1/3/2015
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10 Rational Fears Many Black People Have Living Under White Supremacy
For Black people in the U.S. and around the world, there are devastating wages to be paid for living in a world dominated by white supremacy. There are also many painful realizations that you must face, rational fears that you will likely possess at some point in your life. Here are some of them:
That You Will Be Unjustly Charged by the Police
There are more than 2.3 million people currently in prison in the United States — and more than 840,000 of them are African-American men. The life blood of the criminal industrial complex is the plea bargain, which steamrolls many Black defendants into pleading guilty to minor offenses they may not have committed in order to avoid going to trial for more serious charges that prosecutors have admitted they often don’t have evidence to back up.
That You Will Be Subject to Police Violence
In a report by an organization called the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, it was estimated that a Black person in the U.S. is killed once every 28 hours by a member of law enforcement or private security. Black teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.
Past analyses have found disproportionate violence against Blacks, including a 2007 investigation by Colorlines and the Chicago Reporter in 10 major cities. An NAACP report on Oakland, California, found that 37 of 45 police-involved shootings were of Blacks, while zero were of whites.
“Although weapons were not found in 40 percent of cases, the NAACP found, no officers were charged,” Mother Jones reported.
That You Will Spend Your Life in Poverty
Nearly half of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty; that’s less than $1.25 a day. More than 2 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Nearly all of these are people of color and a big chunk are Black. More than half of the impoverished population in developing countries lives in South Asia, and another 29 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. In the U.S., about 27.2 percent of the 44 million Black people live in poverty. So it is clear that for a huge number of Black people around the globe, white supremacy has ensured that they will live their lives in a state of dire poverty.
That the World Will Only See You as Poor, Hungry and Corrupt
For Africans, the negative narrative of the continent coming from outsiders, what novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls “the single story,” has created a distorted, one-dimensional view — eagerly embraced by the West, but also by many Africans themselves — that sees the continent only through a prism of war, disease, poverty, starvation and corruption. The single story has helped to generate millions of dollars in “aid” and an industry dedicated to spending it. It has enriched corrupt African dignitaries and raised the profile of Western celebrities like Bono and Sir Bob Geldof. It has fueled conflict and ultimately undermined African leadership. It has not helped Africa move forward. It has not protected the vulnerable, cured the sick, educated the illiterate or ended conflict.
That You Won’t Be Hired Even When You’re Qualified
The 2013 unemployment rate for recent college grads who are Black was almost twice that of recent college grads overall, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. In fact, the Black jobless rate has been consistently almost double the white jobless rate for the past 60 years. A large part of the problem is job market discrimination. One study found that job applicants with “Black-sounding” names (researchers gave Lakisha Washington and Jamal Jones as examples) were less likely to get called back for an interview than their counterparts with the same qualifications who had “white-sounding” names (like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker). Some researchers have even suggested that drug testing would improve the prospects of Black job-seekers because hiring managers are more likely to assume they’ve used drugs and are less likely to discriminate when presented with actual evidence to the contrary.
The 2013 unemployment rate for recent college grads who are Black was almost twice that of recent college grads overall, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. In fact, the Black jobless rate has been consistently almost double the white jobless rate for the past 60 years. A large part of the problem is job market discrimination. One study found that job applicants with “Black-sounding” names (researchers gave Lakisha Washington and Jamal Jones as examples) were less likely to get called back for an interview than their counterparts with the same qualifications who had “white-sounding” names (like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker). Some researchers have even suggested that drug testing would improve the prospects of Black job-seekers because hiring managers are more likely to assume they’ve used drugs and are less likely to discriminate when presented with actual evidence to the contrary.
That You Won’t Be Able to Move Into the Best Neighborhood You Can Afford
One of the most heinous examples of racist housing policies was introduced by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, and lasted until 1968. The FHA explicitly refused to back loans to Black people or even other people who lived near Black people. As writer Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it, “Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever Black people lived.” As Coates writes, Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Research shows that Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000.
That Your Child Won’t Get an Education as Good as He Deserves
The statistics are staggering, proving how much the U.S. education system is designed to ensure that Black students won’t receive an adequate education. Public school students of color get more punishment and less access to veteran teachers than their white peers, according to the U.S. Education Department. Black students are suspended or expelled at triple the rate of their white peers, according to the U.S. Education Department’s 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection. Five percent of white students were suspended annually, compared with 16 percent of Black students.
Black girls were suspended at a rate of 12 percent — far greater than girls of other ethnicities and most categories of boys. At the same time, minority students have less access to experienced teachers. Seven percent of Black students attend schools where as many as 20 percent of teachers fail to meet license and certification requirements. And one in four school districts pay teachers in less-diverse high schools $5,000 more than teachers in schools with higher Black and Latino student enrollment.
That Your Salary Will Be Lower Than Your White Colleague Who Has Less Experience
Everywhere you turn, in every industry in the U.S., Black workers are paid less than whites. In 1970, Black men earned 69 percent of what white men earned in the U.S. while Black women earned just 48 percent — less than half. Over the next 40 years, the closest Black men ever got to white men was in 1999, at 80.6 percent of what white men earned. After 1999, Black men fell back, eventually to 74.5 percent in 2010. For Black women, the closest they ever got to white men was the latest figure, 69.6 percent in 2010. The statistics show that even in this new millennium, white supremacy still reigns supreme. Incidentally, since 2004, white women have been earning more than Black men. In 2010, white women earned 80.5 percent of what white men earned.
Researchers have found that despite the claims that corporations will pay a premium for Black women, believing that they will get two minorities for the price of one, this has never been the case. In fact, Black and Hispanic women vie for last place on the earnings pyramid at every level of education, and the gender pay gap actually increases with higher education for Black, white and Hispanic women.
That You Won’t Get Top-Notch Care From Doctors Because of Your Skin Color
A 2012 study found that about two-thirds of primary care doctors harbor biases toward their African-American patients, leading those doctors to spend less time with their Black patients and involve them less in medical decisions. Although doctors typically aren’t aware that they’re treating African-American patients any differently, this ultimately creates an environment in which Black people often don’t feel welcome in the medical system — and may start avoiding it. On top of that, Black Americans are more likely to lack access to health insurance and less likely to have a regular doctor. This creates a situation in which African-Americans are dying from diseases at higher rates than other racial groups because they don’t get treatment in time.
That You Won’t Get a Fair Mortgage Because of Your Skin Color
Some of America’s biggest banks have been charging Blacks more than 3.3 times more than other borrowers, according to a 2012 survey of U.S. loan data. Matthew Lee, head of Fair Finance Watch and Inner City Press, collected data on the average interest rates on loans granted to African-Americans by major banks. He found that Citigroup Inc. issued loans to African-Americans with rates 3.38 times more than other borrowers in 2011. Wells Fargo & Co. charged 2.28 times more, while J.P.Morgan Chase & Co. loaned out at rates 2.21 times higher. As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, predatory lenders still target Black communities, deliberately concentrated in neighborhoods by decades of government-sanctioned segregation, and steer them toward subprime loans. “Plunder in the past made plunder in the present efficient,” Coates writes.
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