Race Relations in America

[mark414]

some interesting stuff...gotta give credit to the man who compiled it here:

http://www.the-breaks.com/

this could be used to cite whenever YAPOWPT pops up

http://www.ajc.org/upload/pdf/IntergroupRelations.pdf

Negative ethnic images about Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians declined over the last decade. The proportion seeing these groups as lazier, more violence-prone, and less intelligent than Whites all substantially decreased. For example, in 1990 59 percent of Americans thought that Blacks were less hard working than Whites and this fell to 43 percent in 2000. Likewise, in 1990 50 percent believed that Hispanics were more violence-prone than Whites compared to 40 percent in 2000. Similarly, 39 percent considered Asians as less intelligent than Whites in 1990, but only 26 percent did so in 2000.

http://www.fatdawg.com/subtleracism.html

The camouflage around such racism does not make it benign. It can still damage life opportunities. Take the durable, potent stereotype of blacks as unintelligent and lazy. In 1990, when the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked a representative sample of Americans to evaluate various racial and ethnic groups, blacks ended up at the bottom. Most of those surveyed across the country labeled blacks as less intelligent than whites (63 percent); lazier than whites (62 percent); and more likely than whites to prefer being on welfare than being self-supporting (78 percent).

http://cloud9.norc.uchicago.edu/dlib/t-19.htm

The belief that Americans are approaching a color and creed-blind society is easily disabused by the ethnic image data collected on the 1990 General Social Survey (Table 1). First, these scores show that people are willing and able to rate group members on the basis of their ethnicity. . .

ith one exception, minority groups are evaluated more negatively than Whites in general. The one exception is Jews who are rated more favorably than Whites on each characteristic except patriotism. No other group scores above Whites (i.e. has a positive mean) on any characteristic. Looking at how everyone rates groups (including in-group members), we see that Jews are rated most positively overall (first on wealth, industry, non-violence, intelligence, and self-support and third on patriotism - second among minorities). Asian Americans and White Southerners are ranked next (second or third) on almost every dimension. Finally, Blacks and Hispanic Americans are ranked last or next to last on almost every characteristic. Looking at a scale that sums up scores on all items, except the more factually grounded wealth dimension, we see that Jews are the only positively rated group. Southern Whites and Asian Americans are rated immediately below Whites and Hispanic Americans and Blacks were rated considerably lower. In fact, over 80% of respondents rated Hispanic Americans and Blacks lower than Whites on one or more of the five characteristics. . .

Despite the demonstrable progress in inter-group tolerance over the last several decades, ethnic images are still common place in contemporary society. On the whole these images are neither benign nor trivial. Most Americans see most minority groups in a decidedly negative light on a number of important characteristics. Only images of Jews are generally positive and even in their case people seem to question their patriotism. All other groups, including the old stock, White Southerners, are seen more negatively than Whites in general. In particular, Hispanic Americans and Blacks receive very low ratings.

http://www.uky.edu/AS/PoliSci/Peffley/pdf/473Gilens1999.pdf

In almost every aspect of social and economic well-being, black Americans remain worse off than whites. African Americans' median income today is 74% that of whites, a feeble improvement of only five percentage points in the past 25 years. Racial differences in high school completion rates and achievement scores on standardized tests have narrowed dramatically in the past two decades. But the racial gap in college education remains large, with 26% of whites, but only 15% of blacks, completing four years of college. In other areas, racial differences have not narrowed at all. The racial gap in unemployment has not changed over the past 25 years, and remains over twice as high for blacks as it is for whites (currently 11.5% compared to 5.3%). And racial differences in homeownership rates have actually increased slightly since 1970.

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/downloads/keyWorkplaceDocuments/GlassCeilingBackground1AfricanAmericans.pdf

African American men and women still lag behind White women and men in holding management positions. Over the last ten years, the proportion of African-American men and women holding management positions has only ranged between 5 and 7 percent. They continue to be invisible at the very top level of companies.

http://mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/aa/GlassCeiling.pdf

A survey of senior-level male managers in Fortune 1000 industrial and Fortune 500 service industries shows that almost 97 percent are white, 0.6 are African American, 0.3 percent are Asian, and 0.4 percent are Hispanic.

African American men and women comprise less than 2.5 percent of total employment in the top jobs in the private sector. African American men with professional degrees earn only 79 percent of the amount of their white male counterparts; African American women with professional degrees earn only 60 percent of what white males earn.
. . .
According to surveys of Fortune 1500 companies conducted by Korn/Ferry International and Catalyst over the last decade, 95 to 97 percent of senior managers, vice presidents and above were men. A 1989 Korn/Ferry survey found that 97 percent of male top executives are white. A 1992 survey of Fortune 1500 companies found that 95 percent of the three to five percent of the top managers who were women were white non-Hispanic women. In 1994, two women were CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies.

http://www.diversityweb.org/Digest/W98/research.html

Employment

A 1990 Urban Institute study of employment discrimination found that when racially mixed pairs of individuals applied for the same jobs, one in eight times the white was offered the job and his or her equally qualified African American partner was not. This report also found that Latino/as were more likely to experience unfavorable treatment at the application and interview stages than were African Americans. The author of a more recent synthesis of evidence also concluded that, despite great progress, employment discrimination is clearly still a significant problem.

Housing

Studies of discrimination in housing markets reveal that African American or Latino/a testers experience some form of differential treatment roughly half of the time. Even the most conservative measures reveal that at least 25 percent of the time there will be discrimination in many important types of behavior by rental or real estate agents. Based on a 1989 national housing audit, 5 to 10 percent of the time African Americans and Latino/as are excluded from, or simply not told about, units that are made available to whites. A General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago revealed that in 1994, 32 percent of Americans still believed that homeowners should have the right to refuse to sell their homes to African Americans. This number was, however, down from 65 percent in 1975.

http://www.brookings.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb09.htm

Affirmative action has caused reverse discrimination against whites.

In a recent editorial, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, referring to affirmative action in general, said that "a program to end discrimination in the name of justice became a program to visit injustice on a different set of people" (Zuckerman, 1995).

A 1995 analysis by the U.S. Department of Labor found that affirmative action programs do not lead to widespread reverse discrimination claims by whites, and a high proportion of claims that are filed are found to lack merit. These findings firmly refute the charge that affirmative action has helped minorities at the expense of white males. The analysis found that fewer than 100 out of 3,000 discrimination cases filed involved reverse discrimination, and in only six cases were such claims substantiated. "The paucity of reported cases casts doubt on the dimension of the reverse discrimination problem," the report said (Ross, 1995).
. . .
In 1990, an Urban Institute study utilizing pairs of black and white job applicants with identical credentials found that in 476 hirings in Washington, DC, and Chicago, "unequal treatment of black job seekers was entrenched and widespread, contradicting claims that hiring practices today either favor blacks or are effectively color blind. In 20 percent of the audits, whites were able to advance further through the hiring process than equally qualified blacks. . . similar study using Hispanic job applicants found them discriminated against 29 percent of the time in San Diego and 33 percent of the time in Chicago" (Turner, 1991).

http://www2.chass.ncsu.edu/cobb/me/dissertation/cobb%20diss.pdf

Social psychologists have pondered the meaning of discrepancies between whites’ attitudes measured obtrusively versus unobtrusively. According to these studies, whites consistently appear more racially egalitarian on traditional self-reported measures of prejudice than on implicit or unobtrusive measures. Whites are thought to be intentionally trying to project a more favorable image to others (Crosby, Saxe and Bromley 1980) or themselves (Plant and Devine 1998), or are considered to be oblivious to the fact that they hold and act upon negative attitudes (Dovidio and Gaertner 1986).

So what's this all mean?
The Cardinal Collective wrote:
POVERTY
* Percentage of all Americans in poverty in 2001: 11.7%
* Percentage of white Americans in poverty in 2001: 9.9%
* Percentage of black Americans in poverty in 2001: 22.7%
-- Citation: Census 2001 Poverty Tables

HOMEOWNERSHIP
* Percentage of all Americans who own homes in 2001: 67.8%
* Percentage of white Americans who own homes in 2001: 71.6%
* Percentage of black Americans who own homes in 2001: 47.7%
-- Citation: US Census Bureau Annual Housing Survey

INCOME
* Median income of all American households in 2001: $42,228
* Median income of white American households in 2001: $46,305
* Median income of black American households in 2001: $29,470
-- Citation: US Census Bureau Annual Income Survey

OCCUPATION DISTRIBUTION
* Percentage of all Americans in Managerial or Professional positions in 2001: 29.7%
* Percentage of white Americans in Managerial or Professional positions in 2001: 30.7%
* Percentage of black Americans in Managerial or Professional positions: 20.7%
-- Citation: CPS Annual Demographic Survey