Racial Issues in America: Hate, Anger, and Misunderstanding

The research I’ve done for this assignment has opened up a surprisingly frank view on race in America, and how racial issues lead to hate, anger, and misunderstandings. Economics has played a role in race relations since the start: A major issue of the Civil Rights movement was the freedom of free enterprise and unrestrained entry into the free market for minorities. Free enterprise lies at the very heart of modern economics , without it, the American economy literally would not exist.

I learned that economically—motivated and racially-motivated crimes, particularly violent crimes, have a tendency to “cluster.” That is, there’s a documented correlation between economically—motivated crimes and racially motivated crimes: The two occur at the same general places and times. This suggests a critical link between the economy and racial hatred. It’s not hard to find in the media these days evidence of the recession, and many people wrongly blame racial groups for it, everything from Latino immigrants stealing jobs and providing an outflow of cash, to African—Americans taking preferential treatment and causing costs and prices to rise, to southeast Asians, Mexicans, and Chinese taking American manufacturing jobs, to white Americans intentionally (or subconsciously, according to some) attempting to keep other races down.

All of these are extremely common accusations. Today there are programs intended to reduce the amount of hate and anger over race in the American economy. Affirmative-action programs are by far the most recognizable, and controversial, additions to US. policy. At its’ heart, these programs attempt to correct for bias against race, gender, or other minority status, by requiring companies to employ races fairly and equally.

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However, many have accused it of having the opposite effect, creating companies that hire only a “token” minority to satisfy the law instead of companies hiring someone purely on qualification and skill. Many economists and political philosophers, both white and black, feel that these policies may actually undermine accomplishments made by social groups, by creating a feeling that certain people were only hired for the aforementioned reason of having a “token” minority.

I learned that the entertainment industry, in an effort to appear more culturally equal, will often hire token minorities for roles in film or television (the “token black guy” is a well-known stereotype dating back to the 19605). I learned that female minorities are sometimes referred to, in a derogatory context, as “twofers” e that is, “two~forvone,” as they’re both female and minorities. This sort of behavior, common throughout the entire economy, serves as strong evidence that many businesses are more interested than looking fair than actually being fair, as a means of avoiding punishments and fines incurred by the government. This deceptive behavior is not always a company’s own fault, however: The government’s interference in the economy has put thousands of businesses at risk whose only crime was to, completely inadvertently and through no maliciousness of their own, not hire enough minorities.

This sort of thing, I felt, can cause new hate, anger, and misunderstanding, even as it attempts to correct old hate, anger, and misunderstanding. During my research in Hunter Library’s databases, I found a book by an African-American economist, Dr. Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, and there were excerpts available online. In one section of the book, it’s argued that preferential treatment policies can encourage people to “cheat” the system, such as lying about being in a “preferred” group, or collecting on things like grants, scholarships, charities, or employment practices even if an individual isn’t oppressed by any means (such as wealthy blacks, for example.) This can end up harming both poor minorities and poor whites, and through “money holes” like this, both sides can end up feeling like the other side has ripped them off — Again creating feelings of hate, anger, and misunderstanding among races.

I found that affirmative action is not, as I had previously assumed, an issue of those-who-receive-benefits vs. those—who-Iose-benefits. Many majority classes in America support it, and many minority classes oppose it. For example, in addition to the scholar I mentioned above, Clarence Thomas, the only current blackjustice of the Supreme Court, opposes affirmative action policies, on a simple principle: He states that racial protectionist economic policy creates a “cult of victimization,” which seems to imply that minorities are not good enough to succeed without special treatment. I found, in Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, some words that ran counter to the outright racial preference stated in racial protectionism economic policies, one of the most famous lines in his most famous speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

” While protectionist economic policy means well, in the end, it still explicitly endorses factoring in the color of a person’s skin when making economic decisions (such as employment, investment, et cetera). It is my honest belief that Martin Luther King Jr. earnestly wanted nothing more than simple, equal rights: The right to succeed or fail on your own merit, completely regardless of the color of their skin or the place of their ancestry. While it is a very hotly debated topic if protectionist economic policy can achieve this, I think it is beyond debate whether or not explicitly preferential treatment violates the simple principle of treating all races equally. And, throughout human history, there has been one constant: Unequal treatment leads to widespread resentment. And widespread resentment has always, without question, led to hatred, anger, and misunderstanding.