That’s the question of the year.
I would assume that some portion is the incarceration rates, the un-wed mother rates, and the lack of prioritization of education. Other things also certainly affect the economic outcome of the black population, but do you have an answer (or any evidence) to prove that is is all because of racism?
by a few, you mean about 20 million
So you agree that racism is alive and well?
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rac·ism | \ ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm
also -ˌshi- \
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2a : a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles
b : a political or social system founded on racism
3 : racial prejudice or discrimination
If I read your chart right, 20 million was 10 years ago.
Of course there is racism in the world (and the US), I have always agreed to that.
What I disagree with is the basis that it is THE cause for all the woes and ills of the black population.
Oh, then we are not in disagreement.
Can you show me who it is that you are arguing against? As far as I am aware there is no one making the argument that racism is THE cause for all the woes and ills of the black population. No one at all.
I suppose a lot of the people calling racism “systemic” in the US would disagree with you.
Have a conversation with iiandyiii
I asked you to actually show me an example of what it is that you are arguing against, not to continue to make vague implicative statements.
For instance, if a black person stubs their toe, that’s not caused by racism, yet it is a woe and ill.
I’ve been asked to stop responding to you, so if you cannot actually form a coherent and productive argument to debate against, then I think we are done here.
The economic status, the incarceration rates, the socio-economic , the unwed mother syndrome woes of the black population, based solidly upon racism or based upon some of their own faults and choices?
I have said many times that some of these things might have started 155 years ago but it has been reinforced, and encapsulated and excused for many years
Maybe I shouldn’t bite, but at this point I am talking more to lurkers than you, since you are both pretending that the world resets and the past doesn’t matter (even when the past is closer than my high school graduation) and not responding to current examples.
Taking your examples:
Economic status:
Here is a good overview.
The wage gap has finally started to close, but the wealth gap is widening. Why is that? A big a reason is generational wealth transfer:
Why are high- and middle-income white families so much wealthier than Black families with the same incomes? We note a few reasons. White families receive much larger inheritances on average than Black families. Economists Darrick Hamilton and Sandy Darity conclude that inheritances and other intergenerational transfers “account for more of the racial wealth gap than any other demographic and socioeconomic indicators.”
One of the bigger drivers of that wealth gap is home ownership:
Where did the gap come from? A century of government policies to promote home equity was combined with racial discrimination in home ownership. The result is a homeownership gap that overlaps the racial wealth gap in America.
In case you are wondering about those policies, we are talking about redlining, the Homestead Act, subprime targeting.
Incarceration rates:
Here is an excellent summary of the current (as of 2018) state of race in relation to the U.S. Justice system. Choice quotes:
- More than one in four people arrested for drug law violations in 2015 was black, although drug use rates do not differ substantially by race and ethnicity and drug users generally purchase drugs from people of the same race or ethnicity.15) For example, the ACLU found that blacks were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites in 2010, even though their rate of marijuana usage was comparable.16)
- “Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs,” the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) concluded in 2015, after the police killing of Michael Brown brought national attention to police-community tensions in the St. Louis, Missouri suburb.25) The DOJ found that black residents’ disproportionate rate of police stops, searches, and arrests resulted from city officials’ growing reliance on municipal fines and fees which police officers and court officers were exhorted to deliver through aggressive enforcement of traffic violations and petty offenses. ArchCity Defenders, authors of an early and influential white paper on the troubled municipal court system, has demonstrated that many other St. Louis municipalities have similar or worse practices than Ferguson.26
Pretrial detention has been shown to increase the odds of conviction, and people who are detained awaiting trial are also more likely to accept less favorable plea deals, to be sentenced to prison, and to receive longer sentences. Seventy percent of pretrial releases require money bond, an especially high hurdle for low-income defendants, who are disproportionately people of color.29) Blacks and Latinos are more likely than whites to be denied bail, to have a higher money bond set, and to be detained because they cannot pay their bond.30) They are often assessed to be higher safety and flight risks because they are more likely to experience socioeconomic disadvantage and to have criminal records. Implicit bias also contributes to people of color faring worse than comparable whites in bail determinations.
My bolding.
Not going to get into the socio part of socio-economic. We could have a dozen threads just defining class in America. There is probably a library of disagreeing books on what classes even in exist in the U.S.
As for unwed mother syndrome, I don’t don’t even know what that is. If you are talking about the rate of single mothers, then I have two comments:
The rate has gone up for all races and classes.
The higher baseline rate in black populations probably has a lot more to due with the economic and detention issues above than person failings on the part of black people.
I will make one more recommendation for reading How To Be An Antiracist. My 11 year has had to struggle with it, but he has been able to understand it. If he can, you can. It address almost every single point you have brought up better than I can.
Heavily influenced by racism, and even more influenced by the left over effects of racism.
You do realize that it wasn’t 155 years ago that we had segregated neighborhoods and schools, right?
People make choices, and those choices are influenced by their environment, and their environment is influenced by racism.
For a upper middle class white kid, “choosing” to go to school everyday is easy. The choice is made for them, their clothes are laid out, the bus picks them up at the corner of their yard.
For a black kid in a poor neighborhood, going to school is a much more difficult process. By the time they even arrive at school, they’ve put more effort into their day than the upper middle class kid did all day.
That makes it harder to learn and to learn and to get ahead in life.
Let’s make it somewhat arbitrary. I don’t think you can put a number on it for a lot of reasons, but let’s just say that 20% (which I consider to be low) of the difficulties that a black person encounters are due to racism. Does that mean that everything is due to racism? No. But does it mean that everything is harder due to racism? Yes.
A bit back, there was a story of a group of black teens that were being threatened by a white guy with a knife. Someone called 911, and the black teens had guns pointed at them by the police. Even though all the witnesses around were shouting that it was the white guy that was the problem, the black teens got arrested.
Was that racism? Yes. Does that mean that the cops were racist? Not really, just that they were so steeped in our cultural racism that it was difficult for them to understand what was going on, and jumped to the racist conclusion.
If these teens later distrust law enforcement, is that because they are bad people making bad choices, or because they have been given good reason to distrust such institutions?
It would be an excuse if it were not something that we were trying to overcome as a society. As it is something that we point out that we need to overcome as a society, it is a problem with society as to the way that it treats its members. What I see as the excuse is the putting all the onus on fixing the problems of race and poverty that a black person faces as entirely their own problem to deal with. It excuses society from the damage that it has, and is continuing to do.
Do you feel that any of the economic status, incarceration rates, the socio-economic, the unwed mother woes are a result of racism, or that they are entirely based on their own faults and choices?
If anyone is prejudiced against a person of a particular ethnicity based on what other members of that ethnicity has done in the past…that is racism and bigotry and it matters not one jot from which side of the racial divide it applies.
It can’t be an earned response if the person to whom it is directed played no part in the past act, doesn’t endorse it and would never endorse it. That’s the dogma of original sin and the path taken by bigots and racists throughout the ages and the world over. I’m not aware such an approach has ever been useful.
Treat individuals as individuals, not as a representative of a ethnicity they had no way of choosing or as somehow responsible for hateful acts they had nothing to do with.
OK, let me start with the lack of prioritization of education, because that’s a point that I happen to think is very important. Yes, one cause of black poverty is that many black people undervalue education. But dig deeper: Why do they undervalue education? In most cases, it’s because their parents also undervalued education: Attitudes about such things are learned. And their parents, in turn, held that attitude because their parents did. But that still doesn’t get us to a root cause. Go back enough generations, and you’ll find black people who undervalued education because the only education allowed to them was in fact low value. Go back a few generations further, and you’ll find black people who weren’t even legally allowed to be educated at all. And even though, all these generations later, blacks are allowed to be just as educated as whites, and the racist institutional policies have ended, the effects of those institutional policies linger on.
…that would be wrong, and that’s not what I’m talking about.
But Black people being leery of any individual White person at first is not prejudice. Prejudice is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Whereas Black people have rational reasons, based on experience, to dislike and fear White people. What’s wrong is continuing to hold that opinion of any individual non racist White person after getting to know them, absent any other indicators of racism. But starting with the assumption that any White person you don’t know is going to be a racist is not prejudice. It’s … postjudice.
It can’t be an earned response if the person to whom it is directed played no part in the past act, doesn’t endorse it and would never endorse it.
Well, any time I come across a White person in sackloth and ashes, giving his last cent to a Black man, I’ll be sure not to pre-judge him. Otherwise, no, at least in the places under discussion, there are no White people who do not play a part in whiteness.
Treat individuals as individuals
It’s a privilege to have the luxury to do that from the get-go. Most of us have to make snap judgements before we get to really know people. Sometimes our lives even depend on it. So past experience and reasoning is the best guide there.
I think a lot of white police departments in the US and UK who have been accused of institutional racism would agree with you.
Did you miss the bit about “past experience and reasoning”?
Seriously, you are buying into this “Treat individuals as individuals” white privilege bullshit? It’s not quite as bad as “I don’t see colour”, but it’s right up there.
Those white police officers would also say that their past experience and reasoning, and their lives being in danger, leads them to rightly discriminate against blacks.
No, that individual white person has done nothing to suggest racist acts or intent. Treat them accordingly until you have reason to think otherwise.
What you propose is racism, prejudice and bigotry.
You subscribe to some form of twisted racial “original sin” and it seems clear that the bar you’d set to for a white person not to be a target of your prejudice is too high to be taken seriously. Your worldview seems clearly racist. I hope you aren’t in a position to make hiring or legal decisions that impact on people’s lives.
If someone had been the consistent target of black violence or crime and they used that experience to make snap judgements of all black people they meet…what would you call that? Would you think that is a sensible use of reasoning and experience?
And they’d be lying. It’s Blacks who have to fear police, not the other way around.
It isn’t bullshit, it is the only sure way to eradicate racism. Content of character not colour of skin. Focus on that, build your laws and society on that principle and heavily punish transgressions.
Not quick, not perfect, not a magic bullet but it is the ground state requirement of any fair society and I’ve yet to hear proposals that were any quicker or better.