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Only White Privilege Explains This - Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html?smid=fb-shareMy sister posted snips of this on Facebook, and what she posted was so depressing that I didn't want to read the article. I thought about posting this in GD, since posting it here is preaching to the choir, especially this snippet:
“One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea,” said Ibram Kendi, a professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. “But for whatever reason, we’re unwilling to stare racism in the face.”
boys, across races, are more sensitive than girls to disadvantages like growing up in poverty or facing discrimination. While black women also face negative effects of racism, black men often experience racial discrimination differently. As early as preschool, they are more likely to be disciplined in school. They are pulled over or detained and searched by police officers more often.
“It’s not just being black but being male that has been hyper-stereotyped in this negative way, in which we’ve made black men scary, intimidating, with a propensity toward violence,” said Noelle Hurd, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia.
She said this racist stereotype particularly hurts black men economically, now that service-sector jobs, requiring interaction with customers, have replaced the manufacturing jobs that previously employed men with less education.
"One of the most startling findings to me was the perfect parallel between these two lines. The adult income gap between black + white men holds whether they grow up poor, rich or anywhere in between.
That gap is also *wider* in low-poverty, high-opportunity neighborhoods. That means many wealthy liberal suburbs are replicating this problem, too.
One implication: If we could pick up all the poor kids in America and move them to high-opportunity places, the U.S. would actually have *more* racial income inequality. Poor black boys would do better. But poor white boys would do much better.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't pursue mobility strategies. But we have to be conscious that moving kids to opportunity doesn't mean they can easily access it.
Another policy takeaway: Promoting marriage will not solve this inequality. Black boys with two parents at home still fare worse than white boys with a single mother who earns *less*.
One of the most curious findings: Poor black boys do well in nhoods where there are many other low-income black dads around. Not their own dads. Other dads.
Perhaps this is because low-income black dads are a very particular kind of indicator: Where we see lots of them, there are also likely to be jobs and other opportunity that help support them as stable partners.
The incarceration data in this study is staggering. Sons of black millionaires were as likely to be incarcerated during the 2010 census as sons of white families earning about $36,000.
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