Redlining hasn't left

In the "good old days," whites kept minorities out of their neighborhoods by deliberate discrimination, with banks refusing to lend to blacks who wanted to buy homes in predominantly white areas.  While civil rights laws have prohibited that particular practice, financial institutions have continued to redline.

The ratio of rejection for African American is 3, even 4-to-1 compared to whites. 

At the highest income level measured - $157,000 - for every four African American home loan purchase applications rejected only one white applicant was rejected. 

By contrast African Americans and other minorities are much more likely to get costly subprime deals. Again at the highest income level the ratio of African Americans with subprime home purchase loans is 6-to-1 compared to whites. 

And of the 25 largest metropolitan areas, which might you expect to have the worst racial record?  New Orleans?  Atlanta?  No.

Minneapolis.  Way to go, Minnesota Nice.

Your subconscious is still racist

It turns out it's harder than just voting for equal rights to remove all the lingering social prejudices from your mind.  Check out this fascinating column as well as two tests of your subconscious preferences:

• Test 1
• Test 2

I blogged about Kristof's last column on this subject, too.

How Racism Works

Thanks to MJE for the email, and to Kelvin LaFond for writing this letter to the editor on Sept. 5, 2008 in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said 'I do' to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the 'Keating 5'? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

-Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

If you're more of a "compare the stats" person, try this from the email I received (if you're part of the anti-intellectualist wing of the Republican party, don't bother.  I know you think education is worthless):

Educational Background of Candidates
  Obama:
  Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
  Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

  Biden:
  University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
  Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

   vs.

  McCain:
  United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

  Palin:
  Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
  North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
  University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
  Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
  University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Election 2008: a chance to conquer unconscious racism

The studies show that conscious prejudice has been on the decline for years, but that unconscious prejudice has been fairly steady.  The problem is that the prejudice rarely happens in a clear-cut fashion:

Whites are particularly likely to discriminate against blacks when choices are not clear-cut and competing arguments are flying about...

For example, when the black job candidate is highly qualified, there is no discrimination. Yet in a more muddled gray area where reasonable people could disagree, unconscious discrimination plays a major role.

White participants recommend hiring a white applicant with borderline qualifications 76 percent of the time, while recommending an identically qualified black applicant only 45 percent of the time.

The subconscious prejudice unfortunately plays out in the election campaign:

a careful survey completed last month by Stanford University, with The Associated Press and Yahoo, suggested that Mr. Obama’s support would be about six percentage points higher if he were white

It may seem that solving this problem is beyond us. 

But another lesson, a historical one, is that we can overcome unconscious bias. That’s what happened with the decline in prejudice against Catholics after the candidacy of John F. Kennedy in 1960.

White privilege and this election

From Tim Wise, an excellent writer and thinker on racism in America:

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

• White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
• White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
• White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
• White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
• White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
• White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
• White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
• White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."
• White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
• White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.
• White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
• White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.
• And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem. 

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull. For review copies or interview requests, please reply to publicity@softskull.com

My Obama spin

I'm for Obama and it was a great night for him on Super Duper Tuesday. He overcame all the polls of the past couple weeks and is now effectively neck and neck with Hillary. The only disappointment of the night was California, where Hillary maintained a fairly solid lead with 90% reporting (52-42%) this morning.

But here's a couple things to think about from the California exit polls:

• Many Californians voted early via absentee ballot. Of those who decided their vote in the last three days, it was Clinton by 49-46%. Of those who decided earlier, it was Clinton 56-39%. In other words, Obama was surging, but many people may have already voted.
• Racism still has a grip. Of those who said race of the candidate was important, 62% went for Clinton. Of those who didn't, only 51% did.
  

At any rate, what a fantastic election. It's going to be contested far into the primary season!

Eventually the homophobes will die out, too

Skemono has a nice look at the similarities between anti-miscegenation and anti-gay perspectives and laws. He looks back at polls on interracial dating and finds that it wasn't until 1991 that a plurality of Americans supported the idea, despite 25 years having passed since many of the major civil rights laws were enacted. For a stunning look at how education affects views on differences, check out the 1991 poll breakdown by education.

The latest Pew poll finds that 83% of Americans approve of interracial dating, up 35 percentage points since 1991. The summary has a nice chart showing how each generation has become more accepting, although older generations start out much less tolerant than younger ones and are also slower to adapt.

On gay marriage, opinions are also shifting. Only 39% approved in 2006, but that's up from 29% in August 2004 (ironically, the early 2004 Massachusetts Supreme Court position legalizing gay marriage ignited a higher level of opposition). And as usual, younger folks are much more supportive. Interestingly, the difference in opinion from education is more pronounced among older folks. Those who haven't graduated from college among 20-somethings are almost as likely to support gay marriage as those who have not.

Think Bonds cheated? You're a racist

At least that's what this guy has to say. Amidst some thoughtful reflection on the state of segregation and discrimination in sports, he clearly feels that whites who dislike Bonds - and feels he does not deserve the home run record - are racists. Recent polls show that whites are three times as likely as blacks to want Bonds to fail to get the record - a damning indictment of someone, but is it quite so simple?

Bonds has complicated his approach to the record by his likely use of steroids in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and then probably lying about it to a grand jury, which could result in a perjury indictment sometime this year.

Of course, you could also look at the part of the survey that asks if fans believe that Bonds should be recognized as the career home run leader if he breaks the record. In that case, 53% of whites and 78% of blacks agree that's okay. Still a racial gap, but not quite so drastic.

Here's another tidbit. 85% of blacks feel Bonds deserves to get into the Hall of Fame, along with 53% of whites. That means that half the blacks who think Bonds doped think he deserves the Hall, same as for whites. (15% of blacks think he doesn't deserve the hall, whereas 37% think he doped. Thus, at least 22% of blacks think Bonds doped and deserves the hall. For whites, 76% think Bonds doped but only 53% say he deserved the hall, meaning at least 29% of whites think a doper deserves entry.)

In other words, a sad quarter of whites and blacks thinks a doper deserves the honor the Hall of Fame.

But why look at those numbers. I, a white dude, sit on my couch and feel that Bonds is probably guilty. I therefore feel that he doesn't deserve the recognition of various baseball records accrued with the assistance of performance-enhancing drugs. I, therefore, am a racist.

Don Imus is a racist

I didn't want to wade in to this mess, since it's another example of media hounds smelling blood (like OJ or Britney or Michael Jackson) when there's a war on, a budget crisis, and global warming to face down. But I rediscovered Tim Wise, an anti-racism activist who spoke at my undergraduate institution several times, and his essay on the Imus affair shines light in the dark corners of social indifference to one racist shock jock.

Wise has 3 points on the immediate issue of Imus:

1. Wise dismisses the "free speech" argument, noting that the 1st Amendment shields you from government oppression and does not give one the right to a network radio show.
   
2. He also notes that a racial slur isn't just one insult, when flung against the backdrop of institutional racism.

   That backdrop--of housing and job discrimination, racial profiling, unequal health care access, and a media that regularly presents blacks in the worst possible light (think the persistent and inaccurate reports of murder and rape by African Americans in New Orleans during the Katrina tragedy)--makes verbal slights, even if relatively minor, take on a magnitude well beyond the moment of their issuance.

3. Finally, Imus is no fallen angel:

   In the past he's referred to black journalist Gwen Ifill as "the cleaning lady," a Jewish reporter as, a "boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy," and Arabs as "ragheads." Furthermore, he handpicked a sidekick who called Palestinians "animals" on the air, and suggested that Venus and Serena Williams would make fine centerfold models for National Geographic. Imus is a serial offender, and his contrition now, while perhaps genuine, has been long overdue.

Wise is not content with just pointing out Imus' failings, since it's merely one incident on that "backdrop" of institutionalized racism.

One thing has been made clear by the Imus incident: namely, white folks are incapable of blaming other whites for white racism and racist behavior. Despite all the demands by whites that blacks take "personal responsibility" for their lives, their behaviors, and the problems that often beset their communities--and especially that they stop blaming whites for their station in life--the fact is, we can't wait to blame someone else when we, or one of ours, screws up. So please note, from virtually every corner of the white media (and from black conservatives who are quick to let whites off the hook no matter what we do), the conversation has shifted from Imus's racism to a full-scale assault on rap music and hip-hop. In other words, it's those black people's fault when one of ours calls them a name. After all, they do it themselves, and Imus can't be expected not to say "ho" if Ice Cube has done it. At this point, I'm halfway expecting to hear Bill O'Reilly say that white folks wouldn't have even heard words like nigger if it weren't for 50 Cent. (emphasis mine)

But this kind of argument is not only absurd on the face of it, even more to the point, it's a complete affront to the concept of "personal responsibility." It ranks right up there with telling your mom that "Billy did it too," back when you were ten, and playing ball outside, and broke your neighbor's window. As I recall, mom didn't really give a rat's ass, and responded by saying something about Billy, a bridge, and whether his desire to jump off like a damned fool would inspire similar stupidity on your part.

If you want to see the rest of Wise's essay, read it here. And be glad that at least one bigot is off the air.

Hope and despair in eliminating racism

For those thinking that racism is dead, two tidbits I came across today highlight a) how long the road to equality and b) how far we've yet to travel.

Item A: Turner County High in Georgia will be hosting an integrated prom for the first time ever this year. Until now, whites and blacks at this 55% African American school have held segregated events. FYI, the Supreme Court decision eliminating racial segregation in schools, Brown v. Board of Education, was decided (unanimously) 53 years ago, in 1954.

Item B: All other things being equal, a white man would have to earn $220,000 more than a black man to be considered an equivalent romantic interest to the average African American woman. John Tierney explores the persistence of racial preference among women (of all races) in this blog post. The conclusion? If you are a man open to dating interacially, good luck. Men, as it turns out, do not have a statistically significant racial preference (bosom size was not discussed).

Related reading: try the Dead Racists Weekly

This "week's" featured blog is called Dead Racists Weekly. Hosted over at Live Journal, this lively author posts on the politics of race, religion and science, with a generous nod to some of the more idiotic maneuvers in public policy (a big fav of yours truly). The posts aren't just random ravings, but include some interesting quotes and show a good commitment to backing things up (e.g. with facts, unlike some of the politicians frequently mentioned here).

A product of skemono, DRW first came to my attention via his/her link to my embedded Youtube video showing Senator Boxer verbally skewering Senator Inhofe. This suggests to me that mirroring Youtube videos is going to be the key to my blogging success...

It's the whiteys who do the crime

Articles like these should all be part of a series: Exposing Our Inner Racist. The NY Times Magazine explores how greater immigration depresses local crime rates, whereas white people feel the exact opposite. In other words, we like to think that dark-skinned people cause crime, but we're as wrong as Bush is on climate change.

Interestingly, the article notes that the law-abiding benefits of immmigrants are concentrated in the first generation. Successive generations are much more likely to be involved in crime. Probably because they get tired of being discriminated against for looking like an immigrant...

What's in a name?

A name can be from a much-loved relative, a Christian reference, or even a commercial product. But it's also a detriment to your employment hopes if it "sounds black." Lovely.

Racial profiling by name

Is there really anything more we can do to alienate otherwise friendly Arabs? We already have few enough friends in the Arab world. And even though there may only be 200,000 Arabs living in the United States, each one serves as an ambassador of American ideas to their relatives back home.

So it probably doesn't do us any favors to have Western Union, citing Treasury Department policy, prohibiting money transfers to people with Arab-sounding names. Here's just a few reasons why this is dumb:

• We punish innocent people with Arab names
  
• As a result, we further erode Arab opinion of the United States
  
• We don't actually prevent terrorist money transfers, because there are alternative money-transfer services.

I'm just glad there weren't any Irish terrorists involved in 9/11.