Tag Archives: minorities

This article here from the Chicago Sun Times explains how the American Dream for Hispanics is becoming a harder and harder thing to achieve. Many people still believe that with enough hard work and determination, anyone, regardless of ethnicity, can place themselves into the comfort of a middle class lifestyle. However, the housing crisis and the recession have taken the greatest toll on the Hispanic community, especially in Chicago. From 2005 to 2009, the net worth, assets minus debt, of Hispanic households fell 66 percent nationwide, according to a Pew Research Center report. As a result, in 2009, the typical Hispanic household had an astonishing $6,325 in wealth while the average white household had $113.149. This is mostly due to the fact that many minorities were given toxic mortgages that could not be repaid during the housing crisis. These statistics are very shocking, since race seems to now determine ones wealth more than before. The middle class seems to be diminishing for minorities, who have to face obstacles such as racism to overcome their class standing. Our country seems to be following the paths of many third world countries where the difference between the rich and the poor are enormous and there is no way out of the class you were born into. This article reminds me of the movie we watched “Maid in America”, where Hispanic women tried desperately to make themselves into the American Dream through hard work with little pay. “The loss of that quintessential American promise is worse than any downgrade of our country’s financial rating” and that cannot be explained through numbers and statistics.