Being called a white epithet isn't racism, it's bigotry. Those bigots
might hate you, but white privilege guarantees that hate will never
affect every aspect of your life.
Racism is a systemic problem. It creeps into all corners of one's life. It goes beyond being called a foul name.
So many folks want to decry the idea that racism is alive, well and thriving in the good 'ol USofA. They want to stick their heads in the sand while farting out of their asses about how 'those people' should just try harder, do better, "Hey, it's 'Murrica!" after all.
It isn't so, though, and I am going to show you why.
Let's discuss the criminal justice system.
White high-school students who are current users of cocaine: 4.1%
African-American high school students who are current users of cocaine: 1.1%
Chance of a white person ever trying an illicit drug in their lifetime: 42%
Chance of an African-American person ever trying an illicit drug in their lifetime: 37.7%
Percent of felony drug defendants in state courts who are white: 37%
Percent of felony drug defendants in state courts who are black: 37.7%
Percent of white drug felons given probation or nonincarceration sentence by state courts: 32%
Percent of black drug felons given probation or nonincarceration sentence by state courts: 25%
Percent of black drug felons sentenced to prison by state courts each year: 43%
Percent of white drug felons sentenced to prison by state courts each year: 27%
Whites are more likely to do drugs than Blacks or Hispanics: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Drug_Usage#nsduh_cu…
Whites are more likely to be in possession of guns and drugs, as found in this NY study: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/22/2046451…
According to the US Justice Department and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, drug users typically buy their drugs from sellers of their own racial or ethnic background. For research on Ethnicity & Race of Drug Sellers and Users, see: US Dept. of Justice National Institute of Justice & the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, "Crack, Powder Cocaine, and Heroin: Drug Purchase and Use Patterns in Six U.S. Cities," December 1997, pp. 1, 16, and p. 15, Table 16.
Whites are doing, and selling, more drugs than blacks if we look at the statistics as a whole.
Yet?
Black males continue to be incarcerated at an extraordinary rate. Black males make up 35.4 percent of the jail and prison population — even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall U.S population. Four percent of U.S. black males were in jail or prison last year, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanic males and .7 percent of white males. In other words, black males were locked up at almost six times the rate of their white counterparts.
There also seems to be quite a gap between whites and blacks in sentencing when similar crimes are committed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732443…
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/2170-new-study-…
http://www.naacpldf.org/files/case_issue/Duane%20Bu…
The Supreme Court, in the 2005 case U.S. v. Booker, struck down a 1984 law that required federal district judges to impose a sentence within the range of the federal sentencing guidelines, which are set by the commission.
The law was meant to alleviate the disparity in federal sentences, but critics say placing restrictions on judges can exacerbate the problem by rendering them powerless to deviate from guidelines and laws that are inherently biased. An often-cited example is a federal law that created steeper penalties for crack-cocaine offenses, which are committed by blacks more frequently than whites, than for powder-cocaine offenses. Congress reduced the disparity in 2010.
In the two years after the Booker ruling, sentences of blacks were on average 15.2% longer than the sentences of similarly situated whites, according to the Sentencing Commission report. Between December 2007 and September 2011, the most recent period covered in the report, sentences of black males were 19.5% longer than those for whites. The analysis also found that black males were 25% less likely than whites in the same period to receive a sentence below the guidelines' range.
The Sentencing Commission released a similar report in 2010. Researchers criticized its analysis for including sentences of probation, which they argued amplified the demographic differences.
In the new study, the Sentencing Commission conducted a separate analysis that excluded sentences of probation. It yielded the same pattern, but the racial disparity was less pronounced. Sentences of black males were 14.5% longer than whites, rather than nearly 20%.
This also affects the voting constituency. In some states, convicted felons are stripped of their right to vote. Forever.
Blacks are being systematically stripped of their right to vote via the war on drugs, and it smells an awful lot like Jim Crow. No vote, No voice.
http://newjimcrow.com/
There's racial disparity in the housing market as shown by these studies:
http://ips.jhu.edu/pub/Racial-Disparity-Still-Haunt…
http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107514/1/Chin_…
For a variety of reasons - including continued, if not so open, racism and discrimination - black homebuyers pay more than their white counterparts, get stuck with higher-interest loans and get less home value for the money spent. This is especially true for black homebuyers in low-income neighborhoods, and it has made homeownership for these individuals and their families a risky business.
A recent study published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) uncovered striking racial disparities in the open housing mortgage market. The report found that high-interest loans, many of which are illegal, are three times more likely in low- income neighborhoods than in high-income areas, and five times more likely in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods.
In predominantly black communities, high-cost lending accounted for 51 percent of home loans in 1998, compared with only 9 percent in predominantly white areas. HUD further noted that homeowners in high-income black neighborhoods are six times as likely as homeowners in upper-income white neighborhoods, and twice as likely as homeowners in low-income white neighborhoods, to have high- interest loans.
Another study found that black homeowners receive less value for their homes than white homeowners.
The study, which compared home values to homeowner incomes for owners of different ethnic and racial groups in the nation's 100 largest cities in 1990, found that, equalizing for income, black homeowners received 18 percent less value for their homes than white homeowners; white homeowners owned $2.64 worth of house for every dollar of income, while black homeowners owned only $2.16 worth of house. Or to put in another way, for every dollar African-Americans spend on a house, they receive only 82 percent of the value that white homeowners receive.
The study further revealed that the 18 percent gap imposed on black homeowners - the so-called segregation tax - primarily results from a high degree of racial segregation in neighborhoods. Baltimore's segregation tax of 30 percent ranks among the 10 highest of metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the study.
High-cost lending and the segregation tax, combined with block busting, "flipping" and other illegal housing practices, have contributed to a sharp increase in mortgage foreclosures in Baltimore.
There's racial disparity in education opportunities as shown by these studies:
Due to tax bases and education funding, minorities are at a disadvantage educationally. This is tied directly to the housing disparity.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411785_e…
http://cte.rockhurst.edu/s/945/images/editor_docume…
There's racial disparity in the workforce and in pay as indicated by these studies and articles:
“The lesson of most economic downturns is minorities are the last hired, first fired. They lose jobs more quickly, and they will be the last to recover,” said Roderick Harrison, a demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that studies minority issues.
"Even when you compare black and white workers, same age range, same education, you still see pretty significant gaps in unemployment rates," said Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute. "So I do think the fact of racial discrimination in the labor market continues to play a role."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30437468/ns/business-care…
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news/economy/black_…
There's racial disparity in healthcare:
In another recent study, AHRQ-funded researchers in Boston examined the quality of care provided to hospital patients with congestive heart failure or pneumonia. Quality of care was measured both by physician review and by adherence to standards of care. The researchers found no difference in quality of care for patients from poor communities compared with other patients, after adjusting for other factors. They did find, however, that African American patients received a lower quality of care than white patients.
http://www.ahrq.gov/research/findings/factsheets/mi…
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/06/04/racial-dis…
There's even racial disparity in the ability to purchase food as noted by the phenomenon called 'food deserts':
"Food deserts," areas characterized by relatively poor access to healthy and affordable food, may contribute to social disparities in diet and diet-related health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity. The term "food desert" reportedly originated in Scotland in the early 1990s and was used to describe poor access to an affordable and healthy diet. Although the term "food desert" can mean a literal absence of retail food in a defined area, studies of food deserts more commonly assess differential accessibility to healthy and affordable food between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged areas.
Geographic areas with a high proportion of low-income or African American residents were underserved by food retailers compared with more advantaged areas (19 studies: 18 in support, 1 mixed). Evidence on rural/urban differences was mixed.
Low-income areas (8 studies) and areas with a high proportion of African Americans (5 of the 8 studies) had fewer supermarkets or chain stores per capita and fewer midsized or large stores than did advantaged areas. Three studies combined income and race; in these, areas characterized by low income and a high proportion of African Americans and Latinos had few supermarkets or chain stores per capita . Four studies that were unadjusted for population found few supermarkets or chain stores in low-income and African American areas.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/883903/err140.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722409…
http://www.ppgbuffalo.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/0…
How many areas of life have to be affected before racism is considered systemic? I've pointed at every aspect here, and all of the studies say racism is alive and well.
So, the next time you get your feelers all hurt and want to cry "RACISM!" because some dude called you a cracker? Remember, being called a cracker or honky doesn't constitute understanding racism. Congratulations, you've just met a bigot. That doesn't come anywhere near close to the experience of systemic racism in America. Apples and hammers.
White people, you have fucking privilege in this country and no amount of screaming it doesn't exist is going to make it so. When every study shows whites have an advantage, you can't deny the existence of white privilege.
Racism is a systemic problem. It creeps into all corners of one's life. It goes beyond being called a foul name.
So many folks want to decry the idea that racism is alive, well and thriving in the good 'ol USofA. They want to stick their heads in the sand while farting out of their asses about how 'those people' should just try harder, do better, "Hey, it's 'Murrica!" after all.
It isn't so, though, and I am going to show you why.
Let's discuss the criminal justice system.
White high-school students who are current users of cocaine: 4.1%
African-American high school students who are current users of cocaine: 1.1%
Chance of a white person ever trying an illicit drug in their lifetime: 42%
Chance of an African-American person ever trying an illicit drug in their lifetime: 37.7%
Percent of felony drug defendants in state courts who are white: 37%
Percent of felony drug defendants in state courts who are black: 37.7%
Percent of white drug felons given probation or nonincarceration sentence by state courts: 32%
Percent of black drug felons given probation or nonincarceration sentence by state courts: 25%
Percent of black drug felons sentenced to prison by state courts each year: 43%
Percent of white drug felons sentenced to prison by state courts each year: 27%
Whites are more likely to do drugs than Blacks or Hispanics: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Drug_Usage#nsduh_cu…
Whites are more likely to be in possession of guns and drugs, as found in this NY study: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/22/2046451…
According to the US Justice Department and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, drug users typically buy their drugs from sellers of their own racial or ethnic background. For research on Ethnicity & Race of Drug Sellers and Users, see: US Dept. of Justice National Institute of Justice & the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, "Crack, Powder Cocaine, and Heroin: Drug Purchase and Use Patterns in Six U.S. Cities," December 1997, pp. 1, 16, and p. 15, Table 16.
Whites are doing, and selling, more drugs than blacks if we look at the statistics as a whole.
Yet?
Black males continue to be incarcerated at an extraordinary rate. Black males make up 35.4 percent of the jail and prison population — even though they make up less than 10 percent of the overall U.S population. Four percent of U.S. black males were in jail or prison last year, compared to 1.7 percent of Hispanic males and .7 percent of white males. In other words, black males were locked up at almost six times the rate of their white counterparts.
There also seems to be quite a gap between whites and blacks in sentencing when similar crimes are committed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732443…
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/2170-new-study-…
http://www.naacpldf.org/files/case_issue/Duane%20Bu…
The Supreme Court, in the 2005 case U.S. v. Booker, struck down a 1984 law that required federal district judges to impose a sentence within the range of the federal sentencing guidelines, which are set by the commission.
The law was meant to alleviate the disparity in federal sentences, but critics say placing restrictions on judges can exacerbate the problem by rendering them powerless to deviate from guidelines and laws that are inherently biased. An often-cited example is a federal law that created steeper penalties for crack-cocaine offenses, which are committed by blacks more frequently than whites, than for powder-cocaine offenses. Congress reduced the disparity in 2010.
In the two years after the Booker ruling, sentences of blacks were on average 15.2% longer than the sentences of similarly situated whites, according to the Sentencing Commission report. Between December 2007 and September 2011, the most recent period covered in the report, sentences of black males were 19.5% longer than those for whites. The analysis also found that black males were 25% less likely than whites in the same period to receive a sentence below the guidelines' range.
The Sentencing Commission released a similar report in 2010. Researchers criticized its analysis for including sentences of probation, which they argued amplified the demographic differences.
In the new study, the Sentencing Commission conducted a separate analysis that excluded sentences of probation. It yielded the same pattern, but the racial disparity was less pronounced. Sentences of black males were 14.5% longer than whites, rather than nearly 20%.
This also affects the voting constituency. In some states, convicted felons are stripped of their right to vote. Forever.
Blacks are being systematically stripped of their right to vote via the war on drugs, and it smells an awful lot like Jim Crow. No vote, No voice.
http://newjimcrow.com/
There's racial disparity in the housing market as shown by these studies:
http://ips.jhu.edu/pub/Racial-Disparity-Still-Haunt…
http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107514/1/Chin_…
For a variety of reasons - including continued, if not so open, racism and discrimination - black homebuyers pay more than their white counterparts, get stuck with higher-interest loans and get less home value for the money spent. This is especially true for black homebuyers in low-income neighborhoods, and it has made homeownership for these individuals and their families a risky business.
A recent study published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) uncovered striking racial disparities in the open housing mortgage market. The report found that high-interest loans, many of which are illegal, are three times more likely in low- income neighborhoods than in high-income areas, and five times more likely in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods.
In predominantly black communities, high-cost lending accounted for 51 percent of home loans in 1998, compared with only 9 percent in predominantly white areas. HUD further noted that homeowners in high-income black neighborhoods are six times as likely as homeowners in upper-income white neighborhoods, and twice as likely as homeowners in low-income white neighborhoods, to have high- interest loans.
Another study found that black homeowners receive less value for their homes than white homeowners.
The study, which compared home values to homeowner incomes for owners of different ethnic and racial groups in the nation's 100 largest cities in 1990, found that, equalizing for income, black homeowners received 18 percent less value for their homes than white homeowners; white homeowners owned $2.64 worth of house for every dollar of income, while black homeowners owned only $2.16 worth of house. Or to put in another way, for every dollar African-Americans spend on a house, they receive only 82 percent of the value that white homeowners receive.
The study further revealed that the 18 percent gap imposed on black homeowners - the so-called segregation tax - primarily results from a high degree of racial segregation in neighborhoods. Baltimore's segregation tax of 30 percent ranks among the 10 highest of metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the study.
High-cost lending and the segregation tax, combined with block busting, "flipping" and other illegal housing practices, have contributed to a sharp increase in mortgage foreclosures in Baltimore.
There's racial disparity in education opportunities as shown by these studies:
Due to tax bases and education funding, minorities are at a disadvantage educationally. This is tied directly to the housing disparity.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411785_e…
http://cte.rockhurst.edu/s/945/images/editor_docume…
There's racial disparity in the workforce and in pay as indicated by these studies and articles:
“The lesson of most economic downturns is minorities are the last hired, first fired. They lose jobs more quickly, and they will be the last to recover,” said Roderick Harrison, a demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that studies minority issues.
"Even when you compare black and white workers, same age range, same education, you still see pretty significant gaps in unemployment rates," said Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute. "So I do think the fact of racial discrimination in the labor market continues to play a role."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/30437468/ns/business-care…
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/news/economy/black_…
There's racial disparity in healthcare:
In another recent study, AHRQ-funded researchers in Boston examined the quality of care provided to hospital patients with congestive heart failure or pneumonia. Quality of care was measured both by physician review and by adherence to standards of care. The researchers found no difference in quality of care for patients from poor communities compared with other patients, after adjusting for other factors. They did find, however, that African American patients received a lower quality of care than white patients.
http://www.ahrq.gov/research/findings/factsheets/mi…
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2013/06/04/racial-dis…
There's even racial disparity in the ability to purchase food as noted by the phenomenon called 'food deserts':
"Food deserts," areas characterized by relatively poor access to healthy and affordable food, may contribute to social disparities in diet and diet-related health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity. The term "food desert" reportedly originated in Scotland in the early 1990s and was used to describe poor access to an affordable and healthy diet. Although the term "food desert" can mean a literal absence of retail food in a defined area, studies of food deserts more commonly assess differential accessibility to healthy and affordable food between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged areas.
Geographic areas with a high proportion of low-income or African American residents were underserved by food retailers compared with more advantaged areas (19 studies: 18 in support, 1 mixed). Evidence on rural/urban differences was mixed.
Low-income areas (8 studies) and areas with a high proportion of African Americans (5 of the 8 studies) had fewer supermarkets or chain stores per capita and fewer midsized or large stores than did advantaged areas. Three studies combined income and race; in these, areas characterized by low income and a high proportion of African Americans and Latinos had few supermarkets or chain stores per capita . Four studies that were unadjusted for population found few supermarkets or chain stores in low-income and African American areas.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/883903/err140.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722409…
http://www.ppgbuffalo.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/0…
How many areas of life have to be affected before racism is considered systemic? I've pointed at every aspect here, and all of the studies say racism is alive and well.
So, the next time you get your feelers all hurt and want to cry "RACISM!" because some dude called you a cracker? Remember, being called a cracker or honky doesn't constitute understanding racism. Congratulations, you've just met a bigot. That doesn't come anywhere near close to the experience of systemic racism in America. Apples and hammers.
White people, you have fucking privilege in this country and no amount of screaming it doesn't exist is going to make it so. When every study shows whites have an advantage, you can't deny the existence of white privilege.
Thank you so much for this. I wish more people would pay attention to this difference.
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