Are White Males Discriminated Against?

There is a persistent myth that white people are discriminated against.

The world is so outrageously politically correct, the story goes, that my rights as a white male are being impinged. Maybe the world was once racist against blacks, but we are way past that now. Good luck applying to college, white guy. All those colleges slurp on racial minorities now, so you got no chance. So it goes.

I challenge that view on many levels. For one thing it is an unqualified and deeply flawed claim, even before we begin to look at any evidence. Can you find instances where whites are mistreated or discriminated against because of race? Of course you can. What does that prove? People are mean to each other and they will find any pretense.

So perhaps what people really want to claim is that “White people are more discriminated against than minorities.” But when I read that, the only thing that allows me to keep a straight face is how dangerously ignorant it is. Can anyone really think that?!

Or maybe it is more like “White people face as much discrimination as blacks and other minorities.” That is a bit more reasonable, though still quite untrue by all serious quantitative measures.

The one thing that people want to point at is affirmative action. So, let me clear up a few things. This blog has nothing to do with affirmative action. (Besides, we do not have affirmative action any more.) My ENGL 103 students will know what I mean when I say that I am arguing a claim of fact, not a claim of policy. In other words, I am concerned with clearing up what we can reasonably and objectively infer from data about race; I am not making a claim about what should be done about it.

Of course, I am not arrogant enough to think I will end this discussion, but I do feel compelled to at least make a contribution to the discussion.

I invite you consider is this: there is a huge difference between, on the one hand, broad systematic and institutional (even if unofficial) racial injustice/inequality/discrimination; and on the other hand, interpersonal racial tension.

I also invite you to consider the important distinctions between inequalities, injustices, and prejudices. These words are not interchangeable. In fact it is possible to think of a scenario where there is “discrimination” against whites, but still inequality against minorities, and injustices on both sides. For example, in the cases where a white student feels that she is excluded from college admission because preference was given to a minority applicant, she may (perhaps rightly) argue that she is a victim of discrimination. However if the overall admission ratios of the college show that only 5% of the total population is minority, then we would all acknowledge that there is inequality “in favor” of white students.



Criminal Justice:

I often find that white people will cite a particular instance when a racial minority was mean to them as evidence that minorities discriminate against whites. I invite you to consider this hypothetical situation. I am standing on the sidewalk in Fullerton at night and standing near me is a black or latino man. I tell a nearby police officer that the man stole my wallet. What will happen? Now reverse the scenario. The black man tells the officer that I stole his wallet. Can we expect commensurate treatment? I wonder.

About ten years ago, John Lamberth, a statistician and professor emeritus at Temple University conducted a landmark study that showed that on stretches of highway in New Jersey and Maryland, “While 17.5 percent of the traffic violators on I-95 north of Baltimore were African American, 28.8 percent of those stopped and 71.3 percent of those searched by the Maryland State Police were African American.” Read his report (published in the Washington Post) here http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/192.html

So why are blacks stopped on the highway more frequently than whites? Lamberth’s study shows through quantitative measures that it is not because they are more likely to commit a traffic violation.

So why are more blacks arrested than whites? Violators on this stretch of highway were typically arrested for possession of narcotics. How do the officers know there are narcotics in the cars? They search them of course. The study shows that “for every 1,000 searches by the Maryland State Police, 200 blacks and only 80 non-blacks are arrested. This could lead one to believe that more blacks are breaking the law--until you know that the sample is deeply skewed. Of those searched, 713 were black and only 287 were non-black.” In other words, of the people searched, almost exactly the same percentage of black and non-black offenders had illegal contraband in their cars. The evidence suggests that blacks are NOT more likely to drive with drugs in their car. In fact, the most reliable information from the National Institute of Drug Abuse indicates that drug use among blacks is exactly the same as among whites. And yet they are searched more frequently, arrested more frequently, and are much more likely to go to jail on drug charges. In 2002 blacks represented 44% of the federal prison population (even though they are less than 14% of the population).

The data that Lamberth compiled was used to launch a class action suit against the police forces in question, and the result is that over the last ten years there has been an increase in watch dog organizations that track state laws, litigations, arrest and search data, etc. For example, Northeastern University in Boston has a service here http://www.racialprofilinganalysis.neu.edu/ Police forces are now held accountable in a way that they were not before. The supposedly reckless lawsuits that people are always railing against are often the instrument of justice for the underrepresented and dispossessed.

Then there is the anecdotal evidence: I have never talked to an African American male (and this includes the middle class, and even politically conservative, African Americans that I know) who did not have a story about being harassed by police officers. Many of these stories are quite shocking.

African Americans do not have any unfair racial advantages in the criminal justice system. For the unconvinced, I invite you to do additional research, as there is much more data to confirm this.



Schools:

The majority of US States (including California, Texas, and New York) spend less money per student in districts that have high-minority enrollments. This is even after adjusting for things like Title III and other specialized funding packages that (some would say unfairly) target districts and schools with high minority enrollment. So even after the government gives special money to “minority” districts, they still receive less money than white-dominated districts. And it is not close. For example in 2004, Illinois was the most unfair; they spent $1,223 less per student in “minority districts” per year. As a teacher I can imagine a lost of ways that twelve hundred per student could dramatically change a classroom. There are some of states that spend extra money on “minority districts” (Georgia spent $556 more for example), but the overwhelming trend is to under-fund.

Here is another way to see it: according to a study of forth graders by the National Center for Education forty-seven percent of blacks and fifty-one percent of latinos were in the highest poverty schools in 2003, contrast with five percent of whites. Conversely six percent of black and latino forth graders were attended the wealthiest schools, vs. Twenty-nine percent whites.

The oakland school district is an underperforming district where the minorities are the majority. In the midst of the district, there is a nice white oasis in the Piedmont school district, where the schools receive max funding to reflect the wealthy demographic. In accordance with a well-established practice, the districts have been gerrymandered to guarantee that wealthy white parents will not have to share their rich schools with the poor students in Oakland at large.

According to a 2007 UCLA study of K12 racial isolation, the average white student attends a school where 77% of his/her classmates are white. Black students can expect 52% of their fellows to be black. 55% for Latinos. What does this mean. It means that we have to a large extent re-segregated our schools in part by gerrymandering districts. Even racial minorities can expect to attend a school where their race is the majority.

Despite the frequent complaints that white people get the shaft when it comes to college admission, admissions are based on many practices that favor wealthy white families. There is of course the question of the SAT that heavily favors teenagers who speak Broadcast English in their homes and/or who have access to expensive/extensive after school tutoring programs. Top Tier colleges also place a lot of emphasis on AP credits. However, studies show that “white” dominant schools are much more likely to have AP programs than minority dominated schools. Also, the AP programs at wealthier schools are consistently stronger, with well-trained teachers and counsellors.

The admissions office for Berkeley is on speed dial in the wealthiest high schools in California, but a survey of counsellors in impoverished schools revealed that nearly half of the counsellors surveyed acknowledged that they did not know they were “allowed” to talk to universities on behalf of their students. (I apologize that I cannot give you the reference for this survey; I read it in a newspaper article that I cannot find.)

Minorities are underrepresented in college and less prepared than their white counterparts. Since none of us is ignorant enough to say that whites are superior to minorities, then we need to continue to examine how we can improve K12 education. The inequalities and injustices are statistically clear.



Income:

To be brief, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2002 the average white worker made $126 more per week than the average black worker and $201 more than Latinos. Racial minorities remain proportionally underrepresented in the highest paying American jobs.



Housing:

Large gaps in homeownership between whites and non-whites are persistent as well. The US Census Bureau reports that blacks and Latinos are nearly 30% less likely to own a home. And those who did purchase homes over the last ten years were much more likely to fall prey to predatory loans. During the housing boom, subprime loans represented about 9% of all conventional home-purchase loans. Yet from 1995 to 2001 subprime loans to blacks grew 686%, to Latinos 882%. Fannie Mae estimates that nearly half of the homebuyers who received these loans could have qualified for lower-cost conventional mortgages.




Coda:

What have I shown? Maybe nothing. This was a hastily written blog. But I have tried to show that there is quantitative objective evidence showing pervasive racial inequalities, injustices, and discrimination in several foundational American institutions.

So what is the difference between institutional racism and interpersonal racial tension?

Power. And white males have it.

This is why there are no racial slurs that hurt white males, though there are for all other groups. (And don’t tell me “cracker” hurts your feelings.) We have the power. We have the money. We have the good jobs (professional sports notwithstanding). We have the criminal justice system.

Therefore, even if in specific instances individual whites may feel discriminated against, it simply does not mean the same thing. As a white male, the law of averages is on my side. If I keep applying it is bound to shape out in my favor, since the real power is on my side.

It is not liberal tomfoolery to say so.