Shi:
In June of 2020, we got to participate in a really cool protest and awareness event where paddleboarders went out on Tahoe for an eight-minute and 46 seconds of silence out on the water, on their paddleboards. And if that number sounds familiar to you, it’s because that’s the amount of time that the officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck ultimately killing him and this man’s tragic death did become a catalyst for the movement and so he certainly didn’t hopefully die in vain and there has been progress there, but how do we get to the point where a white officer being filmed and surrounded by other officers feels emboldened enough to put someone in a chokehold where they repeatedly say they can’t breathe for nearly nine minutes and ultimately kills them?
Kay:
Well, it’s a hard thing to witness but the reality of the situation is that there are more situations that happen like this to black people and people of color than anybody else and that’s not just us talking about it or you seeing it on the news or seeing that one horrible instance because it got filmed. There are many other of these instances that didn’t get filmed. Among those who had contact with the police between the years 2002 and 2011, black people were two and a half times more likely than whites to experience the threat or use of non-lethal force. So, we’re talking about the usage or the threat of force on their bodies, two and a half more times likely. So, when you think about that in practicality, what does it mean the difference between the black person who’s getting pulled over and the white person who’s getting pulled over? It means that the black person has double the chance.
Shi:
250% chance more, right? If we’re looking at that in terms of statistics like 2.5 is not 25%, that’s 250% more likely to experience the threat or use of force and this is from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. So, these are high-level stats being shared. But it’s not only evident in our justice system. When we look at unemployment from the US Department of Labor among black people the unemployment is about 4% higher than white people. And you might think, “Okay, 4%, that’s not too bad,” and we might say, “Okay, sure, that’s unusual.” But once they have a job, they’re good to go, right?
Kay:
No! The median income is still $30,000 more for white families than for black families. $30,000, it’s 42% more for white families than black families. Okay. So, well they don’t get as many jobs, and they don’t make as much but there are a lot of poor people out there, right?
Shi:
And disproportionately a lot of poor black people. Here’s another interesting statistic for you from the US Census Bureau. Research in our country shows that one out of every 12 white people is in poverty, but here’s the thing. One out of every five black people are in poverty, more than 20% of the black people in our country are in poverty and you might think, “Okay, well that does mean that out of those five, there are four that are doing okay, right? And some of them are even wealthy.” Well, let’s look at the median household wealth.
Kay:
Well, median household wealth is when we start to look at the full wealth portfolio of a family, which includes inheritances and generational wealth that comes in. Now look, white households in the US have 1000% more household wealth than black families in the US, 1000% more household wealth. Now, obviously, this comes from black people in America not having the same access to generational wealth that white people in America have had access to because of systemic racism, because of legal racism, and because of slavery.
Shi:
And that source is the US Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. So again, we’re talking high-level reporting from our own government. If we come back to our justice system, black people accounted for nearly 32% of arrest-related deaths despite being just 12% of the population. They’re also disproportionately represented in our jails. They get higher sentences. In fact, one of the studies in my Sociology 101 book that we use in class is the fact that if you are a white person with a jail time record, you still have a higher chance of being hired than a black person with no jail time record. So, when we talk about systemic racism, it’s numbers like these that clearly reflect that it’s real and it’s in play.
