Quote from Person McPerson

I've read somewhere in a book that 1/4 blacks go to jail at some point in their lives in USA. (could be true, could be false, I really don't know) So it will definitely improve. Not to be mean or anything, but most people connect blacks with violence or drugs or something.

Quote from Unbounded

Do you think this is a cause or a symptom?

Quote from Externus

Might be a little of both. Not a cause of being black, but letting yourself give into that rowdy, uneducated "black culture" that we see. White people do it as well. They're just as bad. Yet, we look at white people who act that way with disapproval and show no remorse when they're caught by police, or killed by a police officer. We grant leniency and act as if it's society's fault when the same thing occurs in blacks. The real truth is that society doesn't perpetuate that black people are inferior or have to commit crimes or anything close to that. You find the most pressure coming from peer-to-peer relationships and social bonds. Even in the slums of NYC where I went to school (among a majority black/minority community), there is still education, guidance, help and direction for everyone, not just for those who seek it out. There's a reason that "acting white" is a slur in places that do have black culture. And it only makes more sense considering how high black-on-black crime is. You find this same elevated crime rate in most places that have black culture.

Quote from Unbounded

Society, sometimes unintentionally, most definitely helps perpetuate systemic racism. Stuff like Redlining, Employers being less likely to call people back with "black-sounding" names, or black people being more likely to be arrested for nonviolent crime than white people.

So yes, there are mounds upon mounds of data supporting the assertion that black people can, and often do get the short end of the stick. We do find that black people receive harsher, unjustified penalties for doing the same things that white people do.

Not everything that affects us is overt by any means. It's rarely ever a dude at the top who thinks "Lol, black people r dumb so I rejekt dis applikashun hurdur". It's more often than not death by a thousand cuts. It's: "Okay, this guy is black. I'm not sure if he'd be a good fit for the job", or "This woman is black and checking all of the equipment in our store. There might be something up..." or even "This kid is black at night. There's a good chance he's dangerous". Slight pushes here and there. Normally they wouldn't be a big deal. If several thousand people are doing them though? In aggregate they can mess you up.

Sure, you can be extremely lucky as I have and manage to endure and duck around all the crap, but for every black person who manages to get past that torrent, there's a sizable amount of people who didn't make it.

Also, if we want to throw in some personal experience, I've never once been told I was "acting white" by a black person. I've always, always heard it from a white person who thought that suddenly because I didn't fit a some sort of stereotype that I was suddenly a white person or something like that. Shit is offensive.

Quote from Externus

Do blacks get the short end of the stick or are people also worried about their own investment?

The sassy black person is a common archetype for a reason.

I myself would never allow someone with that attitude to represent my company or business, and it's not unjust or even close to immoral to choose not to. As I mentioned earlier, there would be no leniency for a white guy who came in and presented a bad attitude with low work ethic/respect for authority. There shouldn't be for black people either. And if it's more prevalent in blacks, I'm gonna side with the whites and vice versa.

Quote from Article

Now a "field experiment" by NBER Faculty Research Fellows Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan measures this discrimination in a novel way. In response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers, they sent resumes with either African-American- or white-sounding names and then measured the number of callbacks each resume received for interviews. Thus, they experimentally manipulated perception of race via the name on the resume. Half of the applicants were assigned African-American names that are "remarkably common" in the black population, the other half white sounding names, such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.

To see how the credentials of job applicants affect discrimination, the authors varied the quality of the resumes they used in response to a given ad. Higher quality applicants were given a little more labor market experience on average and fewer holes in their employment history. They were also portrayed as more likely to have an email address, to have completed some certification degree, to possess foreign language skills, or to have been awarded some honors.

In total, the authors responded to more than 1,300 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services job categories, sending out nearly 5,000 resumes. The ads covered a large spectrum of job quality, from cashier work at retail establishments and clerical work in a mailroom to office and sales management positions.

The results indicate large racial differences in callback rates to a phone line with a voice mailbox attached and a message recorded by someone of the appropriate race and gender. Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback. This would suggest either employer prejudice or employer perception that race signals lower productivity.

Quote from Scarecrow

I have a suspicion that for the most part racial inequality has been eliminated. From systems, laws, and society's rules, that is. You can't eliminate it from individuals... but those dinosaurs who still feel that way will die out quickly over the next generation or two.

Quote from Unbounded

It requires awareness on our parts regarding our actions towards people of various groups.

Quote from Person McPerson

And how are we (society as a whole) supposed to do that when we're so used to what we see and hear everyday?

Quote from Unbounded

Taking a few minutes to think about how you treat people, why you treat them like that, and if you're treating them fairly or not is a pretty OK place to start.