White Privilege

You are enormously privileged. Did you go to college? If yes, you had a greater chance of getting in because you're white. Because, e.g., SAT tests structurally favor whites. And SAT scores impact scholarship opportunities, too. And college choices, as well. Did you "earn" that privilege? Nope.You also likely come from a family who earned more than African-American families, on average, earn. That right there is much more opportunity provided to you -- opportunity that you didn't earn.Your parents are/were likely more literate than the average African-American parent, because their parents had greater educational opportunities. So, as a consequence, you have the privilege of being more or less literate. This isn't something you "earned," either.You probably had a more decent house than the average African-American, when you were a child. You probably didn't go to bed hungry as often as African-American children do. Guess what? That certainly impacts educational outcomes. Did you earn that better house and better food choices? Not really.You've had a better chance of getting employment than your African-American peers by virtue of the color of your skin and (likely) your name. So your standard of living is higher.And you didn't have to walk the streets at night fearing you'd be shot to death.By the police. Who are supposed to protect U.S. citizens but instead often choose to execute young black men in extrajudicial fashion. Exactly as I suspected. You have an emotional bias towards not believing in your white privilege. A bit insecure, if you ask me. Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.

You are not quite addressing what Mod said. Very appropriately, Mod stated that "the question is about history." It's part of a "long history of race relations." So automatically stating that Asian Americans have an unfair advantage without a look at the history of race relations which explain better GPA and SAT scores is a grossly flawed line of reasoning. Hardly. Asian Americans do have a statistical propensity for outperforming whites on standardized educational tests, yes. Or perhaps you are falling for a myth that's been repeated to you by pop culture, without considering that the cultural value hypothesis to explain this phenomenon has been empirically falsified. Anecdotal speculation is hardly evidence.The whole notion that Asian Americans have academically outperformed other races because of a cultural emphasis on the "importance of hard work and strategizing success" has been largely refuted by data (see the work by Dornbusch and colleagues).Here's a more complete perspective on the above phenomenon (based on evidence outlined by Suzuki, 1977 and Sue and Okazaki, 2009):- During the 1940s, labor unions specifically discriminated against Asians. So many Asian Americans were systematically excluded from manual labor jobs in a way that other minorities were not. This, coupled with advancing technologies and a post-WWII economy that demanded white collar technical professionals, meant that the only way for Asian Americans to achieve upward mobility was through education. They had no other choice, based on the racism of the 1940s.- This trend was then reinforced by stereotype susceptibilities (see Shih et al., 1999). In other words, stereotypes about ethnic identity help shape performance -- not cultural values, but the stereotypes externally attributed to an ethnic/racial group by the predominant race.- Blacks and African-Americans, on the other hand, have had to grope with systematic racism in a way that is much more deeply embedded and much more negative than encountered by other minorities. That's not the point. We know that blacks and African-Americans, for example, score lower on SAT tests than whites. Why do you think this is the case? I'm curious here -- will you respond with knee-jerk anecdotal conjectures or actually look at the empirical evidence? Yes, and there are many lines of very good evidence that support this thesis. Are you aware of this evidence? Have you looked into it? And why would a culture promote or foster self-destructive behavior? You're ignoring the history of race relations -- and decades of oppression -- and what this means for present African-American communities. Sure. And there have been many anti-Semitic Jews. What's your point? Actually, it's not exactly discrimination. Here's an example: many whites (who are inordinately defensive about their privilege) think that Affirmative Action is "reverse racism" against whites. Well, let's tear this idea apart a bit. SAT tests are constructed in a way that positively inflate the scores of white test-takers, even whites who come from poverty (see Freedle, 2003). This is statistically significant. Now, SAT scores play an enormous role in college admissions. So to paint Affirmative Action as some weird discrimination against whites is to completely ignore this artifact of SAT test-taking. See, Hyroglyphx, you don't even understand the historical and cultural context behind so-called gangster rap. Here's to ameliorating your myopic perspective:"...rap constitutes a strident form of cultural combat and critique, it generates in response censorship, blacklisting, arrests, and the police-enforced cancellation of concerts. Rap's cultural roots and primary audience are among the minority residents of US inner cities. While many of these citizens are unable or unwilling to speak out -- for lack of access to cultural channels, for fear of reprisal -- rappers invoke a militant black pride, and portrays and confront social injustic in ways that threaten complacent status quo of mainstream society. As part of this critique, rappers lay bare the daily reality of police violence against minority populations..." From: Rap, Cops, and Crime: Clarifying the "Cop Killer" ControversyInstead of taking the time to understand the cultural basis of rap, you're instead opting to assume you know what it's all about and how it affects blacks and African Americans. You don't know, though. You're not bringing any evidence that it's actually having a measurable, statistically significant negative affect. So why are you tacitly assuming that it does? As usual, you're going for a very anecdotal line of thinking. The issue of racial discrimination as it comes to employment -- and with regards to Mod's example of a C.V. with a white-sounding name vs. a black-sounding name -- goes much deeper than just "people stick with what they know." Your friend Sunbow is going to have an easier time finding a job than Jamal, based only on his name. Here's one reason why: many employers don't carry out criminal background checks. Those who don't often assume that a candidate with a black-sounding name will have a prior criminal conviction. This is systematic bias and racism -- employers who do run criminal background checks are more likely to hire African-Americans than those who don't. Your perspectives on race appear to need a great deal more of nuance. Wow, you really don't get it. First, African Americans are far more oppressed today than Jews are in present-day Germany. Secondly, African Americans are faced with what amounts to centuries of institutionalized and systematic racism from all sectors of society.ReferencesDornbusch, et al., 1987. The relation of parenting style to adolescent school performance.Suzuki, R.H., 1977. Education and the socialization of Asian Americans: A revisionist analysis of the model minority thesis.Sue, S., Okazaki, S., 2009. Asian-American Educational Achievements: A Phenomenon in Search of an Explanation.Shih, et al., 1999. Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance.Freedle, R., 2003. Correcting the SAT's Ethnic and Social-Class Bias: A Method for Reestimating SAT Scores.Edited by Genomicus, : Correcting embarrassing grammar errors n' stuff.

Look, Hyroglyphx, you have a kind of knee-jerk tendency to get defensive on this subject. No one (well, not anyone here, anyway) is saying you haven't worked hard to get where you are today. I'm sure most of us at EvC forum, in fact, have worked hard to that end. That's not the point; I'm not here to critique your life. No; instead, I'm simply striving to demonstrate to you that you are -- by virtue of the color of your skin -- privileged in ways that blacks and other minorities are not. This isn't about making you feel guilty, either.With that said, let me briefly eviscerate your arguments. Not what I said. I said: Since you will have a propensity for scoring higher on SAT tests, on average, than your African-American peers, you will have (1) a greater chance of being admitted to a college, and (2) greater choices in what colleges to attend, and therefore (3) greater scholarship opportunities (as many scholarships are awarded based on GPA + SAT scores of particular thresholds), thereby funneling more capital your way.I cited Freedle (1999) in a previous post; this author outlined evidence that the structure of the SAT test is such that there is a distinct bias favoring whites, who thus score higher than African Americans by as much as 200 - 300 points (which, you know, can mean the difference between an Ivy League and a little-known state college). This effect remains for whites regardless of their socioeconomic status; in addition, the College Board's brief response is hardly satisfactory as there is an extensive literature that reinforces Freedle's (1999) argument. I'm sure you are familiar with the history of racism behind the GI Bill which lead to socioeconomic stratification (particularly, e.g., when it comes to housing and education) that favored whites in a way that it did not benefit African Americans. The evidence you will find delineated in this rebuttal will demonstrate that, actually, everything you have is not something you've earned wholly by yourself. Some of it is built on your unearned privileges granted to you by virtue of the fact that you were born to Anglo parents. Umm, 10 million or so people would strongly disagree with you (many of which include children). Cook and Frank (2008) showed that, in 2005, 10.8 million people lived in food-insecure households where hunger was prevalent. Oh, and guess what? A disproportionate amount of these households are African American.You didn't go to bed hungry. Lots of children in the U.S. do, however -- and a disproportionate amount are black and African American. That impacts educational outcomes in a negative way. So check your privilege before assuming that almost no one goes to bed hungry in the U.S. Check your privilege. Again. Your white parents had an easier time finding jobs than African Americans in a similar socioeconomic bracket. In response to your last line, let me offer this thought by Charles Darwin:"'If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."It's easy for someone in a position of privilege to assume that someone else's parents were bad because they couldn't put food on the table. Period. When, in fact, the real reasons are far more granular than your coarse and myopic perspective. Less than the median income of whites? Of African Americans? Is it above the median income of African Americans for your age group? Let me know on that, as I'm rather curious (though not in a creepy sort of way, ya know?).And you completely sidestepped the fact that you're more likely to land a job than an African American candidate who is equally qualified. Are those better job chances you have something you earned? Umm, okay? The number of people who died on September 11, 2001, was about .001% of the U.S. population. What's your point? I could say something like "Ferguson."But I wouldn't be referring to the Missouri city, though. I'd be talking about Malcolm Ferguson. An unarmed black man who was shot in the head by the police. Or Amadou Diallo, who was killed in a hail of 41 bullets by New York police. The connection between these two black men is interesting. Look into it.Or I could mention Patrick Dorismund. Or 19 year old Tyisha Miller, who actually wasn't an African American male. She was a black female. Or Tanya Haggerty. And on and on. All of this was before Black Lives Matter was ever a hashtag.Look, you're certainly privileged when it comes to the threat police are to your bodily safety. "All lives matter," defensive people of privilege offer in riposte to the chant of "Black Lives Matter." Of course, what these people don't understand is that if a white kid is gunned down by a cop, we can be very sure that that kid's skin color didn't count against him/her. The complete opposite is true if a black kid is shot to death by a cop.And there is evidence to succinctly demonstrate this. For instance, when the Memphis Police Department adopted a more stringent and restrictive deadly force policy, the shooting rate of officers with that department dropped significantly (Sparger and Giacopassi, 1992). And, interestingly enough, the difference/disparity between African Americans and whites who were shot (African Americans are shot and killed by police at a disproportionate rate; see below) went down by half. Which nicely suggests that much of the reason for this disparity was the use of grossly unnecessary lethal tactics by police officers prejudiced against African Americans -- exactly what we'd predict if the thesis is correct that African Americans are disproportionately executed in extrajudicial fashion by racist thugs with badges. There are considerably more lines of evidence in support of that thesis, too.So, yeah. A whole lot of police shootings of African Americans aren't justified at all.But that's not something you need to worry about, huh? Your lack of a need to worry about that -- did you earn that privilege? That's a rookie statistical mistake you made right there. Of course more whites are killed by police because there are more whites in the United State.The actually relevant thing we need to look at is percentages based on demographic size. From the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Arrest-Related Deaths, 2003 - 2009":- Whites accounted for 42% of reported arrest-related deaths. And whites make up 63% of the U.S. population.- Blacks accounted for 32% of arrest-related deaths. Blacks make up 12.3% of the U.S. population.- 20% were Hispanic. Hispanics make up 17% of the U.S. population.There is only one group in the above with a population percentage that's higher than the proportion of arrest-related deaths. Guess which one.And those are the relevant statistics. Right. Because, you know, let's just pretend that America's police force doesn't have a racist streak when it comes to pulling the trigger. Because, you know, that might shatter beliefs about privilege, power, and modern race relations. Let's pretend it doesn't matter.ReferencesCook, J.T., Frank, D.A., 2008. Food Security, Poverty, and Human Development in the United States. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.Sparger, J.R., Giocopassi, D.J., 1992. Memphis Revisited: A Reexamination of Police Shooting After the "Garner" Decision. Justice Quarterly. Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.

Take a look at that table, Jon. It's not at all of a refutation of my point that SAT tests structurally favor whites; it's just more shooting from the hip emanating from your apparent lack of ability to rigorously discuss this subject matter.Whites, on average (based on this table), score 300 points higher than blacks. So I suspect that you're endeavoring to highlight the fact that Asian-Americans, on average, outperformed whites on SAT tests.But take a look at that link you posted. You'll see that Asian-Americans had a mean score of 525 on the Critical Reading section of the SAT, while whites had a mean score of 529. The study by Freedle (1999), along with other studies, mainly excoriate present SAT tests based on the Critical Reading section, which is favorable to whites given the methodology used to choose what questions will be used on the test.That Asian-Americans score, on average, higher on the SAT does not in any way suggest that there is no structural bias in the test that favors whites. To argue otherwise would be to commit a pretty rudimentary slip in logic.Anyways, most of your argument consists of vapid emoticons so I will move on to addressing this: First, you're failing to cite any source. Second, you're failing to define a vague phrase: "interaction-by-interaction basis." Third, I'm wondering what part of the following you don't understand: Once again, you aren't addressing the empirical evidence that's presented.

Yeah, but:1. What I am establishing is that blacks are statistically more likely to be in an arrest-related death than whites. This is very rudimentary statistics, your deformed rhetoric and antics notwithstanding. At this point, this has nothing to do with why police are shooting the individuals under consideration; it is merely about demonstrating that if you are a black individual you are much more likely to be shot by police than if you are white.2. The evidence and data I provided from the Bureau of Justice Statistics bear this out. You have done nothing to refute this evidence except for a rather unhinged display of mockery. Okay, wait. Your source is a blog run by a Mr. Moskos? Who said 25% of the data failed to report the race of the person being killed? Who made absolutely no use of statistical tests to demonstrate statistical significance? You've got a lot of work to do here, Jon, to show that this data is more relevant than the data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. You evidently don't understand what this is all about. This isn't just about state-protected murder of black lives by police officers tainted with racist biases. This is one piece in a much larger puzzle, where the whole system (justice, educational, financial, etc.) is institutionally rigged against blacks and African-Americans and has, for decades, worked in the favor of whites. Nope. The above statistics say nothing about police brutality which, fortunately, didn't end in death. They say nothing about shakedowns of individuals based on racial profiling. And on and on.Let me put it this way. More innocent black lives have been lost this past year due to police shootings than due to domestic terror attacks by ISIS affiliates. So should African-Americans just suck it up and accept that the American police force has a racism problem? Let me know what you think. It's largely the way SAT questions are chosen. The questions are primarily chosen based on the performance of whites, not blacks or Chicanos or Asians. This is because whites make up the largest demographic of SAT test-takers. See Kidder and Rosner (2002; How the SAT Creates Built-In Headwinds) for evidence to that end. The result is that blacks perform poorer on a test that structurally advantages whites because of a flawed design methodology. A test which can mean the difference between a college education and the lack of a college education. It's not "just a test." It's a test that's heavily weighted in the college admissions process, more so than more relevant factors (e.g., class rank). Yup. Doesn't change the fact that it favors whites by design, does it?Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.

I'm going to take a brief detour from the discussion regarding police brutality and focus on the issue of SAT tests and whether there exists a racial bias in this test which favors whites and disadvantages blacks and other minorities.While Freedle's 1999 argument is still very relevant, here I will more deeply examine the evidence accumulated by Kidder and Rosner, 2002, published in the Santa Clara Law Review ("How the SAT Creates Built-In Headwinds: An Educational and Legal Analysis of Disparate Impact").With that preamble out of the way, let me circle back to this question: Have a look at the below two questions.I doubt anyone could answer the question posed without consulting the 2002 paper. It turns out that the question on the right was correctly answered by a greater percentage of African-Americans than whites on pre-tests. On the other hand, the question on the left was correctly answered by a higher percentage of whites than African-Americans. Guess which one was chosen for inclusion in the SAT?The question on the left -- where a greater percentage of whites than blacks answered the question correctly -- was chosen for use on the SAT. The other question was rejected. Yet both are perfectly legitimate mathematics questions for America's high school juniors and seniors.Why did African-Americans find it easier to correctly answer the question on the right, and why did whites find it harder? This is an interesting question worth considering when formulating SAT questions; there may be subtle cultural and economic factors at work that escape our intuitions. But regardless of the reason, is it fair to choose questions for inclusion on the SAT -- over and over again -- based on the superior performance of white test-takers? Absolutely not.As Kidder and Rosner note:"Would it shortchange America's high school seniors if items like that on the right appeared on the scored SAT in addition to or instead of items like that on the left? While the content of both items is ostensibly neutral, can it be said that the SAT is truly unbiased if, time and time again, the test construction process tends to prefer (for statistical reasons) items like the one on the left (that favors Whites) and rejects items like the one on the right (that favors African Americans)?"One might, at first blush, think that this is not as significant an issue as I am making it out to be. Yet the entire design methodology behind selecting which questions make it on the SAT consistently chooses items where whites outperform blacks. As Rosner states:"My considered hypothesis is that every question chosen to appear on every SAT in the past ten years has favored whites over blacks. The same pattern holds true on the LSAT and the other popular admissions tests, since they are developed similarly. The SAT question selection process has never, to my knowledge, been examined from this perspective. And the deeper one looks, the worse things get. For example, while all the questions on the October 1998 SAT favored whites over blacks, approximately one-fifth showed huge, 20 percent gaps favoring whites."If all questions on the October 1998 SAT favored whites over blacks -- by design -- then you can imagine how many black seniors faced disadvantages during the college admissions process, while their white peers took full-ride scholarships largely due not to their talent but to a flawed test construction methodology.The SAT test is categorically not race-neutral. This is not a conspiracy on the part of the test-makers; rather, this reveals how those in positions of privilege are very often the most blind to their privilege.Rosner and Kidder (2002) suggested ways to improve the neutrality of the SAT (and the LSAT, GRE, etc. -- all of which suffer from this fatal flaw which advantages whites to the detriment of their black peers), so it's not like this is a "necessary problem." It's not necessary at all, and only serves to cement the existing privileges of the dominant racial group in the United State.I could delve into this even deeper, but before anyone initiates a knee-jerk attempt at an argument, I strongly advise all 83 pages of the Rosner and Kidder study be read. You can find an online PDF for free.

Then I am sure you will have no problem providing independent, statistically significant evidence that the reason behind Asian-American achievement in academia is because of cultural values of "hard work" and stuff. I consistently support my position with research from the peer-reviewed literature, so I expect you can attempt the same instead of making mere assertions. Yeah, but:1. I didn't mention internment camps. I said "labor unions."2. The racism of labor unions extended beyond the 1940s.There have been many other factors at play behind Asian-American success in academia -- factors which were not present for African-Americans. And that question has been answered in a copious volume of research. That (1) African-Americans are discriminated in the job market and that (2) this has a significant role in explaining the present socioeconomic divide between whites and blacks has been well-established. For starters, see here, here, here, here, and here. You evidently do not appreciate the extent to which racism is embedded in our society's institutions -- political, educational, corporate, and social. Racism in the United States is more than the desire of some Southerners to fly the Confederate flag from state government buildings; it is a fabric that is weaved with many intersecting threads of socioeconomic and political realities. Racism is much more pervasive than you think precisely because present-day racism manifests itself in ways that are not so obvious to privileged individuals who otherwise consider themselves not to be prejudiced. But the effects are very real, and they are deeply entrenched in society, so electing a black president doesn't suddenly -- like a specter in the fog -- make this structural racism vanish. You didn't cite any sources here, but anyways, you are committing a grave logical error. There are a multiplicity of factors that go into determining SAT scores; race is one of them, and so is economic status. That African and Caribbean blacks emigrating to the United States also score higher than that of native African-Americans proves exactly nothing regarding the lack of racial bias in the SAT. Consider that immigrants to the U.S. are often rather well-educated, and the education of one's parents plays a predictive role in shaping SAT scores. So that could rather easily explain the above phenomenon and in no way refutes my central thesis: that SAT tests structurally favor whites. And year after year they use the exact same design methodology which produces questions that favor whites. See Kidder and Rosner, 2002, and my discussion of that paper. Which, again, has a long history of racism. See Stephen J. Gould's excellent exploration of IQ and race in his The Mismeasure of Man. You have literally cited no evidence that counters my thesis; to the contrary, I have cited a considerable body of evidence to support my position -- evidence which you have only made a vague attempt to refute. Right. But you specifically cited "gangster rap" as self-destructive behavior, when I see that as a white guy with only a surface level understanding of African-American struggle and culture having an opinion on a cultural phenomenon with no supporting evidence. This isn't about "excuses." The disparity in school grades can be very well explained by socioeconomic conditions. What's your explanation for the disparity in school grades? Black kids aren't trying hard enough? Yeah, right. It's a prediction of the hypothesis that blacks are discriminated against in the job market because of negative racial stereotypes. The results of that study match nicely with the predictions. That's the way evidence works. If molecular phylogenies show a consistent branching pattern, in line with the predictions of common descent, then what does that mean? It means that common descent is a robust explanation for the observed pattern.

Right. Which has nothing to do with the hypothesis that Asian-American's have a value system that emphasizes "hard work" compared to other U.S. demographics. This paper simply demonstrates that Asian-Americans "exert greater academic effort," which isn't exactly something I contest -- and neatly lines up with the history of discrimination on the Asian-American community and what this meant for their paths to upward mobility.Maybe we're not actually disagreeing on anything here; some misinformed individuals think that African-Americans are, for instance, "lazy" and this is what accounts for the GPA and SAT gap -- when nothing could be further from the truth. They don't perform better than whites in most areas. See Suzuki, 2002 ("Revisiting the Model Minority Stereotype: Implications for Student Affairs Practice and Higher Education"). The "model minority" viewpoint has largely been discredited by more recent studies. Whites still tend to perform better, on average, than Asian-Americans. And I provided several studies which demonstrate the validity of my above statement; you have offered nothing to refute these studies. None of this is incompatible with my thesis. Reality is more granular than course, and so there are obviously a multiplicity of factors behind the present socioeconomic divide between whites and blacks. What I am arguing, and what has been consistently demonstrated, is that systematic racism is not only perceived but real; and that such racism plays a significant role in disadvantaging African-Americans compared to their white peers. Citation needed. So white privilege. And there are a lot more non-egalitarian institutions than there are egalitarian ones. If something as apparently neutral is the SAT is actually deeply, systematically biased against African-Americans, then imagine what other institutions are like. Actually, we don't have to imagine because there are very good lines of evidence that institutional racism is pervasive in all sectors of society. I'm potentially causing a bigger problem than systematic racism? I'd like to see you demonstrate that instead of casually conjure various speculations. You keep saying "excuses." So check your privilege. That SATs are inherently biased against African-Americans (more on that later in a following post) is not an excuse; that African-Americans find it harder to get a good-paying job despite being as qualified as whites is not an excuse; that a large percentage of African-Americans presently incarcerated are for drug offenses, rather than violent crime, is not an excuse; that African-Americans face more obstacles in getting adequate health care despite similar socioeconomic status as their white peers is not an excuse; that the justice system is biased against African-Americans is not an excuse; that African-Americans are more likely to be born in poverty than their white peers because they did not have the luxury of enslaving whites in days gone by is not an excuse; etc. These are not excuses. These are institutionalized structures, deeply embedded and enmeshed in present social reality, which consistently disadvantage African-Americans and advantage whites. No, I don't think anyone in particular needs me to rescue them. So, let me see here. You think we should just ignore the problem of racism in this country and hope that it will go away? Tell that to all the black lives lost to police executions for absolutely no defensible reason.You seem slightly uncomfortable talking about your privilege and the current state of racism in the United States. I wonder why that might be. I literally said nothing that would imply that. There is a multiplicity of factors that go into shaping SAT scores. What about this do you not get? The SAT test is inherently structured to favor whites, but this isn't the only factor that goes into shaping SAT scores. Which means that none of your counterarguments are actually relevant. That does not necessarily follow, no, since authorized immigrants are often more well-educated than U.S. citizens (kinda why they're chosen for entry into the United States), and the education level of one's parents help shape SAT scores. Evidence, actually. Which I haven't seen yet. But I have seen a good deal of evidence that SAT tests are structured in such a way that they favor whites.