Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The ups and downs of African-American fortunes
- 3 The politics of explaining racial inequality
- 4 Are blacks to blame?
- 5 Is the economy to blame?
- 6 Have racism and discrimination increased?
- 7 Politics and black educational opportunity
- 8 Politics and black job opportunities: I
- 9 Politics and black job opportunities: II
- 10 Black economic gains and ideology: the White House factor
- 11 Is there any hope for greater equality?
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Notes
- Index
6 - Have racism and discrimination increased?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The ups and downs of African-American fortunes
- 3 The politics of explaining racial inequality
- 4 Are blacks to blame?
- 5 Is the economy to blame?
- 6 Have racism and discrimination increased?
- 7 Politics and black educational opportunity
- 8 Politics and black job opportunities: I
- 9 Politics and black job opportunities: II
- 10 Black economic gains and ideology: the White House factor
- 11 Is there any hope for greater equality?
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Notes
- Index
Summary
For most in the black community and some in the white, there is a simple explanation for the slowdown in black economic gains in the 1980s: deeply ingrained white racist attitudes that have hardened in the past decade. According to this explanation, most whites are not able or willing to deal with their feelings toward blacks and practice racism on a day-to-day basis. Further, such attitudes are ingrained in the nation's most important institutions – schools, offices, factories, hospitals, and sports organizations. Institutionalized racist practices, the argument goes, translate into continued and even increasing discrimination in education and jobs.
The argument can be broken down into two parts: (1) racism and racist practices are as bad as or worse than they were two decades ago despite the Civil Rights Act, affirmative action, and the growth of the black middle class; and (2) such practices are translated into greater educational, job, and other institutional discrimination.
Has racism hardened in the past decade and does that explain blacks' stagnating incomes? Racist attitudes and practices certainly abound, from race baiting at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to high school guidance counselors' making black students feel unworthy to go to college, to police brutality toward blacks under arrest.
But it is one thing to say that attitudes continue to exist, another that they have hardened, and yet another, that, even if hardened, they have led to increased racial discrimination.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Faded DreamsThe Politics and Economics of Race in America, pp. 109 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994