THE IMPACT OF RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES

DAVID CALDWELL
FEBRUARY 2014








THE IMPACT OF RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Economic programs in the United States have historically negatively affected the Black
community. Programs to improve the situation in recent years have generally not been
successful. Although progress has been made by some individuals, poverty among blacks is still
widespread. White exploitation turned to white guilt has been the main depressant to black
progress. The ignorant, antiquated view of white supremacy is replaced in the modern era by
the equally unreasonable idea of white evilthe view that whites have a special talent for
dehumanizing others on a grand scale (Steele, 2006, pp. 100-101). New black leadership that is
more inspiring and more honest is needed to improve the future economic climate for African
Americans.
Before the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the view of white supremacy was still
accepted in many quarters of society. The United States economic system was blatantly
oppressive if not completely destructive to the black community. Before the Civil War, most
blacks were considered to be the property of their slave owners and had no economic rights.
Even long after slavery was abolished segregation and discrimination continued to depress the
black community economically. Since most ex-slaves did not have money to buy land, they still
had to work for white landowners for low wages. There were few black business owners, and
those businesses could only cater to black clientele. Segregated black schools were
underfunded and under staffed, leading to under-educated students, not able to compete with
white students in the market place.

Many early government programs designed to benefit the population economically
excluded blacks. For example, the Homestead Acts in the late 19
th
century and early 20
th

century favored white ethnic groups over black Americans (Feagin & McKinney, 2005). The
Social Security Act of 1935 was also discriminatory because it excluded domestic workers and
farm workers, the two areas in which most black workers in the South were employed.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemed to promise economic improvements.
However, a study of the 1980 census showed that blacks were less prosperous than other
ethnic groups (Aguirre & Baker, 1998, p. 255). Even as late as August of last year (2013), the
Washington Post printed an article by Michael A. Fletcher with the headline, Fifty years after
March on Washington, economic gap between blacks, whites persists. He said, In 1963, black
families earned 55 cents for every dollar earned by whites. In 2011, blacks earned 66 cents for
every dollar earned by whites. The black unemployment rate averaged 11.6 percent between
1963 and 2012, more than double the white jobless rate over that time (Fletcher, 2014).
Clearly, White America privilege and power prevented black economic development
before the 1960s, but why is there still such an income gap? One answer, proposed by Shelby
Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, is that white exploitation
turned into white guilt (Steele, 2006). The prevalent view flipped from a view of white
supremacy to the equally absurd view that western society was fundamentally evil, with no
room for nuance. Many new programs were introduced to help the poor, of which category
the majority were black. This would be a good thing, of course, except that these programs did
not include the concept of the poor helping themselves, but consisted of providing money or

services without any requirements. In his book, Losing Ground, Charles Murray explains that:
The first effectwas to make it profitable to be poor, to behave in the short term in ways that
were destructive in the long term. We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more
poor instead (Murray, 1984, p. 9).
The desire for equality of opportunity was soon replaced with the demand for equality
of outcome. Since the poor were all victims, they all had to be cared for. In the day-to-day life
of the rest of society, the elite, like the broad middle class, continued as always to differentiate
the clever from the dull, the upright from the outlaw, the industrious from the indolent. But
when it came to the poor, all must be victims. They were not permitted to be superior to one
another (Murray, 1984, p. 181).
Shelby Steele used an analogy to demonstrate the social and psychological destruction
caused by such reasoning. He says If a young black boy cannot dribble well when he comes out
to play basketball, no one will cast his problem as an injustice [he simply must practice more
and by doing so becomes proficient and feels the associated pride in his accomplishment] [To
the contrary] his reading and writing will be seen to follow from countless racial and
psychological determinisms that make it impossible to ask that he and his family be fully
responsible for overcoming these problems (Steele, 2006, p. 66). In other words, he cannot be
asked to truly work harder; the school must lower its standards to ensure his success.
Welfare checks to non-working individuals eliminated the incentive to find work. Why
work when you can avoid it and have the same monetary reward?

Payments to unwed mothers for the support of children eliminated the financial
responsibility of the father, and the number of unwed mothers soared. In 1965, 24 percent of
black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990 the rates
had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Every year about one million
more children are born into fatherless families. If we have learned any policy lesson well over
the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in
poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are
staggering (Akerlof & Yellen, 2014).
Affirmative action programs went beyond the same results concept to actually
demanding superior treatment; that is, lower requirements for jobs, educational consideration,
etc. for ethnic groups, including blacks. This program drew fire from some blacks who saw it as
an assumption by whites that black people could not be expected to compete fairly with
whites. The Supreme Court decision which validated the Michigan affirmative action case drew
criticism from Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black member of the Court, who wrote the
dissenting opinion (Steele, 2006, p. 151).
Of course, for as long as I can remember, Justice Clarence Thomas has been at the front
of a group of black Americans that have been detested for holding views that go against the
more popular contemporary black leadership positions. Actor Bill Cosby was another figure who
drew fire from many sectors of society for positing his view that traditional black values have
been lost and replaced by a sense of victimization. In a speech at the 50
th
Anniversary of Brown
v. the Board of Education he spoke of the irony of a community that grieves the end result of

violence and crime that is proportionally higher in black neighborhoods, but takes little
responsibility for the boys development, saying Where were you when he was two? Where
were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you
dont know he had a pistol? And where is his father, and why dont you know where he is? And
why doesnt the father show up to talk to this boy? He compared the plight of black America
to a boxer who was losing badly, and put himself, in effect, in the position of the boxers
manager, saying Its not what hes doing to you. Its what youre not doing (Cosby, 2004).
It could be argued, however, that such an analogy is not reasonable in many respects,
because it implies that the match is more or less a fair fight. What if the boxer were not an able-
bodied contender, but rather a paraplegic?
1
Such a scenario would at once point out the
absurdity of a manager saying that the boxer can change the outcome of the fight merely by
changing a few techniques or doing a few things differently. Perhaps this is why his rhetoric
drew such criticism from the black community. However, there needs to be more rhetoric that
calls for more responsibility, and is more inspiring to fight toward a goal in that regard.
Such a circumstance can be humbling, and not everyone tolerates humility well, if at all.
It is easier for many people to fall into what Amy Wax calls the myth of reverse causation. She
says Consider the parable of the paraplegic. A reckless driver runs over a pedestrian, leaving
him unable to walk. The driver pays for the pedestrians treatment and physical therapy, but
recovery will require a long, exhausting, and painful effort. The victim is angry. Its not his fault,
so why must he face an overwhelming, uphill struggle? But there is no help for it. Although the

1
Idea taken from (Wax, 2008)

driver can and must pay, he cannot guarantee success. He cannot make his victim walk again
(Wax, 2008, pp. 201-202). The restitution of the integral black family and traditional black
values and culture that has been torn apart from without, through social programs and an
increasing dependence on extrinsic factors, cannot be built back from anywhere except from
within the black community, and it must begin with better guidance from black leadership.
I admit that I do not have as much knowledge and understanding as I should have. I do
not, however, believe that because I am white, I pose a threat to black economic prosperity. It
is challenging to appreciate the struggles black America faces as a collective while also
acknowledging the danger of the implicit message that a sense of victimization sends to
individuals about how to prosper and achieve greatness. The attempt to lock blacks into a
group cohort that is incapable of overcoming the challenges it faces on its own is an overt
racism coming from would-be leaders in the black community today. As Shelby Steele
emphasizes, Since the sixties, black leaders have made one overriding argument: that blacks
cannot achieve equality without white America taking primary responsibility for it. Black
militancy became, in fact, a militant belief in white power and a correspondingly militant denial
of black power. He notes that it has completely separated itself from its origins, until finally
we embraced a black militancy that argued nothing more strongly than our own perpetual
weaknessor, put another way, our inferiority (Steele, 2006, p. 60).
Responding to the alleged racism following the publicity of the George Zimmerman trial
in 2013, Charles Barkley made comments that were refreshingly honest. He said There are
very few people [who] have a pure heart when it comes to race. Racism is wrong in any shape,

[or] forma lot of black people are racist too. I think sometimes when people talk about
racism, they say only white people are racist. There are a lot of black people who are racist A
lot of people have a hidden agenda they want their racist views, whether they are white or
black (Barkley, 2013). He lamented the situation in America today where any event that
involves race is exploited by those holding racist views to segregate American society and fuel
tensions in order to further a hidden agenda that is racist at its core.
There are other extreme views though. Charles Murray advocates scrapping the entire
federal welfare and income-support structure for working-aged persons leaving the working
aged person with no recourse whatsoever, except the job market, family members, friends and
public or private locally funded services (Murray, 1984, pp. 227-228). This approach seems far
too drastic, and would probably result in riots and increased racial tension. However, it is
demeaning to blacks to argue that they cannot overcome the past because of their unique
circumstance. It seems to me that the only solution is for black leaders to encourage a return to
the traditional values of hard work and individual responsibilitylooking to the future more
than concentrating on past injustice.






BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aguirre, A. J., & Baker, D. V. (Eds.). (1998). Sources: Notable Selections in Race and Ethnicity, Second Edition. Guilford,
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Akerlof, G. A., & Yellen, J. L. (2014, February 2014). An Analysis of Out-Of-Wedlock Births in the United States.
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akerlof
Barkley, C. (2013, July 18). Charles Barkley On Zimmerman Trial. (M. Bartiromo, Interviewer)
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persists. Retrieved from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/50-
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Wax, A. L. (2008). Discrimination: Opposing Viewpoints. (J. Langwith, Ed.) Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press.