In my last blog post I pointed out that affirmative action arose as a concept when the detrimental effects of racially segregated education continued long after state-sponsored segregation was declared unconstitutional. Affirmative steps were needed to accomplish integrated education without further ado. Bussing was one of the methods used.
But how is such affirmative action relevant today? Black people are succeeding in society. We’ve already had a black president. Public officials, entertainers, athletes, technical experts, and doctors appearing on TV are often black. Blacks seem to be doing fine, so no more affirmative action is needed to reverse the detrimental effects of past racism.
The main problem now, according to this view, is the impoverishment and demoralization of whites, especially white men, who are increasingly losing well-paying jobs, taking too many drugs, and committing suicide. If affirmative action includes preferring blacks to whites for jobs or for entrance into elite universities, it’s exactly opposite of current needs.
Although the difficulties of whites are real, the rosy picture of black acceptance and success is factually incorrect. In what follows I’ll cite some evidence, concentrating on blacks, but much of the information applies at present to Latinos as well. Just as the ill effects of segregated schooling persisted, which justified affirmative action, the negative effects of racism continue to detract from the life prospects of (mostly) black people in the United States, which justifies addition affirmative action today and in the future.
According to the Federal Reserve, black (and Hispanic) households have on average only 15% or 20% as much wealth as white households. This is the result of blatant discrimination by the federal government in past decades. Home ownership is the most common form of wealth acquisition in the US, and blacks were not given loans on the same bases as non-Hispanic whites when the federal government subsidized home loans after World War II. As a result, the current generation of blacks and Hispanics didn’t inherit as much wealth from their parents because their parents didn’t inherit as much wealth from their parents.
Housing discrimination also existed in the form of covenants that disallowed selling homes to blacks in favorable neighborhoods. Currently, zoning laws requiring single-family dwellings to be on plots of at least one or two acres reduces the availability of starter homes for people of limited means, both black and white. But since blacks are statistically more often people of limited means, the relative scarcity of starter homes for purchase hurts blacks more than whites.
Studies show also that houses believed to be owned by blacks are currently appraised by professional appraisers at lower value than those believed to be owned by whites. This has been shown repeatedly by having different appraisers look at the same house both with and without pictures and other indicators of black ownership. Take away those indicators, and the house can be appraised 25% higher.
Home ownership also affects the quality of the schools that children attend because much of the expense of K-12 education is borne by local property taxes. When blacks were relegated to areas where houses were cheaper, even when they could afford houses in wealthier neighborhoods, their children attended schools with fewer resources. And statistics show that even in the same school, children do better when they come from homes with more financial resources. Racist practices affecting home ownership have ripple effects across generations and fields of endeavor.
Racism also makes it more difficult for blacks to earn as much as whites even when they succeed in securing equal educational attainment. Studies show that even today identical credentials sent to the same employer receive very different responses when the name on the application for a job suggests that the applicant is black. Denying the better jobs to Jamari and LaToya deprive them of greater income and wealth and, by relegating the family to a poorer community, deny their children the best educational opportunities.
Opponents of affirmative action have often said that past sins of racism can’t reasonably be addressed by current programs to benefit blacks. The people who were enslaved are all dead, and even the last generation of those subjected to racist Jim Crow laws are mostly senior citizens too old to benefit from affirmative-action advantages in hiring or education.
But the evidence shows that wealth accumulation is intergenerational, so today’s blacks are still disadvantaged by past practices regarding mortgages and current practices concerning access to jobs, appraisals of housing, and quality of schools. Affirmative action to end continuing disadvantages for blacks are just as necessary now as they were to integrate schools. These disadvantages remain largely invisible to people who, although they don’t know it, enjoy white privilege. They would have a rude awakening if they could ever have the experience of trying to hail a taxi while black.
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