"No More Excuses": Problematic Responses to Barack Obama's Election
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J Afr Am St DOI 10.1007/s12111-009-9088-3 A RT I C L E S “No More Excuses”: Problematic Responses to Barack Obama’s Election Wornie L. Reed & Bertin M. Louis Jr. # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States brought forth torrents of emotions and expressions from across the racial spectrum, but especially so among African Americans. However, amidst the euphoria of this historic event is a disturbing reaction circulating among African Americans which has implications for the struggle against racism in America. Since Barack Obama’s election, many African Americans across the nation are saying “now blacks have no more excuses,” in effect evoking old discredited theories that eschewed racism as a factor in African American life and blamed victims of this racism for their resulting situations. We assess this development. Keywords Barack Obama . Racism . Presidential election . Responses . Excuses Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election was one of the most important, transformative events in African American history. The reactions and outpouring of emotions from black people across the United States have been expansive. On election night, blacks across the United States—including the two of us—cheered, laughed, and shed many tears of joy because what many considered to be improbable had occurred: a black man was elected president of the United States. But amidst the euphoria of this historic event is a disturbing reaction circulating among African Americans which has implications for the struggle against racism in America. Since Barack Obama’s election, African Americans across the nation are saying “now blacks have no more excuses.” For example, days after the 2008 presidential election, Kara Lynch, a reporter for the African American student newspaper of North Carolina State University, wrote a W. L. Reed (*) : B. M. Louis Jr. Africana Studies, University of Tennessee, 1115 Volunteer Blvd., Knoxville, TN 37996, USA e-mail: wreed5@utk.edu
J Afr Am St column titled “The First Black President: No More Excuses.” In reaction to the election of Barack Obama, she wrote the following (Lynch 2008): For so long we’ve used the excuse of being inherently behind because of slavery and the oppression of so many years, but Tuesday marked the end of many of the excuses, and its name is Barack Hussein Obama. Black men can no longer use the excuse that their name is Tyshawn Deon Jackson. So what! A man named Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States of America. No longer can we let our situations dictate the rest of our lives. Based on Lynch’s rationale, 250 years of chattel slavery, 100 years of constitutionally sanctioned racial apartheid and continuing institutional racism are not factors in the status of African Americans. Rather, racism has just been an excuse African Americans use to explain their collective socioeconomic status in comparison to whites and other ethnic groups. Echoes of Right Wing Commentators We anticipated this type of commentary about Obama’s victory from conservatives and right wing commentators. After all, white conservatives and right wing commentators have long criticized African Americans for continuing to complain about racism as a factor holding blacks back from full integration in American society. Now, with the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, some white conservatives are hailing Obama’s victory as proof positive that racism does not exist and, by extension, that blacks have “no more excuses” with regard to their collective condition in the United States. For instance, during CNN’s election night coverage of the 2008 presidential election, host Anderson Cooper asked a panel of experts what the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States would mean in terms of changing race relations in the United States. Neoconservative William Bennett, former secretary of Education during the Reagan administration, immediately responded to the question: Well, I’ll tell you one thing it means, as a former Secretary of Education: You don't take any excuses anymore from anybody who says, ‘The deck is stacked, I can’t do anything, there’s so much in-built this and that.’ There are always problems in a big society. But we have just—if this turns out to be the case, President Obama—we have just achieved an incredible milestone (Neiwert 2008). Widespread Sentiments The reactions of conservative commentators should have been expected; however, what is alarming about the “no more excuses” discourse is that many middle class African Americans are also proclaiming that blacks “have no more excuses.” It appears that many African Americans have bought into the idea that racism is no
J Afr Am St longer a major factor affecting blacks. In other words, racism is not a factor in the plight of African Americans; rather, African Americans have been using racism as a crutch. African Americans have never been monolithic in their sociopolitical views; however, it appears that the “blaming the victim” mentality is a rampant discordant voice in black communities—from entertainers to everyday people. For example, the actor Will Smith and the comedienne and actress Wanda Sykes have expressed this view. Wanda Sykes did so in the middle of election, in the late spring of 2008. On the Conan O’Brien Television Show, Sykes said that “Obama being in the White House would mean that black people have no more ‘excuses’ for their inferior status and would now have to take personal responsibility for being disproportionately locked up in the nation’s prisons” (Street 2008). Smith appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show 2 days after the election and expressed a similar sentiment (Moore 2008): “The history of African Americans is such that you want to be a part of America, but we’ve been rejected so much it’s hard to take the ownership and take responsibility for ourselves and this country. It was like, at that second, at that moment, all of our excuses were gone.” The belief that black people have “no more excuses” is not restricted to prominent black actors but also can be found among African Americans of lesser means and popularity. For example, towards the end of an African American Studies class discussion on Barack Obama’s victory, one of Bertin’s black students noted that because of the results of the 2008 presidential election, black people in America now “have no more excuses.” Also, a black friend of Bertin’s sent him a text message on the night of election stating that he was “proud to be American” and that “you realize that we [African Americans] can’t make excuses anymore”. The idea that blacks in America now have “no more excuses” since the election of America’s first black president is not limited to classroom comments and text messages. The internet is full of these expressions. For instance, in electronic responses to a moving essay by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2008) about the historic nature of Obama’s victory, one person with the pen name “redeeminggrace” commented: “In my opinion, Barak Obama’s election to this nation’s highest office is not only a momentus event because he will be the first Afircan-American to hold this office, but it also says two other im(p)ortant things. It says to young blacks that there can be no more excuses [our emphasis], such as “I can’t make it because I am black,” or “the white man won’t let me improve my way of life.” Barak Obama has proven [sic] that we can be whatever we set our minds and hearts to be regardless of race” (Redeeminggrace 2008). Another person responding to the Gates essay, using the pen name “Mr. Thompson” reacted in a similar fashion. This person wrote: “Tuesday night when Obama was elected I cried…I just hope and pray that young people will look at this as a great accomplishment not only as Black Americans but also as young Americans. That the excuses will stop [our
J Afr Am St
emphasis] and they can see that “Yes we can” can turn to “Yes we did” (Mr.
Thompson 2008).”
The blogosphere is full of expressions of “no more excuses.” Samples of these
expressions follow below:
[N]ever again will a black male, in particular, have an excuse to doubt his
own capacity, to doubt his ability to reach for the best. Never again will he be
able to claim his incompetence, his social impotence on external forces
[Emphasis added]. No more of the “It’s because I’m black” excuse (Petit-
Sumrall 2008).
Electing a black president “strips us as African Americans of every excuse,
every ‘ism,’ every schism we’ve tried to hide behind,” said Kenneth
Stepney Jr., 25, a student at Richmond’s Virginia Union University. “We
can’t hold the government responsible for our failings” (Kaufman and
Fields 2008).
A New Twist to an Old Phenomenon
Based on these comments and others, it appears that many African Americans have
bought into the idea that racism is no longer a major factor in African American
life. In other words, blacks have been using racism as a crutch to explain their lack
of collective social progress in comparison to whites and other ethnic groups in the
United States. For example, another oft-repeated reaction by blacks to Obama’s
victory is to say that “Now I can tell my son that he can be anything he wishes.”
On the surface that is a laudatory expression. While this phrase and similar
expressions suggest that African American youth can raise the bar of personal
expectations for their life, it contains an ominous undercurrent, which is also
prevalent in the oft-repeated reaction that blacks now have “no more excuses”
since the 44th President of the United States is an African American.
This undercurrent—an idea, sentiment or belief in something inherent in black
people which prevents them from progressing in American society—has been
explained as a behavioral or cultural pathology which is prevalent in black
communities across the United States. Conservative blacks who criticize the African
American community frequently articulate this undercurrent.1 For example, in a
recent, provocative book called Losing the Race, black linguist John McWhorter
(2000) argues for the abolition of affirmative action in American colleges and
universities because, in his opinion, it prevents black students from achieving their
true academic potential (Louis 2001). McWhorter theorizes that the root of this
problem can be traced to specific African American ideological and behavioral
1
For an in-depth analysis of black conservatism, see Bracey 2008.J Afr Am St patterns that coalesce in three “cults” which are endemic to black American culture: the cults of Victimology, Separatism and Anti-Intellectualism.2 Comedian and actor Bill Cosby considers that anti-intellectualism, poor parenting and a pathological youth culture hold back the African American poor from full inclusion in American society. His views are reflected in his widely-reported harangue against low-income African Americans on May 17, 2004, when he received an award for his philanthropic endeavors during a gala event commemo- rating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision (Dyson 2005, p. xi). As Michael Eric Dyson eloquently explains, Cosby’s diatribe reflects beliefs shared by the Afristocracy—upper-middle-class blacks and the black elite (lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, civil rights leaders, entertainers, athletes, bankers and the like) who rain fire and brimstone upon poor blacks for their deviance and pathology, and for their lack of couth and culture (Dyson 2005, pp. xiii–xiv). Both McWhorter’s view and Cosby’s view support assertions made by other African Americans in the wake of the Obama victory that there is something endemic in the behavior of blacks in the United States which limits them from attaining high stations in life. This may be true to some extent, but these behaviors are far from being the major factors holding blacks back. It has been racism “on the ground,” not “low hope in our breasts” that continues to be the main factor that represses black people in the United States. We do not deny the fact that some black youth are limited by their outlook, and that counselors and concerned citizens work very hard to elevate the perspectives and goals of African American youth. However, we do take issue with the assertion that self-doubt is the main culprit in racial inequality. The Culture of Poverty Thesis The sentiments that we are addressing suggest that some old discredited “blaming the victim” arguments still have legs. One of these discredited arguments is the so- called “culture of poverty.” The culture of poverty thesis holds that poverty is perpetrated primarily by defects in the lifeways of the poor. The idea of a “culture of poverty” was introduced by the anthropologist Oscar Lewis in his books on the lives of poor Hispanics in the United States and Latin America, including Five Families (1959), The Children of Sánchez (1961), and La Vida (1966). According to the culture of poverty thesis, the poor remain in poverty because of their value systems, 2 The Cult of Victimology, the belief that all Black people are victims of racism, explains why African Americans have not been as successful as other racial and ethnic groups. The Cult of Separatism refers to what McWhorter considers the narrowness of Black American scholarship, exemplified by a lack of commitment to the objective assessment of intellectual issues, and rigorous debate of relevant theories and methods, as well as by an obsession with topics which pertain only to Blacks, Africa, and the African Diaspora. The Cult of Anti-Intellectualism is a tendency among African Americans to attribute low course grades or poor performance on standardized tests to racially marked cultural differences, and to characterize book learning and the pursuit of knowledge as peculiarly “White” endeavors. McWhorter contends that these defeatist cults have been woven into the very fabric of Black American life. Deeply embedded in the ideologies, rituals and ordinary practices of a peculiarly African American culture, the effects of the three cults are evident in language use, speech inflection, hairstyles, dress, and body language among Blacks.
J Afr Am St which are adaptations to the burdens of poverty. Further, the culture of poverty is not only an adaptation to a set of objective conditions of the larger society. It comes into existence and tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation. Thus, we have cycles of poverty. Valentine (1968, 1969) challenged the concept of the culture of poverty by arguing that Lewis’ data did not support such a conclusion. Valentine pointed to other scholars who were addressing this same phenomena differently (1968): A few social scientists are pursing a different line of thought. Clark (1965; also HARYOU 1964) points out that the “cult of cultural deprivation” serves to rationalize discrimination against the poor. Gladwin, beginning with early doubts about the scientific validity of the “culture of poverty” (1961), has come to believe (1967) that the “war on poverty,” founded on that very conception, is a failure. Liebow (1967) documents the assertion that street-corner men—far from representing a separate culture—strive to live by standard American values but are continually met by externally imposed failure (131). Oscar Lewis’ formulation called for eradicating the culture of poverty (1968). However, perhaps the most significant argument by Valentine and Clark, as well as others (Leacock 1971), is that a better approach is the removal of the objective conditions of poverty created by the social system. Since the 1960s, critics of culture of poverty explanations have attempted to show that real world data does not fit Lewis’ model. Despite decades of this criticism by prominent sociologists, anthropologists, and other scholars who argue that descriptions of the poor as being culturally unique have little explanatory power, the culture of poverty concept persists in popular culture. The Moynihan Thesis One of the most enduring of the discredited theses is the “Moynihan Thesis,” which was set forth in his infamous study, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, which is based on the culture of poverty theory. In this study, Moynihan (1965) proposed that the black family was a tangle of pathology that perpetuated a cycle of poverty and deprivation. In Moynihan’s formulation, the tangle of pathology was due to the nature of slavery in the United States. In contrast to slavery in many other countries, there was no legal recognition of marriage among slaves in the United States. Thus— according to Moynihan—marriage was not a strong part of the culture of blacks during and after slavery. Instead, the black family tended to be matriarchal, which leads to lone mother households. Because this type of family structure was so out of line with the rest of American society, according to Moynihan, it negatively affected the progress of blacks as a group, which led to the tangle of pathology. For Moynihan, family structure is the problem. Consequently, many of the solutions proposed to address this problem were aimed at strengthening the black family. The decline in African American two-parent families, however, is not the result of some mystical cultural trend, like black matriarchy. It is the result of forces in the middle of the 20th century, not slavery or age-old culture. If slavery and/or culture
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were the causative factors, the proportion of African American households headed
by women would have always been low. Two-parent families were the rule among
African Americans until after 1960 (See Fig. 1). As shown in the figure, the
proportion of African American families with two parents takes a rather significant
drop in the 1960s. Thus, the growth in black households headed by lone females is
not the result of slavery, but of more contemporary forces: i.e., the declining rate of
black male to female sex ratios, the decline of manufacturing industries near large
black populations, and the economic alienation of African American men (See Reed
2002).
Blaming the Victim
William Ryan, in his classic book, Blaming the Victim, explained “how to blame the
victim” (1971):
The logical outcome of analyzing social problems in terms of the deficiencies of
the victim is the development of programs aimed at correcting those deficiencies.
The formula for action becomes extraordinarily simple: change the victim…All
of this happens so smoothly that it seems downright rational. First, identify a
social problem. Second, study those affected by the problem and discover in
what ways they are different from the rest of us as a consequence of deprivation
and injustice. Third, define the differences as the cause of the social problem
itself. Finally, of course, assign a government bureaucrat to invent a
humanitarian action program to correct the differences (8).
Ryan further argues that the “blaming the victim” is an ideological process
derived from systematically motivated, but unintended, distortions of reality. We are
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1890 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1995
Black 80 77 78 74 68 48 39 36
White 85 88 89 89 83 77 75
Fig. 1 Percent two-parent families by Race, U.S., Selected Years, 1890–1995. Source: U.S. Bureau of the
CensusJ Afr Am St
familiar with this process and how it spreads throughout the culture. However, what
was unexpected [in 2008] is the degree to which African Americans are a part of that
culture and that belief system—as exemplified by the widespread assertions that
“[blacks] have no more excuses.”
Continuing Systemic Racism
There are many problems in black communities, including some that may be
considered self-inflicted—like teenage pregnancies, drug addition, and low rates of
high school completion. However racism is a major factor in the life chances of
American Americans. In the following sections, we review selected examples of racial
discrimination and its effects.
Economics
A dollar amount can be used to estimate the effect of economic discrimination
against African Americans. Economist and former Federal Reserve Board member,
Andrew Brimmer, tracked the economic cost of discrimination against African
Americans between the 1960s and the 1990s (Brimmer 1995). He has shown that the
African American community in particular and the American economy in general
lost between 1.5 and 2.2% of gross national product (GNP) each year between 1967
and 1993 because of racial discrimination against African Americans that limited the
full use of their existing education. In other words, the gap in earnings each year
between African Americans and Whites with the same level of education ranged
from 1.5 to 2.2% of the GNP during the period studied.
In 1967 this loss amounted to 1.5% of the GNP, or $12.1 billion. In 1993 it had
grown to $137.5 billion, 2.2% of the GNP. When the total cost of the failure to
improve and fully utilize the education of African Americans is considered, another
1.4% of the GNP was lost in 1967. Thus, a total of 2.9% of the GNP, $23.2 billion,
was lost to the American economy in 1967 because of job discrimination. In 1993
this proportion of lost GNP had grown to 3.8% of the GNP, $240.9 billion. Thus,
racial discrimination costs the economy as well as individual African American
families and communities.
Criminal Justice
The American correctional population is increasingly African American. This racial
disparity has several ominous manifestations:
& Nationally, African American males are incarcerated 8.2 times the incarceration
rate of whites (Rosich 2007).
& On any given day one-third of all African American males in the 20–29 age
group are in the criminal justice system, i.e., in prison or jail, or on probation or
parole. The rate is higher in many cities (Mauer and Huling 1995). For example
in Washington, D.C., the rate is 42 percent; in Baltimore, Maryland, it is 56%;
and in Jacksonville, Florida, it is 75% (Miller 1996).J Afr Am St
Illegal drugs play a major role in the increase in imprisonment. One in four jail
inmates in 2002 was in jail for a drug offense, compared to one in ten in 1983; drug
offenders constituted 20% of state prison inmates and 55% of federal prison inmates
in 2001 (The Sentencing Project 1997)
Major reasons for the increasing racial disparity in prison incarceration are illegal
drugs and drug prosecution policy and practices. Black Americans are prosecuted
and imprisoned for drug offenses at a much higher rate than white Americans.
African Americans are imprisoned at a rate far beyond their proportions of
participation in illegal drug activities. This results substantially from the dispropor-
tionate prosecution of African Americans for the use and distribution of crack
cocaine.
It is generally well known that more African Americans are arrested and
prosecuted for crack cocaine than whites. Perhaps the reason that there is not more
outcry from the African American community is the widely held belief that crack
cocaine is a “black urban drug,” that African Americans are the predominant users of
crack cocaine while whites are the predominant users of powder cocaine. Two
features feed this perception. One is the perception that since crack is less expensive
it is much more accessible to inner city blacks. The other is the perception that most
of the criminal activity as well as criminal justice activity concerning crack involves
African Americans. Contrary to popular opinion, however, whites are the
predominant users of crack as well as powder cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and other
illegal drugs. In fact, African Americans were 12.3% of the U.S. population in 2000,
and they are approximately the same proportion (13%) of all illegal drug users.
However, they are 36% of drug arrests, 53% of drug convictions, and 63% of all
drug offenders admitted to state prisons (Human Rights Watch 2003).
Day (1995) examined trend data on arrest rates for all types of drug violations by
race between 1965 and 1993. She found that while the arrest rates for whites grew
very slowly over the 1965-1992 period, the arrest rate for people of color increased
substantially during this period. By 1993, there were 78 arrests of blacks for drug
possession for every 1,000 black drug users, while there were only 20 arrests of
whites for drug possession for every 1,000 white drug users. Significantly, this was
the case whether the group examined was adults over the age of 18 or youth under
18 years of age.
The bottom line is that this selective prosecution of African Americans is
discriminatory. A consequence of this discriminatory action is a disproportionately
high rate of African American men with felony records. The felony records severely
limit the ability of these men to obtain stable jobs, which negatively impact family
formation, and ultimately urban communities.
Housing
While the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 did not stop discrimination in
housing, it did stop or limit substantially, overt discrimination in housing. Sales or
rental agents ceased indicating that they did not sell or rent to blacks. They began to
use subtle and covert means that were less observable. Consequently, fair housing
advocates and social scientists developed methods to detect this “new” type of
discrimination. They began to use housing audits. In an audit study, units beingJ Afr Am St marketed for sale or rent are randomly selected and separate teams of white and black auditors posing as home-seekers are sent to inquire about the availability of the advertised units, the number of other units available, and the terms under which units might be obtained. Auditors are assigned similar demographic and economic characteristics. They differ only by race. They present themselves in a neutral fashion and ask uniform questions about the housing being marketed. Afterwards, each auditor completes a report form which describes the nature and outcome of the encounter. Theses forms are analyzed to see whether there were differences in treatment by race. In a study of over 70 housing audits George Galster (1990: cited in Massey 2008) concluded that “racial discrimination continues to be a dominant feature of metropolitan housing markets in the 1980s” (172). He found that blacks averaged a 20% chance of experiencing discrimination in the home sales market and a 50% chance of discrimination in rental markets in encounters with real estate agents. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has conducted three nationwide housing audits—in 1977, 1988, and 2000. All three studies found significant discrimination against African Americans in the rental and sale of housing (Massey 2008). In the 2000 study, rates of African American discrimination were based on 4,600 paired tests in 23 metropolitan areas (Austin 2002). Because of the continuing issue of housing discrimination, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights/Education Fund, the National Fair Housing Alliance, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law came together to form the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity to investigate the state of fair housing in 2008, the 40th anniversary year of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The seven-member commission was co-chaired by former U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretaries, Jack Kemp, a Republican, and Henry Cisneros, a Democrat. The Commission held hearings for 6 months in five major U. S. cities—Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta—to assess progress in achieving fair housing for all. The Commission concluded that despite strong legislation, past and ongoing discriminatory practices in the nation’s housing and lending markets continue to produce extreme levels of residential segregation that result in significant disparities between minority and non-minority households, in access to good jobs, quality education, homeownership attainment and asset accumulation (National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity 2008). Medical Care Medical care is another area where racial discrimination is clearly demonstrated. African Americans suffer from diseases and illnesses at a higher rate than whites. When they seek medical treatment they are not accorded the same level of medical care as whites. Several hundred studies have documented a consistent pattern of racial disparities in health care (Lurie 2005). These studies reveal that racial and ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, experience a lower quality of health services, and are less likely to receive even routine medical procedures than are white Americans. These disparities moved Congress to request the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies to assess differences in the kinds and quality of
J Afr Am St healthcare received by U.S. racial and ethnic minorities (Smedby et al. 2003). We quote from the summary of the report by the Institute of Medicine (Smedby et al. 2003): Evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare is, with few exceptions, remarkably consistent across a range of illnesses and health care services…The majority of studies, however, find that racial and ethnic disparities remain even after adjustment for socioeconomic differences and other healthcare access- related factors…Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare occur in the context of broader historic and contemporary social and economic inequality, and evidence of persistent racial and ethnic discrimination in many sectors of American Life (5–6). Summary and Conclusions Since the election of the first black President of the United States, many African Americans have asserted that blacks have “no more excuses” to prevent them from achieving their desired goals in life. This undoubtedly means that despite hundreds of studies demonstrating racism and despite innumerable instances of racism in the everyday lives of many, if not most, African Americans, a significant number have nevertheless bought into the arguments by right wing commentators that there is no systemic racism in America. However, as we have demonstrated above, racial discrimination against African Americans is well documented. In a limited and selected review, we have noted the deleterious effects of racial discrimination on the American economy, the disparate prosecution and incarceration of African Americans in the criminal justice system, and the continued discrimination against African Americans in housing and medical care. The “no more excuses” argument resonates with previously debunked theories such as “the culture of poverty” which were used to explain so-called black pathologies in American society in the 1960s. Furthermore, the “no more excuses” argument ignores all of the evidence of institutional racism and posits that when blacks complain about racism, they are just making excuses for their own failings. This point of view is highly problematic for present-day struggles against systemic racism. The apparently widespread belief that systemic racism does not exist is an ominous development, which undoubtedly mitigates efforts to eliminate or reduce racism; however, the sentiment that one’s son or daughter can now be told truthfully that they “can be anything they want to be” may suggest a more problematic belief: that what is causing the gap in socio-economic achievement between blacks and whites is negative mindsets of African American youth. In other words, African American youth—and their parents—have not believed that the youth could achieve lofty career goals. Of course, to some degree, personal ambitions and beliefs may limit many youth; however, to suggest that this psychological factor is the major cause of racial inequality in America is to deny facts as presented not only by scholars, but by the federal government and governmental commissions. For example, see the Kerner Commission Report to President Johnson (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1968), the recent Institute of Medicine
J Afr Am St
report to the U.S. Congress (Smedby et al. 2003), the reports by the Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) concerning disproportionate
minority confinement (OJJDP 2004), and the studies by the Department of Housing
and Urban Development (Massey 2008). Each of these reports shows discrimination
against African Americans.
While it is not our objective to propose a complete remedy for what we see as
a major problem, we do propose an action that we believe should be a part of the
remedy. This action is informational. We believe that scholars and others who are
familiar with the nature and extent of racism should escalate discussions about it.
Data, in the form of concrete systemic issues, should be presented much more
often than is currently the case. Too often discussions of racism devolve into
discussions of prejudice or more limited individual racism. The strongest
argument for the existence of institutional racism is the data demonstrating the
point.
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