With this being the last Civic Issues Blog, I wanted to write about something that isn’t necessarily thought provoking, but instead a very common mentality amongst many people. I was skimming through the New York Times when I found this headline that immediately stopped me and demanded that it be read.
The article was titled, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It.”
And I think that the title more than speaks for itself. This is an issue that many white people don’t recognize, and as a minority, while I am not black and am not literally in their places, I can still attempt to understand their problems. I don’t even fully understand their problem, and I know for a fact that a majority of whites don’t either.
So the article started off with an interesting question to the reader:
It asked readers to chose answer option A, B or C based on the following question:
When researchers sent young whites and blacks out to interview for low-wage jobs in NYC, with similar résumés, their results were…
- Whites and blacks were hired at the same rate
- Blacks had a little bit of an advantage because of affirmative action
- Whites were twice as likely to receive a second interview
The answer is actually C, and according to author Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, a black man with no criminal record had the same likelihood of getting hired as a white man who had just been released from jail after 18 months of serving jail time.
Most whites believe that black and whites have the same job opportunities, according to a PBS poll, but after rigorous follow up research, this has been found to be untrue.
Whites talk about personal responsibility and cite that as the reason for their personal successes, while interestingly, according to CNN, 86% of black people claim family breakdown is the cause of specific difficulties amongst the African-Americans today. So while white people talk about personal responsibility, maybe it’s time that they take some initiative and start to help out the black community to enable it to strive.
In 2008, when Obama was elected, the black community felt hope that there would be drastic reform to their civil inequalities, but the median household income for a black family is only 8% of the wealth of the median of a white household. Further, of the black people who are in the upper quartile amongst income for American household, 60% of the children in these families tumble back down into the lower half the following generation. According to a Federal Reserve Study, if these trends continue, the black community will make no further progression.
It is clear that many black children will not be able to break out of the cycle that they are born into and I believe that it is time to address this within the national government. Children from financially struggling families will not be able to succeed at the same rate as a child who come from a middle class white family. And while I fully support the business mentality that everyone should take personal responsibility for their own financial ventures and gains, the black community is struggling and has been struggling for decades.
Something needs to change and maybe it is time that the government take some responsibility and further, take action, because without it, where will we be in 50 years?
The same place that we are today. And that cannot and should not be tolerated.
The link is as followed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-6.html?_r=0