Why whites discriminated against blacks

It is the easy way out that Americans have historically taken in trying to explain racial disparities in our society…Racist ideas of black inferiority is the easy way out. This kind of back and forth seems to be everywhere, from intellectuals arguing in books and essays to the general public arguing on social media.

When it comes to statistical disparities, this is a rare case in which almost no one is disputing the facts. But the meaning of those facts appears endlessly up for grabs because opponents cannot agree on what is the cause of the disparities—discrimination or differences in merit. The only kind of evidence that can hope to bridge this divide comes from experiments which directly measure discrimination — and these experiments have been done. Consider an experiment by sociologist Devah Pager, who sent pairs of experimenters—one black and one white—to apply for job ads in New York City.

She gave them resumes doctored to have identical qualifications. She gave them scripts so that the applicants said the same things when handing in their applications. She even dressed them alike. She found that black applicants got half the call backs that white applicants got with the same qualifications.

This study inspired experiments in lots of areas of life. One study, for example, responded to more than 14, online apartment rental adds but varied whether the name attached to the email implied a white applicant e.

The black applicants were twenty-six percent less likely to be told that the apartment was available. These kinds of experiments are not ambiguous like statistics on disparities are. There were no differences in merit. Race was the cause. Real employers and landlords discriminated against blacks and in favor of whites, by a large margin. This kind of direct evidence of discrimination against minorities have been found in other arenas.

Professors are more likely to ignore emails from students of color. Airbnb hosts are more likely to tell black renters that the listing has already been taken. To close these persistent labor market gaps, African American families need more wealth to begin with. Wealth makes it easier for families to invest in their own futures. Each of these benefits gives families access to more and better jobs. People with a college degree typically have lower unemployment rates and greater access to well-paying, stable jobs with decent benefits; starting a business gives people more control over their own lives and thus the potential to avoid the uncertainty that can come from working for somebody else in a low-paying job with irregular hours; and buying a house closer to where good jobs are located makes it easier to switch jobs when one does not pan out as expected.

Similarly, wealth allows families to move to a new location when jobs in one area decline or disappear altogether. Having less wealth makes all these benefits much harder to achieve for African Americans. The data summary looks first at differences in unemployment rates, followed by indicators of employment opportunities. The discussion then turns to measures of job quality, starting with wages, followed by benefits, and concluding with job stability.

Regardless of the observed labor market outcome, African Americans always fare worse than whites, with Black women often experiencing the harshest impacts. Worse labor market outcomes—higher unemployment, fewer benefits, and less job stability—contribute in part to the growing racial wealth gap, leaving African Americans in a more precarious financial situation.

African American workers regularly face higher unemployment rates than whites. There are several explanations for this. Blacks often face outright discrimination in the labor market.

For a decade now, the unemployment rate has fallen, improving the labor market outlook for many groups along the way. More importantly, the unemployment rate for prime-age workers—those who are ages 25 to 54—fell to an average of 5. The trend toward ever-lower unemployment rates should not obscure the fact that African Americans systematically suffer higher unemployment rates than whites, even in a good labor market. The unemployment rate for Black workers remains higher than that for white workers even when looking at subpopulations.

The data further show that African Americans typically face higher unemployment than whites regardless of age, gender, education, and veteran status. Regardless of educational attainment by Black workers, they typically have a higher rate of unemployment than their white college-educated counterparts.

Among college graduates, for example, the Black unemployment rate averaged 2. Black workers, no matter their level of education, still face impediments in the labor market—employment discrimination, occupational segregation, and unequal pay.

Black women face unique burdens in the labor market. They are more likely to work than white women: The employed share of Black women was African American women also work in lower-paying jobs than Black men or white women, which translates to a particularly steep pay gap for Black women. Among those who worked full time all year in , Black women earned In comparison, Black men earned Importantly, the employed share of both prime-age Black and white workers was still below the peaks recorded in the late s, suggesting that the labor market is not as strong as the unemployment rate shows.

For most Americans, household wealth is closely tied to home equity, and there are sharp and persistent gaps in homeownership between blacks and whites. And on the flipside of wealth — poverty — racial gaps persist, even though the poverty rate for blacks has come down significantly since the mids.

When asked about the underlying reasons that blacks may be having a harder time getting ahead than whites, large majorities of black adults point to societal factors. On each of these items, the views of blacks differ significantly from those of whites. However, the relative ranking of these items varies among blacks and whites. While whites rank family instability and a lack of good role models above or on a par with societal factors as major reasons that blacks may have a harder time getting ahead than whites, fewer blacks say these items are major reasons than say the same about lower quality schools, discrimination, and lack of jobs.

Still, large majorities of black adults say that blacks in this country are treated unfairly in a range of institutional settings — from the criminal justice system, to the workplace to banks and financial institutions. Across all of these realms, whites are much less likely than blacks to perceive unequal treatment — with differences ranging from 23 to 42 percentage points.

Among blacks, men and women are equally likely to report having personally experienced racial discrimination, and there are no large gaps by age. While some whites report being treated unfairly at times because of their race, the overall impact is relatively minor.

For many blacks, the cumulative impact of discrimination has had a markedly negative impact on their lives. Four-in-ten blacks say their race has made it harder for them to succeed in life. There is a sharp educational divide among blacks on the overall impact their race has had on their ability to succeed.

Unfair treatment can come in different forms. Many blacks also report feeling like others have questioned their intelligence. Being treated with suspicion and being treated as if they are not intelligent are more common experiences for black adults who attended college than for those who did not.

Even so, blacks have somewhat mixed views about the extent to which the Black Lives Matter movement will be effective, in the long run, in helping blacks achieve equality. Granted, many blacks are skeptical overall that the country will eventually make the changes needed to bring about racial equality.

For their part, whites have mixed views of the Black Lives Matter movement. Young white adults are more enthusiastic about Black Lives Matter than middle-aged and older whites. When asked how well they feel they understand the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, blacks are much more likely than whites to say they understand it very or fairly well. But the two groups disagree about the effectiveness of some other tactics.