American communities. There is nobody on this entrada … who'southward talked about poverty, whether information technology'due south in the white customs, the black community, the Latino community, more than I have."
Our ruling
Sanders says that "when y'all're white ... you don't know what information technology's like to be poor." On the opposite -- the most recent figures show that nearly 20 million white Americans are experiencing poverty. While that's smaller as a percentage than it is for other racial and ethnic groups, that's nevertheless a lot of people. In raw numbers, information technology's actually more than than any other group. Nosotros charge per unit his claim False.
Transcript of the Democratic presidential argue in Flint, Mich., March half dozen, 2016
NBC News, "Bernie Sanders Attempts to Analyze 'Ghetto' Annotate," March 7, 2016
U.S. Census Bureau, "2014 Poverty Tabular array of Contents," accessed March 7, 2016
U.Southward. Demography Bureau, "Historical Poverty Tables - People," accessed March 7, 2016
Kaiser Family Foundation, "Population Distribution by Race/Ethnicity," accessed March 7, 2016
Institute for Research on Poverty, "Who is poor?" accessed March six, 2016
Huffington Postal service, "Bernie Sanders: White People Don't Know What It'due south Like To Live In The 'Ghetto,' " March vi, 2016
Email interview with Timothy M. Smeeding, professor of public affairs and economic science at the University of Wisconsin, March 7, 2016
Email interview with Christopher Wimer, research scientist at the Columbia University Population Research Middle, March 7, 2016
Email interview with Julia Isaacs, a senior swain at the Urban Institute, March 7, 2016
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If Youre White You Dont Know What Its Like to Be Poor
Source: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/mar/07/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-wrong-say-when-youre-white-you-dont/
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