|
Using 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 Knapsack
Thinking 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 Racism
Prejudice 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. Education
Funding
School Funding Equity
It 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 1994-1999
The 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 States
Every 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" Revisited
The 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
integration
Race and the Achievement Gap
These 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.
Brownballed
This 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 frontier
Now 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. Cirriculum
Towards a non-Centric Curriculum
The 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 Education
Racial Equity and Higher Education
There 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 States
An 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 Kidneys
Research 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 Assessment
Many 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 Racism
POVERTY 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. Economics
How the Right Rationalizes Racial Inequality in America
Fact 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 White
Among 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 2007
Increasing 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 American
Wealth 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 Hole
The 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 Inequality
What 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 Gap
African 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.
Judicial System, Law, and Law Enforcement
Racial Profiling:
Media Blackface: "Racial Profiling" in News Reporting
There is need for a broader understanding of
"racial profiling." As a general concept and not just a specific police policy, racial profiling may best be understood as
the politically acceptable and very American practice of defining a social problem in "blackface"--i.e., in racial terms--through
indirect association. Once portrayed in blackface, the "blackness" of the problem encourages suspicion, polarizing antagonism,
and typically leads to the targeting of the racial group for punitive (public policy) action.
The link between the
stereotypical profile and the public policy is key. In police racial profiling it is direct: Individual officers act on racial
stereotypes against racial minorities, especially African-Americans. But when it comes to the news media, the racial profiles
projected are indirectly related to punitive public policies, thus giving the mainstream news media the "out" of deniability.
When the news media over-represents the number of black people in the category that is at issue, the issue becomes "black,"
stigmatized, linked to some form of always-justified politically punishing behavior, and, in turn, further racialized. Department of Justice Statistics Show Clear Pattern of Racial
Profiling
“These findings demonstrate clear and
significant racial disparities in the way in which motorists are treated once they have been stopped by law enforcement. The
report found that blacks and Hispanics were roughly three times as likely to be searched during a traffic stop, blacks were
twice as likely to be arrested and blacks were nearly four times as likely to experience the threat or use of force during
interactions with the police.
“And while the Department of Justice says that the higher rate of searches of blacks
and Hispanics is not necessarily the result of racial bias, it begs a critical question: why are blacks and Hispanics subject
to searches disproportionately? It’s a question that needs to be answered.
“Moreover, there was a significant
figure left out of this report – the racial breakdown of the number of searches that resulted in the discovery of illegal
contraband. Previous reports demonstrated that while black and Hispanic drivers were more likely than whites to be searched
by law enforcement during traffic stops, they were less likely to be harboring contraband. In 2005 the Justice Department
went so far as to try to conceal these numbers. They even demoted the official, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, who compiled them.
This report makes no mention of the racial breakdown of the hit rate. It’s an eerie silence and the Justice Department
needs to explain why this is not in the report.” The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: Why "Driving While
Black" Matters
This type of thinking means that anyone who
is African-American is automatically suspect during every drive to work, the store, or a friend's house. Suspicion is not
focused on individuals who have committed crimes, but on a whole racial group. Skin color becomes evidence, and race becomes
a proxy for general criminal propensity. Aside from the possibility of suing a police department for these practices - a mammoth
undertaking, that should only be undertaken by plaintiffs with absolutely clean records and the thickest skin - there is no
relief available. Reporter Victim of Racial Profiling is Cleared, Hundreds of
Thousands of Innocent Black New Yorkers Stopped by NYPD in 2007
A Bronx Criminal Court judge has dismissed
charges against a black New York Post reporter who was the victim of racial profiling by NYPD officers. The dismissal came
on the same day that the NYPD quietly released figures showing that police made nearly half a million stops in 2007, most
of which were of black and Latino New Yorkers. Incarceration and Sentencing:
Prison and Jail Inmates At Midyear 2006
Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment
On
December 31, 2005, there were 2,193,798 people in U.S. prisons and jails. The United States incarcerates a greater share of
its population, 737 per 100,000 residents, than any other country on the planet. But when you break down the statistics you
see that incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment.
U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2006:
Whites:
409 per 100,000
Latinos: 1,038 per 100,000
Blacks: 2,468 per 100,000
Gender is an important "filter" on the who
goes to prison or jail, June 30, 2006:
Females: 134 per 100,000
Males: 1,384 per 100,000
Look at just the males
by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening, June 30, 2006:
White males: 736 per 100,000
Latino
males: 1,862 per 100,000
Black males: 4,789 per 100,000
If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what
is going on even clearer, June 30, 2006:
For White males ages 25-29: 1,685 per 100,000.
For Latino males ages 25-29:
3,912 per 100,000.
For Black males ages 25-29: 11,695 per 100,000. (That's 11.7% of Black men in their late 20s.)
Or
you can make some international comparisons:
South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society.
South
Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000
U.S. under George Bush (2006), Black males: 4,789 per 100,000
What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black males at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most
openly racist country in the world? Racial Disparity In Sentencing
Direct Racial Discrimination
Key findings:
There
is evidence of direct racial discrimination (against minority defendants in sentencing outcomes);
Evidence of direct discrimination
at the federal level is more prominent than at the state level;
Blacks are more likely to be disadvantaged in terms of
sentence length at the federal level, whereas Latinos are more likely to be disadvantaged in terms of the decision to incarcerate;
At
the state level, both Latinos and blacks are far more likely to be disadvantaged in the decision to incarcerate or not, as
opposed to the decision regarding sentence length.
Interaction of race/ethnicity with other offender characteristics
Key
findings:
Young black and Latino males tend to be sentenced more severely than comparably situated white males;
Unemployed
black males tend to be sentenced more severely than comparably situated white males.
Interaction and indirect effects of
race/ethnicity and process-related factors
Key findings:
Blacks pay a higher “trial penalty” than
comparably situated whites;
Whites receive a larger reduction in sentence time than blacks and Latinos for providing “substantial
assistance” to the prosecution;
Blacks and Latinos with a more serious criminal record tend to be sentenced more
severely than comparably situated whites;
Blacks are more likely to be jailed pending trial, and therefore tend to receive
harsher sentences;
Whites are more likely to hire a private attorney than Latinos or blacks, and therefore receive a less
severe sentence.
Interaction of race of the offender with race of the victim
Key findings:
Black defendants
who victimize whites tend to receive more severe sentences than both blacks who victimize other blacks (especially acquaintances),
and whites who victimize whites.
Interaction of race/ethnicity and type of crime
Key findings:
Latinos and
blacks tend to be sentenced more harshly than whites for lower-level crimes such as drug crimes and property crimes;
However,
Latinos and blacks convicted of high-level drug offenses also tend to be more harshly sentenced than similarly situated whites.
Capital punishment
Key findings:
In the vast majority of cases, the race of the victim tends to have an
effect on the sentence outcome, with white victim cases more often resulting in death sentences;
However, in some jurisdictions,
notably in the federal system, the race of the defendant also affects sentencing outcomes, with minority defendants more likely
to receive a death sentence than white defendants. School and Prisons: 50 Years After Brown vs. Board of Education
Crime Rates – Higher rates of involvement
in some crimes explains part of the high rate of black imprisonment. For property offenses, blacks constituted 29.6% of arrests
in 2002 and for violent offenses, 38%; these compare to the 12.3% black proportion of the total population. (Note that an
arrest may not always be an accurate indicator of involvement in crime, but it often remains the best means of approximating
this measure.) However, criminologist Alfred Blumstein, in a study on race and imprisonment, noted that higher arrest rates
for drug crimes in particular were not correlated with higher rates of use in the general population. In short, drug arrest
patterns were not a reliable indicator of drug offending, because African Americans are arrested more frequently than their
rate of drug use would suggest.3 What appears to be a race-based relation for some offenses is in many respects one of social
class. Youth surveys document that a significant proportion of teenage males of all races have engaged in serious crime. These
rates drop much more sharply by the early 20s for whites than blacks, due to more ready access to adult roles – employment,
college education, and stable relationships. Further, researchers have identified not just poverty, but concentrated poverty,
as a significant contributor to crime rates due to the socioeconomic disadvantages it brings. Housing patterns in the U.S.
often result in low-income African Americans living in concentrated poverty, but poor whites and other groups are rarely found
in such situations.
Rising Imprisonment – Much of the rising incarceration of African Americans mirrors the dramatic
increases in imprisonment overall since 1970. From a combined prison and jail population of about 330,000, the nation’s
incarcerated population has now increased to 2.1 million. This increase is largely attributable to the adoption of “get
tough” policies that emphasize harsher sentencing practices, rather than any significant increases in crime rates. An
examination of the growth of the prison population from 1992 to 2001 found that the entire increase was explained not by crime
rates, but by an increased likelihood that convicted offenders would be sentenced to prison and by longer prison terms.4
War
on Drugs – Two overlapping trends since 1980 have contributed to a substantial increase in the number of African Americans
in prison. First, the inception of the war on drugs has resulted in a dramatic surge in the number of incarcerated persons,
rising from about 40,000 persons awaiting trial or serving a sentence for a drug charge in 1980 to about 450,000 today. The
current figure is only slightly less than the total number of incarcerated persons for all offenses in 1980. Second, the prosecution
of the drug war has disproportionately affected communities of color. Surveys conducted by the Department of Health and Human
Services estimate that blacks constitute 13.3% of monthly drug users, yet blacks represent 32.5% of persons arrested for drug
offenses.5 Of all persons imprisoned for drug offenses, three fourths are black or Latino. These disparities result in large
part through a two-tiered application of the drug war. In communities with substantial resources, drug abuse is primarily
addressed as a public health problem utilizing prevention and treatment approaches. In low-income communities those resources
are in short supply and drug problems are more likely to be addressed through the criminal justice system.
Crack/Cocaine
Sentencing – Federal legislation adopted in 1986 and 1988 provides for far harsher punishment of crack cocaine offenders
than powder cocaine offenders, even though crack is a derivative of powder cocaine. Persons convicted of selling 500 grams
of powder cocaine are subject to a mandatory five-year prison term; for crack cocaine, the same penalty is triggered by possession
of just five grams of the drug. Enforcement of these laws has resulted in African Americans constituting 83% of crack defendants
in 2001, despite the fact that approximately two-thirds of users in the general population are white. This represents a policy
decision by agencies in the criminal justice system to pursue the “war on drugs” using tactics that have a detrimental
impact on the African American community. In addition, 14 states also maintain disparities in their sentencing differentials
between crack and
powder cocaine. Widespread concern about these disparities led the U.S. Sentencing Commission to recommend
the elimination of the sentencing differential in 1995. This recommendation was overwhelmingly rejected by Congress and the
Clinton Administration. A subsequent effort to revise the penalty structure in 2002 was opposed by the Bush Administration’s
Department of Justice.
“School Zone” Drug Laws – In recent years many states have adopted “school
zone” drug enhancement laws that increase penalties for drug crimes committed near a school. These laws, intended to
deter drug-selling to school children, have in practice contributed to extreme racial/ethnic disparities, primarily due to
housing patterns. In urban areas, large proportions of most cities are within the typical 1,000-1,500 foot range of these
sanctions, whereas in suburban or rural communities, far fewer locations fall within this limit. Since African Americans disproportionately
live in urban areas, any such crime (even a drug sale between consenting adults at 3 a.m. near a school) will produce these
enhanced penalties. In one recent year, 99% of the juveniles automatically prosecuted as adults in Cook County (Chicago),
Illinois under the school zone law were black and Latino.
“Three Strikes” and Habitual Offender Policies
– Sentencing legislation that imposes harsher prison terms on offenders with prior convictions exerts a disproportionate
effect on African Americans. Judges have always had the ability to impose lengthier terms on repeat offenders, but this effect
has been magnified through policies such as habitual offender laws and “three strikes and you’re out” legislation.
Whether one believes that African Americans are more likely to engage in crime or are subject to racial profiling and other
discriminatory forms of decisionmaking, the result is that African Americans are more likely to have a prior criminal record
than other groups. Therefore, policies that impose harsher penalties based on criminal history will have a disproportionate
effect on African Americans. In California, for example, blacks constitute 29% of the prison population, but 44.7% of the
persons serving a “three strikes” sentence.6 These disparities take on added significance due to the extreme disparities
created by such policies. A non-violent offense in California that might otherwise lead to no more than a few years in prison
becomes a sentence of 25 years to Life when treated as a third strike offense.
Inadequate Defense Resources –
Forty years after the historic Gideon decision guaranteeing right to counsel in criminal cases, the state of indigent defense
remains highly inadequate in many areas of the country. An estimated 80% of criminal defendants are indigent and a 2000 report
by the Department of Justice declared that public defense was in a “chronic state of crisis.” In Virginia, for
example, the maximum payment for attorneys representing a defendant
in a felony case that can result in a life sentence
is $1,096. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, the public defender office has only two investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases
and 4,000 new misdemeanor cases assigned to the office each year. Since African Americans are disproportionately low-income,
they are more likely to suffer the deficiencies produced by these dynamics.
Zero Tolerance Policies – In response
to the perceived problem of school violence, many states and school districts have enacted “zero tolerance” policies
for violations of school regulations. Such policies result in automatic suspension or expulsion of students for infractions
that in previous times might have been handled by school officials. While ostensibly targeted at gun violence and other serious
crimes, in practice these policies have led to disciplinary action for behaviors such as bringing Advil or water pistols to
school. Zero tolerance policies contribute to higher rates of suspension and expulsion, and ultimately to increased numbers
of school dropouts. Children of color have been disproportionately affected by these policies. According to the Department
of Education, 35% of African American children in grades 7-12 had been suspended or expelled at some point in their school
careers, compared to rates of 20% for Hispanics and 15% for whites.7 These figures in turn result in increased risk of involvement
in the juvenile and adult criminal justice system. The racist injustice system
One in every eight Black men between the ages
of 20 and 34 is currently behind bars--an incredible seven times the rate for white men of the same age. More than 2.1 million
Americans are in jail or prison, making the U.S. the country that locks up more of its citizens than any other country.
.......
The
U.S. is in the company of only two countries--Iran and Congo--when it comes to executing juveniles. And at the same time that
growing numbers of Americans have doubts about the death penalty, Attorney General John Ashcroft has been overriding the decisions
of federal prosecutors to impose more death sentences. At least 28 times, Ashcroft has intervened to seek a death sentence--and
in 25 of those cases, the defendant was nonwhite. Black Prison Gulag and the Police State
The United States has passed an historic and
symbolic watershed in its unrelenting, two generations-long quest to incarcerate as many Blacks as humanly possible. As of
January 1, more than one of every 100 adults is behind bars, about half of them Black. That's not counting Afro-Latinos and
other Hispanics. The U.S. is the unchallenged leader in mass incarceration, with the largest Gulag on the planet, based on
raw numbers of inmates - 2,319,258 in federal and state prisons and local jails - and per capita incarceration: 750 inmates
for every 100,000 people. Russia, which led the world back in Soviet times, is number two, with 628 inmates per 100,000. The
Black and brown U.S. prisoner population, alone, roughly equals that of China's - a nation with four times the population
of the U.S. Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity
Examines racial and ethnic disparities by state,
and finds substantial variation in the degree of black-to-white incarceration. The report finds that African Americans are
incarcerated at nearly 6 times the rate of whites and Latinos at nearly double the rate. Five states, located in the Northeast
and Midwest, incarcerate blacks at more than ten times the rate of whites. Recommended reforms include: addressing disparities
through changes in drug policy, mandatory sentencing laws, reconsideration of “race neutral” policies, and changes
in resource allocation. The
War On Drugs:
Race, Prison and the Drug Laws
Of the 250,900 state prison inmates serving
time for drug offenses in 2004, 133,100 (53.05%) were black, 50,100 (19.97%) were Hispanic, and 64,800 (25.83%) were white.
Source: Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, PhD, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners
in 2005 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, Nov. 2006) (NCJ215092), Table 12, p. 9.
"When incarceration rates by
State (excluding Federal inmates) are estimated separately by gender, race, and Hispanic origin, male rates are found to be
10 times higher than female rates; black rates 5-1/2 times higher than white rates; and Hispanic rates nearly 2 times higher
than white rates (table 14)."
Source: Harrison, Paige M., & Beck, Allen J., PhD, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, May 2006) (NCJ213133), p. 10.
The incarceration
rate in state or federal prison and jail for men was 1,371 per 100,000 residents, for women 129 per 100,000 residents. The
rate for white men was 709 per 100,000, for black men 4,682 per 100,000, for Hispanic men 1,856 per 100,000. The rate for
white women was 88 per 100,000, for black women 347 per 100,000, and for Hispanic women 144 per 100,000.
Source: Harrison,
Paige M., & Beck, Allen J., PhD, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 (Washington, DC:
US Dept. of Justice, May 2006) (NCJ213133), p. 10, Table 13.
"When total incarceration rates are estimated separately
by age group, black males in their twenties and thirties are found to have very high rates relative to other groups (table
13). Among the nearly 2.2 million offenders incarcerated on June 30, 2005, an estimated 548,300 were black males between the
ages of 20 and 39. Of black non-Hispanic males age 25 to 29, 11.9% were in prison or jail, compared to 3.9% of Hispanic males
and about 1.7% of white males in the same age group. In general, the incarceration rates for black males of all ages were
5 to 7 times greater than those for white males in the same age groups."
Source: Harrison, Paige M., & Beck, Allen
J., PhD, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005 (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, May 2006)
(NCJ213133), p. 10. The Dark Alliance: Gary Webb's Incendiary 1996 SJ Mercury News
Exposé
For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco
Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug
profits to an arm of the contra guerrillas of Nicaragua run by the Central Intelligence Agency, the San Jose Mercury News
has found.
This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods
of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack" capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion
in urban America - and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy weapons. Blacks Were Targeted for CIA Cocaine: It Can Be Proven
Leaving the unsupportable arguments aside,
is there a supportable case that CIA directly intended for African-Americans to receive the cocaine which it knew would be
turned into crack cocaine and which it knew would prove so addictive as to destroy entire communities? The answer is absolutely,
yes.
And the key to proving that CIA intended for blacks to receive the drugs which virtually destroyed their communities
lies in the twofold approach, of proving that they brought the drugs in and interfered with law enforcement - AND that, by
virtue of CIA's relationships with the academic and medical communities, they knew exactly what the end result would be. Knowing
that, we then have a mountain of proof, especially since the release of volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's Report
(10/98) that the CIA specifically intended and achieved a desired result. The War On Drugs Is a War on the People
Contras and allied drug-traffickers who ran
afoul of drug agents were repeatedly helped by their contacts in the U.S. government. Agents of the federal Drug Enforcement
Agency circulated complaints inside the government that whenever they had developed a legal case against some major drug-trafficker,
the CIA would come in and use this legal threat to blackmail the trafficker into the network supplying their secret war. And
the DEA was then "called off"--because the trafficker was now valuable as an "asset."
Beginning around 1983, and in
significant part pushed on by the CIA-sponsored contras themselves, cheap cocaine flooded into ghettos of New York and L.A.--into
the economic life of inner cities that were becoming a wasteland of closing factories. Much of it was turned into crack--a
smokeable form of cocaine that gives the same intense high at a much cheaper price. Soon, crack was widely available in the
ghettos and barrios of New York and L.A. Within several years, nearly every major city was faced with a tidal wave of crack.
The CIA has (predictably) denied any role in the cocaine trade. And the system's mainstream media act like it is "paranoia"
to believe that the government might specifically target Black communities with cheap cocaine.
However several questions
about this have never been answered. In the early 1980s, a drug distribution ring was set up in California by supporters of
the Nicaraguan contras. The investigative journalist Gary Webb has documented that this ring specifically sent its "marketing
expert" to Los Angeles to seek out Black drug dealers for the distribution network. Why did these Spanish-speaking Nicaraguan
reactionaries not set up distribution through the various Latino drug operations of Los Angeles? Did someone in their operation
(or someone controlling their operation higher in the CIA-contra network) specifically decide to unleash this cheap cocaine
into the Black community of South Central L.A.? Crack/Cocaine Disparity
The crack/powder disparity fuels racial disparities.
In 2006, blacks constituted 82% of those sentenced under federal crack cocaine laws while whites constituted only 8.8% despite
the fact that more than 66% of people who use crack cocaine are white(2). The U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) has
found that, “sentences appear to be harsher and more severe for racial minorities that others as a result of this law.
The current penalty structure results in a perception of unfairness and inconsistency.”(3) Change Racist Crack Cocaine Laws
If you distribute just five grams of crack,
it carries a minimum five-year federal prison sentence. If you distribute 500 grams of powder cocaine, it carries the same
sentence. This 100:1 sentencing disparity has been condemned for its racially discriminatory impact by a wide array of criminal
justice and civil rights groups. Hispanics and whites make up the majority of crack cocaine users, but the majority of those
convicted under crack cocaine offenses are African Americans. African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and the Criminal
Injustice System
African-Americans represent:
• 12.7%
of the US population
• 15% of US drug users
(72% of all users are white)
• 36.8% of those arrested for
a
drug abuse violation
• 48.2% of American adults in State
or Federal prisons and local jails
• 42.5%
of prisoners under
sentence of death
Latinos Represent:
• 11.1% of the US population
• 10% of
US drug users
(72% of all users are non-Hispanic
whites)
• approximately 22.5% of sentenced
State prisoners
convicted of a drug
offense
• 18.6% of American adults in State
or Federal prisons and local jails Gangs:
Vacuum Left by Black Panthers Allows Gangs to Thrive
The Panthers new social reform began to attract
the attention of the U.S. government in a negative way. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s director J. Edgar Hoover
said the Black Panthers were, “The greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.” In an internal
memo Hoover also stated “The free breakfast program for children represents the best and most influential activity going
for the B.P.P and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the B.P.P. to destroy
what it stands for.” The FBI created a counter-intelligence program called COINTELPRO. This program rapidly dismantled
the party by assassination raids, false accusations of crimes, infiltration and sabotage.
The Black Panthers were
the last line of defense for many black victims of oppression in this country. In the late 1960’s through the mid 1970’s
black urban youth has witnessed the demise of any viable leadership. Without older mentors to guide them politically, emerging
gangs filled the vacuum in the same communities where the Panthers had once instituted strong community reform.
In
Los Angeles, two of the most notorious street gangs, the Crips and Bloods, formed. These gangs became increasingly violent
toward, which created intra-racial fratricide mainly over territorial drug trade. Today street gangs continue a foreboding
presence many American cities. Crips and Bloods
After that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) and LAPD systematically disbanded the BPP. Angry black youth in South Central Los Angeles looked for other groups to
join and keep up the fight against their oppressors—white or black. Raymond Washington recruited members for a new gang,
calling them the Baby Avenues or Baby Cribs. The term Cribs eventually evolved into Crips in common vernacular. Bloods and Crips In Lost Angeles
The attack on black political leadership in
Los Angeles, and the power vacuum that remained, created a large void for young black youths in the late 1960s that coincided
with the resurgence of black gangs. A generation of black teens in Los Angeles saw their role models and leadership decimated
in the late 1960s. Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement tactics and the Need for
Effective Public Safety Strategies
The public face of the gang problem is black
and brown, but whites make up the largest group of adolescent gang members. Law enforcement sources report that over 90 percent
of gang members are nonwhite, but youth survey data show that whites account for 40 percent of adolescent gang members. White
gang youth closely resemble black and Latino counterparts on measures of delinquency and gang involvement, yet they are virtually
absent from most law enforcement and media accounts of the gang problem. The disparity raises troubling questions about how
gang members are identified by police.
African American and Latino communities bear the cost of failed gang enforcement
initiatives. Young men of color are disproportionately identified as gang members and targeted for surveillance, arrest, and
incarceration, while whites—who make up a significant share of gang members—rarely show up in accounts of gang
enforcement efforts. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office found that close to half of black males between the
ages of 21 and 24 had been entered in the county’s gang database even though no one could credibly argue that all of
these young men were current gang members. Communities of color suffer not only from the imposition of aggressive police tactics
that can resemble martial law, but also from the failure of such tactics to pacify their neighborhoods. One researcher argues
that in Chicago, for example, a cycle of police suppression and incarceration, and a legacy of segregation, have
actually
helped to sustain unacceptably high levels of gang violence.
Studies based on self-reports as well as localized ethnographic
research have documented that white and black gangs are both present in urban areas, and that white gangs are also involved
in serious violence. Yet people of color predominate in law enforcement estimates of gang membership, and most of those arrested
for gang offenses are African American and Latino. Housing
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
From Maine to California, thousands of communities
kept out African Americans (or sometimes Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.) by force, law, or custom. These communities
are sometimes called "sundown towns" because some of them posted signs at their city limits reading, typically, "Nigger, Don't
Let The Sun Go Down On You In ___." Some towns are still all white on purpose. Their chilling stories have been joined more
recently by the many elite (and some not so elite) suburbs like Grosse Pointe, MI, or Edina, MN, that have excluded nonwhites
by "kinder gentler means." When I began this research, I expected to find about 10 sundown towns in Illinois (my home state)
and perhaps 50 across the country. Instead, I have found more than 440 in Illinois and thousands across the United States.
This is their story; it is the first book ever written on the topic. Race and Home Ownership, 1900-1990
The historical evolution of racial differences
in labor incomes has received considerable attention from economists. In contrast to labor incomes, far less attention has
been paid to the historical evolution of racial differences in wealth. This scholarly neglect is unfortunate because racial
differences in wealth were B and still are B much larger than racial differences in labor incomes and also because wealth
per se is an important determinant of living standards, independent of earnings. This paper uses IPUMS data to examine the
historical evolution of racial differences in one aspect of wealth B home ownership B from 1900 to 1990. Redlining/Block-Busting/White Flight
Tenant Responses to the Urban Housing Crisis, 1970-1984
In the second half of the 1970s the organizations
trying to combat abandonment focused on a new target: the banks and their practice of "redlining," whereby certain geographic
areas were singled out as bad risks for demographic reasons, such as racial change, so all applicants were denied loans regardless
of their personal credit worthiness. The housing analysts associated with these organizations were well aware that the causes
of housing abandonment were complex. However, they held that redlining played a key role by setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy
concerning neighborhood decay: by making mortgage financing difficult to obtain, it reduced demand for properties, thus causing
their values to fall and encouraging owners to "milk" their buildings by postponing repairs, cutting services, and even not
paying taxes in order to earn a profit under the new conditions. Redlining In Philadelphia
Redlining is the figurative or literal process
of drawing red lines around areas to which lenders refuse to make loans, or make loans on less favorable terms. Areas that
are home to racial minorities, particularly African Americans, have historically been the target of redlining practices. The
word "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by community activists in Chicago and was made illegal by the Fair Housing Act
of 1968. Prior to this landmark legislation, there was little legal protection against redlining, and it was common practice
for lenders and federal agencies to collect and map demographic and housing data about local neighborhoods in order to avoid
areas they considered high risk. Race: The Power of an Illusion
But it wasn’t only discriminatory real
estate practices that kept African Americans and Latinos out of the new suburbs. Federal investigators evaluated 239 regions
for lending risk. Communities with a mere one or two black families were deemed ipso facto financial risks and thus found
themselves ineligible for low-cost home loans. The film shows old government appraisal maps, adopted by the mortgage industry,
which colored those neighborhoods red -- hence the origin of the term "redlining."
“As a consequence,”
explains Melvin Oliver, author of Black Wealth, White Wealth, “most of the mortgages went to suburbanizing America,
and it suburbanized it racially.” Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans; more
than 98 percent went to white families.
............
It wasn't African Americans moving in that caused housing
values to go down in Roosevelt and other neighborhoods, it was whites leaving. Oliver explains: “If African Americans
are 20% of that market, it means that 80% of the people are not looking in those places for homes. So the price of those homes
declines or stays stable. And banks contribute to this by making loans in regions that are on the rise, in white communities,
and making it difficult to get loans in Black communities.”
When the whites left, they took capital and resources
with them. Business closed and moved away and the county used Roosevelt as a dumping ground for welfare families. A spiral
of decline had begun.
The consequences of housing segregation are profound. Today, the median African American family
has only one-eighth the net worth of the median white family. Even when they make the same income, white families have over
twice the wealth. Much of that gap is due to home equity and family inheritance. Global Ghetto
The US federal government was directly involved
in the segregation process. To increase employment in the construction industry and increase home ownership, the Home Owners
Loan Corporation (HOLC) was started. The HOLC initiated the process of redlining. Those who resided in the redlined areas
almost never got loans and could never move out. How the World Bank and the IMF divides up countries of the world into zones
and ratings is alarmingly similar to HOLC practices.
By giving a twenty five to thirty five year loan with a 90% guaranteed
collateral payment, the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) and VA (Veteran's Administration), during the 1950s and 1960s,
encouraged selective out-migration of middle class whites to the suburbs, leading to a decline in the economic base of the
city and the expansion of the ghetto. In giving out loans, the FHA determined minimum eligibility requirements for lot size,
which effectively eliminated inner city homes, thus forcing those who had got the loan to move out. Subprime Lending
Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008
We estimate the total loss of wealth for people
of color to be between $164 billion and $213 billion for subprime loans taken during the past eight years. We believe this
represents the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern US history.
From subprime loans, Black/African
American borrowers will lose between $71 billion and $92 billion, while Latino borrowers will lose between $75 billion and
$98 billion for the same period.
According to federal data, people of color are more than three times more likely to
have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55% of loans to
Blacks, but only 17% of loans to Whites. If subprime loans
had been distributed equitably, losses for white people would be 44.5% higher and losses for people of color would be about
24% lower. "is is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism. Based on improvements in Median Household Net Worth
before the current crisis (from 1982 to 2004), it would take 594 more years for Blacks/African-Americans to achieve parity
with Whites. "The current crisis is likely to make it take much longer.
Homeownership rates for Blacks/African-Americans
compared to Whites are already starting to take back recent gains. At the current rate of improvement (from 1970 to 2006),
parity will not be achieved for another 5,423 years. "The spillover effect of the subprime crisis affects whole communities
negatively, in terms of abandoned houses, increased crime, devaluation of neighboring houses, and erosion of the tax base,
causing revenue shortfalls that mandate service cuts. "The crisis is having a negative impact on property owners, as well
as neighborhoods, and local and state governments. Rules made the crisis worse, and rule change can make it better via better
policies. Just as many policies in the past and today have supported asset development for the wealthy, so can new policies
support asset development for those injured by the subprime crisis.
Broad racial and economic inequalities need to
be addressed for the success of any policy solutions to the subprime crisis.]We estimate the total loss of wealth for people
of color to be between $164 billion and $213 billion for subprime loans taken during the past eight years. We believe this
represents the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern US history.
From subprime loans, Black/African
American borrowers will lose between $71 billion and $92 billion, while Latino borrowers will lose between $75 billion and
$98 billion for the same period.
According to federal data, people of color are more than three times more likely to
have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55% of loans to
Blacks, but only 17% of loans to Whites. If subprime loans
had been distributed equitably, losses for white people would be 44.5% higher and losses for people of color would be about
24% lower. "is is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism. Based on improvements in Median Household Net Worth
before the current crisis (from 1982 to 2004), it would take 594 more years for Blacks/African-Americans to achieve parity
with Whites. "The current crisis is likely to make it take much longer.
Homeownership rates for Blacks/African-Americans
compared to Whites are already starting to take back recent gains. At the current rate of improvement (from 1970 to 2006),
parity will not be achieved for another 5,423 years. "The spillover effect of the subprime crisis affects whole communities
negatively, in terms of abandoned houses, increased crime, devaluation of neighboring houses, and erosion of the tax base,
causing revenue shortfalls that mandate service cuts. "The crisis is having a negative impact on property owners, as well
as neighborhoods, and local and state governments. Rules made the crisis worse, and rule change can make it better via better
policies. Just as many policies in the past and today have supported asset development for the wealthy, so can new policies
support asset development for those injured by the subprime crisis.
Broad racial and economic inequalities need to
be addressed for the success of any policy solutions to the subprime crisis. Predatory Lending: Redlining in Reverse
After decades of redlining practices that starved
many urban communities for credit and denied loans to racial minorities, today a growing number of financial institutions
are flooding these same markets with exploitative loan products that drain residents of their wealth. Such “reverse
redlining” may be as problematic for minority families and older urban neighborhoods as has been the withdrawal of conventional
financial services. Instead of contributing to homeownership and community development, predatory lending practices strip
the equity homeowners have struggled to build and deplete the wealth of those communities for the enrichment of distant financial
services firms. Subprime People
There we learn that subprime lending is shorthand
for new racism in banking. Instead of “redlining” neighborhoods filled with struggling workers of color, bankers
have for the past decade “subprimed” them — giving credit to these working poor at predatory rates (cf:
Wyly HPD 15.3). An Unstable Foundation And Racism In The Structure
As the housing bubble continues to deflate,
it leaves in its path a discarded group of individuals who spent the early years of the 21st Century striving to be part of
the American dream. Many low-income people were led to believe that sub-prime loans—that is, loans with interest rates
at least three percentage points higher than conventional loans—were their pathway to achieving the dream. But the sub-prime
lending market was also the proverbial needle that popped that balloon, and its biggest victims were communities of color. African Americans Bear the Brunt of Subprime Crisis
The subprime mortgage mess is making headlines,
but what the media barely mentions is that the African community is bearing the brunt of it.
Once again, bankers,
brokers, lenders and even regular white working America have profited mightily and are bailed out by the government when their
strategy fails. The African community is used, bled dry, and then criminalized and blamed for the problem.
You have
to dig to find out that, for instance, more African borrowers making upwards of $100,000 a year were given subprime mortgages
than were whites making under $40,000. African communities were targeted for subprime and adjustable rate mortgages as a very
lucrative new market for loan sharks. Gentrification
What Is Gentrification?
Many aspects of the gentrification process
are desirable. Who wouldn't want to see reduced crime, new investment in buildings and infrastructure, and increased economic
activity in their neighborhoods? Unfortunately, the benefits of these changes are often enjoyed disproportionately by the
new arrivals, while the established residents find themselves economically and socially marginalized.
Gentrification
has been the cause of painful conflict in many American cities, often along racial and economic fault lines. Neighborhood
change is often viewed as a miscarriage of social justice, in which wealthy, usually white, newcomers are congratulated for
"improving" a neighborhood whose poor, minority residents are displaced by skyrocketing rents and economic change. Gentrification
Capitalism generates a division into classes.
At the top of the social pyramid is the tiny class that owns the bulk of economic wealth. Filling their need for control over
labor is another class — the techno-managerial "middle class" who manage, plan, advise. Their class position is based
on monopolization of skills, education and connections rather than ownership of capital. Below them are ranged the mass of
workers who are forced to work under the control of this sort of hierarchy — the working class. This class hierarchy
in the economy generates great inequality in wealth and income.
The housing market tends to sort the population by
income into different areas. Racism may add another type of sorting. If an area is increasingly filled by lower income residents,
landlords have an incentive to not maintain their properties. If they were to invest in upgrades, they'd need to charge a
higher rent to make this a profitable investment. People with higher incomes who could pay the higher rents may not be willing
to live in that neighborhood. So landlords simply "milk" the decaying buildings of their rent. By putting off repairs, they
can save money to buy other buildings elsewhere. Gentrification: bankers and landlords push ‘ethnic cleansing’
Gentrification is undeniably a racist process.
In many gentrified areas, higher-income white households have replaced lower-income minority households. This is what happened
in communities that experienced “white flight” and painful urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. The same process
continues in cities throughout the United States today. Gentrification is undeniably a racist process. In many gentrified
areas, higher-income white households have replaced lower-income minority households. This is what happened in communities
that experienced “white flight” and painful urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. The same process continues in
cities throughout the United States today.
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