Lukewarm acceptance yields subtle racism

A couple weeks ago, Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel detailed the results of a… A couple weeks ago, Wall Street Journal columnist David Wessel detailed the results of a year-old study on race bias in job hiring. The study, conducted by Northwestern University sociologist Devah Pager, sent black and white college students with similar skill sets and qualifications to 350 Milwaukee-area employers to apply for unskilled, low-paying jobs. Pager asked some applicants to say they had spent eighteen months in prison, convicted of cocaine possession with intent to sell. She then measured the percentages of white people and black people, with and without a “criminal record,” who were called back for a second interview.

The results were disturbing, to say the least. Thirty-four percent of white people with no reported record were called back, compared to 14 percent of black people. Meanwhile, 17 percent of white people “convicted” of cocaine possession got a call; only 5 percent of black applicants who claimed a record were called back. Add up the figures, and the conclusion – even apart from Pager’s also-important point about discrimination against the formerly incarcerated, who most need a job to reconnect with society – is that a black employee is less attractive to employers than a white one, even one with a criminal past.

The figures are disturbing, but maybe not surprising – to anyone who wants to pay attention, anyway. They occupied a space somewhere in the back of my head, the place most Americans store difficult questions about race, until I read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.” In the letter, King responded to moderate, white clergymen who criticized his work as “unwise and untimely.” They denounced his supporters as “outside agitators,” while claiming to want equality for black people, just not yet. Equality would come, they believed, through the divine passage of time and the fullness of God’s providence.

Responding to these moderates, who claimed to agree with his goals but refused to support his methods, King wrote: “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.”

It is lukewarm acceptance that leads to the problems revealed in Pager’s study. I doubt the employers tested would consider themselves racist, in the “outward rejection” sense. Yet their actions continued a subtler, perhaps more dangerous kind of racism – the lukewarm acceptance that allows a human being to eat where they wish, but makes it as hard as possible for that person to get a job.

If we’ve made progress in eliminating the stereotype of black inferiority, we’ve made little in redefining the common idea of racism. It does not always come hooded in white sheets; it is not always as obvious as a burning cross. Racism still exists, we admit, but we’d like to believe it is found only in backwoods enclaves of snaggle-toothed yokels far removed from us and our polite society. What, then, are we to make of the 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study finding that a “white-sounding” name increases one’s chance of an employer callback by 50 percent – the equivalent of eight extra years of experience for a black applicant?

Few people are fully aware of their own prejudices, which is part of the problem: an unrecognized belief cannot be challenged. It remains hidden, unarticulated, in the back of the mind, revealed only in deed, not in thought. Without recognizing quiet, individual prejudice, it’s impossible to change the resulting unjust society. Another Pager study punctured another comfortable self-delusion: it’s common for “white-flight” families to claim higher crime rates as their reasons for leaving an integrated neighborhood. Yet the strongest factor in whites’ perception of higher crime rates was not actual crime statistics, but the number of young, black men in the neighborhood. To them, young, black people were synonymous with crime, a belief they couldn’t recognize in themselves.

The only way to change this kind of subconscious misperception is to become aware that it exists, both in us and in society. A Gallup poll cited in Wessel’s article found 55 percent of white Americans felt racial minorities have equal job opportunities in this country, compared to just 7 percent of black Americans. Who’s more in touch with reality? Why is that?

White Americans cannot continue this blindness behind the twin veils of goodwill and denial. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought and died combating outward rejection. It’s left to the rest of us, all of us, to defeat the problem of our own lukewarm acceptance.

Jesse Hicks is a columnist for The Pitt News, and may be reached at jhicks@pittnews.com.