Topics: Killings by Police, Prison, Poverty, Home Ownership, & Market Measures (Business)
Early this week I was being enraged by the idea that anyone could ever defend the baseless idea that there’s no such thing as systemic racism. I’m not even sure if the point isn’t to deny that systemic racism doesn’t exist, but to minimize the scope of the problem. I tried to pull the best facts I could to have a document that highlights not only the existence but the very scale of these issues in the things Americans care about most. Front of mind are shared impacts in this immediate moment before touching on Pt.3 which would be legislation should look like to right the undeniable existence of white supremacy through systematic racism. This will likely get long so please use: ctrl + f and use the topics we’re going to cover for ease of navigation.
Killings by Police
Whenever someone is killed by the police, it should be viewed as a failure to prevent loss of life. It means that officers have failed in their duty to deescalate a situation by focusing on protection and safety with their service. Instead of focusing on those cases to which evil seeps from the shadows with anticipation, (Pt. 4 should that come), this is a quick point in that focuses on data gathered on statista.com and PEW research center for population to measure how the cop murder rate compared between Black and White Americans.
Averaging murders by police from 2017-2019 in reported communities (Black, Hispanic, & White) gives you an average of 759 average annual killings, 409 being White, 222 being Black, and 128 being Hispanic. Taking the PEW data from 2017, populations of those groups is that 64% of the total population is white, 12% is Black, and 16% are Hispanic. Now we bring together to the population of those murdered by police and their proportion of total population to compare these groups to each other. While white victims are 53% of all police killings, by their comparison to population they’re killed at a rate 2.9 times less than black Americans on average every year.
On a very basic level, this translates to for every white American killed by the police, three black Americans are killed. If you scaled the populations to equal size, that’s almost 1200 black people killed every year.
Prison
From the latest report from prisonpolicy.org and diving into the actual prison data from the PEW data center more than shows that white supremacist simply used the stipulation to continue the slave industry. Highlighted at the end of Pt. 1, slavery is allowed if it’s subjugating convicted prisoners. I proposed that they were successful and the proof is in the data. First is that the size of the problem is never fully captured. The “Justice System” controls over 7 million people which more than half are on probation of some form.
Second anywhere from 2-2.4 Million people are in prison at any give time. About half a million of that population have not been convicted and are sitting in jails because they cannot pay their bail (tax on the poor; indentured servitude). Add the people there for non-violent drug offenses and you have 900,000 to 1,000,000 people in jail whom are simply not convicted or convicted of minor drug offenses.
Rounding out the scaled view and comparing the prison population compared as we did before to the total population of Black and White people, the incarceration rate is 6:1. To frame it the same way, for every one white person incarcerated, there are six black persons incarcerated.
Poverty
Pairing the data from Census’s from mid 2000’s to about 2011 and a sponsored cite of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI; stateofworkingamerica.org), removed from most of Trumps America to highlight how these issues are only amplified by Trump and conservative legislation. Poverty for Native American’s is the highest the Census found at 27% with Black poverty trailing right behind being at 25.8%. Pairing that with the state of working america provides (27.4%), you can average out 26-27% poverty rate for black Americans. Hispanic poverty rest in a range that varies greatly, anywhere from 16-26%, depending on country of ethnicity. In contrast, the white poverty rate rests between 10% (SOWA.org) and 11% (Census) respectively. These numbers have already been scaled per their comparison to their respective populations.
Poverty is the measure of income inequality to some degree since those in poverty are threatened by great degree from those with unequaled wealth . Consistency is important and a bit dry, but for every white person subjected to poverty and austerity, 2.6-2.7 black Americans are subjected to that same financial austerity. Add trigger happy cops and the pressures of the prison-for-profit pipeline measured above, it’s hard to imagine how black people in this country could stand for these injustices any longer.
The next four points are for those tone deaf and filled with empty platitudes. Simply saying things like, “Invest in property/Buy a home,” or “Take a risk and start a business,” will accomplish nothing if the person speaking doesn’t mention the context to which people in adverse situations live. There’s also the moment we’re in and how underlying things we know are bleaker still.
Home Ownership
In an analysis of data by CNBC with the Urban Institute, the current gap of black and white home ownership in America is 30%. To give that stark number further context, the gap was 27% in 1960 back when housing legislation was explicitly and fundamentally racist. That’s just over a 10% increase from a period of explicit racist housing and redlining policy, to another period where those policies have been deemed unconstitutional. I’m personally unable to square that right now but I will unpack this in another piece to which I can learn more and bring a nuanced point of view. The gap being in a range between 27-30% is unacceptable and regardless and is another arrow in the quiver of “proof” of systemic racism.
Market Measures / Businesses
Taking the numbers from the Small Business Administration, by volume of business’ their size relative to their distribution of population is the least deviated. As we’ve state above, white people make up 64% of the population, black people are 12%, and Hispanic or Latin is 16%. Now there’s still some deviation since white owned business’ make up 71% of all total business (19 million). Looking at black owned business’ at 9.5% (2.6 million), and Latin owned business’ being 12.2% (3.3 million) of the totality of the industry.
There’s ultimately nothing nefarious about the amount of business’ being slightly larger or smaller than percentage of total population. The proof of the inequality stands in the total market sales and the control of U.S. work force (roughly 162 million people). Total market sales is a measure of the liquid economy; goods and services provided to the consuming American people. While white business’ make up 71% of business’, they have 88% of the market sales, and controls 86.5% of the U.S. work force. Conversely black business’ are just under 10% of the business sector, and only make up 1.3% of the market and 1.7% of the work force. Now to be clear, these boundaries aren’t clearly defined but the best way to frame total market sales to the laymen is this is the data that feeds the Stock Market and capital injections (i.e, investments). It’s important to grasping that the idea of market based financial options for attaining and growing black wealth is only true in a very limited and specific scope.
It didn’t happen without immense and continued adversity accompanied with being completely ‘present’ and within a social prison; just another rabbit hole for another time.
Bringing this back to the subject, that is a 9:1 ratio of money going to white verse black business’ despite the relative matching of amount of business being within reason of population. This bleakly illustrates that while there’s been progress from a society with explicitly racist laws, unfortunately there’s a superficiality to the gains made and a severity of the ones in front of us.
In this pieces finality is the goal of summarizing before I asses substantive and legislative measures for progress. The problems do not exist in a silo so the above was the background to understanding the very simple and basic ask that black lives matter. Imagine a world where you were three times as likely to be killed by police than if you were white. Should you be fortunate enough to live, you’re also arrested at six times the rate of white Americans. Compared to your community of color, almost three times as many black Americans are in poverty compared to white Americans. I hope to get a grasp onto how the housing gap is larger now than in 1960, but it still speaks to how ingrained this problem is. In the rare chance a black American isn’t involved in a debilitating pressures of a racist judicial system and are able to persist and start their own business and begin generating wealth, the economy funnels money to white owned business’.
At this point I always try and share one quote from James Baldwin. The quote is but the tip of the iceberg in recognition of the pain Black american’s are subjected to. It’s long, like this series here will be because there’s a lot to consider in the scale of systematic racism.
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.
James Baldwin, 1961 Radio interview about what it’s like to be Black in America
~Until next time
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