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Joe R. Feagin, Kevin E. Early
and Karyn D. McKinney
excerpted from: Joe R. Feagin, Kevin E. Early and Karyn D. McKinney, The Many Costs of Discrimination: the Case of
Middle-class African Americans , 34 Indiana Law Review 1313-1360,
1357-1360 (2001)(186 Footnotes)
Some literature suggests a "declining significance of
race," and an increasing importance of class, in regard to the
situation of African Americans nationally. Other more recent research
goes further to assert the "end of racism" in U.S. society
today. Our research flatly contradicts both the assertion that racial
discrimination is being replaced by class discrimination, and that
racism has been substantially or entirely eradicated. While both class
and racial characteristics have been shown to interact and cause health
problems for African Americans, our interviews with relatively affluent
African Americans demonstrate that racism alone is enough to create
serious health problems for them. A racialized society exists because
discrimination is practiced, rewarded, or ignored within important
social settings such as historically white workplaces. Our data and that
of other recent studies undertaken by the authors and other scholars
indicate that discrimination by white Americans targeting African
Americans is still commonplace in a variety of arenas, including
government and corporate workplaces.
Much research on racial relations focuses on the attitudes of those
who discriminate rather than on the suffering inflictedon the targets of
discrimination. A fleshed-out perspective on discrimination directs us
to pay attention to particular social settings and to the consequences
of racial discrimination in such settings. Recurring discrimination in
workplaces and elsewhere wastes human beings and human capital and
seriously restricts and marginalizes its victims, destroying the
possibility of completely normal lives. This discrimination is so
dehumanizing that in discussing it some black workers even make
reference to the "slave-master mentality" of discriminating
whites and to "feeling like a slave" in white workplaces. By
marginalizing and dehumanizing black workers, whites cause them and
their loved ones much damage, pain, and suffering. According to the
accounts of the respondents, the damage takes many forms. The negative
impact of racial animosity and discrimination includes a sense of threat
at work, lowered self- esteem, rage at mistreatment, depression, the
development of defensive tactics, a reduction in desire for normal
interaction at work, and other psychological problems.
Our respondents understood that the often high level of racialized
stress in workplaces has generated or aggravated their physical health
problems. Most recognize the threat discrimination brings to their
health, and most try hard to fight it and its consequences. Not
surprisingly in the light of the data from the focus groups, a growing
public health literature indicates that there are wide disparities in
the physical health of white Americans and African Americans, as well as
in the application and use of medical services. A full understanding of
the physical and psychological suffering of black Americans at the hands
of white Americans necessitates a close look at the character and impact
of the discriminatory workplaces as they are experienced by workers.
Sentient human beings react seriously, in their minds and bodies, to
mistreatment and discrimination. The recurring and dehumanizing
discrimination creates, among other things, marginalization, impotent
despair, and rage over persisting injustice.
Our data show that the costs of racial animosity and discrimination
extend beyond the individual to families and communities. Social
scientists have written much over the last few decades about problems in
black families and communities. This discussion often focuses on the
so-called "broken" or "disorganized" black families,
with the responsibility for these conditions commonly placed on African
Americans for not maintaining their families and communities and for not
adhering to certain values. In contrast, more structural and
contextualized accounts of these family and community problems fault the
U.S. economy for its failure to provide enough job training or jobs.
Yet, to our knowledge, nowhere in the social science literature is there
a serious discussion of the points made by the focus group participants
about the direct and harsh impact of racial animosity and discrimination
on their families, voluntary associations, and communities. The long era
of racial discrimination has often reduced the energy available to
African Americans to build stronger and better families and communities.
While many have managed to build strong families and communities in
spite of discrimination, they have done this by exerting super-human
efforts that take toll in their personal health or on the ability to
maximize contributions to the larger society. These focus group accounts
suggest that the total cost of racial animosity and discrimination is
much higher than most social science, legal, and journalistic
commentaries have heretofore recognized.
African Americans remain central to the costly system of racial
oppression in the United States, and they have long been among the
strongest carriers of the ideals of liberty and social justice. In spite
of the weight of racial oppression, most have been creative and
successful in their lives and communities, and most have regularly
pressed the society in the direction of greater liberty and justice.
Indeed, their sense of social justice has perhaps the greatest potential
for stimulating further movement by this society in the direction of its
egalitarian and democratic ideals. African Americans have developed
large-scale social movements twice in U.S. history, and smaller-scale
movements many other times. Significantly, most African Americans have
not retreated to a debilitating pessimism but have slowly pressed
onward. Today, they join religious, civic, and civil rights
organizations working to eradicate systemic racism, to get civil rights
laws enforced, and to secure better living conditions for Americans of
all racial and ethnic backgrounds. There are lessons here for all
Americans concerned with eliminating systemic racism in the United
States.
Today, the state and federal court systems face many challenges, not
the least of which is the fact that the U.S. population is rapidly
becoming less white and European and much more Asian, Latino, African,
and Native American in its composition. In spite of these changes over
the last few decades, however, the overwhelming majority of district
attorneys, judges, and court administrators are still white. This means
major and increasing problems for the court system. As the mostly white
judges look across the bench at growing numbers of defendants of color,
their understanding of those they face, and their ability to mete out
justice, are likely to be affected by the heritage of white racism that
is imbedded not only in the court systems but in all major institutions.
These understandings (or lack of understanding) sometimes result in
court decisions, such as the Etter decision by a California court, that
do not view black workers' representations of pain and suffering from
recurring racial insults as severe. In that case, racist epithets such
as "Buckwheat," "Jemima," and the like were not seen
as "sufficiently severe or pervasive" to warrant a judicial
remedy. Yet, as we have shown, racists epithets and incidents can be
veryserious, painful, and damaging to their African American targets.
The hurling of even a few racist words can be a very hostile and
discriminatory act, and that can in turn generate much pain, especially
since even one such act can trigger memories of accumulated experiences
with racism by those so targeted.
In the Etter case, a white judge called on a jury to assess if the
reported antiblack conduct would be considered severe by a
"reasonable person of the Plaintiff's race." However, judging
from the data in our focus groups and in studies of whites we have
cited, the pain and suffering most African Americans endure because of
continuing racism are likely not known to or understood by most whites,
be they white jurors or other white Americans. How then can whites
presume to answer the judge's critical question?
As we see it, such questions can be most meaningfully and reliably
answered when there are larger, or representative, numbers of African
Americans in the state and federal court systems. If we are to achieve
the dream of a truly just society, we must greatly expand the input into
our justice systems by African Americans and other Americans of color -
at all levels, from policing, to prosecution, to administration, to
courts, and to prisons. It is past time for the U.S. justice system to
become much more democratic, multiracial, and multivoiced in its
management and everyday operation. And it is past time for the pain,
suffering, and anger that African Americans and other Americans of color
confront because of widespread discrimination to be truly heard in the
justice system. |
