Oh, most definitely something should be done about it. This is no major breakthrough, of course, but I would posit that the reason skin color correlates strongly with education/income/etc is that at one point lack of education/income/etc was caused by racial discrimination, and now disadvantaged minorities are sort of stuck in the “it takes money to make money” hole. This is, incidentally, why I don’t think you can accurately say that skin color drives the disparity; I think it better to say that skin color drove the disparity at one point, and it is largely the case now that the disparity is self-perpetuating. Being a WASP male meself, I may, of course, be hopelessly naive about this.
Even if I’m right, the solution is for someone wiser than me to provide, which is admittedly a weasel answer if ever there was one. Inner city schools need to be improved, and also importantly, there has to be within the community both an emphasis on taking advantage of educational opportunities and the chance to do so. I don’t pretend to know how precisely this is to be accomplished; it’s easy to say and not so easy to do.
But I also don’t pretend to believe that this can be accomplished simply by throwing money at the problem or putting people in a position in which they have not been given the tools necessary to succeed. In other words, I wouldn’t think that putting someone in a position for which that person would be unqualified if he or she were a white male is a terrific recipe for success. I certainly don’t think doing so at the expense of someone who is qualified but happens to be a white male is justified at all, though I’m not sure how often that actually happens.
I wish you stop throwing the word racist around in the way that you are. I don’t think applies to those who support AA, I know you think it does, but I notice that you’re not calling them sexist as well, since AA applies to women as well, no matter what the race.
So what kind of people were living in this country when slavery was legal, when Jim Crow laws were enacted? Were they the reasonable people that you speak of? Being White does offer and advantage, you may not want to believe that it does, but it does. People of color know this, since the have experienced this phenomenon first hand. You speak like the soceity we live in was created today. Look at the history of this country. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to enforce the 15th amendment. Cleary there was a concerted effort to deny a segment of the population the right to vote and this was only 38 years ago. Can we assume that when these members of this soceity were denied the right to vote, a basic fundamental right, that they weren’t also denied access to other things as well i.e. certain jobs, real estate, membership in organizations, schools? Is there any reason to believe that this isn’t still happening today, given the track record of this soceity?
I feel sorry for you because you feel threatened that AA is going to deny and deprive you all of the things that you have coming to you, because law makers have decided that the egregious wrongs of the past need to be righted.
I think they have provided you with facts, you seem to have your mind closed as to what the facts mean.
Not to be overly argumentative, EasyPhil, but a few questions, if I may. I am honestly curious: what do you think would happen if two people, a white male and a black male, with entirely equivalent backgrounds, educations, essays, interviews, etc etc, were to apply for the same job? Do you think the white guy would get it because he’s white, the black guy would get it because he’s black, that there would be a coin-flip, or what? Would what happens depend on the race/gender/political orientation of whoever gets the final say on hiring decisions? Is anything other than a completely random decision fair? Why or why not?
In any event, I think it’s patently unfair to ask someone to disprove the existence of racial discrimination, given that even if by some miracle it no longer existed, it would be impossible to prove it so. A much fairer question would be, I think, whether racial discrimination is still common. To be honest, even if the answer were in the negative, I question whether even this could be adequately demonstrated, given the abundance of complicating factors.
Lastly… I realize this is probably a lost cause already, but can we dispense with the “you support [or oppose] AA; ergo you’re a racist” stuff? Ditto with the “the numbers have only one interpretation” nonsense. Neither is particularly helpful, and neither is conducive to a reasonable debate.
It so happens g8rguy, that I have some direct experience with this. Before I answer that though, I will direct you to this thread, where a so-called human resources manager of a large company talks about how he tosses applications simply because they have a name that they feel is associated with a Black person.
I’m a software consultant and one day I was hanging out in the lobby of an office building waiting for the representive of the consulting firm that I was working with at the time. This firm was presenting two prospective candidates this day, one of them was me, a Black male, the other was a White male. As the White male came down, I notice that I know him and have worked with him before, which means I know his qualifications. I go to the interview, things seem to go okay, they seem like they like me and my work experience is so extensive I’m really over qualified for what it is they need me to do. I call the rep after I’m done and he tells me that they chose the other guy because he was better, which is amazing, because other people that I know that have worked with us both are as stunned as I am. None of us could figure it out. Maybe he was abducted by aliens and they super charged his brain or something, or maybe this really is the “Matrix” and he got loaded up with the appropriate program prior to the interview? Now of course I don’t have any direct proof that they hired him because he was White, but I sure as hell know he wasn’t as qualified as me.
Perhaps the greater irony is that you more so than anyone else in this thread have taken a great liking to calling people racist.
This gem was pulled from page 1 of the thread in response to **
tomndebb**:
Nice way to display your mastery of intelligent debate, that was.
The fact that this statement can easily be applied to you on all three points constutes a rare and wickedly amusing irony indeed. Thanks for the smile.
Interestingly, this illustrates exactly what I’m trying to get across. I look at what he said, and while I think it’s really stupid and reprehensible, I also note that his stated objection is to lower-class people with attitude problems. I of course grant you that it’s ludicrous and racist to equate “has a name associated with black people” with “is lower-class and has an attitude problem.”
But my larger point is that where you see a jerk rejecting an application because he associates the name on it with a black person, I (in what may be a frighteningly naive manner) see a jerk rejecting an application because he associates the name on it with lower-class people with attitude problems. Having not read his or her pit thread, I have no idea what Tarpal would do with an application that says “my name is Robert, I speak 8 languages, have 2 PhDs, and I’m black.” Or better to say, I have an idea and neither you nor I have any way of knowing whether my idea is correct or not.
And before I forget, thanks for responding with these anecdotes, and I really would be interested if you have time and inclination to get to those other questions of mine, as well (especially the latter questions, those I think being more informative). I don’t mean to pry or to be accusatory or anything; it’s just that the better I understand how people I’m having a discussion with view an issue, the more meaningful I find the discussion. (I take your latter story to indicate that your feeling is that all else being equal, the white guy will tend to get the job, and to provide anecdotal support of this feeling, of course.)
You miss the point. An accurate study needs to control for many of the factors that go into a lending decision, not just one. When those factors are controlled for, racial disparities largely disappear; see the Federal Reserve paper linked to above.**
I’m claiming more than that: redlining (as defined above) is irrational even if racism exists in other sectors. A black person’s money spends just as well as a white person’s. In a competitive lending environment, a bank would be foolish to turn away a qualified borrower solely on account of his race; that bank would just be losing a customer to one of its competitors.
Based on the four separate studies of twin-paired job and housing applicants I cited in my post of 12-30-2002 09:30 PM, the white applicant has a 20% better chance of being offered a job. (And since there are far more whites than blacks in competition for jobs, a 20% advantage in a 50-50 situation translates to far worse odds for the black in real life.)
It is frustrating to be unable to pull up the Cornell study, because beyond the mere numbers, (which were bad enough), they had documented that the black applicants were routinely told of the difficulty of the position and the need to stick with that position for many years while the white applicants were told of the opportunity of the position and the advancement to which they could look forward. In other words, not only were equivalent applicants not given a 50-50 chance, but the black applicants often were actively discouraged from even seeking the position.
Improving education is a necessary step, but that alone will not provide opportunities for blacks. (Along the lines of december’s disingenuous remarks about Jews, Italians, and Irish making it without government assistance (while black failure appears to be some great mystery, I guess), or the equally disingenuous quote he supplied from Sowell regarding black gains in the 1940s and 1950s.)
It may be irrational theoretically, but human behavior is rarely rational, especially when it comes to matters of race and discrimination. So your continual emphasis on irrationality doesn’t prove your point.
This isn’t to say that without AA, blacks (or anyone else, for that matter) will ALWAYS get the shaft. But anti-black discrimination is still prevalent.
What I don’t understand is why people think thirty-some-odd years is long enough to eliminate this country’s racists and their apologists. My parents were in their teens when Jim Crow was being laid to rest. If the victims of Jim Crow are still alive, surely the perpetrators of Jim Crow are still farting around. I think many of them are in positions of power (or were, as in the case of Trent Lott). So why is it easy to accept the existence of racial discrimination “back in the day” but when it comes to the present-day, we suddenly think enlightened rationality determines our behavior?
Unless you are willing to accept a wide-ranging and near-monolithic conspiracy to shaft black people, redlining of the type described in this thread is simply not possible: banks that fail to give blacks a competitive price will find blacks taking their business elsewhere. This isn’t the 1950’s, where the local bank was a consumer’s only option; today you can get a home loan from large multinationals. Hell, today you can go to various banking internet sites and apply online. Any bank that discriminates on the basis of race does so at their peril.
For decades–hell, centuries–there was a "wide-ranging and near-monolithic conspiracy against black people. So forgive me if I’m not as optimistic as you are.
As monstro has said, a monolithic conspiracy to shaft Black people DID exist and for a long long time here, you seem to be missing that. Do you think the world began 10 years ago?
Apparently they DON’T do so to their own peril, which is why they do it. It’s irrational to you, but not to the people that make the policy for those organizations. You need to come to the realization that things are often done for irrational reasons by seemingly rational people.
A conspiracy between First Bank of East Bumfuck, MS and Second Bank of East Bumfuck, MS I can believe. A conspiracy between global banks like Citbank and Chase Manhattan, plus the myriad regional and local banks out there, plus the internet-based lenders, plus the numerous financial institutions moving into banking thanks to Glass-Steagall repeal is, to put it mildly, a little more far-fetched.
The problem isn’t that I “think the world began 10 years ago,” it’s that you guys seem to think the world is the same as it was five decades ago. It isn’t. And I’m not just talking about social changes that have made even casual racism unacceptable in modern society. I’m also talking about technological changes that have made the marketplace increasingly global. First Bank of East Bumfuck is no longer just competing with Second Bank of East Bumfuck; now it’s competing with lenders across the country. The marketplace has gotten far more competitive, and it punishes inefficiency with remarkable brutality. A lender who discriminates on the basis of race is literally cutting its own throat.**
You are assuming facts not in evidence, namely that racial discrimination in lending is a widespread and common phenomena. That assertion is, to put it mildly, in dispute. See the study I cited to above.
But first wipe away the water from behind your ears.
I don’t understand your disbelief. If popular “wisdom” tells lenders that black people = no good bastards, then the lenders will be less likely to do business than they are with white people. Simple. Period. This is no conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo akin to Roswald paranoia here.
You know, I’d completely forgotten that post, and had I the time I ought probably to take a bit of a look at those studies, eh? Thanks for reminding me of them; it’s the sort of thing I find a lot more useful than things like “there exists an income gap.”
To answer at least partially the question you raised in that post (“what do you suggest society do to rectify the situation”), it seems to me that what is needed is really more along the lines of changing the way that people of influence think, and changes in the way they act will follow. This is, unfortunately, many times easier to say than to do. I don’t know how to do it myself, but it seems to me that whatever merits AA as currently practiced has, it’s not been entirely successful in changing the way people think.
Oh, I agree with you. I just happen to think that improving educational opportunities is the most important step.
“Conspiracy” may be the wrong word, but you are asserting that most banks – from the largest multinationals to local institutions to internet lenders – have decided to blithely accept the notion that blacks are “no good bastards” and thus forgo efforts at profit from the black community.
That is, quite frankly, implausible. It requires the belief that not just one or two, but rather literally hundreds of competitors are in total agreement to NOT seek profits from a particular racial group, to NOT try to take market share from their competitors, to NOT run themselves efficiently. That kind of belief requires a rather extreme level of paranoia, a level not inconsistent with the tin-foil hat brigade.
Not far-fetched when you consider there was a country wide conspiracy to deny Blacks full access and participation in this society.
Apparently cutting its own throat still allows it to thrive.
I read your study, which attempted to refute the findings of another study though your study still says the disparity exists but attempts to play down the reasons to give the appearance that things aren’t as bad as the previous study indicated.
If you check out the statistics, these institutions can afford to descriminate, the number of White applicants compared to Black applicants is almost an order of magnitude higher.
Whats so far fetched about organizations knowing that there is an ample market of white customers and concentrating on that market because they believe it’s the most lucrative? Look at the applicant numbers that I’ve cited above. An extreme level of paranoia isn’t required, you only need to look at the history of Black people in this country. Your argument assumes that none of this history took place, so I can see why you think it has to be this grand conspiracy. This country is accustomed to treating and viewing Blacks in a particular kind of way, it’s part of the psychological campaign that allowed slavery, segragation, and other outragous policies by seemingly reasonable people to occur. Whites were taught for a long time that Blacks are inferior to them, that they are less than human. Things are changing, but there’s still much work to be done.
Again: it is not 1950. Not only have we changed socially, but the nature of business has changed due to technological innovations. The scenario you suggest is implausible in today’s competitive financial services market.**
Methinks you need to re-read the study I posted. That study found that when critical lending factors are controlled for, there is no disparity in lending between blacks and whites except for marginal applicants (i.e., those at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder), and that no conclusive answers can be drawn as to the cause of the differential among “marginal” applicants. IOW, the study shows that the disparity does NOT exist except at the very bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, and that even in that narrow situation the disparity cannot conclusively be ascribed to racial discrimination.
The study you cite shares the same flaws as the others posted: it only controls for one variable, income, which is only one factor in a lending decision. The study I cited controls for other factors, which makes it more credible.
The theory that blacks = no good bastards has been with us since the birth of our nation. It only has been recently that that idea has been challenged on any large scale. So my assertion is not that most banks "have decided to blithely accept the notion that blacks are ‘no good bastards’ ". Rather, I’m saying that have at least to some degree continued to accept that long-held idea.
Things have changed since 1960; no one is denying that. But that’s not to say that the civil rights movement miraculously caused businesses to be color-blind and perfectly rational. It’s a nice idea, but a bit naive.