In my sphere of influence, everyone has been very excited with Tulane’s sudden interest in social justice issues. Specifically, with The New Jim Crow and myriad speakers (from Common to Tim Wise), Tulane appears to be earnestly attempting to expose its students to the issue of the War on Drugs and the racism inherent in it. A shocking number of students, however, seem to be stalwart in their rejection of this new direction and even of the reality of the situation.
In her book, Michelle Alexander writes about our “colorblind” society; some people interpret that incorrectly, coming to the conclusion that American society and its institutions cannot be racist. That flabbergasts me, because I know that fifteen minutes of honest research can show how opposite that is from the truth. A colorblind society is not one where race doesn’t matter; it’s one where people ignore race and avoid talking about the issue. America’s current colorblindness exacerbates the racial biases that permeate our judicial, economic, and educational systems because it convinces you and others that many Americans are not denied their basic civil and human rights. When given evidence of bias, you ask for proof of outright racism. That proof does not exist; that is no longer the demon we are fighting. The bias is the racism.
Outright bigotry is not our biggest threat; entrenched racial bias, deep in our societal structures and deep in our minds, is the enemy. In school, black children are given fewer opportunities to succeed and excel than their white peers.1 Once out of school and in the job market, black applicants without criminal records are less likely to be called back for a job interview than whites with criminal records and exactly the same application, and even the “blackness” of their names holds them back.2, 3 If they secure a job, they are paid less and will have a harder time securing a mortgage to buy a home.4, 5, 6 It’s no surprise, then, that middle class black youth are three times as likely to fall into poverty as adults than their white counterparts.7 And what are they to fall back on? With less time to accrue familial nest eggs than whites, black families have on average one-tenth the net worth of white families.8
However, it is not just economic pressures that are exerted on black Americans; they are disproportionately targets of the criminal justice system. In the context of the drug war, massively more black people than white are arrested for drug possession, despite white people using drugs at a higher rate.9 Once arrested, black youth are 48 times more likely to go to jail for their first-time drug offense.10 In New York City’s Stop and Frisk campaign, young men of color, innocent of any wrongdoing in 90% of stops, make up 41.6% of detainments, despite comprising only 4.7% of the city’s population.11 This disparity did not exist for white men, even though whites were more likely to have a weapon found during a stop. In fact, more stops of black men were made than black men live in the city. Any person making the argument that black Americans are not targeted is clearly ignorant of the facts.
And frequently people are not only ignorant of the facts; they are ignorant of the human reality of the situation. They cavalierly dismiss the notion that people be given leniency for stealing essential items. Like jokes about potted meat and Tang told by our elected national representatives in the wake of a government shutdown, this attitude they exhibit betrays their privilege. In human terms which might be easier to understand: they are requiring people to sacrifice themselves and their children to obey the laws of a society which has only ever rejected them and adhere to a system which has only ever failed them.
In any case, what crimes are they being punished for? What laws have they broken? For no scientific reason of health or social effects, sentences for crack cocaine were many times harsher than those for powder cocaine until 2010’s Fair Sentencing Act began to even the disparity. Those unfair laws were allegedly championed by Congress to fight urban blight and address high crime rates, but their race-based motivations and subsequent perpetuation of popular misconceptions of black culture should not be ignored.
This is not all a liberal fever-dream cherry-picked from contentious data. This is a real phenomenon despite its not affecting many of us personally. Racism is not just the definition we can read in the dictionary; it is much more than hate crimes and professed notions of racial superiority. Racism is the fact that the scales of all of our social and governmental institutions are tipped in favor of the white majority.
This isn’t a political issue; every politician—theoretically a public servant—should be fighting for equal rights. This is a human rights issue. Hiding behind our privilege isn’t going to make the problem go away. In fact, part of becoming a responsible citizen is to go through the uncomfortable process of removing the blinders that limit your awareness to only your reality so that you can become aware of others’ lived experiences. Only at then have you reached the starting point for the directed, positive social change that Tulane purports to be invested in.
1By the Color of our Skin, p.47
2http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/11/14/race-criminal-background-and-employment/
3http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
4Table 217 on page 144, Statistical Abstracts of the United States: The National Data Book, by the US Census Bureau, 2007
5 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40721832
6 John Wilke, “Race is a Factor in Some Loan Denials”, WSJ
7http://www.alternet.org/story/70694/the_american_dream,_or_a_nightmare_for_black_america
8Pew Research, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/
9http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED466907
10“Young white offenders get lighter treatment”, The Tennessean, 2000
11 http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/NYCLU_2011_Stop-and-Frisk_Report.pdf