Getting Smart about Race by Margaret L. Andersen

Author:Margaret L. Andersen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2021-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

* Prejudice is a noun and should be used accordingly. People often misuse the word, using its adjectival form (prejudiced) when the noun (prejudice) is appropriate. To illustrate: a person may have a prejudiced attitude but exhibits prejudice.

CHAPTER 4

What Did You Say?

Contesting Commonsense Racism

I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country toward people of color is terrifying, sickening, and prevalent.

—TAYLOR SWIFT1

THE BASIC CONTOURS OF RACIAL INEQUALITY ARE FAMILIAR TO most people, at least in a general way. People know many people of color are poor. They hear there are various disparities in some of life’s most basic facts: health care, education, housing, and work. They might have witnessed injustice for people of color at the hands of the criminal justice system. This is not the place to review or debate these realities, but a few basic facts are:

The income gap between Black and White households

is the same as it was in 1970—Black families still earn only about 60 percent of what White families earn. For Hispanics, the gap is 72 percent, also unchanged since Hispanics were first enumerated in the US Census in 1970.

On virtually every measure of health (life expectancy, infant mortality, health insurance coverage, and so on), African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans have poorer health than White Americans. Paradoxically, Latinos have better health.

In schools, Latino and Black students are now more isolated from White students than was true in 1980. The poor quality of “majority minority” schools means there is a large racial gap in educational achievement.

Housing segregation between White and Black Americans has declined somewhat in recent decades, but Latinos

and Asians have become more residentially isolated from Whites.

African American men are six times more likely to be imprisoned than are White men; Hispanic men, twice as likely.2

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