African American contemporary issues
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African American contemporary issues are a group of social, political, and business issues that are of interest and concern to African Americans because these issues and the state of their resolution directly affect the quality of life of African Americans. Historically African Americans have faced discrimination in varied forms to a much greater extent than other ethnic groups.
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[edit] Background
of the discrimination African Americans have experienced is a direct result of slavery within the United States until that "peculiar institution" was outlawed at the end of the American Civil War in 1865 with several amendments to the United States Constitution. Though slavery within the United States was legally ended, American society was slow to change. During the Jim Crow era, especially in the Southern United States where racism was much more overt and socially acceptable than in the Northern United States, African Americans, as well as other ethnic groups, were faced with a large number of obstacles to participating in the main stream of American society, politics, and business. The African American community was basically a community apart as the White majority created a legal and political structure which attempted to create a social ghetto into which African Americans were expected to remain.
During the 1930s, a series of changes within the United States triggered by increasing industrialization and increased mobility of the population along with changes from World War II in the 1940s saw movements of African Americans, who were concentrated in the primarily agricultural Southern United States, to the industrialized North in search of jobs. During the 1950s, the Separate but Equal educational doctrine and segregation practices in general came under legal attack with a series of court actions by the NAACP and others to upgrade the dismal educational facilities available to African Americans.
The 1950s and 1960s saw a series of political acts by African American leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, and Malcom X, resulting in President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While political changes were being made at the Federal level, change at the state level was slow to come. Many southern politicians staked successful political campaigns around resisting the Federally mandated changes but while their rhetoric was segregationist, most southern politicians bowed to the inevitable especially when Federal subsidies were tied to compliance--with some notable exceptions, such as George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, and Lester Maddox, Governor of Georgia.
Some cities in the South, such as Atlanta, Georgia which adopted the motto of "A city too busy to hate", began to become centers of African American culture as African American politicians such as Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson rose to prominence. Other cities in the South, such as Birmingham, Alabama became notorious for political and legal practices designed to continue segregation.
During the 1970s and the 1980s, African Americans began to participate more and more in the mainstream of American society and politics as more cities and states began to elect African American political leaders such as Tom Bradley, mayor of Los Angeles (see also African American politicians). The 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s also saw increased participation by African Americans in business primarily due to affirmative action initiatives that encouraged business and social organizations to diversify their employees and membership to include African Americans as well as other ethnic groups. The booming economy of the 1990s also assisted African American businesses to grow and prosper.
The result of these changes in American society have resulted in the removal and dismantling of the most overt and easily identifiable practices of discrimination. Access to good educational opportunities and jobs, for instance, has become less of a racial discrimination problem and more of an economic problem. Some problems, such as discriminatory practices in the American judicial system also appear to be more of an economic problem in which access to good legal assistance is directly correlated with financial ability to pay.
As a result of the historical fact of discrimination, the policy of Affirmative Action has been put into place. Under Affirmative Action, members of groups traditionally "under-represented" in higher education, etc., are given preferential access to education and employment. Most prominent of these groups are African-Americans, though women, the handicapped, and other non-East Asian minorities also receive preference. On the one hand, Affirmative Action has made it possible for even more African-Americans to improve their educations and incomes. On the other hand, it comes at the expense of other applicants—some of whom may have superior qualifications—who, as a result of limited positions, are denied access. This practice has been the subject of intense debate and even legal action.
Since the Civil Rights Movement, the situation of African-Americans continues to improve dramatically, in the economic, educational, and societal realms, and discrimination and racism are, on the societal level, clearly on the decline. However, perhaps the greatest paradox about discrimination is that in spite of these changes, charges of white racism against blacks have, if anything, increased in recent years. There is no consensus opinion on why this is the case.
[edit] Institutional racism and discrimination
Institutional racism is discriminatory practice by organizations (institutions) that is based on the ethnocentric beliefs of a particular group without regard to the effect of the practice on other groups.
In some American states, mostly in the South, felons can never vote again. This prevents numerous black men from voting, as they have disparate incarceration rates. Some suggest that the 2000 presidential election may have had a different outcome if all blacks who wanted to vote had had the opportunity to do so. Only by moving to states where they do have the right to vote as ex-felons can these men and women influence the federal outcome once more. When viewing the fact that in modern times only 3 African-Americans were able to make it to become Senator, while the population is at least 12% African-American, another political disconnect is found between a specific population group and the specific representatives. Studies suggest that employers are indifferent to a white male's participation in the military, but are appreciative when African-American men have served in the military.
A second example was the effect of poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses on the ability of African Americans to vote during the century between the end of the American Civil War and early part of the 1960s before they became illegal through federal legislative and judicial action. Several southern states implemented such discriminatory barriers to voting, which disenfranchised many poor people and African Americans.
Another example of institutional racism could be requiring a college degree for a job whose performance does not require a college education--thereby ruling out African Americans and Hispanics who could competently do the job but do not have a college degree. While, in this case, the degree requirement would also rule out other ethnic groups without college degrees, a greater percentage of African Americans lack a college degree than Whites (about 3 million employed blacks age 18 to 64 held a bachelor's degree or higher in 2004 whereas 39.4 million employed civilians age 18 to 64 of all races held a bachelors degree or higher according to the United States Census Bureau and about 30% of Whites held a bachelor's degree or higher while only 18% of Blacks within the civilian employed population 18 to 64 years old held such a degree).
[edit] Education
Due, by and large, to widespread de facto segregation in housing patterns and white flight, many of the nation's economically depressed urban centers are populated predominantly by African Americans and other minorities. Public schools in the nation's inner cities and other centers of poverty which serve low-income families generally and consistently have failed to produce literate learners who achieve at or above grade level. African-American children, who are more likely to live below the poverty level than any other group in American society, consistently score below national or state averages on standardized tests. In many instances, when there are white children living within the areas served by failing schools, their families send them to higher-performing, out-of-boundary public schools, or to charter, magnet or private schools. Although a significant number of African-American children are served by below-average schools, this phenomenon is only restricted to the black lower and lower-middle classes. In many middle-class schools, African Americans do not perform as badly as the "inner-city" schools and also socially blend in with people of other races.
There are various factors lying behind the lower scores that schools in lower-income African-American neighborhoods achieve. One of the factors is that when the whole region is poor, the school is unable to provide experienced and trained staff to meet the needs of students. Because inner-city public schools are supported with fewer tax dollars, these schools usually spend less money per student than affluent middle-class public schools. Also, many African Americans are skeptical about the nature of the tests themselves, claiming the tests are biased against African Americans. Although many black schools in depressed urban areas fall below average, some have progressed and shown excellent academic scores as compared to other schools with similar demographic make-up. Five of Inglewood's elementary schools, for example, have made the Pacific Research Foundation's High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools list. [1] Other lower-income schools that were historically under-achieving are now also improving greatly and taking big steps toward better education of today's African-Americans youths.
The SATs have recently changed, partially in response to criticism from university administrators. This change was not aimed at reducing the race gap. [2]
[edit] Economics and employment
Economically, blacks have also benefited from the advances made during the Civil Rights era. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The black middle class has grown substantially. In 2000, some 47% of African Americans owned their homes. However, African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of whites.
There is, however, a significant African-American working class, which tends to neutralize or distort the tremendous progress among those in the black middle and elite classes. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African-Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the September 2004 unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3%, their white counterparts, who were unemployed at the rate of 4.7%. [3] [4]
The income gap between black and white families is also significant. Employed blacks earn only 77% of the wages of whites in comparable jobs, down from 82% in 1975. Although rates of births to unwed mothers among both blacks and whites have risen since the 1950s, the rate of such births among African Americans is three times the rate of whites.
[edit] The black middle class
However, many blacks have risen up to the middle classes, have increased their presence as professors, doctors, lawyers, government officials, and corporate executives, and since the 1960s and 1970s, this sector has also grown rapidly as many African Americans move from the inner cities into the suburbs.
Some communities, which used to be mainly African American, have now been replaced by other ethnic groups, such as Asians, Latinos and whites; gentrification is not uncommon in many former ghettos.
Generally, the black middle class has the opinion that persistence of the poor black working class concentrated in the inner city or rural areas, which carries with it all the cyclical pathologies associated with poverty, continues to plague "blacks as a group", i.e., to draw media attention away from the more fortunate and affluent members of the black community. The black middle class tends to believe that the presence of a large portion of poor blacks in the country distorts the collective image of blacks.
Just as whites and others who have risen into the bourgeoisie have historically looked down upon the working class from which they originated, many in the black middle class believe that the blacks who are left behind in poor and working class conditions are actually lazy and ignorant. Many blacks who progressed from inner city slums to the suburbs often express detached feelings toward blacks remaining in ghettos. This is especially true of black athletes, doctors, actors, and so forth. [5]. Renowned black comedian Bill Cosby has spoken out to this effect.
[edit] The black economic elite
Racial economic disparities are greatest of all at the highest levels. According to Forbes rich lists, a 2000 net-worth of only $800 million made Oprah Winfrey the richest African American of the 20th century, in sharp contrast to the 20th century's richest White American Bill Gates whose net-worth briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. Winfrey's been the world's only black billionaire since 2004.[6] and she's been the only black on the Forbes 400 nearly every year since 1995 (BET founder Bob Johnson briefly joined her on the list from 2001-2003 before his ex-wife acquired part of his fortune). With only one black wealthy enough to rank among America's 400 richest people, blacks are currently only 0.25% of America's economic elite, despite being 12% of the U.S. population. In 2005 Winfrey became the first black listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $250 million. [7]. Although most of Winfrey's philanthropy is donated to black causes in and out of the United States, the rarity of extreme black philanthropists continues to impede the progress of blacks world-wide.
[edit] Health and healthcare access
As a group, Black Americans have shorter life expectancies than the national average and often higher mortality rates for certain disease conditions. They suffer disproportionately from heart disease, AIDS, hypertension, stroke, sickle cell anemia, and diabetes. The rate of blacks organ and tissue donation in the U.S. is currently on par, percentage-wise, with that for whites; however, because as a group they require a disproportionately higher number of organ and tissue transplants, the result is a net deficit. Lower-income blacks’ lack of access to quality health care, a general and well-documented pattern of race-based discrimination in health care delivery, as well as deep-seated distrust of the medical establishment occasioned, in part, by the Tuskegee syphilis study all are contributing factors to these
[edit] The criminal justice system
Black experiences with and attitudes towards the criminal justice system often differ markedly from whites. Because of a history of racism, discrimination and brutality at the hands of law enforcement agencies, African Americans tend to distrust the criminal justice system far more than whites. In 1991, the brutal beating of a fleeing felon, Rodney King, by four Los Angeles police officers was captured on videotape. An all-white jury later acquitted the police officers, sparking riots in Los Angeles and protests around the country. Ten years later, in June 2001, a series of killings of black males in confrontations with police, and deaths in police custody, provoked rioting in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine community.
Due to public safety concerns, local law enforcement, news media and the general public place a higher priority on combating street crime, compared to white-collar crime. The higher profile of street crime in the media and law enforcement has given rise to the perception that African-Americans, particularly young, black men, are a "problem population" prone to thievery, violence and other criminal behavior. Such perceptions are a major factor in the kind of afrophobia which encourages white flight and, which studies have shown, often causes non-blacks to assume criminal intent or activity on the part of blacks when there is none.
Historically law enforcement agencies, especially (but not limited to) local agencies in the southern states, employed a significant number of racists and white supremacists who used their positions to victimize innocent blacks, sometimes acting in concert with vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or lynch mobs. Issues of unnecessary or excessive force, police brutality, police corruption, racial profiling, suspicious deaths of black detainees while in police custody, and illegal detainment and interrogation are well-documented problems that perpetuate black distrust of, and antipathy toward, public law enforcement.
Both property crime and violent crime in the U.S. are concentrated in poor, urban areas. And because African-Americans are disproportionate poor and heavily concentrated in the nation's inner cities, black communities have a notably higher crime rate than that of other communities. Poverty, alienation and despair in the black lower class have led to the rise of a number of professional street gangs and criminal networks. Although the incidence of violent crime is dropping among blacks, more than one million African American men are currently in jail or prison. Homicide remains the leading cause of death among black men between the ages of 15 and 34.
Many local law enforcement and justice agencies have little diversity within their organizations. Cultural differences between non-black police officer and African American is sufficiently large that misunderstandings and misreading of behaviorial cues can lead to conflict and physical violence. Too, many blacks view the criminal justice system as a bureacracy which oppresses African Americans, and especially poor African Americans, who are unable to afford the competent legal assistance.
Since the 1960s however, more African Americans have been hired by law enforcement agencies due to lawsuits such as Penn/Stump v City and due to a rise in militancy from groups such as the Black Panther Party who constantly fought with disproportionatly white police departments. The hiring of Black officers however has not stopped the rates of police brutality. In several American cities, police departments have instead more justification for brutalizing African Americans as the use of African American officers neutralizes any racial issues. Some cities that have majority Black police forces such as Detroit and Washington D.C. have even been notorious for leading the nation in homicide rates of Black citizens. In short, the racial issues that presist with police departments exist all over America regardless of the department's demographics.
In 1995, one-third of African American men between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some form of criminal justice control (in prison, on parole or probation).[1] Some statistics report that African Americans are at least seven times more likely to murder, be murdered and/or incarcerated than white Americans.[2] Studies suggest that the association of racial or ethnic identity with crime rates is a potentially misleading and racialist paradigm, with education and socioeconomic status being more accurate correlates to criminal behavior. Rates of homicide and other violence among African Americans are no greater than those of similarly situated (i.e., economically disadvantaged) whites or any other ethnic group in the United States.[3]
There are other factors which contribute to the overrepresentation of African Americans caught up in the criminal justice system. African Americans are frequently the targets of racial profiling[4] and negative societal stereotyping. Historians agree that black stereotypes and coping strategies are rooted in America's history of slavery and racial segregation.[8] Additionally, once apprehended and charged with a crime, African-Americans are several times more likely than whites to receive substandard legal representation and harsher sentences for petty crimes, including longer periods of incarceration. Blacks also receive the death penalty far more frequently than whites for similar crimes, particularly when the victim is white.[5] Further, sentencing laws, which generally mandate harsher sentences for certain types of drug offenses and for street crime, as opposed to other types of criminal offenses, place the black poor at a disadvantage when compared to whites.[6]
