Monday, November 25, 2019

Measuring White Privilege

Instructions
As you enter, please work on this independently. Raise your hand if you have a question and I will come over to your personally.

Defining Terms

First, let’s define terms. Yesterday we talked about bias – both explicit and implicit. Because this bias affects everyone – including people of color, it has effects on our society. The long term effects are sometimes called white privilege (see page 222 of the Ferris and Stein textbook for more info). White privilege is the idea that whites in our society have certain advantages that are not available to non-whites. These advantages are usually not even noticed, similar to the implicit bias that we learned about yesterday. Remember that racism puts people in the majority (in the U.S. it’s whites) in a position to use race to maintain their power in the country. This does not mean that whites are supposed to feel guilty about this privilege. They are not supposed to apologize for it. This is a lesson that simply acknowledges that it exists. Remember, sociology is about how individuals are shaped by their society and their social position in it. Being a certain race shapes how society treats you – what advantages or disadvantages you have.
Question 1: What does “white privilege” mean? (Try to answer without re-reading)
Question 2: Are whites supposed to feel guilty about white privilege?
Question 3: Are whites supposed to apologize about white privilege?

How does white privilege show up?

Michael Harriot who has an MBA degree in international business from Auburn thinks that it is measurable. Read the essay below by Harriot and answer the questions embedded within the reading (in italics).
Yes, You Can Measure White Privilege by Michael Harriot
Whenever anyone slips the words “white privilege” into a conversation, it immediately builds an impenetrable wall. For some white people, the words elicit an uneasy feeling because, for them, the term is accusatory without being specific. It is a nebulous concept that seemingly reduces the complex mishmash of history, racism and social phenomena to a nonspecific groupthink phrase.
Question 4: Does talking about white privilege give you a defensive/uneasy reaction? Be honest about your feelings.

But white privilege is real.
Instead of using it as a touchy-feely phrase that gives white people the heebie-jeebies because it conjures up images of Caucasians sitting on plantation porches drinking mint juleps while they watch the Negroes toil in the Southern sun, we should use it as a proper noun, with a clear definition. White privilege does not mean that any white person who achieved anything didn’t work hard for it. It is an irrefutable, concrete phenomenon that manifests itself in real, measurable values, and we should use it as such.
Question 5: Does white privilege mean that white people did not work for whatever they have achieved?

Imagine the entire history of the United States as a 500-year-old relay race, where whites began running as soon as the gun sounded, but blacks had to stay in the starting blocks until they were allowed to run. If the finish line is the same for everyone, then the time and distance advantage between the two runners is white privilege. Not only can we see it, but we can actually measure it. If we begin viewing it as an economic term—the same way we use “trickle-down economics”—then it might be debatable, but it becomes a real, definable thing that we can acknowledge, explain and work toward eliminating. Race might be a social construct, but white privilege is an economic theory that we should define as such:

White privilege: n. The quantitative advantage of whiteness

Here are four examples that explain white privilege in economic terms.
Education
If education is the key to success, then there is no debate that whites have the advantage in America. In 2012, the U. S. Department of Education reported that about 33 percent of all white students attend a low-poverty school, while only 6 percent attend high-poverty schools. In comparison, only 10 percent of black students attend a low-poverty school, while more than 40 percent of black students attend high-poverty schools.

This means that black students are more than six times more likely than white students to attend a high-poverty school, while white students are more than three times more likely than black students to attend a low-poverty school.
Question 6: What percent of blacks and whites attend a high-poverty school?
Question 7: Did you personally choose to live in district 125? Did your parents ask you if you wanted to go to district 125 before they moved into district?

National Equality Atlas
The logical response to this is for whites to explain the disparity away with statistics of black unemployment and the minority wage gap, but that might not be true. In 2015, a research scientist named David Mosenkis examined 500 school districts in Pennsylvania and found that—regardless of the level of income—the more black students, the less money a school received. While this may not be true for every single school, people who study education funding say that they can predict a school’s level of funding by the percentage of minority students it has. Even though this is a complex issue that reveals how redlining and segregation decreased the property tax base in areas where blacks live—therefore decreasing funding—it underscores a simple fact:  
White children get better educations, and that is a calculable advantage.

Employment
Even when black students manage to overcome the hurdles of unequal education, they still don’t get equal treatment when it comes to jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of Friday, April 7, the unemployment rate for African Americans was nearly double that of whites (8.1 percent for blacks, 4.3 percent for whites).

There are some who will say blacks should study harder, but this phenomenon can’t be explained by simple educational disparities. A 2015 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that whites with the exact same résumés as their black counterparts are hired at double the rate. In fact, a white man with a criminal history is more likely to be hired than an African American with no criminal past.
Question 8: Assuming that resumes are exactly the same, who is more likely to get hired, a white with a criminal history or an African American with no criminal history?
EPI.org (Economic Policy Institute)
A similarly named, but different, organization—the Economic Policy Institute—examined 2015 data and discovered that at every level of education, whites were twice as likely to have jobs as blacks.
If it is statistically easier for whites to get a better education, and better jobs, then being born white must be an advantage in and of itself.

Income
But let’s say a black man somehow gets a great education and finds a job; surely that means the playing field is level, right?
Not so fast.

Pew Research/PewResearch.org
Researchers at EPI found that black men with 11-20 years of work experience earned 23.5 percent less than their white counterparts, and black women with 11-20 years of experience were paid 12.6 percent less than white women with the same experience. This disparity is not getting smaller. The wage gap between black and white workers was 18.1 percent in 1979, and steadily increased to 26.7 percent in 2015. When Pew Research controlled for education and just looked at income data, white men still surpassed every other group.  These income inequalities persist to create the disparities in wealth between races, manifesting in generational disadvantages. A black person with the same education and experience as a similar Caucasian, over the span of their lives, will earn significantly less.
Question 9: Assuming the education and work experience is the same, who is likely to get paid more, a minority or a person in the majority?

Spending
It is a little-known fact that the average black person pays more for almost every item he or she purchases. While there is no discount Groupon that comes with white skin, there might as well be. A John Hopkins study (pdf) showed that supermarkets were less prevalent in poor black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods with the same average income, leading to increased food costs. News organization ProPublica recently found that car-insurance companies charge people who live in black neighborhoods higher rates than people in predominantly white areas with the same risk.

When it comes to credit, it is even worse. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, The Atlantic reports, “even after controlling for general risk considerations, such as credit score, loan-to-value ratio, subordinate liens, and debt-to-income ratios, Hispanic Americans are 78 percent more likely to be given a high-cost mortgage, and black Americans are 105 percent more likely.” Even banks as large as Wells Fargo have lost cases for up-charging minorities.

According to the Wall Street Journal, large auto lenders have paid more than $200 million since 2013 to settle lawsuits for charging minorities higher rates, but in November, both Democrats and Republicans voted to reduce regulations on the financial institutions that offer auto loans. The National Consumer Law Center filed a 2007 lawsuit that exposed how “finance companies and banks put in place policies that allowed car dealers to mark up the interest rates on auto loans to minorities based on subjective criteria unrelated to their credit risk.”

Instead of hurling the term “white privilege” around as an imprecise catch-all to describe everything from police brutality to Pepsi commercials, perhaps its use as a definable phrase will make people less resistant. Maybe if they saw the numbers, they could acknowledge its existence. It is neither an insult nor an accusation; it is simply a measurable gap with real-world implications. It is the fiscal and economic disparity of black vs. white.

In America’s four-and-a-half-centuries-old relay race, the phrase “white privilege” does not mean that Caucasians can’t run fast; it is just a matter-of-fact acknowledgment that they got a head start.
Question 10: What are the three areas of white privilege that are measurable?
Question 11: If you choose to ignore or not acknowledge these statistics, are they still true?


Other Research:

Here is a study from ProPublica that provides an excellent and measurable example of institutional racism, implicit bias and white privilege.


Once you are finished, here is a study from economists that explains another way that privilege was measured.


After that, please read this article from the journal Sociology of Education. It provides research on the implicit racism and how it affects kids in high school.


Question 12: What is the authors' claim? What evidence do they provide?

When Implicit Bias Becomes Privilege...

When Implicit Bias Becomes Privilege...

What color dress is Mrs. Obama wearing in this picture?


This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress. Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh? I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored.  This is just one of many privileges of being white in a culture that sees white as normal, desirable or better than other "colors".  This type of privilege is often unnoticed, subconscious, implicit.  But, it has a big impact.
Here is another example from Johnson and Johnson.  Note that the bottle says, "Normal to Darker skin," implying that there is normal skin and then there is darker skin which is implicitly abnormal. And, here are some privileges related to Christmas.  Some sociologists call these subtle nudges of racism microaggressions.  Here are 25 microaggressions from buzzfeed.






Sociologist Peggy McIntosh writes about White Privilege in her essay, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.
In class instructions:
Please read through McIntosh's reading and choose one of the numbered privileges to respond to.  Take out a sheet of paper and write down which privilege you are responding to.  Things to consider: Have you ever thought about this before?  Why do you think McIntosh considers this a "privilege"?  Can you see this type of privilege happening in your day to day life?  

Here is an example of implicit bias from the NY Times about Baltimore and the Texas biker fight.


When you're accustomed to privilege, equality sounds like oppression.  From Chris Boeskool of Huffington Post.


Privilege does exist and it's measurable.  From Michael Harriot of The Root who explains the ways privilege shows up in education, employment, income, spending.


Robin DiAngelo, author of What Does it Mean to Be White and White Fragility; Why It's So Hard for  White People to Talk about Racism published this op-ed about White Privilege.  Here is a journal article about White Fragility.


Here is an example from Sociological Images of how white privilege shows up even when discussing racism.

This article from Contexts explains how the approach to drug problems change when the victims are middle class and white.

Teaching Tolerance explains white privilege here.

National Seed Project explains it here:
https://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack




Finally, this video called Slip of the Tongue uses slam poetry to explore how one girl stands strong to embrace her identity
without giving in to popular pressure to change who she is.



This 2018 Study by Harvard economist Nathaniel Hendren shows that there is a dramatic difference for American males who are black and growing up in a top quintile household vs. American males  who are black and growing up in a top quintile household.





Wednesday, November 20, 2019

What Are We Racing For?

As students arrive, please brainstorm an answer to this question:

So, we have seen that race is a social construction, but why does that matter?  In other words, why would Thind care enough to take a case to the Supreme Court?

Even though the biological idea of race is a social construction, it has very real consequences (Thomas Theorum).   Race is often used to justify and promote unequal social arrangements.  The inequality might simply be promoting the idea that a person or a group of people do not belong because of their race. 

What are some ways that institutions in the U.S.  have created opportunities based on race?

Not only do people react to each other based on their perceived races, but institutions have been constructed around the idea of race.  Yesterday we saw the ways that institutions construct the idea of race, and who is white.  Today we look at what opportunities are created based on race, or more simply, why would anyone want so bad to be white, if it's just a faulty label?  Here is a list for starters about why being white mattered and still matters:
  • 1705 a statute in Virginia required masters to give white indentured servants fifty acres of land, thirty shillings, ten bushels of corn and a musket.  Most people have not heard of that.
  • 1705 House of Burgesses passed the Virginia Slave Codes.  Those laws locked in a brutal system of white supremacy by giving slave owners sweeping rights to control and even torture the African people they owned, and making it illegal for black people to employ white people.
  • 1785 Land Ordinance Act provided a clearer system for putting formerly Native land into the hands of white settlers.  This was 640 acres at a dollar an acre.  And public education system was set aside in this act but it was designed to serve white children, not enslaved African children or Native Americans.
  • 1790 Naturalization Act allows whites to become citizens.  This isn’t about anything except the color of your skin.  Not merit, not hard work, not meeting the criteria, just being white, the color of your skin.
  • 1862 Homestead Act allowed people to claim land for free in the rapidly expanding United States, but excluded the vast majority of black people in the U.S., because you had to be a citizen to participate and enslaved people were not eligible for citizenship until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
  • 1934 FHA created loan opportunities that by 1962, would loan over 120 billion dollars that over 98 percent went to white people.
  • 1934 Social Security Administration was created to help aging Americans, but two-thirds of all African American workers were blocked from Social Security until the program was expanded in the 1950s.
  • 1944 GI Bill of Rights Millions of mostly-white men got higher education through the GI Bill and became engineers, scientists, doctors, teachers. The GI Bill also sent people to trade schools and helped veterans find jobs. But here again, men of color were at a disadvantage because of the military’s racist practices back then in assigning jobs within the military.  So, when people came home and met with a job counselor, a local job counselor, their duties were to line up a civilian job that matched the skills you gained in the military.  White men came home and became builders and welders and mechanics, and men of color came home and became dishwashers and cooks. until 1971, the GI Bill spent ninety-five billion dollars on veterans, helping them buy homes, get vocational training, and start businesses.  

For more on these ways that whiteness helped whites checkout the Seeing White series from Scene on Radio Podcast, episode 13 or listen below:




What is racism?

These are all ways that people who were seen as white had access to institutional power.  The ways that race has played a role in helping certain groups gain or maintain power has come to be termed racism. Since these examples above are about institutions creating and maintaining power, it is an example of institutional racism.  An important distinction here is that racism is perpetrated against people who do not have power.  This is why people sometimes hear the idea that racism can't be perpetrated against the majority race, whites.  Racism is about maintaining power in favor of the racial group that holds power.  Another important distinction is that racism is an action, so people's actions can be racist, and in a society with as much racism as the United States, all of us are likely to have racist actions (even Ibram Kendi, an African American scholar and racism historian defines his own actions as having been racist), but that does not define us as people.  Instead of labeling individuals as racist, we should identify racist actions and language.  Otherwise, allowing the status quo to continue allows the racist power dynamic to continue.  So, Kendi makes that case in his book, How to Be an Anti-Racist.   So it is through this lens of language and actions that allow and promote racial disparities to exist that we will discuss "racism".  However, this should not be confused with these other related terms:
  • bigotry - intolerance for a group of people
  • prejudice/bias - holding an over-generalized attitude that prevents objective consideration of an individual or group of people
  • discrimination - the unequal treatment of an individual or group because of their status in a group 
  • individual racism - individual ideas or actions that justify and perpetuate a minority individual from gaining or accessing power 
This sociological understanding is a more specific view of racism than what often gets labeled as "racism" in everyday language.

Below is more evidence about how race matters explicitly, also called explicit racism.  As you explore the examples think about how these situations use race to get or maintain power.  Also, think about whether these are individual acts of racism or institutional.


Miss America 2013, Nina Davluri came to SHS. But when she won the pageant, there was a flurry of tweets about her race.

Here is a post about tweets from the 2013 Miss America pageant.
Is this racism?
Is this prejudice?
Is this discrimination?

For more about racism (esp. with women from Indian descent) and beauty pageants, see this post based on Asha Rangappa.


Racism in College

Fraternities and sororities hold racial-themed parties that display very directly the racialized stereotypes that persist in the United States. Does this surprise you?  How would you feel/react to a party like this when you go to college?
Here is a post about why dressing up in this way is not okay.

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has an ongoing list of racist incidents.

Here is a post about a 2013 racist incident at a liberal college in a liberal state.

Racism in Sports

In 2018, Racism at Wrigley in the bleachers.
The stakes of the moment are made clear by a Latino female fan who security rescues from physical and verbal harm. She stands on the bleachers and points at each member of the white security team.
“You and you and you will never know what it’s like,” she says.
A few seconds later, a Latino fan involved in the altercation accuses security of “taking the white people’s side.” The fight appears to be ending when the non-Latino fan bellows the same slurs, putting his hands on either side of his mouth to amplify his voice and ensure he’s heard. It’s only then that he realizes he’s being recorded. (If you feel the need to fully absorb these words, you can watch the videos here.)
It’s a telling moment. He feels safe enough to shout those words next to security personnel. But when he realizes his actions might be seen outside of the stadium, he accosts the person recording the fight. Security also instructs this person to “put your phone away” and says “you’re on private property, you don’t have permission to videotape anyone.”
In 2017, Fans at Fenway made news numerous times over there racist taunts of opposing teams'  players.

In 2017, Yu Darvish was taunted and mocked for looking Asian.

In 2012, Joel Ward, a black NHL player scored the winning goal in the NHL playoffs and he became the target of racial slurs.


Racism in the Marketplace
A college student from Queens got more than he bargained for when he splurged on a $350 designer belt at Barneys — when a clerk had him cuffed apparently thinking the black teen couldn’t afford the pricey purchase, even though he had paid for it, a new lawsuit alleges.
“His only crime was being a young black man,” his attorney, Michael Palillo, told The Post.


Racism in Politics

During the Healthcare debate in 2009, Representative David Scott of Georgia had a 4foot swastika painted over his office sign.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies hate groups in America. This link will show you a map of all the hate groups in the United States.   Is this surprising?  Is this concerning?

This article from the Mail Online, A British online newspaper:
And with Mr Obama reportedly receiving more death threats than any other American president - 400 per cent more than those against his predecessor George Bush, according to a new book...A black U.S. Congressman had a swastika painted over his office sign after he yelled at allegedly racist protesters at a Southern town hall meeting, it emerged today.
Michael Tesler's Post Racial or Most Racial documents the tremendous amount of racism that President Obama faced during his presidency, including ongoing claims that he was not American.  Is this any different than the flurry of racism that Ms. Nina Davluri faced after becoming Miss America?

"Tesler shows how, in the years that followed the 2008 election—a presidential election more polarized by racial attitudes than any other in modern times—racial considerations have come increasingly to influence many aspects of political decision making."



Racism in the Media



Jeremy Lin is an example of the racial stereotypes in sports and how stereotypes can be more or less permissible for different groups within a society.  Here is a post explaining that dynamic from the society pages.   Here is a clip of the skit from the daily beast.  Have you seen or heard any explicit racism in your own life?

Explicit Racism Backstage

Sociologists Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin explain in their book Two-faced Racism that racism can be explicit even if it is not always shared publicly.  Read an excerpt here.  Watch a video of Leslie Picca here:


SOCHE Talks: Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage from SOCHE on Vimeo.