Economic Gap Between Races Put at 150 Years

WASHINGTON — Black Americans are progressing so slowly in economic terms that there appears to be little chance of their catching up with whites before the middle of the 22nd Century, the National Urban League said Monday.

Prospects are slightly better for blacks in matters of education and health, a study conducted by the league found, but in some areas, such as infant mortality, the researchers were unable to estimate when equality between the races might be reached.

The league’s annual conference has attracted 16,000 people to Washington for three days of lectures, workshops, career counseling and other activities. The report, titled “Stalling Out: The Relative Progress of African Americans,” seemed to belie the theme of the meeting, “Parity by the Year 2000.”

“The impressive, long-term progress of African Americans has in more recent years stalled and, in some cases, even reversed,” the league said in a statement released with the report.

The projections were drawn from Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau findings, the Urban League researchers said. Another recent publication, “The State of Black America 1989,” cited the same data to show that blacks are three times as likely as whites to be poor and twice as likely as whites to be unemployed.

“Our report plots the numbers over the period from 1970 to 1985, and makes predictions from changes in the past rate of growth,” said Betty Watson, an Urban League economist.

The Urban League study found that it would take more than 1,000 years for home ownership among blacks to catch up with the rate among whites.

The percentage of blacks who finish high school, however, increased from 55% of the white graduation rate in 1967 to 79% in 1985.