What White America Still Doesn’t Understand About Racism
In 2016, the median white household
held roughly ten times the net wealth of the median black household; the average black worker
earned 73 cents on the dollar compared to his or her white colleagues; and even among college graduates, blacks earned 20 percent less than their white counterparts. For decades, racial disparities in wealth and wages have been stark and enduring – and frustratingly impervious to change.
These systematic inequalities are among the many destructive by-products of “structural” racism. But too many white Americans simply do not understand this as a phenomenon, argues a new report. Instead, they tend to see racism through the narrow prism of individual—not institutional—behavior.
This failure to grasp the systemic nature of racism today could explain why the nation hasn’t made as much progress as it should—and could—on racial equity.
What’s more, when white Americans fail to understand systemic racism, they’re more likely to attribute poverty to individual failings rather than to structural disadvantages. As a consequence, they are less inclined to support policy fixes specifically aimed at alleviating racial inequities. Indeed, E Pluribus Unum’s survey found that when respondents were asked whether “lack of opportunity” or “poor life choices” were to blame for poverty, 76 percent of blacks said “lack of opportunity” while only 42 percent of whites said the same.
“The way we teach our history and the way we teach our civics don’t tell the whole story,” said Landrieu. “We tell it from a very narrow perspective.”
A new survey finds a yawning gap between black and white perceptions about slavery’s lasting impacts.
washingtonmonthly.com
