Racism Is Still Alive And Well - And A Tangible Barrier To Minorities

I have a few items to post on my usual fare -- foreign affairs, especially Iran -- but I'll put that off for later to share this post dealing with racism in America today.

I felt compelled to share this because this issue has been a pretty prickly one in my experience. And the issue is the progress and sometimes lack of progress minorities, especially African-Americans have been making in America since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the late 60's.

There is often this though among Americans ranging the spectrum that racism is either gone, or more commonly, that it has been reduced to such a level that it is not a significant tangible barrier for minorities, especially Black people, to make it to a better life. The implicit argument is that these minorities are whining with out cause, and simply seek to blame their situation on outside factors without addressing their own faults for their bad circumstances.

Now, there is something to be said about personal initiative and drive, but it is foolish and ignorant to ignore the substantial and still-present barriers African Americans face.

Read this post, titled 'White Convicts As Likely to Be Hired As Blacks Without Criminal Records'

Anyone claiming that racism is no longer alive and well in the United States, in addition to considering the race-driven circumstances surrounding the Jena 6, or statistics demonstrating that prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty when the victim is white than when the victim is black (particularly if the defendant is black), or studies demonstrating that blacks receive harsher sentences than whites for equivalent drug crimes, or the fact that even though more whites per capita smoke marijuana than blacks, blacks are arrested and prosecuted at a far higher rate, should read a recent study by Princeton University examining employment discrimination titled "Discrimination in Low Wage Labor Markets."

All good links, but the only one that I had never seen was the one detailing how white Americans smoke more marijuana per-capita than black Americans yet blacks are arrested at far-higher rates. What is clear, at least from these few links (which is anything but comprehensive in detailing the whole picture), is that there is some institutional racism or prejudice still present in America unfairly targets African Americans more harshly than whites.

But the final link 'Discrimination in Low Wage Labor Markets.' highlights what I think is the most insidious type of latent racism in America today: That involving employment.

In the largest and most comprehensive project of its kind to date, 13 young male applicants, presenting the same qualifications and experience, split into teams and went on nearly 3,500 entry-level job interviews with private companies in supposedly left-leaning, "progressive", multicultural New York City, jobs ranging from restaurants to manufacturing to financial services. After recording which applicants were invited back for interviews or were offered jobs, two sociology professors looked at the hiring practices of 1,500 prospective private employers, focusing specifically on discrimination against young male minorities and ex-offenders.

Some of the study's findings are depressingly familiar. For instance, young white high school graduates were twice as likely to receive positive responses from New York employers as equally qualified black job seekers.

It also reaffirmed not only that former prisoners are at a distinct disadvantage in the job market, but also that, again, black ex-prisoners are in a much worse position: positive responses from employers towards white applicants with a criminal record dipped 35 percent, while for black applicants similarly situated it plummeted 57 percent.

However, the study revealed that our society's racism extends even deeper: black applicants with no criminal record were no more likely to get a job than white applicants with criminal records just released from prison! In other words, while whites with criminal records received low rates of positive responses, such response rates were equally low for blacks without a criminal background. Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study's finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records...(snip)

Given how wary our society is of ex-offenders, and how difficult it is for ex-offenders to obtain gainful employment, this finding reveals the depth and breadth of racism in the job market.

How this ties in to the crime and racism in criminal justice data is clear. Black Americans, in the big picture, are more likely to be locked up, and arrested (and given more time) for offenses than other races. Our criminal justice system comes down a lot harder on African Americans.

Yet boosting this phenomena further are the underlying factors that boost criminal activity in black neighborhoods:

Higher poverty rates, poor schools due to low property tax revenue, which breeds an environment conducive to increase violence, and inadequate means to escape or improve the environment.

Its like a negative self-reinforcing circle:

The poverty and government neglect that are legacies of the pre-Civil Rights era, has trapped African Americans in this loop.

-Poverty and neglect are environments that breed violence and crime (often drug dealing and drug offenses)

- The criminal justice system is tilted against African Americans overall and has been shown to imprison and punish black people more harshly than other races

- You are left with a large population of the population with a criminal record

- Employment racism and prejudice figures have shown that not only are African Americans, overall, with the same qualifications as whites, less likely to be hired as whites, but that white former criminal offenders are just as likely of being hired as a black person with a clean record. A black person with a record...forget about it.

Meaning: Less employment opportunities for African Americans and thus, less opportunities for better incomes, and less opportunity to make a better life for themselves

- This lack of opportunity feeds the negative circle, by making crime a much more appealing (and practical) way for people to survive...but of course this only feeds the circle by ensuring more and more violence and crime in the neighborhood.

Its all a negative circle of factors that feeds on itself and serves to ensure one thing: More often than not, the poor stay poor. More often than not, blacks stay in the ghetto with little chance of success....And then we can point our fingers and chide them for not being able to progress much in the last half of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century. All the while most of us go to sleep ignorant of the institutional and other factors working against African Americans.

It's not that African Americans are any less capable than other races, it's that from birth, and finding its origins in the disadvantaged-starting-point that the Jim Crow laws and other racist laws of the late 19th and 20th century put black americans - the cards of circumstance were often stacked against African Americans.

There are many examples of people making it: Getting out the hood, becoming success etc...but that's not what the issue is here.

The issue is not that sometimes people can be successful in spite of the factors working against them (because many can). No, the issue is one of equality and fairness of opportunity.

The data so far sourced has demonstrated one thing quite clearly: As far as we may have come, we are a LONG way from African Americans having a level playing field.

And that is the thing; No one asks for 'special privileges,' simply policies and considerations that would help level the playing field in America.

So that a black man, and a white man can truly reach the limits of his/her ability, intelligence, and drive. So that no Race starts a 26 mile marathon 5 miles behind the starting point for the other Race.

Repercussions for Affirmative Action
In this light, programs such as affirmative action which seek to boost African American and other minority race chances of employment, of being enrolled in colleges are not "reverse discrimination" as some critics assert.

Critics assert that it unfairly gives minorities access to jobs and college spots, and that is unfair (and even a form of reverse racism). But that completely flies in the face of the original and continuing purpose of Affirmative Action: To affirmatively deal with and counteract existing prejudice, racism, and factors that keep more minorities from being hired are admitted in college. There has been shown to be a subtle racism under the surface that serves to inhibit black employment...Affirmative Action has, and continues to be one means to counteract that tendency and ensure minorities are more gainfully employed than they otherwise would be.

That is not racism, that is not discrimination.

That is balancing the prejudice and racism that is still present in America. That is America and Americans trying to help level the distorted playing field.

PS: I urge everyone to give the rest of the post a good read. I cited a large part of it but there are still some interesting tidbits, some which fill in with details and statistics what I only generalized about in my own comments.