courtesy of Nicholas Kristof in his column for Sunday's New York Times, When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5 (and there are links for the first four pieces in this series in a sidebar).
Each fact appears in the column as a hyperlink.
The first is the United States incarcerates a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did. That link takes you to a PDF from the Aspen Institute titled "Race, Crime and Punishment: Breaking the Connection in America, with essays by a number of notables, the first of which is Michelle Alexander (and a side note, Charles M. Blow is speaking on his new book at the Aspen Institute headquarters in Washington DC this week).
The introduction of the volume, written by editor Keith Lawrence, begins
More than 2.3 million people in America are in jail or prison. Sixty percent are African American and Latino.
That's just fact with which to slap you alongside your head - our prison population is vastly distorted with the percentage of people of color.
But there is more.
The second fact that jumped out at me was
In America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.
That link takes you to a blog post titled
Worse Than Apartheid: Black in Obama's America. Here are the opening two paragraphs of that post:
For every dollar in assets owned by whites in the United States, blacks own less than a nickel, a racial divide that is wider than South Africa’s at any point during the apartheid era.
The median net worth for black households is $4,955, or about 4.5 percent of whites’ median household wealth, which was $110, 729 in 2010, according to Census data. Racial inequality in apartheid South Africa reached its zenith in 1970 when black households’ median net worth represented 6.8 percent of whites’, according to an analysis of government data by Sampie Terreblanche, professor emeritus of economics at Stellenbosch University.
One can restate the relationship of that 4.5 versus 6.8 as follows - the median net worth of black households in the United State stated as a percentage of the median wealth of white households is only 2/3 of the same ratio in South Africa during the the height of Apartheid.
Of course, poor people are always more likely to get locked up than those of more means. And of course a greater proportion of people of color are towards the bottom of the economic ladder than are whites.
The final fact is actually a series of related facts, all described in this sentence:
Most troubling, America’s racial wealth gap, pay gap and college education gap have all widened in the last few decades.
That link is to an August 19 "UPSHOT" piece in the
Times titled "America's Racial Divide, Charted." Take the time to examine the data and graphics. They are depressing.
We may have a Black President.
We currently have two Black Senators, one of whom, Cory Booker, is featured in Kristof's piece because of what he experienced as a newly named Rhodes Scholar at Stanford in 1992. You can read the details in Kristof's piece.
Kristof wants the equivalent of a Truth and Reconciliation Panel. I wonder if it could make a difference. Unless and until the predominantly White power structure will speak bluntly to the damage racism does to all of us, I fear that our true long national nightmare, that of a racism that is older than the Republic, will continue to haunt us.
If we will not pay attention to this data, to what data will we pay attention?
If we think petty crimes committed by poor people of color deserve serious imprisonment with the concomitant loss of civil rights (including voting and holding many types of licenses) why are we not insisting on similar serious imprisonment for those in the financial sector, business and government who corrupt the processes and destroy the economic future of millions?
Many here are fond of an acronym: IOKIYAR - It's okay if you are a Republican. And perhaps for a Ben Carson what matters is the political affiliation?
For too many, including my adolescent students, it is only okay if you are white, and then be careful if you are really working class, because your whiteness will only protect you so much.
Just several facts that should shock and explain a lot.
Make of this what you will.