Adrienne Watson-Racial Inequality in America

Adrienne Watson

ENG 11000

Professor Moore

Racial Inequality in America

25 March 2015

     Probably the best way to begin to understand racial and ethnic inequality in the United States is to read works by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Malcolm X. All of these great writers gave detailed, autobiographical accounts of the bigotry and discrimination they faced while growing up. The widespread societal changes introduced in America since the 1960s have done little to settle the covert discriminatory policies against racial minorities.

   Many people have some very strong opinions concerning why it is that racial inequality exists. Compared to whites, minority families tend to have much lower family incomes and much higher rates of poverty. They are also much less likely to have college degrees. One long standing belief is that blacks and other people of color are biologically inferior to whites. The belief is that they are naturally less intelligent and have other innate flaws that keep them from achieving the same accomplishments as their white counterparts. Fortunately, this racist view is no longer common today.

   The current financial gap between blacks and whites is one of the main points of tension between the two groups has reached its highest point in history. In 1967, with the Civil Rights movement still in full swing and Jim Crow still in effect, average household income was forty three percent higher for white households than for black households. But things changed dramatically over the next fifty years, as legal segregation diminished. By 2011, average white household income was seventy two percent higher than average black household income, according to a Census report from that year. Average household income for whites is $55,412; for blacks it is $32,229 and for Hispanics $38,624. To say that economic inequality is still a heavily racialized phenomenon, even after the end of the Civil Rights era, would be an understatement. Limited schooling and poor performance

     Educational achievement is important because it directly relates to levels of health, employment, income and civic engagement. “Segregated schools were, and are inferior schools; and we still haven’t fixed them…the inferior education they provided, then and  now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students”(Obama 5). Average public high school graduation rates for whites are eighty three percent, for blacks it is sixty six percent and Hispanics it is seventy one percent. The schools that many children of color attend every day are typically overcrowded and underfunded. In many of these schools, the education standards are less than average. This puts minority students at a disadvantage and produces adults with lesser education. Low-income, Hispanic and African-American students are more likely to need remediation than their white peers. According to a recent U.S census, the percentage of 25 to 29 year-olds with a bachelor's degree is thirty nine percent for whites, twenty percent for blacks, and thirteen percent for Hispanics. The unemployment and poverty rates are lower for whites than for blacks and Hispanics.   

    Employment discrimination has done its part to ensure that black unemployment remains twice as high as white unemployment. “ A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of lack families” (Obama 5). An experiment by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, faculty research fellows of The National Bureau of Economic Research, tried to test discrimination on resumes. In response to help wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Half of the applications were assigned African-American names that are “common” in the black population and the other half had “white sounding” names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker. The applicants had a varied degree of credentials. Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback. Resumes are significantly less likely to get a positive response from potential employers if the applicants have names that are more common in the black community. Criminal background checks have helped to fuel racial inequity in job hiring. An arrest for even a non-violent drug offense can haunt a job applicant for the rest of his life; combined with the fact that Black people are more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites.

   In the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. expresses his frustration with the general white population,

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate… who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom…who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season". Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection” (King 3).

King says that the indifference of the general white populace is just as oppressive as the white supremacists. Moderates have ensured the continuation of segregation by telling blacks to wait and have patience, that black equality will be realized with time. King argues that in order to combat injustice men of action need to force change. The clergymen accused King of supporting violence and encouraging the extreme actions of protesters. In response, King states that he stands in middle of two extremes. On one side is the black people who have been demeaned for so long that they no longer hope for anything better and those few blacks who profit superficially and fear change that could threaten their comfort. On the other side are black people full of bitterness and hate, like Elijah Muhammad and his Muslim movement, which more or less supports violence. King believes he has been successful in encouraging both groups towards peaceful, nonviolent protest, and that more blacks would be attracted to violent movements if Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were to step down as the clergymen wish them to.

      King criticized the clergymen for praising the Birmingham police for maintaining order nonviolently. He said the recent public displays of nonviolence by the police were in stark contrast to their typical treatment of black people. There was a recent incident in Michigan, where a man ran a stop sign and after pulling over, he was forced to the ground, put in a chokehold and brutally beaten by police officers. In another incident, Jamier Sale, was at the Carol Miller Justice Center in Sacramento where the judge found him guilty of a $200 traffic infraction. Family and friends believe he is being charged because he is an organizer of the #blacklivesmatter movement, a police brutality protest that took place at the Arden Fair Mall last November. Of all the protestors that where there, a young black man was charged with a crime. The topic of "police brutality" has gained momentum nationwide and has sparked outcry from elected officials and community members asking for police reform. King vehemently states that not only is it wrong to use immoral means to achieve moral ends, but also “to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

   The issues of race are complex, tightly interwoven into socio-economic status, gender, culture, history and language. There are no simple answers whatever solution we come up with must be sustained. Our nation faces many challenges; polls asking about the most important issue facing the country receive a long list of responses: the economy, health care, gun policy, foreign policy, immigration and the environment. These problems are very real and demand immediate attention. Who, then, is prepared to take on the challenge of racial equality?

Works Cited

United States. Census Bureau. "Demographic Trends."census.gov.20 March 2015.

King, Martin Luther, Jr.”Letter from Birmingham Jail”. The Atlantic Monthly.1963.

Obama, Barack.”A More Perfect Union”.

Bertrand, Marianne and Sendhil Mullainathan. "Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review. 2004.