Institutional Racism and White PrivilegeInstitutional Racism InstructionalUsing the concepts we've just defined I can offer a definition of racism. Racism is a caste system of hierarchically ordered races that uses economic, political, kinship, and especially cultural practices to maintain the separation and hierarchy of races.
This instructional is about institutional racism in North America.
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible KnapsackThinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in women's studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious. Then I remembered the frequent charges from women of color that white women whom they encounter are oppressive. I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."
Toward an Understanding of Prejudice and RacismPrejudice by itself does not constitute racism, however. Neither does power by itself. But when people use their position of power, be it political or institutional, to reinforce their prejudices and to enforce them so that as a result of their racial prejudices the life chances, rights and opportunities of others are limited, the result is racism. Thus, the simplest definition of racism then is: Racism is prejudice plus power. On the basis of this definition, while all people can be prejudiced, only those who have power are really racist. African Americans, Latinos, Asians and American Indians‹the powerless in American society‹can be and often are most prejudiced toward Whites on an individual basis, but they are not racists at the structural, institutional level. Within this understanding of racism, to be a racist you have to possess two things: 1) socioeconomic power to force others to do what you desire even if they don't want to, and 2), the justification of this power abuse by an ideology of biological supremacy. Keep in mind that what often is described as racism in society today, is really nothing more than prejudice and discrimination. While a Black or Latino person, through the use of a gun and/or intimidation, can force a White person to do as he‹as an individual‹desires, this is an individual act of aggression, not a socially structured power arrangement. At present, however, only Whites have that kind of power, reinforced by a belief in an ideology of supremacy, both of which constitute the basis of racism in America today.
Losing What We Never Had: White Privilege and Deferred Dreams, Part One The larger white society is getting ready to hold a party, to celebrate the end of racism, and lean back on their white privilege for the rest of their lives. It is an ongoing story of constant revision of history, and writing Black people out it. "It seems that every four years we see our struggle and needs ignored," writes the author, an historian. Presidential years are key to the revisionist project, they define the "new era." What follows is betrayal, as whites made up a feel-good version of history to justify their past actions.
Losing What We Never Had: White Privilege & the Deferred Dreams of Black America, Part 2 Modern political mythology, also believed by Blacks, maintains that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the post-World War Two college and housing benefits for veterans were unmitigated boons for African Americans. However, in many ways, the opposite is true. The New Deal, largely shaped to appease racist southern lawmakers, actually codified Black inferior status, while elevating poor whites. And returning Black veterans got only a tiny fraction of the benefits of the GI Bill. President Johnson's Sixties War on Poverty effectively lasted only three years – at the end of which, the hopes of the Black poor were smashed.
Losing What We Never Had: White Privilege and the Deferred Dreams of Black America, Part Three In the final installment of his series, the author debunks the mythology of "reverse racism" - a phrase that "needs to be done away with." Privileges accrued over centuries of Black subjugation translate into present-day white wealth and Black poverty. "Race-neutral" public policies amount to nothing less than change-resistant strategies by those who strive to continue the old order of Black over white - a society in which whites just out of prison are more likely to get a job than African Americans with no prison record. Lending and redlining practices suck billions of dollars out of the Black community, and mass incarceration effectively destroys the futures of successive generations of young people. But huge numbers of whites believe they are the ones who are getting a raw deal.
EducationFundingSchool Funding EquityIt is also abundantly clear that the funding disparity is a racial issue as well as an economic one. African American and Latino students are consistently over-represented in those districts that lack adequate funding for education, as is the case in Illinois. Although African Americans represent 14.8% of Illinois’ total population, they make up only 2.1% of the population in the state’s wealthiest county, while Illinois’ poorest county is 34.7% African American. (14) Of the nine states that have attained school funding equity, only two (Mississippi and Texas) have significant African American populations. This racial bias in educational resources can help to explain, amongst other things, lower SAT scores, grade point averages, and college achievement, as well as higher rates of remedial education amongst African American and other students of color. (15)
Internet Access in Public Schools and Classrooms 1994-1999The proportion of public schools allowing students to access the Internet before school was lower in schools with the highest minority enrollment (60 percent) than in schools with the two lowest categories of minority enrollment (80 percent each) ( table 8 ). A similar pattern occurred by school poverty concentration (percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch). Fifty-four percent of schools with the highest poverty concentration had computers with Internet access available to students before school, compared with 82 percent and 80 percent of schools with the two lowest categories of poverty concentration.
Of the schools with a website in 2003, 73 percent reported that their website was updated at least monthly (table 15).17 Among the 27 percent of schools updating their website less often than monthly, differences were detected by instructional level, locale, minority enrollment, and poverty concentration. For example, schools with the highest minority enrollments were more likely than schools with lower minority enrollment to update their website less than monthly (45 percent compared with 18 to 25 percent). In addition, the likelihood of updating the website less than monthly increased with poverty concentration, from 18 percent of schools with the lowest poverty concentration to 44 percent of schools with the highest poverty concentration.
The Funding Gap 2005: Low-Income and Minority Students Shortchanged by Most StatesEvery year, thousands of American children enter school already behind. Most Americans are well aware of that fact.
What they often don’t know, however, is that instead of organizing our educational systems to make things better for these children, we organize our systems of public education in ways that make things worse. One way we do that is by simply spending less in schools serving high concentrations of low-income and minority children than we do on schools serving more affluent and White children.
In other words, we take children who have less to begin with and give them less in school, too. In the nation as a whole, we spend approximately $900 less per year on each student in the school districts with the most poor students than we do in the school districts with the fewest poor students -- a gap effectively unchanged over the six years that the Education Trust has examined state and local funding for education. Fortunately, not all states make the same choice. Indeed, some states -- Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey among them -- have chosen to spend more on schools serving concentrations of poor children. But as this report shows, not enough states have made those kinds of choices.
This report is unique among funding equity reports in looking not at overall differences between school districts but, rather, on who wins and who loses as a result of state and local financing decisions. The Funding Gap looks at the outcomes of policy choices made in every state and documents that most states continue to shortchange the districts educating the greatest numbers of poor students and students of color.
"Savage Inequalities" RevisitedThe conditions in this school illustrated a crisis of funding inequality in the U.S. public school system. In his 1991 book Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol, a long-time critic of unequal education, famously exposed this crisis. He noted, for instance, that schools in the rich suburbs of New York City spent more than $ 11,000 per pupil in 1987, while those in the city itself spent only $5,500. The story was the same throughout the country: per-capita spending for poor students and students of color in urban areas was a fraction of that in richer, whiter suburbs just miles away.
Over ten years after Savage Inequalities was first published, how close has the U.S. public school system come to providing equitable funding for all students-funding that is at least equal between districts, or better yet, higher in poorer areas that have greater needs?
Not very far, according to a new report by the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust. Entitled "The Funding Gap: Low-Income and Minority Students Receive Fewer Dollars," the report examines state and local expenditures in 15,000 school districts during 1999-2000. Since federal funds account for only 7% of public school resources, this study of state and local spending zeroes in on the source of funding inequality.
Testing, performance, achievement, discipline, and integrationRace and the Achievement GapThese three studies taken together suggest three related explanations for the race gap in academic achievement and in test scores. First, are students' perceptions of the opportunities in the wider society and the realities of "making it." Second, are the educational opportunities available in the educational system itself — within school districts, schools, and each classroom. Third, are the cumulative psychic and emotional effects of living in a social world saturated with racist ideology, and where racist practices and structures are pervasive and often go unnamed.
Standardized Testing: The Interpretation of Racial and Ethnic Gaps"Statistical studies have suggested that test scores reflect income and socioeconomic status. It has been demonstrated again and again that scores vary in relation to cultural background; the test's questions assume a certain uniformity in educational experience and lifestyle and penalize those who, for whatever reason, have had a different experience and lived different kinds of lives. In short, what is being measured by the SAT is not absolutes like native ability and merit but accidents like birth, social position, access to libraries, and the opportunity to take vacations or to take SAT prep courses."
We know that test scores go up with family income. They also improve with socioeconomic status. Both trends are observed within all ethnic and racial groups. But before you blame income and socioeconomic status for the test score gaps, consider this:
Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white children from families below the poverty line.
Figure 3 shows how math SAT scores increase with family income for both whites and blacks, confirming Professor Guinier. However, black students from families earning more than $70,000 (1995 dollars) score lower than white students whose families earned less than $10,000. Figure 4 shows more of the same for the verbal SAT. Here too, the wealthiest blacks score below the poorest whites. (Complete data can be found in Appendix B.)
Teacher Perceptions, Expectations, and Behaviors May Put Black Students at a Disadvantage Why Might Teacher Expectations Affect Student Outcomes?
Ferguson says that there are several possible reasons why a teacher's expectations might (wittingly or unwittingly) affect the way a teacher behaves toward a student. He says that research shows that teachers tend to be less supportive of black students on average, perhaps because they have lower expectations. Because teachers are less supportive, they may actually help to cause the low performance that they already expect. Ferguson calls this a "self-fulfilling prophesy."
But why would teachers tend to be less supportive of black students? Ferguson discusses three different explanations:
Teachers perceive that young black students are less willing to put forth effort to succeed academically. Ferguson says that research shows that the largest differences in perception of student effort between the two groups occurs early in the elementary years. As students get older, teachers begin to perceive more similarity in the level of academic effort that black and white students put forth. However, the early perception that black students put forth less effort in their school work can affect the students' future educational experiences.
Low-performing black students may be perceived as "more difficult" than low-performing white students and so receive less teacher support. Additionally, higher performing black students may be perceived as "less difficult" than white students and so receive more teacher support. Ferguson says that research appears to support this view. "Difficult" students can be a hassle and distraction for teachers. Rather than spend their time attending to "trouble-makers,"teachers might prefer to spend time teaching students whom they perceive to be willing and interested in learning. Ferguson says that he believes "that on average, teachers probably prefer to teach whites, and on average they probably give whites more plentiful and unambiguous support." (pp. 298-299)
Black students may be at a disadvantage because of the "mismatch" between student and teacher race. In other words, black teachers may be more likely to give black students more support and attention than white teachers would. Ferguson says that this does not appear to be a central problem in the way teachers treat black students. In fact, he says, black teachers also appear to have similarly low expectations for black students.
Perhaps teacher expectations cause teachers to prefer teaching white students. Ferguson says that these possible explanations still do not tell us how much of a difference teacher preferences make for student outcomes.
BrownballedThis question was addressed somewhat in Jacqueline Jordan Irvine’s book Black Students And School Failure. She outlined eighteen studies where teachers’ attitudes toward and perceptions of black students was compared to those of white students. Researchers of these studies concluded that teachers had more negative attitudes and beliefs about black children than about white children in such variables as personality traits and characteristics, ability, language, behavior and potential.
In one study, Gottlieb (1964) asked black and white teachers from inner-city schools to rate the students they taught. These teachers were given a list of thirty-six adjectives and asked to select the adjectives that best described their students. Black teachers described the (black) students as happy, energetic and fun-loving; their white counterparts described the same students as talkative, lazy and rebellious.
Griffin and London (1979) administered a questionnaire to 270 black and white teachers in inner-city schools in which 90 percent or more of the children enrolled were members of minority groups. The researchers found that 64.6 percent of the black teachers considered minority students of average or better ability; 66.1 percent of the white teachers considered these same children to be of average or lesser ability.
Simpson and Erickson (1983) observed teachers’ verbal and nonverbal behaviors for the independent variables of student race, student gender and teacher gender. The white teachers directed more verbal praise, criticism, and nonverbal praise toward males than toward females. In contrast, they directed more nonverbal criticism toward black males than toward black females, white females or white males.
Aaron and Powell (1982) also found that black pupils received more negative academic and behavioral feedback than did white pupils. By far the most interesting study, in my opinion, was that of Meir, Steward and England (1988). In it an analysis was conducted of 173 large urban school districts and they found that as the proportion of black teachers in a school district increases, the proportion of black students assigned to special education classes, suspended, or expelled decreases.
These findings are not meant to suggest that all white teachers are incompetent in teaching black students or that all black teachers are exemplary educators of black children. However, these findings do indicate that, as a group, white teachers are more likely than black teachers to hold negative expectations for black students and for anyone to suggest that this has nothing to do whatsoever with the academic future of our children would be reprehensible. When 85 percent of this nation’s K-12 teachers are white and over 90 percent of its administrators are as well, the aforementioned findings become even more noteworthy.
School discipline, the “new” racist frontierNow the Chicago Tribune shines further light on the magnitude of racism in school discipline across the country. The Tribune analyzed carefully hidden US Department of Education data that show tha, in 49 out of 50 states, black students are far more likely to suffer sever discipline [suspensions or expulsion] than are white students committing similar offenses.
As a result, across the country blacks are 3.1 times as likely as whites to be suspended and 2.9 times as likely to be expelled. In my state of Massachusetts, the rations are 2.4 and 2.7 respectively [see state breakdowns here].
While socioeconomic factors play a role, the disparities remained when socioeconomic status was statistically controlled.
CirriculumTowards a non-Centric CurriculumThe curriculum is in fact "Eurocentric". This means that when it discusses the history and development of various fields and world culture in general, it dwells only on European contributions and influences. The curriculum in fact implicitly promotes racist ideas * namely, the idea that only Whites have the intellectual ability and intelligence to succeed in the sciences, as well as in the arts and humanities.
"Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science"Social science has been Eurocentric throughout its institutional history, which means since there have been departments teaching social science within university systems. This is not in the least surprising. Social science is a product of the modern world-system, and Eurocentrism is constitutive of the geoculture of the modern world. Furthermore, as an institutional structure, social science originated largely in Europe. We shall be using Europe here more as a cultural than as a cartographical expression; in this sense, in the discussion about the last two centuries, we are referring primarily and jointly to western Europe and North America. The social science disciplines were in fact overwhelmingly located, at least up to 1945, in just five countries - France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Even today, despite the global spread of social science as an activity, the large ma- jority of social scientists worldwide remain Europeans. Social science emerged in response to European problems, at a point in history when Europe dominated the whole world-system. It was virtually inevitable that its choice of subject matter, its theorizing, its methodology, and its epistemology all re- flected the constraints of the crucible within which it was born.
Higher EducationRacial Equity and Higher EducationThere is something terribly wrong with this picture. How could the issue have become so muddled that those opposed to affirmative action are actually winning the battle using "discrimination" as a rhetorical weapon, despite strong and persistent evidence of racial inequality? Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau reports the percentage of people over twenty-five who have completed four or more years of college, broken down by race. I have always considered this percentage the appropriate numerical benchmark of what we have in fact accomplished.
From 1940 to 1970, the rates of college graduation among non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Hispanics rose slowly, but at a similar pace. Over the past thirty years, access to higher education has increased markedly; however, the biggest gains have been made by whites, not by Hispanics or blacks, as opponents of affirmative action would have us believe. See Figure 1.
Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United StatesAn examination of empirical data reveals that racial inequality in higher education is still a serious problem, and thus it is urgent for the Supreme Court expressly to recognize racial inequality in higher [*PG450]education.47 Although many in white America may believe that the gap between whites and blacks in higher education has all but closed during the recent era of court-sanctioned affirmative action, the numbers continue to show a gap in access to colleges and universities between these two racial groups.48 According to the Department of Education, despite the fact that almost one-half of all whites believe that blacks have attained education levels equal to that of whites, only 16% of all black adults are college-educated as opposed to 28% of adult whites.49 The United States is still a nation where the number of incarcerated black men substantially outweighs the number of black men in colleges and universities.50
Health and Healthcare The Institute of Medicine
Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care "Racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive a lower quality of healthcare than non-minorities, even when access-related factors, such as patients' insurance status and income, are controlled. The sources of these disparities are complex, are rooted in historic and contemporary inequities, and involve many participants at several levels, including health systems, their administrative and bureaucratic processes, utilization managers, healthcare professionals, and patients."
Spectre of racism in health and health care: lessons from history and the United States These inequalities are not wholly a result of differences in socioeconomic circumstances. 4 5 38 39 Escarce et al explained their finding that white patients were more likely than black patients to receive services in terms of the following factors: different disease patterns; different level of contact with doctors, especially specialists; financial and organisational barriers; patients' preferences; and the fact that doctors managed their patients differently on the basis of race.40
The difficulty in interpreting these findings is considered in the context of heart disease, which has been studied in detail. Differences between black and white patients have been publicised since 1984.33 As the box shows, white patients in the United States receive more intensive medical attention in the treatment of heart disease than do black patients.
Racism and Healthcare in America: Legal Responses to Racial Disparities in the Allocation of KidneysResearch also reveals that, on average, African Americans receive less aggressive treatment for various physical ailments even after income adjustments are made to the data.103 For instance, studies pertaining to cardiac treatment reveal that African-American men are half as likely to undergo coronary angiography and one third as likely to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery as European-American men.104 These astonishing statistics are even more troubling in light of the fact that African-American males are more likely to suffer from heart disease than European-American males.105
Studies also indicate that the intensity of treatment within the realm of internal medicine is influenced by racial considerations.106 Even after income differentials are taken into account, research reveals that African-American patients are less likely to be treated aggressively for illnesses and/or conditions such as pneumonia, kidney failure, and glaucoma than European Americans.107 The Journal of the American Medical Association also reports that African-American women have fewer cesarean sections than European-American women even when researchers account for the degree of clinical difficulty of [*PG47]the childbirth(s).108 Within the mental health sector of health care, treatment disparities based on race also exist.109 For example, African Americans are less frequently considered viable patients for psychotherapy, are more likely to be cared for by an inexperienced therapist and are treated for shorter periods of time, and less intensively, than European-American mental health patients.110
Research indicates that, after adjusting for income, some procedures are in fact performed with greater frequency on African-American patients than on European Americans suffering from the same ailments.111 Unfortunately, those procedures are of the type that most people, regardless of race, would hope to avoid undergoing.112 For example, African Americans are three times more likely than European Americans to have a partial or total amputation of the leg.113 Similarly, African-American men are twice as likely to have a bilateral orchietomy in attempts to treat prostate cancer than European-American men.114 The implications of this research indicate that the medical profession may detect certain illnesses in African Americans at more advanced stages.115 As a consequence, less invasive and less drastic treatment measures are no longer viable.116
Environmental Racism and Biased Methods of Risk AssessmentMany studies support the CRJ conclusions. U.S. minorities disadvantaged in terms of education, income and occupation bear a disproportionate environmental risk.2 Socioeconomically deprived groups are more likely than affiuent whites to live near polluting facilities,3 eat contaminated fish4 and be employed at risky occupations.5 Because minorities are statistically more likely to be economically disadvantaged, many researchers assert that "environmental racism" -- racial bias in imposing environmental threats -- is the central cause of disparities in risks that minorities face.6 Indeed, some have argued that race is an independent factor, not reducible to socioeconomic status, in predicting the distribution of air pollution, contaminated fish consumption, municipal landfills and incinerators, abandoned toxic waste dumps and lead poisoning in children.7 Yet, whether race or socioeconomic status is the main cause of such inequities is still debated. Because they are more likely to be poor, minorities are also more likely to be politically disenfranchised. Thus, they are typically less able to fight unwanted risks. This disability could explain the disproportionate share of environmental threats that minorities appear to bear. It is not necessary, however, to settle whether race or socioeconomic status is a greater cause of environmental inequities. Regardless of the precise cause, there is evidence of racist bias in environmental decisionmaking, as this essay shows.
Poverty, Pollution, and Environmental RacismPOVERTY AND POLLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES
Toxic Foods. The United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world. Still, Food borne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325 000 hospitalizations, and 5 000 deaths in the U.S. each year. [69] Known food borne pathogens account for 14 million of the illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations and 1,800 deaths. [70] Unknown agents account for approximately 81% of food borne illnesses and hospitalizations and 64% of deaths. [71]
Number One Environmental Threat to Children. In many African cities, childhood lead poisoning can be as high as 90 percent. Even in the United States, lead poisoning continues to be the number one environmental health threat to children, especially poor children, children of color, and children living in inner cities. [72] Lead poisoning affects an estimated 890,000 American preschoolers or 4.4 percent of the under 5 age group. [73] African children are five times more likely to be poisoned than white children. Some 22 percent of African American children living in pre-1946 housing are lead poisoned, compared with 5.6 percent of white children and 13 percent of Mexican American living in older homes.
Geography of Air Pollution. The number of automobiles is increasing three times faster than the rate of population growth. According to National Argonne Laboratory researchers, 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanics live in 437 counties with substandard air quality. [74] In the heavily populated Los Angeles air basin, the South Coast Air Quality Management District estimates that 71 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Latinos live in areas with the most polluted air, compared to 34 percent of whites. Air pollution costs Americans $10 to $200 billion a year. [75]
Asthma Epidemic. The number of asthma sufferers doubled from 6.7 million in 1980 to 17.3 million in 1998. [76] Over 4.8 asthma sufferers are children. [77] Asthma hits poor, inner-city dwellers, and people of color hardest. African Americans and Latino are almost three times more likely than whites to die from asthma. [78] In 1995, more than 5,000 Americans died from asthma. [79] The hospitalization rate for African Americans and Latinos is 3 to 4 times the rate for whites. [80] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that asthma accounts for more than 10 million lost school days, 1.2 million emergency room visits, 15 million outpatient visits, and over 500,000 hospitalizations each year. Asthma cost Americans over $14.5 billion in 2000. [81]
Toxic Wastes and Race. Nationally, three out of five African Americans and Latino Americans live in communities with abandoned toxic waste sites. [82] Discrimination influences land use, housing patterns, and infrastructure development. Zoning ordinances, deed restrictions, and other land-use mechanisms have been widely used as a "NIMBY" [83] (not in my backyard) tool, operating through exclusionary practices. [84] The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that there are between 130,000 and 450,000 brownfields [85] (abandoned waste sites) scattered across the urban landscape from New York to California. Most of these brownfields are located in or near low-income, working class, and people of color communities. [86]
Toxic Housing. A 2000 study by The Morning News and the University of Texas-Dallas found that some 870,000 of the 1.9 million (46 percent) housing units for the poor, mostly minorities, sit within about a mile of factories that reported toxic emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency. [87] Homeowners have been the most effective groups to use "NIMBY" (Not in My Back Yard) tactics and practices in keeping locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) out of their back yards and communities. However, racial discrimination prevents millions of people of color from enjoying the advantages of home ownership. A little over 46 percent of African Americans and Latinos own their homes compared with 73 percent of whites in 1999. If blacks and Hispanics owned homes at the same rate as whites of similar age and income, their homeownership rates would have been 61 percent in 1998 versus 72 percent for whites. [88] African American and Latino American households, on average, must pay discrimination "tax" of roughly $3,700. [89]
Toxic Schools. More than 600,000 students in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and California were attending nearly 1,200 public schools that are located within a half mile of federal Superfund or state-identified contaminated sites. [90] No state except California has a law requiring school officials to investigate potentially contaminated property and no federal or state agency keeps records of public or private schools that operate on or near toxic waste or industrial sites. [91]
Toxic Jobs. Farm work is the second most dangerous occupation in the United States. Farm workers suffer from the highest rate of chemical injuries of any workers in the United States. EPA estimates that pesticide exposure causes farmworkers and their families to suffer between 10,000 to 20,000 immediate illnesses annually, and additional thousands of illnesses later in life. [92] Of the 25 most heavily used agricultural pesticides, 5 are toxic to the nervous system; 18 are skin, eye, or lung irritants, 11 have been classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as cancer-causing; 17 cause genetic damage; and 10 cause reproductive problems (in test of laboratory animals). [93] Annual use of the pesticides causing each of these types of health problems totals between one and four hundred million pounds. [94]
Farms employing less than 10 workers are exempt from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Over 85% of migrant farm workers work on farms with fewer than 10 employees. Over 80% of migrant farm workers in the U.S. are Latinos. An estimated 250,000 children of farm workers in the U.S. migrate each year, and 90,000 of them migrate across an international borders; half of all migrant children have worked in fields still wet with pesticide and more than one third have been sprayed directly; over 72.8% of migrant children are completely without health insurance.
An estimated of 137 American workers die from job-related diseases every day. [95] This is more than eight times the number of workers who die from job-related accidents. Fear of unemployment acts as a potent incentive for many workers to stay in and accept jobs that are health threatening. This practice amounts to "economic blackmail." Workers are often forced to choose between unemployment and a job that may result in risks to their health, their family's health, and the health of their community.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that more than half of the country's 22,000 sewing shops violate minimum wage and overtime laws. [96] Many of these workers labor in dangerous conditions including blocked fire exits, unsanitary bathrooms, and poor ventilation. Government surveys also reveal that 75% of U.S. garment shops violate safety and health laws. [97]
Military Toxics. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has left its nightmarish nuclear weapons garbage on Native lands and the Pacific Islands. In fact, "over the last 45 years, there have been 1,000 atomic explosions on Western Shoshone land in Nevada, making the Western Shoshone the most bombed nation on earth." [98] Over 648 U.S. military installations, both active and abandoned, in Alaska are polluting the land, groundwater, wetlands, streams and air with extensive fuel spill, pesticides, solvents, PCBs, dioxins, munitions, and radioactive materials. Many of these military installations are in close proximity to Alaska Native villages and traditional hunting and fishing areas. Military toxics threaten the way of life of Alaska Natives.
The U.S. Navy has used the tiny island of Vieques, Puerto Rico as a bombing range since 1941. [99] Fifty years of military exercises including the use of bombs, artillery shells, depleted uranium ordnance, and napalm have left local communities with serious health problems and destroyed ecosystems. Nearly three-fourths of the island's 9,000 residents live in poverty. Soils are degraded and contaminated, and both Navy and independent testing of bombing areas have found at least 10 toxic constituents including metals, benzene, and chloroform.
Radioactive Colonialism. There is a direct correlation between exploitation of land and exploitation of people. It should not be a surprise to anyone to discover that Native Americans have to contend with some of the worst pollution in the United States. Native American nations have become prime targets for waste trading. [100] The vast majority of these waste proposals have been defeated by grassroots groups on the reservations. However, "radioactive colonialism" is alive and well. Winona LaDuke sums up this "toxic invasion" of Native lands as follows:
While Native peoples have been massacred and fought, cheated, and robbed of their historical lands, today their lands are subject to some of most invasive industrial interventions imaginable. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 317 reservations in the United States are threatened by environmental hazards, ranging from toxic wastes to clearcuts.
Reservations have been targeted as sites for 16 proposed nuclear waste dumps. Over 100 proposals have been floated in recent years to dump toxic waste in Indian communities. Seventy-seven sacred sites have been disturbed or desecrated through resource extraction and development activities. The federal government is proposing to use Yucca Mountain, sacred to the Shone, a dumpsite for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. [101]
Radioactive colonialism operates in energy production (mining of uranium) and disposal of wastes on Indian lands. The legacy of institutional racism has left many sovereign Indian nations without an economic infrastructure to address poverty, unemployment, inadequate education and health care, and a host of other social problems.
Eastern Navajo reservation residents have been struggling to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission form permitting a uranium mine in Church Rock and Crown Point, New Mexico. The Mohave tribe in California, Skull Valley Goshutes in Idaho, and Western Shoshone in Yucca Mountain, Nevada are currently fighting proposals to build radioactive waste dumps on their tribal lands. Native and indigenous people all cross the globe are threatened with extinction due to the greed of mining and oil companies and "development genocide." A growing grassroots multiracial transnational movement has emerged to counter this form of environmental racism. [102]
Climate Justice. Climate justice looms as major environmental justice issue of the 21st century. [103] The United States emits one quarter of the world's gases that cause global warming. People of color are concentrated in cities that failed EPA's ambient air quality standards. Global warming is expected to double the number of cities that currently exceed air quality standards. A study of the fifteen largest American cities found that climate change would increase heat-related deaths by at least 90 percent. People of color are twice as likely to die in a heat wave. Global warming will increase the number of flood, drought and fire occurrences worldwide. Also, low-income people typically lack insurance to replace possessions lost in storms and floods. Only 25 percent of renters have renters insurance. Climate change will reduce discretionary spending because prices will rise across the board. Poor families will have to spend even more on food and electricity, which already represent a large proportion of their budgets. Indigenous people are losing traditional medicinal plants to a warming climate, and subsistence households are suffering from the loss of species that are unable to adapt.
EconomicsHow the Right Rationalizes Racial Inequality in AmericaFact is, earnings gaps persist at all levels of education. According to Census data, whites with high school diplomas, college degrees or Master's Degrees all earn approximately twenty percent more than their black counterparts. Even more striking, whites with professional degrees (such as medicine or law) earn, on average, thirty-one percent more than similar blacks and fifty-two percent more than similar Latinos.
Even when levels of work experience are the same between blacks and whites, the racial wage gap remains between 10-20 percent.
Looking at whites and blacks of similar age, doing the same work, earnings gaps remain significant. Among 25-34 year olds, white lawyers, computer programmers, and carpenters earn, on average, about one-fourth more than comparable blacks; white doctors and accountants earn, on average, one-third more than comparable blacks; and even white janitors earn sixteen percent more, on average, than comparable blacks.
MLK Day Report Shows Greater Disparity Between Black and WhiteAmong the more disturbing findings: Unemployment among blacks is more than double that for whites, 10.8 percent versus 5.2 percent in 2003 -- a wider gap than in 1972. Black infant mortality is also greater today than in 1970. In 2001, the black infant mortality rate was 14 deaths per 1,000 live births, 146 percent higher than the white rate. The gap in infant mortality rates was 37 percent less in 1970.
Black Americans have also made little progress compared to whites in terms of income. According to the report, for every dollar of white income, African Americans had 55 cents in 1968. Thirty-three years later, in 2001, the gap had only closed by two cents. The report notes that, at this pace, it would take 581 years to achieve income parity.
According to the report, the average black college graduate will earn $500,000 less in his or her lifetime than an average white college graduate. Black high school graduates working full-time from age 25 to 64, will earn $300,000 less on average.
Avis Jones-DeWeever, study director for poverty and welfare issues at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a private research organization that has studied the racial disparities of welfare reform, found the wealth disparities -- measured by net worth, including income and assets, minus debts -- even more troubling. "[Blacks] might not be cash poor, but they might be wealth poor," she said.
The report indicates that many black Americans are indeed "wealth poor." The average black family in 2001 had a net worth of just $19,000, including home equity, compared with $121,000 for whites. Blacks also had just 16 percent of the median wealth of whites, up from five percent in 1989. At this rate, it would take until 2099 to reach median wealth parity.
"It’s very discouraging," Jones-DeWeever said. "In the 1990s, there was an increase in the black middle class, but these families still are not secure. They don’t have that wealth to serve as a Band-Aid in times of economic distress."
In related areas, like health, conditions for black Americans as a group continue to improve slowly, or not at all. In addition to the widening racial gap in infant mortality rates, the report said blacks have a nearly six-year gap in average life expectancy, having narrowed the gap only 1.81 years in the past three decades.
State of the Dream 2007Increasing Minimum Wage:
The proposal would increase the minimum wage by 70 cents three times during the next three years. If the same increase of 70 cents were approved every single year after that, a minimum wage worker, supporting a family of three, still would not rise above the poverty level until 2013.
Workers earning less than $7.25 an hour (the proposed minimum wage at the end of the next three years) are disproportionately African American and Latino. While white non-Hispanic workers are 69 percent of the overall workforce, they are only 59 percent of those earning under $7.25 an hour. African Americans are 11 percent of the workforce but 16 percent of workers under $7.25; for Latinos the numbers are 14 percent and 21 percent. But higher unemployment rates and the loss of union jobs undercut the gains from raising the minimum wage.
Reducing College Loan Debt:
The $5,600 saved by typical college students will not help African American and Latino students as much as white students. Black families have only 15 percent of the wealth of white families resulting in less capacity to handle debt; moreover Black college graduates on the average earn half as much as the overall population of college graduates over their lifetimes, making college debt burdens more onerous for non-whites.
Decreasing Prescription Costs for Medicare:
The government will save money on the subsidized drugs purchased for low-income seniors. Beyond that it mostly serves middle-income seniors by reducing their out of pocket costs, a group disproportionately made up of whites. For very low-income seniors of color, Medicaid benefits may have been just as good or better.
Early indications with Medicare Part D suggest that the complexity of the program has led to low participation rates among low-income seniors, particularly seniors of color. Therefore, Congress’ second pledge, to simplify Medicare Part D by offering an option directly administered by Medicare, is vital to closing racial disparities in access to drugs.
Reducing Oil Subsidies, Investing in Alternative Energy Research:
Of 153,725 jobs created in 2005 by the ethanol industry, our analysis using the most generous methodology estimates that the upper bound of the number of jobs that went to Blacks is only 13,835. The industry is located in the Midwest; the largest concentrations of African Americans and Latinos are in the South and Southwest.
New incentives for the education of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians will not benefit students of color without specific funds for affirmative action programs. Currently, only 6.2 percent of graduate degrees in these fields go to African Americans and 4.1 percent to Latinos.
The Hidden Cost of Being African AmericanWealth is the sum of the important assets a person or family owns -- home equity, pension funds, savings accounts and investments. Wealth is better than income because it is durable. People use income to meet daily expenses, whereas wealth accumulates. People who have wealth tap it only to deal with emergencies or to take advantage of opportunities -- opportunities that usually build more wealth.
Wealth passes down from generation to generation. The main reason African Americans are currently worse off than whites, according to Shapiro, is that today's African Americans inherited less wealth from their parents than today's whites did. It is not hard to see why: The generation of African Americans now passed away accumulated less wealth because discrimination in their day kept most of them poor and denied them opportunities other Americans enjoyed.
The disparity in wealth not only persists, it mushrooms. Without a cushion of inherited wealth, emergencies hit harder, and people who have no nest egg have to let opportunities pass by. Because of the wealth deficit, African Americans find themselves more vulnerable to shocks and less able to capitalize on breaks than whites with the same income. So the next generation will inherit less, too. The wealth gap will not close anytime soon.
Wealth of a White Nation: Blacks Sink Deeper in HoleThe median net worth of an African American household is about $6,000, while white households wield 14 times as much wealth: more than $88,000. The disastrous details are contained in a report on wealth disparities by the Pew Hispanic Center, "The Wealth of Hispanic Households: 1996 to 2002," but the worst news is for Blacks, one-third of whom have no assets or a negative net worth.
The bottom fell out of Black wealth accumulation in the deep recession of 2000 - 2001, a downturn that hurt all ethnic groups, but from which whites and Hispanics rapidly rebounded. Whites recouped their losses from the recession and fattened their holdings by 17 percent between 1996 and 2002. Hispanics boosted their meager household wealth to about $7,900 during that period - still only one eleventh of white households, but almost fully recovering the 27 percent loss they suffered at the turn of the 21st century. Blacks also lost 27 percent of their net worth in 2000 - 2001, but got back only 5 percent in 2002. These African American losses appear near-permanent, the result of the deindustrialization of the United States - the destruction of the Black blue-collar workforce.
Hispanics, clustered in the low wage service sector, suffered less lasting effects. However, for African Americans, the worst news just keeps on coming, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. As Roderick Harrison, a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told the Associated Press: "Wealth is a measure of cumulative advantage or disadvantage. The fact that black and Hispanic wealth is a fraction of white wealth also reflects a history of discrimination."
Initial Conditions at Emancipation: the Long-Run Effect on Black-White Wealth and Earnings InequalityWhat are the causes of these different economic outcomes for blacks and whites? What has driven the dynamics of black-white inequality since Emancipation? Perhaps the most fundamental historical economic difference between blacks and whites in the United States is that almost all black households had zero wealth at the time of Emancipation. In addition, by 1835 formal education of slaves was illegal in every Southern state. Thus, by the beginning of the Civil War 95% of the black Southern population was completely illiterate (Smith, 1984). In addition to initial conditions, it is argued that discrimination in public schooling expenditures has negatively impacted black human capital levels. Since Reconstruction there have been significant disparities in the quality of public schooling available to blacks relative to whites. This paper will attempt to quantify the effects of (i) “initial conditions” of human capital and non-human wealth, (ii) subsequent black-white school spending differences, and (iii) black-white differences in human capital investment on the paths of black-white wealth and earnings inequality.
Doubly Divided: The Racial Wealth GapAfrican Americans and other minorities hold far less wealth than whites. But why should the wealth gap be so large, greater even than the racial income gap? It turns out that government has played a central role. Throughout U.S. history, countless specific laws, policies, rules, and court decisions have made it more difficult for nonwhites to build wealth, and transferred wealth they did own to whites.
