Everyone should hope for a society in which everyone’s equal. So, along those lines, when will these conservatives address the following:
Businesses still practice name discrimination. Applicants with Black-sounding monikers with equal or better qualifications are far less likely to be called in for a job interview than those with white-sounding names, according to a study by the University of California Berkley and the University of Chicago.
Black people with credit scores and incomes equal to that of White people still pay, on average, higher interest rates for a house.
Black people are more likely to be stopped by cops but less likely to possess any contraband than their White counterparts, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California.
There are only six Black CEOs at Fortune 500 companies because too many jobs are decided in back-room deals that don’t include people of color.
These examples, and there are many more, show that conservative efforts don’t care about creating a color-blind society. They want to enhance inequity to ensure that Black people have few avenues to succeed.
Their actions replay past efforts by White people afraid of losing their power and place. That happened in 1898 when an angry mob lynched Frazier Baker and his infant daughter, Julia, in South Carolina. Baker was the first Black postmaster in Lake City, which made the mob furious because that’s the type of good job only White people should have.
It happened in 1955 in Brookhaven, Mississippi, when White men shot Lamar Smith because he threatened the political power structure by registering Black people to vote.
ProPublica’s Documenting Hate database has more than 300 examples of Black people being harassed and threatened in their neighborhoods because White people didn’t want them there — and that’s within the last few years.
History repeats itself, only now, messaging and lawsuits replace nooses and bullets. Most people want to get by day to day, but some use their money and power to enhance modern-day racism to appease Americans with bigotry on the brain. (In one poll, Democrats and Republicans used phrases including violent, lazy, and unintelligent to describe Black people).
America has done the best job in the world’s history of building a diverse society. It’s also true that the country has a long way to go.
The lawsuits against these programs have a chilling effect, as companies figure it’s easier to pull back from equity initiatives than explain a lawsuit to shareholders. JP Morgan Chase, the investment firm Black Rock, and American Airlines have all made changes, Reuters reported.
Anyone can believe these conservative efforts are indeed altruistic.
They’re not. They’re ugly, racist practices meant to benefit one group who they believe should control the country, as it has since 1619. Otherwise, why would they pick on only certain programs while not speaking up or condemning the daily instances of racism? Why aren’t they using their considerable resources to make life better for all Americans?
That’s an easy answer. They only want to make life better for one group.
That’s wrong.
That’s despicable.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday. He can be reached at raymarcanoddn@gmail.com.
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