This month, I and my colleague Mike Norton, of Harvard Business School, published research findings regarding how Americans today think about racial bias. We found some consensus: on average, both White and Black Americans agree that bias against Blacks was prevalent several decades ago. But we also found noteworthy areas of disagreement, namely that many Blacks see such racism as ongoing, whereas Whites tend to see it as a problem that has been more or less resolved.
But perhaps the most provocative finding from our survey -- and the one that attracted a fair amount of media attention over the past week -- was that many Whites in the study expressed the belief that these days, a new form of bias is on a dramatic upswing. Which group do they see as being the primary target of today's racial bias? Themselves. Our results indicate that when talking about the present day, Whites, on average, now view anti-White bias as even more prevalent than anti-Black bias. This is a sentiment, unsurprisingly, that isn't shared by Black Americans.
This notion that Whites have replaced Blacks as the primary victims of discrimination is particularly notable when you consider that by nearly any metric in any important domain, statistics continue to indicate drastically poorer outcomes for Black versus White Americans. From infant mortality to education level to loan rates to employment, it becomes difficult to tell an objective story that ends with White Americans being disproportionately disadvantaged. Yes, many Whites have been hurt by the recent economic downturn, but analyses indicate that unemployment has hit the Black and Latino populations even harder.
Even analyses that control for socioeconomic status demonstrate, for example, that resumés sent out to prospective employers with a "Black-sounding" name on them would receive 50% more callbacks if they simply had a "White-sounding" name instead. Yet specific tales (in some cases apocryphal) of the minority candidate who received a job offer, promotion, or college admission over a -- quote-unquote -- "objectively more qualified" White applicant remain powerfully salient to the point where they're apparently more persuasive than aggregated statistics.
Why is the perception of anti-White bias so strong? Consider a brief history of recent efforts to curtail discrimination in the United States: the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's; women's intensifying efforts to secure gender equality in the 1960's and 1970's; the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; the push for gay marriage in the past decade. Many Americans applaud this march toward full and equal rights for all citizens. At the same time, though, a nagging voice in the minds of others asks at whose expense?
The "prototypical" American has historically been thought of as the White heterosexual Christian. For members of this demographic, change to the status quo can be threatening. Thus emerges a view of the disparate groups named above as clamoring for rights they have not earned, that they do not deserve, and that violate the very sense of what it means to be an American. Ironically, it would seem that one outcome of traditionally marginalized groups having secured additional rights in recent years has been to leave many Whites feeling marginalized themselves.
What are the consequences of this sense of marginalization? For one, the very same developments that some would tout as evidence of progress towards equality (for example, the election of a Black president) are seen by others as further evidence of the threats aligned against them. Consider some of the rhetoric associated with factions of the Tea Party, whose focus on the perceived values of the Founding Fathers is also a focus on the notion that these Fathers were White heterosexual Christians. Or the oft-voiced concern that political correctness has stifled traditional American values, as with the perceived "War on Christmas."
As a result, America is now witnessing an unprecedented fight for marginalized status, or what we term "jockeying for stigma." This pyrrhic competition is particularly noteworthy because being marginalized often equates to being powerless, yet many Whites increasingly see their perceived disadvantage as a rallying cry toward action.
This intensifying sense of marginalization among Whites has already begun to shift political discourse in the United States, as evidenced by the emergence of the Tea Party and the increasing number of lawsuits alleging so-called "reverse racism." When designing and proposing new policies designed to address bias, policymakers and politicians must take into account the fact that the word bias itself means very different things to different constituencies. In short, in an era in which all groups, even the historically empowered majority, see themselves as victims of bias, deciding from which direction to combat the problem of discrimination will only continue to become an increasingly difficult task.
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Sam Sommers is a social psychologist at Tufts University in Medford, MA. His first book, Situations Matter, will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin) in December 2011. You can follow him on Facebook here and on Twitter here.
Follow Sam Sommers on Twitter: www.twitter.com/samsommers
The powers that be have spent centuries oppressing Black people, and they have (historically) done everything possible to prevent us from excelling. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that some Black people have struggled to catch up (in just a few decades) after having been enslaved, discriminated against, and systematically broken-down by nearly every political and social organization in the country.
So I say ‘get over it’ if occasionally an otherwise qualified Black person is given a boost because of skin color. Whites had that advantage for hundreds of years. White people (as a whole) were able to buy homes in neighborhoods that Blacks couldn’t even enter. They went to schools and colleges while Black people weren’t allowed to read (under threat of death). They were able to get jobs, vote, go to hospitals, and a million other things that Blacks were forbidden to access. Moreover, their descendants continue to reap the benefits, if not through wealth, then simply by being raised in a country that favors lighter skin.
Fanned.
Apparently so many in this (my) demographic are threatened by, and terrified of, this prospect, which, intellectually or intuitively, they know is coming. They mourn the passing of their (our) social and political hegemony, symbolized for them ( but not for me) by President Obama.
I hope my fellow aging white folks can soon come to grips with the literal changing face of America, or the next decade or so will be quite a bumpy ride for some. I vow to learn Spanish, at least!
If you are born affluent, chances are you will live your life that way.
If you are born into poverty, statistically the odds are you will remain so, and "middle class" children are now more likely to fall in status then rise.
The "upward mobility" ladder has been removed.
Until someone can find it, and put it back where it belongs, then America will continue to go in circles, spiraling down the drain.
I think people tend to forget that little things do add up, and you are a product of a past WAY larger than your present.
If something is done to a group of people that has lasting negative effects generations should something be done to correct that? - Is someone owed something? - You can't blame benefactors of something they did not do, but is it okay to allow the descendants of the systematically disenfranchised to routinely deal with an unfairness that is a result of past or arguably suffer?
I mean even people that are thrown in jail wrongly get compensated when they are rightfully released. Depending how long their experience was I bet they had depression, some other mental, emotional issues due to their undeserved fate.
Apparently there are certain wrongs as a country we'll try to correct, and others we will just look away.
I don't believe in quotas/AA/"positive discrimination" – everything should be based on merit (even though nepotism is never going to go away).
But here's one thing that I have always found fascinating: from what I have seen and experienced in grad school and then in the corporate world, no single group has enjoyed more substantive, “real†benefits from quotas and AA than middle-class white women.
Strangely, I have yet to see one politician, right-wing talk show host or neocon loud mouth ranting about how white women are enjoying “unearned†privileges.
Seems that affirmative action is just fine in some cases.
No one is being hired on quota.
Affirmative Action has always been about breaking through the networks people use to find opportunities...where some people had pre-existing access to the social organizations that others did not, and still do not. You won't accept any minority candidates if none apply because of the network through which opportunities are communicated. It's about making sure you actually INTERVIEW qualified candidates you might otherwise not have interviewed.
I respectfully suggest that your take on AA is extremely naive.
When the beneficiary of it is white...and white males are receiving the (indirect) benefits of it.
I'm all for meritocracy. But meritocracy is only legitimate when there is equivalent opportunity, and equivalent access to the resources necessary to build a good life.
These are not equivalent in this country...they are distributed on a class-conscious basis...and also on a race-and-gender conscious basis.
So insisting on a "meritocracy" at the END of a race, without looking at the unfair advantages that many people enjoy....is like forcing half the contestants in a race to run it with lead weights in their shoes....
...then declaring that the outcome was "fair".
If people want to get rid of Affrimative Action, and still have a just society...the solution is clear. Address the inequities in access to economic opportunity, quality education, etc....
But people only pay lipservice to equality, and are unwilling to do the work to make it a reality.
So AA becomes a proxy fight over the maintenance of class/race/gender-based priviliege.
Very unfair to the black male community that also needed the benefits of this back when it first started. Some things are done with good intentions but can end up causing a different type of damage and people should have gotten a handle on that.
That said, here's an idea. If the tea partiers feel that they are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to jobs, stop voting for Conservatives that are paid off by corporations to allow them to outsource all their jobs.
by Shaw, Bransford
If so, what is your point? Do blacks have to ONLY constitute 12% of the workforce in ANY sector?
Further, scholarships have been based on skin color before those offered for minorities:
Number of returned results on Google for the following searches:
Polish-American scholarships ~ 57,100
Irish American scholarships ~ 131,000
Italian American scholarships ~ 223,000
Jewish scholarships ~ 808,000
German American scholarships ~ 142,000
http://www.multiculturaladvantage.com/opportunity/scholarships/diversity/bias/White-Ethnic-Scholarships-Dont-Trouble-Student-Group-Protesting-Minority-Scholarships.asp
As for college admissions, there are things like quality of schools attended by students that fall into a sort of semi-intangible area.
More importantly, the college experience is one of learning and growth. Harvard in fact argued in court - and the court ruled in their favor - that exposure to people one would otherwise not have contact with is an important part of the educational experience in college. If Harvard were filled up with wealthy white legacies (legacies being a form of Affirmative Action that pre-dates the Civil Rights Movement), they would learn what was in their textbooks, but not much else. They would come out possibly more insulated than they went in.