The Intractable American Racial Disease: The "Segregation" That Never Dies
A recent study by Moody's, an international rating agency, estimated that over the past 20 years, the racial wealth gap in the United States and access gaps in education, housing and investment havecost the country $16 trillion in economic damage.
The report also calculates that if the racial geographic makeup of all U.S. communities aligns with the nation’s “most integrated communities,” then U.S. economic growth could increase by 0.3 percentage points over the next decade.
△Screenshot of CNN report
The report concludes that deep-rooted racial prejudice and substantive segregation are limiting the potential of American society. In the words of the report's lead author, Moody's Chief Economist Mark Zandi, "racism is taking its toll on all Americans."
"Homeownership" is just the "American Dream" of white people?
This comes after a study released by the University of California Berkeley's "Others and Belonging" Institute also showed that over the past 30 years, racial segregation in some metropolitan areas in the United States has increased,leading to African-American and Latino The living conditions of ethnic communities are deteriorating.
The study found that while the U.S. government has created "fair" housing laws and policies to promote integration, 2019 data showed that 81 percent of areas with more than 200,000 residents were more "community segregated" than they were in 1990. It is more serious in years, especially in big cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit. Minority residents in these communities have lower incomes, higher unemployment and lower levels of education.
△Screenshot of CNN report
"Community segregation" reflects, first and foremost, housing inequality. Systemic, institutional racism persists at every level, including U.S. real estate and federal housing policy, and racial disparities in home ownership are even greater than during segregation in U.S. history, according to the newly released State of Black American Housing report.
The report shows that in the first quarter of this year, the home ownership rate of white households in the United States was 73.8%, and the home ownership rate of black households was only 45.1%, a gap of nearly 29 percentage points; in 1960, the two ratios were 65% and 38%, a gap of 27 percentage points.
△Screenshot of Houston Public Radio's website report
The housing gap is just one manifestation of the overall wealth gap between races in the United States. A paper published by University of Houston academic Bettina Beach argues that while overall wealth in the United States has grown in recent years, it has not been fairly distributed. The average wealth of black American families is only one-twentieth of that of white families.
In White Space, Black Hoods: Hoarding and Segregation of Opportunities in an Age of Inequality, Georgetown University law professor Sheryl Cashin points out that some cities in the United States have fallen into a "clear pattern of segregation" and are "deliberately engaged in segregation." Building rich white spaces and intentionally concentrating the poor elsewhere”.
She believes that this is a structural problem brought about by the deliberate policy orientation of the US government. "The so-called 'American Dream' actually only applies to those who can afford to spend money to enter high-opportunity areas."
△Sheryl Cashin with the cover of White Space, Black Hoods: Hoarding of Opportunity and Segregation in an Age of Inequality
"Three Big Mountains" That Can't Be Moved.
Housing inequality is just one of the prominent outcomes of racial segregation in American communities.
Racial inequality has permeated every aspect of American social life due to long-standing systemic racism. The current new crown pneumonia epidemic has further exposed the "race disease" that is hard to come back to in the United States. Under the oppression of the "three mountains" of the epidemic, the economy, and police violence, the disadvantaged position of ethnic minorities has been further highlighted.
The CDC's latest "Racial Health Disparities in the Epidemic" survey report shows that long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many ethnic minorities in the United States at greater risk of new coronary pneumonia infection. Minorities are significantly higher than whites in terms of diagnosis rates, hospitalization rates, and mortality rates.
△CDC website: March 1, 2020-October 30, 2021, African-Americans and Latinos had 2.8 times the hospitalization rate and 2.3 times the fatality rate compared with whites, respectively times.
Then there's the economic racial disparity.
Affected by the epidemic, American minority families are continuing to suffer huge economic losses. Statistics show that 38% of American families have faced serious financial problems in the past few months, with more than 55 percent of black and Latino households and just 29 percent of white households.
What is more lasting than the impact of the epidemic is undoubtedly the discriminatory treatment of ethnic minorities by the US state apparatus.
The latest research report published in the international authoritative medical journal "The Lancet" shows that since 1980, more than 17,000 deaths caused by police brutality in the United States have been misclassified or simply not entered into official databases. According to the analysis, black Americans were 3.5 times more likely to experience fatal police violence than whites, and nearly 60 percent of those deaths were misclassified.
△"Health Data" website reports
Another recent survey found that black Americans are nearly five times more likely to be imprisoned than whites, and in states like New Jersey, the figure is as high as 12.5 times. In 12 states, more than half of prisoners are black.
△Screenshot of CBS report
After the "Floyd Incident" in May last year, several major American physician groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the American College of Physicians (ACP), issued statements pointing out that the police violently enforce the law against black people. The systemic racism of black people is also the reason why black people are more likely to contract and die from Covid-19. This makes it clear that "racism is also a public health problem that needs to be taken seriously".
△Screenshot of CNN report
A new poll released by the Pew Research Center late last month showed that about 70 percent of Americans believe there is conflict between different races in the United States, a figure higher than any other country and region surveyed. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters (74%) of Americans believe racial discrimination is a serious problem in American society.
△Pew Research Center official website
The "Washington Post" recently commented that the United States is now in the midst of a heated racial debate. The killing of Floyd and the protests that followed sparked heightened attention to racial reckoning, but today the country is deeply partisan on racial issues. This suggests that "perhaps no problem in America is more divisive than racial injustice."
△Screenshot of the Washington Post report
