For the Skeptics
I've been working on on finding the simplest, most succinct way of articulating the problem of racism in the U.S., since there are those who would still dispute that it exists. I'm going to try again.
Let's start with an acknowledgment of the fact that Black people--and I'm going to keep it in Black and white terms for this since that is the current, Black Lives Matter moment, even though other ethnicities, backgrounds, and skin tones add layers of complexity--of the fact that Black people in the U.S. have unequal income and wealth compared to white people. They have higher levels of poverty. And everything that comes with poverty, including more health issues, unemployment, violent crime, and other ills.
So, fact: if you are Black you are more likely to live in poverty than if you are white.
If that is our fact, then we must ask why. Why do Black people have higher levels of poverty than white?
There are two general categories of explanation, either:
- Blacks have caused themselves to be poorer, or
- Circumstances have caused Blacks to be poorer.
If you believe Black choices, behaviors, and attitudes have caused themselves to be poorer, then you believe something about Black people is inferior, wrong, or unequal. Whether it is physical and genetic and a part of their bodies or taught and learned and a part of their culture, you believe they are in some way different based on the fact of their blackness. Something makes them lazier or less intelligent or less capable because they are Black. That belief is Racist.
If you don't believe that something about being Black has caused the issue, then, logically, you must believe that the cause is external. It is not something about Black people themselves, it is about the circumstances they are in. Something about the way they are treated by others. Something about the beliefs of the larger culture, the laws, regulations, and policies, the structures and systems that surround them. If they are not unequal themselves yet still have unequal results, then their conditions must be unequal. The problem, then, is Systemic Racism. It is built into our landscape. And it needs to be changed.
Of course, the reality isn't quite so simple. Built into our racist policies and systems are ideas to support them to make them harder to change. And because we are part of racist systems, we absorb the ideas built into them whether we want to or not. Because of systemic racism, we unconsciously adopt some measure of racist beliefs. All of us. So both sides of the chart are true and both need to be changed.
(There's one other possible response to the beginning proposition besides the cause being internal or external to Blacks: you can view the proposition itself as faulty and dispute my facts. You can believe Black people are not in fact poorer than whites, with all of the associated problems like more health issues, unemployment, violent crime, and other ills. My goal today is not to establish that fact. I will provide a brief bit of evidence at the end to give insight into my basic position, but will not argue it as part of this exercise.)
Of course, Black people face more racial issues than simple economic ones. Racism manifests itself in many other ways than poverty. That's merely a beginning point to extrapolate from. The same dynamics apply across the board.
Since it is currently a hot topic in current events, let's look at police brutality. Black people in the U.S. are more likely to be noticed by police, stopped and questioned by them, treated more roughly, arrested, and incarcerated. And more likely to be shot by police. That is why demonstrators are currently holding mass protests every day across the country.
(This, again, is a starting assumption, that the statements above are facts. There is plenty of data supporting my assertions as true. I'm not going to spend time proving the point. Also, these are based on percentages. To invent some numbers to illustrate, say we have a population of 100 Blacks and 1000 whites. 10 Blacks are shot by police and 20 whites are. The total number of white people is higher. But as a percentage, 10% of the Black people have been shot while only 2% of the white people have. So if you are Black you are 5 times more likely to be shot by police than if you are white.)
To extrapolate:
That is why demonstrators are currently holding mass protests every day across the country. Either police have racist beliefs, which need to change, or police are products of a racist system that needs to change. And the reality is both are true.
I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.
From a U.S. Census Bureau report, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018:
Median household income for Blacks is almost half that of whites. The poverty rate of Blacks is twice that of whites.
Economic equality is crucial to racial equality. But at nearly every stage of their lives, black Americans have less than whites.Dollars are like air — crucial to vitality. And when it comes to wealth, black Americans have less at nearly every juncture of life, from birth to death.Perversely, having less can cost more. Black students borrow more to go to college, don’t finish as often and more frequently default on their student loans. They earn less, and generally have lower credit scores — so they pay higher interest rates. It’s harder for them to save for retirement, and they leave less to the next generation when they die.An imbalance of societal power cannot be separated from cradle-to-grave economic inequality. This is what that looks like. . . .Black families with a new baby have a median household income of $36,300, according to an analysis of 2018 census data by the Center on Poverty & Social Policy. For white families, it was more than twice as much: $80,000. . . .Their six-year [college] completion rate through June 2017 for students starting at a four-year institution was 38.9 percent, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. For whites, it was 64.8 percent — even though both groups graduate from high school at roughly the same rate. . . .A college education is supposed to help pave a path to financial security. For many black students, that’s far from guaranteed: They tend to borrow significantly more than their white peers, and they’re more likely to default on their loans. . . .73.4 cents on the dollar - The black/white wage gap was significantly wider in 2019 than at the start of the century . . . according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.But the gap isn’t a function of differences in education levels. Even among those who attain advanced degrees, blacks were paid 82.4 cents for every dollar earned by their white peers. . . .The home is the largest asset for many American families, which may help build wealth over time. Paying down a mortgage often serves as a forced savings plan, enabling families to build equity that they can tap in retirement or leave to their heirs.Black families have long been behind their white peers in homeownership, but that gap is the largest it has been in a half-century, according to the Urban Institute.In 2018, about 72 percent of white households owned homes, compared with nearly 41.7 percent of blacks . . .Sixty percent of white families have at least one retirement account, while just 34 percent of black families do, according to the most recent Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, which drew on data from 2016. . . .Twenty-three percent of white families reported having received an inheritance. Just 9 percent of black families answered affirmatively . . .Whites received more, too: The median inheritance in white families was $56,217, while blacks received $38,224 . . .
When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways.This happens to everyone at some point, regardless of social class. The overload can be prompted by any number of things, including an overly stressful day at work or a family emergency. People in poverty, however, have the added burden of ever-present stress. They are constantly struggling to make ends meet and often bracing themselves against class bias that adds extra strain or even trauma to their daily lives.And the science is clear—when brain capacity is used up on these worries and fears, there simply isn’t as much bandwidth for other things.
"While their rate of imprisonment has decreased the most in recent years, black Americans remain far more likely than their Hispanic and white counterparts to be in prison. The black imprisonment rate at the end of 2018 was nearly twice the rate among Hispanics (797 per 100,000) and more than five times the rate among whites (268 per 100,000)."
"According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2013 black males accounted for 37% of the total male prison population, white males 32%, and Hispanic males 22%. White females comprised 49% of the prison population in comparison to black females who accounted for 22% of the female population. The imprisonment rate for black females (113 per 100,000) was 2x the rate for white females (51 per 100,000. Out of all ethnic groups, African Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Native Americans have some of the highest rates of incarceration. Though, of these groups, the black population is the largest, and therefore make up a large portion of those incarcerated in US prisons and jails. . . .
"In 2013, by age 18, 30% of black males, 26% of Hispanic males, and 22% of white males have been arrested. By age 23, 49% of black males, 44% of Hispanic males, and 38% of white males have been arrested. According to Attorney Antonio Moore in his Huffington Post article, "there are more African American men incarcerated in the U.S. than the total prison populations in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined." There are only 19 million African American males in the United States, but collectively these countries represent over 1.6 billion people. Moore has also shown using data from the World Prison Brief & United States Department of Justice that there are more black males incarcerated in the United States than all women imprisoned globally. To give perspective there are just about 4 billion woman in total globally, there are only 19 million black males of all ages in the United States."
In 2019 data of all police killings in the country compiled by Mapping Police Violence, black Americans were nearly three times more likely to die from police than white Americans. Other statistics showed that black Americans were nearly one-and-a-half times more likely to be unarmed before their death.
“We have been taught that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, lead to racist policies,” Kendi said. “If the fundamental problem is ignorance and hate, then your solutions are going to be focused on education, and love and persuasion. But of course [Stamped from the Beginning] shows that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit that self-interest. When the policies are challenged because they produce inequalities, racist ideas spring up to justify those policies. Hate flows freely from there.The self-interest: The Portuguese had to justify their pioneering slave trade of African people before the pope.The racist idea: Africans are barbarians. If we remove them from Africa and enslave them, they could be civilized.“We can understand this very simply with slavery. I’m enslaving people because I want to make money. Abolitionists are resisting me, so I’m going to convince Americans that these people should be enslaved because they’re black, and then people will start believing those ideas: that these people are so barbaric, that they need to be enslaved, or that they are so childlike that they need to be enslaved.”Kendi boils racist ideas down to an irreducible core: Any idea that suggests one racial group is superior or inferior to another group in any way is a racist idea, he says, and there are two types. Segregationist ideas contend racial groups are created unequal. Assimilationist ideas, as Kendi defines them, argue that both discrimination and problematic black people are to blame for inequalities. . . .“You can be someone who has no intention to be racist,” who believes in and fights for equality, “but because you’re conditioned in a world that is racist and a country that is structured in anti-black racism, you yourself can perpetuate those ideas,” says Kendi. No matter what color you are.Anti-racist ideas hold that racial groups are equal. That the only thing inferior about black people is their opportunities. “The only thing wrong with black people is that we think there is something wrong with black people,” a line that Kendi uses like a mantra.The Blue Lives Matter (the problem is violent black people) Black Lives Matter (the problem is the criminal justice system, poor training and police bias) and All Lives Matter (the problem is police and black people) arguments are extensions of the same, three-way debate (segregationist, anti-racist and assimilationist) that Americans have been having since the founding of the country. . . .“I was born into a world of racist ideas, many of which I had consumed myself,” says Kendi. “I had to come to grips with … some of the things that I imagined and thought,” about black people “and one of the first and most obvious ones was the idea that black neighborhoods are more dangerous than white neighborhoods, which is a very popular idea.”The highest instances of violent crime correspond with high unemployment and poverty, and that holds true across racial lines, Kendi found. Most white poverty, unemployment and thus violent crimes occur in rural areas, while for blacks those ills are more concentrated in densely populated urban neighborhoods. If impoverished white communities “had five times more people, then that community would have five times, presumably, more violent crime.”
posted by Degolar @ 12:55 PM
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