Many White people love to deny the role that race and racism play in our society. For example, I erroneously posted about White convicted felons making more money than college-educated Black men with no criminal records on my Facebook profile. But I was wrong. It wasn’t necessarily pay that was the issue (even though pay disparities are an issue when looking at the overall populations of White and Black men). Rather, it was who gets contacted more frequently for job interviews. Either way, every factor and excuse in the book was offered instead of an examination or admission of White bias.
Here is the thing: If White convicted felons are contacted more for interviews or potential employment than Black men with no records, based solely on applications and résumés, what is the factor? Studies show that applications and résumés with certain ZIP codes or “Black-sounding” names are rejected at very high rates. You cannot gauge work ethic from someone’s name, especially when the applications show identical work histories. And if someone has to choose between a person who was disciplined enough to never get into any serious trouble with the law and someone with a criminal record, chances are that most people would choose the person with the clean record over the person who served time.
Now, this is not to say that convicted felons (sorry for the language) aren’t deserving of good jobs after paying their debts to society. This is not to say that convicted felons wouldn’t make good employees with strong work ethics. But this is to say that choosing White convicted felons over Black men with no criminal records… for the same jobs, with the same work histories… is troubling. Especially when the comparison between White men with no record and White convicted felons shows a strong preference, by more than double the rate, for White men with no record, while Black men with criminal records have a very hard time getting hired.
How else does one explain this discrepancy?
This has nothing to do with work ethic, white-collar jobs versus blue-collar jobs, choosing liberal arts degrees, or any number of other excuses offered.
What’s worse is that when I presented the study showing this, no one actually read it, and a few dismissed it outright with no real argument about why it should be ignored. There was no argument about methodology. No argument about results. Nothing. There were plenty of racist assumptions. Ironically, those assumptions basically proved the premise of my post and even the conclusion of the study (or studies) used as evidence.
Over 1,000 people responded to it, most of them with childish insults and racist comments. Others were defensive. I can count on one hand the number of people who were actually interested in the study. And when they couldn’t refute the claim I was making, they went silent. No apologies. No further comments.
“You just need someone to blame for your failures!”
I don’t post these things to blame White people for my own personal failures. This is what I keep saying all the time. Despite my focus on racism, I had plenty of opportunities. I had access to a vehicle and reliable public transportation, so I could get a job anywhere in the metropolitan area. I’ve mentioned a few times that my olive (or beige) skin color may have opened doors that were closed to my darker-skinned brothers and sisters and gained me access to places and social circles. This is what privilege looks like. My name is ambiguous, and people don’t know what I am from an application. My ZIP code is in a somewhat affluent and racially diverse part of the city.
So this was never about me. Most of my posts aren’t personal unless I specifically say they are. If I am talking about societal issues, they are usually not about me.
I am not a member of the LGBTQIA community, but I sometimes post about their struggles. I have never served time in prison, but I sometimes post about people who have. I have never lived or worked on a farm, but I post about farmers’ issues. I didn’t grow up on welfare or need it as an adult (except financial aid for college, if you want to count that), but I constantly advocate for people who receive public aid. I am not a woman, but I speak out about rape culture and misogyny. I talk about relationships, and although my marriage failed, it was not due to many of the issues I discuss when talking about relationships.
Like I’ve stated many times before, the motivation for my posts can come from anywhere. I have ADHD, remember. Videos I watch could spark a post. Seeing something happen can spark a post. Hell, a random thought on the porcelain throne while pinching a loaf could spark a post (sorry for the visual). And most of the time, it has nothing to do with my personal life, which I try to keep as private as humanly possible.
For example, posting pictures from Ethiopia on Facebook was unusual because I usually hide my traveling. I don’t like many of the questions.
But I digress.
On White bias and Anti-Black racism
White bias is normal in a country that has made Whiteness the exemplary model for humanity for the last four or five centuries. Mentioning this is not an attack on White people, per se, because they are not the only people mentally infected by this… condition. Truthfully, we all are infected, including Black people. This is how we have all been conditioned to think after 400-plus years of pro-White propaganda and the twin philosophies of White supremacy and Black inferiority. You cannot imagine the number of Black people I’ve had to check personally for spouting anti-Black racist ideas and talking points. There have been plenty of times when I needed to be checked, too. It’s just the way it is.
The Repeating of Charlie-Kirk-Style Crime Statistics Without Adequate Context or Examination of Other Factors for Racist Reasons
But anti-Black racism isn’t imagined. It is real. Even the skewed crime statistics are a product of racism. For example, FBI Table 43 is not about who committed a crime or who was convicted of crimes. It is about who was arrested for certain crimes. What FBI Table 43 proves is not Black criminality but the perception of Black criminality and systemic racism in the criminal justice system. This claim is backed up by the OLL (Online Library of Liberty).
Let me hit you with some issues:
- The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, which collects the statistics used in Table 43, is strictly voluntary, not mandatory, according to FBI.gov.
- Although 87% of law enforcement agencies participate, the vast majority of those agencies are from big cities and their metropolitan areas, which all participate. Many small towns and rural areas don’t participate at all.
- Participation is high in heavily populated areas but lower in more sparsely populated areas.
- Black people are 7.5 times more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder than White people, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. This does not include total arrests.
- The rate and risk of wrongful convictions for Black defendants are even higher when the victim is White.
- Only around 70% of people arrested and charged with murder are convicted of murder.
- Black people are much more likely to be exonerated for most crimes than White people, with the exceptions of child sexual abuse and white-collar crime, for which White people are arrested and convicted more often, according to the Syracuse Law Review. As a matter of fact, over half (53%) of all people exonerated since 1989 were Black.
- Several White people have committed crimes and reported that someone Black committed them, leading to the arrests of Black men before it was determined that someone White—usually the person reporting the crime—had committed the crime and lied. It happened so much that the phrase “Blame a Black Man Syndrome” was coined.
I don’t post all of this to deny that many Black men have a problem with conflict resolution that leads to homicides. Nor am I saying that the Black murder rate isn’t still too high compared to our percentage of the overall population. However, what I am saying is that the crime statistics used to construct racist narratives all over the internet and in White supremacist circles are misinterpreted and grossly exaggerated. Arrests are treated like convictions. Partial numbers are treated like the whole story. Numbers are weaponized without any examination of the factors, other than DNA, contributing to them.
“All The Factors” Except When Being Racist
And this brings me full circle to what I was talking about at the beginning of this post. Various factors were presented as reasons for the disparity in hiring rates between White convicted felons and Black men with no criminal records. Many people rejected the premise and the numbers while saying I had to look at “all of the factors.” However, these same people were more than happy to spout crime statistics without any examination of “all of the factors.”
They are not totally wrong. All factors do need to be looked at. But it is hard to deny the conclusion of a controlled study in which the only real variable was race… or perceived race. There are not too many White men named “Quontavious Davis” from the Riverdale neighborhood of Chicago (the name and place were more than likely not used in the actual study). But “Brayden Braithwaite” from the Mount Greenwood neighborhood of Chicago could have a felony burglary or rape conviction and get a callback for a job over Quontavious, who navigated poverty, ever-present gangs, and various vices found in financially struggling communities with no criminal history other than speeding tickets.
What’s worse (and even more ironic) is that the same people who were pissed off and lambasting me for being an anti-White “bigot” were the same people who either ignored or positively reacted to comments about “chimping out,” skewed racist crime statistics, assumptions that White men with felony convictions had a better work ethic than Black men who overcame the many traps set in “the hood,” and many other racist posts. This actually supports the point I was making. But many of them were “too high on their own supply” to see that.