The Living Consequences

There is a new working paper in economics available from the Institute for the Study of Labor which finds that when there is little outside scrutiny, umpires in major league baseball give preferential treatment to pitchers who share their race or ethnicity.

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I’m often asked to discuss whether there are distinctive attitudes within the “black community” in such areas as education, medical care, and the government. The question can take a relatively benign form, wondering where such attitudes might have originated and how they might be addressed. At other times, I’m told angrily that blacks are responsible for their own problems, and that our history of race is irrelevant, because blacks supposedly do not value education or hard work, or that they fail to exhibit constructive attitudes towards authority figures in such areas as law enforcement, the justice system, the medical community, and education.

There are difficult issues involved in this topic: are there, in fact, distinctive attitudes among black Americans towards civic or community values and institutions which are held in high esteem by most white Americans? If so, how widespread are these attitudes? Where and how might these attitudes have originated? Is there a connection to our long history of slavery and racial discrimination? What steps might be taken to begin to address this situation?

On the first issue, there is a new study available in the February issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine which suggests a significantly higher degree of mistrust among black Americans towards medical research than among whites.

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Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams has a perplexing column in tomorrow’s Washington Times in which he claims that with the election of Barack Obama, “all the ‘-isms’ that were born from racism, reparations, and white guilt are now dead and buried.”

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A new study by researchers at the Harvard Business School finds that consumers who highly desire a pair of jeans or sneakers are significantly less likely to be concerned about sweatshop labor or other moral issues involved in their manufacture.

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The Los Angeles Times has a review out about films exploring the subject of teenagers and race at the Sundance Film Festival.

The films covered include Prom Night in Mississippi, about the practice of holding racially segregated high school proms in Charleston, Miss.; Don’t Let Me Drown, a drama about racial and other tensions in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001; Push, a brutal yet hopeful examination of the cycle of poverty and despair in Harlem; and Toe to Toe, a drama about racial prejudice set at an elite private school.

Prom Night in Mississippi is perhaps the most shocking of these films, especially for those previously unaware of the ongoing practice of racially segregated proms in smaller towns in the Deep South.

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The American Jewish Committee has a booklet, available online, which beautifully tells the story of the diversity and shared values of our country at Thanksgiving.

America’s Table: A Thanksgiving Reader tells the personal stories of eight inspirational Americans, representing a variety of racial, ethnic, and personal backgrounds. They are recent immigrants and from long-standing American families; self-made success stories and the beneficiaries of inherited privilege; the descendants of slaves and those who benefited from slavery.

The reader contains passages intended to be read aloud at Thanksgiving, as well as details of all eight Americans profiled. The focus is on the the diverse experiences and shared commitments of all Americans, and on the often difficult history which we have experienced. The emphasis is positive, without shrinking from the negative aspects of our shared history, and there is no no suggestion that the American story is darker than the histories of other parts of the world.

Hat tip: Toby, Ann, and Nanda of Rhode Island for Community & Justice.

Jerry Large of the Seattle Times has an insightful column today about the annual Seattle Race Conference held on Saturday. This year’s conference, marking the 20th anniversary of reparations to Japanese-Americans held in U.S. concentration camps in World War II, was devoted to reparations and other forms of redress and racial healing.

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Several of us from Traces of the Trade attended the White Privilege Conference in Springfield, Mass. over the past few days, where we offered a screening and discussion of the documentary and solicited feedback.

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My cousin Katrina, who directed Traces of the Trade, was on a panel at Sundance this afternoon on filmmaking and being “Black in America.”

The panel was hosted by film critic Elvis Mitchell, who collaborated on The Black List, now playing at Sundance, and also included actor and filmmaker Danny Glover; Melody Barnes, who works in policy on Capitol Hill; actor, musician, and comedian Nick Cannon, starring in this year’s American Son; and Orlando Bagwell, the documentary filmmaker who hosted our panel on public outreach yesterday.

The panel was an engaging, wide-ranging, and often entertaining exploration of a variety of serious issues confronting black filmmakers and those interested in making films about the black experience in the U.S.

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A film student at NYU, Aislinn Dewey, has created a wonderful, moving three-minute animated short, entitled simply “Privilege,” based on the work of Peggy McIntosh on “white privilege.”

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