Posted on 04/20/2014 9:08:59 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
Even if racism were wiped out tomorrow, we'd still need to address pervasive racial wealth inequality. Here's why
Although the Civil Rights Act, the landmark legislation which just reached its 50th anniversary, made great strides in desegregating the economy, economic discrimination is still widespread, and anti-discrimination legislation alone can never rectify the economic damage inflicted upon blacks by slavery and our Jim Crow apartheid regime. The Civil Rights Act was a mild reform, all things considered, but one conservatives fought with vigor and one many conservatives are still bitter about to this day.
When the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, the primary purpose was to root out discrimination in public accommodations (like hotels and movie theaters) and in employment. The former purposeeliminating public accommodations discriminationhas received renewed attention from conservatives lately who find it to be an infringement on the rights of racist business owners to be racist. GOP favorite Rand Paul expressed this view in 2010 and Catos Ilya Shapiro expressed it just a few months ago on MSNBC.
These arent new concerns, of course. One white Nashville resident interviewed at the time of passage said the same thing about the Civil Rights Act: I also think that it is in violation to my civil rights if someone can say you must serve me. Nonetheless, it is telling that the embarrassment attached to claiming it is the racists who are the real victims in all of this has sufficiently subsided within the mainstream conservative movement that even GOP leaders are willing to reinvigorate the claim. I suppose thats par for the course for a movement thats also pushed the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and pursued an intentional campaign of voter suppression that disproportionately targets blacks and other people of color.
Despite the fevered conservative protests over the extensive reach of the the Civil Rights Act, it has not totally succeeded in its aims. Lunch counters and hotels no longer outright ban blacks from service, a relatively easy thing to root out. But academic studies show that employment decisions continue to be made upon race-based lines.
For instance, in one 2003 study, a team of researchers sent nearly 5000 resumes to over 1,300 employment ads posted in newspapers in Chicago and Boston. The resumes were totally fake and otherwise identical except that some had black-sounding names on them while others had white-sounding names on them. The researchers found that the applications with white-sounding names on them received call backs 50 percent more often than the applications with black-sounding names on them. As things usually go with racist discrimination, it can be hard to pin down a particular given instance as motivated by racism, but the aggregate numbers do not lie.
Clearly, more progress needs to be made on the anti-discrimination front, but anti-discrimination, even if it were entirely successful, would still never be enough to rectify the economic harms inflicted by centuries of slavery and racial apartheid.
One of the consequences of the racial caste system that characterized American society prior to 1960 is that black families were prevented from accumulating economic wealth. Because wealth is the kind of thing that is passed down generations and the kind of thing that grows and grows, this initial racist starting point has opened up a yawning racial wealth gap that simply cannot be closed without intentional policy aimed at doing so.
In 2010, the median black family held around $16,000 in wealth, while the median white family held around $130,000. And this is not just a function of the fact that whites have higher incomes than blacks. Even when you control for incomecomparing white and black families in the same income rangewhite families are three times wealthier than black families. The racial wealth disparities hold up and down the income ladder.
As Thomas Pikettys groundbreaking book Capital in the 21st Century has detailed: wealth has a tendency in a capitalist economy to concentrate into the hands of a few and travel down generations through gifts and inheritances. Even if racism were wiped out tomorrow and equal treatment became the norm, it would never cease being the case that the average white person has more wealth than the average black person. We could equalize everything else in society, and racial wealth inequalityplus all of the political power disparities that accompany such a thingwould continue into perpetuity.
Thus, those actually serious about righting the wrongs of enslavement and Jim Crow apartheid must support more drastic leveling efforts. Beefed up anti-discrimination, which is both necessary and good, will not be enough. Ideally, we could work towards reparations in the form of redistributing wealth along racial lines. With that an unlikely possibility though, we can at least think about ways to redistribute wealth more generally from those with wealth to those without it, something that would have a similar, albeit more attenuated, effect as reparations given who the wealthy and non-wealthy happen to be.
You sound like a weak idiot willing to kowtow to those who would do you and yours harm. You want to kiss the ass of those who enact laws against you, those who use race as a battering ram while screaming ‘racism’ but all the while work work, vote and act as a race. See race as an excuse for out of control crime, families and culture please help yourself but most people are starting to see it and call it for what it is.
Live not by lies AH.
We’ve ALREADY redistributed trillions in wealth since the Great Society. It’s done crap b/c it’s been wasted on failed programs, people that don’t appreciate it wasting it, pissing it away and still remaining poor. People deciding they’ll just stay on welfare forever, why leave it b/c it’s money they don’t have to do anything to get!
We need to END welfare for most people in this country. Go to your families. Go to your churches. Private charities. Stop using the force of government to take what belongs to your neighbors. You have no moral right to anyone else’s money.
It’s because for urban blacks, if they do all that stuff you mentioned, they will get ripped by other blacks for being “too white”. And they are scared of being called that. They like being part of the crowd that hates whitey and beats up on whitey. If they are too much like whitey they might become a target too.
Truth hurts. I rest my case.
And So The Author PrOPoses We Correct The Inequalities By Lowering Everyone To A Lowest Common denominator?
... Although the Civil Rights Act, the landmark legislation which just reached its 50th anniversary, made great strides in desegregating the economy, ...
Never accept the premise of your opponent's argument.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponents Argument
The MAJOR constitutional problem with civil rights legislation from the 1960s is the following imo. Congress must be able to justity any law that it makes with enumerated powers which the states have delegated to it via the Constitution.
More specifically, the states made Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to grant Congress the specific power to strenthen only those rights which the states have amended the Constitution to protect. Such rights include not only the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but also the voting rights amendments, for example, which are the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amedments. In fact, the voting rights amendments reflect on Section 5 of 14A by clarifying that Congress has the power to make legislation to strengthen such rights.
So while I agree in principle with the desegration aspects of the Civil Rights Act, the MAJOR constitutional problem with desegration laws is that the states have never amended the Constitution to grant Congress the specific power to legislatively address such issues. In other words, the Civil Rights Act was wrongly established outside the framework of the Constitution imo. (It also doesn't help when activist justices wrongly "amend" segregation laws to the Constitution from the bench.)
And there are all kinds of federal laws which Congess cannot justify under its constitutionally delegated powers imo. And the dark reason for such laws is the following imo. Constitutionally indefensible federal taxing and spend laws in particular have been in the books since the days of Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR. Justice John Marshall warned us about such taxes as evidenced by the following excerpt.
Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States. Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
The FDR legacy of illegal federal tax appropriation laws has resulted in a tsunami of such taxes being paid by low-information citizens, citizens who have never been taught about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers.
And to keep the tsunimi of illegal federal taxes rising year after year, corrupt politicians have promised low-information voters everything under the sun, including segregation laws, laws which are based on constitutionally nonexistent federal government powers. The real goal of such politicians is undoubtedly to get elected to Congress (or to remain in office) to "guard" taxpayer dollars.
Remember, the road to DC is paved with vote-winning legislation which is based on powers that the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific power to make.
I don't know where the moron factory is which produces these MENSA candidates who write such childish drivel.
I can just keep reminding myself, In any kind of a dialogue, NEVER ACCEPT YOUR ENEMY'S PREMISE!
Economic discrimination?
WTF is that?
In a free society, any and all fools are free, by their choices, to eschew the work and effort necessary to avoid economic failure.
The resulting "economic discrimination" is entirely a monster of their own creation.
Make your choices and deal with the consequences.
Their life choices, in a nutshell, is defined by the idea, "Why do I need to expend years of effort educating myself to achieve a good life, when with a gun and an attitude, I can get anything I want any time I want it?"
To label that "discrimination" is an obscenity!
I work at Raytheon, and was part of a 12 person team interviewing potential college new hires about 12 years ago. By coincidence, there were 12 candidates and four open slots. After the interview, all the interviewers made separate anonymous evaluations. The hands down winner was a kid from WPI, who had a pony tail, wore sneakers and a suit, and played in a rock band. But he had a child with his girlfriend and needed insurance, so he was motivated, and he really knew his stuff. One of the 12 was from Tuskegee. While he was clearly the most personable, I rated him last, and he did not appear in the top four. The selection process was headed by two women from human relations, one of whom was black. The recommendation (go nogo) process was not anonymous and, they could not hire anyone without all twelve interviewers’ recommendation. One veto was sufficient. I was was the only hold out against hiring him. He was so manifestly and objectively unqualified I could not recommend him. He was a pure bullshitter. The black HR woman was obviously steamed at me, but I would *not* relent. It was a long and uncomfortable night. Fortunately, they never asked me back, which saved me gas, mileage and time.
It was a long and uncomfortable night.
Mostly for me. I think at least eight other raters agreed with me but didn’t want to stand up. I was playing on their court, but I would not yield.
Go ahead and mandate hiring people with black sounding names, and then let's track actual wealth generating job performance.
That's fair, isn't it? And the person gets the extra benefit of satisfaction from a job well-done, pride in accomplishment, and being a role model for others.
-PJ
So that companies can avoid being sued for Discrimination.
They’re not all black, is correct, but they are all anti-white. Like Tim Wise.
Good for you for not being intimidated into denying a qualified person the position.
Today to be part of an anti-racism movement means you are anti-white. And many whites are in this so called movement.
The short version is>>>
anti-racism is code for anti-white
Just think of the Federal Government as one giant HR department....affirmative action oriented of course
Dittos to what you said Ping
I’ve heard that Raytheon is making an honest effort to hire disabled veterans. As regards minorities in the technical fields, are there really that many that even apply? I teach locally and during graduation, our technical colleges have virtually no blacks (lots of Asians & Indians though) graduating with STEM degrees.
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