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.pdfhttp://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.
