by Tim Wise
In the discussion about race and racism, to make note of the accumulated inequities, which date back generations, is not to blame anyone currently alive for those inequities. It is not intended to produce guilt, for indeed no one living today is directly responsible for them. But their legacy persists in many of today’s institutions for which we are responsible. And just as we have inherited many of the blessings and national assets of past generations—the accumulated national wealth for instance—we have inherited the deficits too. To take advantage of the upside of history while refusing to address the downside—to make use of accumulated assets while refusing to take aim at the debts—would be morally irresponsible .
Don’t misunderstand; I am not claiming that all the responsibility for fixing our nation’s racial quandary rests with whites. Everyone has played a part in the mess, and everyone will need to be involved in digging out from under it. As my friend and colleague Jacqui Wade puts it, “We all have a few nickels in the quarter.” But as a white person, I believe I have a responsibility—we all do—to clean up our own backyards, so to speak, before casting about for black and brown folks on whom to place blame for one or another aspect of our current crisis. It’s called “personal responsibility,” which, notably, is a term we use quite often when talking about people of color. We are quick to lecture them about the need to take personal responsibility for their lives, to stop blaming others or the system for their problems, to address the issues in their own communities, rather than deflecting blame onto us or the larger society we share. This is why we responded so favorably to the words of Bill Cosby several years ago, when he hectored black America to straighten up and address its own internal pathologies. But we seem unable or unwilling to apply the logic of personal responsibility to ourselves. We use it as a weapon against others, never noting the irony that to point at someone else while speaking of taking personal responsibility for oneself is the ultimate contradiction.
Of course people of color need to take personal responsibility for their lives and do whatever they can—regardless of circumstance, regardless of racism—to better their own situations. That has always been true, even under periods of formal apartheid. But that says nothing about what the larger society must do to improve the opportunity structures in which such persons must operate. Just because a person should work hard and behave responsibly, that does not mean the rest of us have no obligation to ensure a fair and just society within which that first person will be trying to better his or her station. Personal responsibility and collective responsibility are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are each contributory to the whole.
So while black and brown folks have work to do too, it is not my job, or yours, to dictate the terms of that effort. Nor can we suggest that until they do their part to make things better, we can remain inactive when it comes to doing ours. Each of us has a responsibility to do what we can, no matter what others do or don’t do. If racism and institutionalized white advantage never went away, people of color would still have a moral obligation to do their best and to try their hardest; likewise, if people of color continue to do certain things from time to time that we feel only perpetuate their own disadvantage, we will still have an obligation to help create equity and end racial discrimination against them.
The truth is, discrimination and inequity stalk the present day. In other words, it is not merely a matter of historical significance, but also a contemporary reality. Perhaps if the injuries and injustices of the past had been wiped away we could avoid this discussion, or at least relegate it to our history classes, but they haven’t been, and so we can’t. And this is yet another way I know you must exist, white America: because the data very clearly tell me that you do—that we do.
For instance, the data tell me that even before the present economic meltdown (which has only made things worse), our families possessed about twelve times the net worth of the typical black family and eight times that of the typical Latino family. Even black and brown middle-class families with good incomes and occupational status tended to have one-third to one-fifth the net worth of similar families in our communities.3 Now, in the wake of the collapsed economy, the median net worth among white families is twenty times that of black families and eighteen times greater than that of Latino families—a difference of over $100,000, between the typical white family and the typical family of color.4
In large part those gaps were (and still are) the historical residue of generations of unequal opportunity and access. They certainly have nothing to do with superior investment wisdom on our parts. After all, if we have learned anything in the past few years of financial collapse, surely we should have learned this: a handful of rich white men—some of the best and brightest Wall Street has to offer—can lose a hell of a lot of money with no help from black folks, Mexicans (documented or not), Asian Americans or native peoples. In the course of only about eighteen months from 2007 to early 2009, these financial wizards—who possess no talent to produce anything of value, their skills being limited to the manipulation of investment instruments like “derivatives,” which even they cannot fully explain—lost over twelve trillion dollars of other people’s money thanks to the shady practices that tanked the stock market during that time. That’s roughly 20 percent of the accumulated wealth of the United States, which it took a couple of centuries to build up, but less than two years to obliterate.5 If that money were placed end to end in $1 bills, it would stretch to the sun and back to Earth two times over. This, the handiwork of that very group—rich, white, and mostly male—that we are told are superior in work ethic, insight and abilities relative to the black and brown, and to women of all colors. So no, the racial wealth gaps we see in this society surely can’t be due to merit.
And yes, I know that some might think it untoward to make reference to the race of those who squandered all this wealth by their illegal, unethical or incompetent machinations; isn’t their racial identity an irrelevant detail? Fair enough. Yet I think we know—whether or not we are prepared to acknowledge it—that if those criminal, unethical and incompetent hedge fund managers, derivatives traders and stock manipulators had been black or brown, we would surely have heard about their race, and little else. We would have been treated to one chorus after another of white resentment, voices asserting that those folks of color shouldn’t have even been in those positions, and probably only got them because of affirmative action, rather than the merit system (better known as Daddy’s personal contact list), which had historically procured the same jobs for the white frat boys who just tanked the economy.
And given the ubiquity of certain stereotypes concerning African Americans and criminality, had the Wall Street con men been black, there is little doubt that part of the narrative would have also concerned how their actions further “proved” the connection between race and predatory behavior. One can only wonder how such stereotypes manage to persist when one examines the blinding whiteness of the financial fraud at the root of the current economic crisis, and how it dwarfs the level of criminality to which folks of color occasionally stoop. The FBI estimates that the annual value of all property stolen in the nation (as of 2008) was around $6.1 billion.6 Even if all regular thefts in the United States were committed by blacks (and of course they aren’t, by a long shot), this would still represent only about one-twentieth of one percent of the amount of wealth destroyed by the almost entirely white Wall Street claque of financial fraudsters. To put this in perspective, the amount of money wiped out by the misdeeds of the banksters is so large, it would be like street criminals stealing what they now steal in a year every five hours, every day for a year. And yet we are still more likely to fear a black or brown male crossing the street in our direction than we are to fear white stockbrokers, hedge fund managers or financial advisors, which tells us quite a lot about the persistence of racial bias and its effect on our judgment. So yes, race matters, if for no other reason than to make a point about how some folks’ misdeeds get racialized, wh
ile those of others do not.
Race also matters in terms of the existing opportunity structure in the larger job market, far beyond the confines of Wall Street. According to a study that examined more than 100,000 businesses across the country, as many as 1.2 million instances of overt job discrimination occur annually against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans, affecting as many as one-third of all job searches by persons of color in the United States each year.7 Additional research tells us that lighter-skinned immigrants, mostly from European nations, earn around 15 percent more than darker-skinned immigrants, even when all their respective qualifications and markers of personal productivity are the same.8 And according to the most recent annual data from 2009, even when a black person has a college degree, he or she is nearly twice as likely as one of us with a degree to be unemployed, while Latinos and Asian Americans with degrees are 40 percent more likely than we are to be out of work, with the same qualifications.9 Furthermore, even when comparing only persons working in management, business and finance jobs, those of us in such occupations typically earn about 30 percent more in weekly income than our counterparts of color, amounting to nearly $13,000 in additional earnings each year relative to African Americans and Latinos.10 Although these gaps don’t necessarily indicate overt discrimination—they could very well suggest that whites are simply privy to more lucrative job networks due to informal connections—the results are the same: whites continue to enjoy advantages, and opportunities remain unequal for persons of color, no matter their qualifications.
Overall, the median income for white men who are between twenty-five and thirty-four years old (early in their careers) is one-third higher than the median for black men who are fifty-five to sixty-four years old and already nearing retirement.11 Research has even found that a white man with a criminal record is more likely to be called back for a job interview than a black man without one, even when their credentials are the same.12 So much for all that reverse discrimination we keep talking about.
Numerous studies also point to the ongoing problem of unequal housing opportunity and suggest that there are millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination occurring each year.13 One recent study found that when blacks have better credit, higher incomes, more reserve savings and less debt than we do, they are subjected to higher interest rates and generally treated worse by lenders in six out of ten instances.14 Even when credit backgrounds, income and other factors that can affect the terms of mortgage loans are the same for whites and persons of color, it is persons of color who are more likely to be steered to high-cost loan instruments with more onerous interest rates. Indeed, one study from just a few years back found that even high-income African Americans were more likely than low-income whites to end up with a high-cost subprime loan, and up to half of the subprime loans were given to people who should have qualified for lower rates (and mostly would have, had they been white).15 Largely because of unequal housing opportunity, even high-income persons of color are more likely than moderate-income whites to live in communities with high concentrations of poverty, which affects everything from access to word-of-mouth job networks to the schools that children of such families will attend.
And speaking of schools, in the realm of education, racial disparities continue unabated as well. According to a recent comprehensive report from the Department of Education, schools that serve mostly African American students have twice as many teachers with only a year or two of experience as schools that serve white students, even when those schools are in the same districts.16 Also, new teachers in majority-minority schools are five times as likely as new teachers in mostly white schools to be uncertified in the subject matter they are currently being asked to teach.17 Research has even found that within given schools, the least experienced and least effective teachers are regularly matched with the most challenging students in terms of prior academic performance (who are often low-income students of color in need of highly capable instruction), while the most experienced and effective teachers are paired with white, high-achieving students.18 Such results often stem from decisions made by white principals or from pressure exerted by white parents to get the “best” teachers for their children. Given the long-standing evidence that teachers with the most experience and highest levels of certification have the best track records for student achievement, the racial implications of this kind of inequity should be obvious. Indeed, the matching of inexperienced and ineffective educators with students of color and low-income students, combined with the pairing of more experienced and effective teachers with white students, perpetuates racial achievement gaps and contributes to larger societal inequity.
Further exacerbating racial disparity in education, those schools that serve mostly black and Latino students are also more than ten times as likely as the schools most of our kids attend to be places of concentrated poverty,19 and they are far less likely to offer a full complement of advanced classes.20 And, of course, schools with mostly white students typically receive more money per pupil for direct instruction than schools serving mostly students of color.21 Then, in what amounts to a cruel joke, after having provided unequal and unstandardized educational resources—from funding to teacher quality to curriculum offerings—our schools administer standardized tests, which are used to determine everything from whether students will be allowed to receive a diploma to whether schools themselves will be allowed to continue operating to where students will be able to go to college (if at all).
Although many of us have long argued that money isn’t really what makes a difference in schools—and therefore, inequities in resources aren’t really the problem—we must also acknowledge that none of us are clamoring to switch places or to have our kids switch places with the students of color who attend less well-funded institutions, hoping to make up for the difference with good values and a solid work ethic. As is so often the case, those who say money doesn’t matter typically have money, so to them, it doesn’t matter.
More evidence of modern-day racial bias manifests in the criminal justice system. Back in 1964, about two-thirds of all those incarcerated in this country were white, while one-third were persons of color. By the mid-1990s, those numbers had reversed, so that now, two-thirds of persons locked up are black and brown, while only a third are white.22 This shift was not the result of a change in who commits crime—the relative rates of criminal offending didn’t change significantly in the intervening years—but rather stemmed mostly from the disproportionate concentration of justice system resources in communities of color, especially due to the so-called War on Drugs. Although whites comprise roughly 70 percent of all drug users and are every bit as likely as people of color to use drugs23 (contrary to popular perception), nine in ten people locked up each year for a possession offense are people of color.24 Black youth are nearly fifty times as likely as our youth to be incarcerated for a first-time drug offense, even when all the factors surrounding the crime (like whether or not a weapon was involved) are equal.25 Even though they are less likely than we are to be found with drugs or other illegal contraband when searched by police, blacks and Latinos are far more likely than we are to be stopped and searched by law enforcement looking for such items.26
The incarceration spiral for persons of color then further contributes to an uneven opportunity structure in the larger society by depressing the likely earning potential of ex-offenders once they’re released from jail or prison. Because of persistent biases against those with criminal records (especially persons of color with such records) and assumptions that they make for dishonest or unreliable employees, ex-offenders are far more likely than others to be unemployed, and they earn far less upon returning to the free world than others of comparable age, education and productivity.
So even in this, the so-called “age of Obama,” evidence of institutional racial inequity and even outright institutional discrimination persists.
Most of us, I’m sure, are largely unaware of these facts, and in many ways that
has always been the case. We have long been in denial about the reality of racism, even back in the day when, in retrospect, it was blatant. Even in the early 1960s, before the passage of civil rights legislation, most of us, according to Gallup polls, failed to see that the nation had a race problem. Even as African Americans were being hosed down and blown up in Birmingham, beaten in Selma, murdered in Mississippi and segregated and isolated up North, two-thirds of us said blacks had equal opportunity in employment, education and housing. In one 1962 survey, roughly 90 percent of us said that we believed black children had just as good a chance to get a quality education as we or our children did.27 That we may see such beliefs as borderline delusional now does not change the fact that we believed them to be quite rational at the time.
What does it say about us that even when the nation was characterized by official and quite legal white supremacy, we mostly failed to appreciate the obvious? What it says to me is that our judgment on the matter is perhaps not the best. It says that perhaps we’d do well to listen to the voices of those who have been and continue to be targeted by racial discrimination, and not those who have had the option of ignoring it. They say we have a problem. And unless we wish to adopt the fundamentally racist view that we know their reality better than they know it—perhaps because they are “too emotional,” or lack objectivity, or are too unintelligent to discern the contours of their own lived experiences—we should probably believe them. It isn’t that we are incapable of seeing the truth. But having the luxury of remaining oblivious to the experiences of people of color (we aren’t tested on it as a condition of obtaining academic or professional credentials, after all), we simply have little reason to know any better, whether in 1962 or today.
