[BostonCard]

Building on what WashingtonIsMoney wrote, here are some thoughts.

1) Undeniably things are better now for African Americans than they were two or three generations ago, just like as odious as it was, the Jim Crow era was still an improvement on slavery.

1a) Specifically, legally enshrined racism (Jim Crow laws) is a thing of the past, and, in fact, legal protections against racism have been affirmed by the Supreme Court and enshrined into law (the Civil Rights Act).
1b) Also, overtly racist acts are much less prevalent and not tolerated by polite society.

2) AND/BUT that doesn't mean that racism has been stamped out.  Moreover, there is a tendency to dismiss racist acts (including, if I recall in this thread) as "isolated" or the result of intoxication.  That may be true, but that is little comfort to those on the receiving end of such acts.  And there tends to be a dramatic disagreement as to the prevalence and severity of these sorts of things between those who face them and those who don't.

2a) Moreover, the impact of even an uncommon but heinous slur should not be underestimated.  I am Jewish, and thankfully overtly anti-semitic slurs are rare enough these days that I can count the times I have personally experienced them on one hand.  Yet those experiences have been burned into my mind.  I cannot begin to comprehend what it would be like to run into bigoted comments on a regular basis, and would feel marginalized if otherwise well meaning people sought to dismiss those concerns because they are isolated incidents and it was much worse before.

3) As WIM has noted, overtly racist acts aside, there is a much more pervasive and subtle form of bias (I will call it).  It may not arise from hatred and it may not even be conscious among those of us who perpetrate it (I say us because I don't think anyone is completely immune to the phenomenon as I will point out), but it is still damaging.

3a) I urge everyone here to take the implicit association test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).  It measures not overt racism but unconscious bias that tests the "strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory."  These include concepts not just of race, but also sex, weight, and age, and the implicit associations we make with them.

3b) Studies have shown that these unconscious biases have real-world effects.  For example, when prospective employers were sent resumes with African American sounding names, they were much less likely to call the applicant back than when the same resume was sent with a White sounding name (http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html).  African American cab drivers were tipped on average 1/3 less than White cab drivers (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?a...d=401201); interestingly the effect was seen even when the cab rider was Black.  This also occurred in restaurant tipping (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...bstract).  It occurs in medical decision making as well (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJ...3400806).  I truly believe most physicians go into medicine out of a sincere desire to help people, and obviously we (as a profession) are amongst the most educated Americans, and yet we are still susceptible to the sort of bias I am describing.

3c) It occurs in mentoring (http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-racial-gap...1443600872) as well.  As the latter article notes, "It is human nature for people to want to sponsor a “mini-me”—someone who reminds them of themselves—says Tai Green, a spokeswoman for the Center for Talent Innovation, which studies workplace issues. White men, who dominate corporate leadership roles, tend to seek out other white men to sponsor, she says. Meanwhile, women of color in leadership roles often shy away from sponsoring junior talent to avoid accusations of favoritism, she adds."  This means it is a double whammy; not only are there fewer women of color in leadership roles, but they are less likely to mentor aspiring junior executives like them.

3d) As I posted earlier in this thread, at Missouri, there is a disparity between the racial makeup of the state and the makeup of students in the University.  The disparity between the state's racial makeup and the makeup of faculty in the University is even more striking.  One could understand how an aspiring academic going through the school system might get the impression that there is no meaningful path forward for them in academia.  Ditto in a lot of professions (in medicine, for instance, only 12 Black doctors from Missouri graduated from medical schools in 2014: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/dis...ethnicity/).

3e) One can easily see how these sorts of obstacles can accumulate over a lifetime.  Moreover, even though it is less overt, it can be more insidious.  Imagine you are a young African American job applicant fresh out of college.  50 years ago, you might have submitted a resume and been told "we don't hire your kind here".  That is horrible, but at least it was out in the open, and if it were to happen today, at least there are legal protections against that.  Today, if you are a young African American job applicant fresh out of college with an African American sounding name, submit your resume and don't get a callback, you have no idea whether it's because of implicit bias on the part of the hiring manager, or if you just weren't good enough.  Functionally, there is no difference in the outcome (the African American in question has not gotten the job), so insisting that things are much better today is little solace.

4) If you add in the remnants of slavery and institutionally racist policies that leave many minorities starting out at a disadvantage, it is easier to see how the frustration at the current situation would boil over, especially because well meaning people dismiss the situation as "well, that was in the past; what are we supposed to do about it now".  This is why I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the idea that people who don't support the protesters are contributing to the problem (I don't completely agree with it, but I can see it from their perspective).  At the very least it would help if we all acknowledged that there is a continuing problem, even if we don't agree on the method to address it.

5) For all the reasons above, I am empathetic to the protesters, and I can certainly understand much of the source of anger, even if I cannot possibly do so fully.  And I can understand the frustration with the feeling that administrators are not sensitive to their concerns.

[continued on next post]

BC 

[BostonCard]

Building on what WashingtonIsMoney wrote, here are some thoughts.

1) Undeniably things are better now for African Americans than they were two or three generations ago, just like as odious as it was, the Jim Crow era was still an improvement on slavery.

1a) Specifically, legally enshrined racism (Jim Crow laws) is a thing of the past, and, in fact, legal protections against racism have been affirmed by the Supreme Court and enshrined into law (the Civil Rights Act).
1b) Also, overtly racist acts are much less prevalent and not tolerated by polite society.

2) AND/BUT that doesn't mean that racism has been stamped out.  Moreover, there is a tendency to dismiss racist acts (including, if I recall in this thread) as "isolated" or the result of intoxication.  That may be true, but that is little comfort to those on the receiving end of such acts.  And there tends to be a dramatic disagreement as to the prevalence and severity of these sorts of things between those who face them and those who don't.

2a) Moreover, the impact of even an uncommon but heinous slur should not be underestimated.  I am Jewish, and thankfully overtly anti-semitic slurs are rare enough these days that I can count the times I have personally experienced them on one hand.  Yet those experiences have been burned into my mind.  I cannot begin to comprehend what it would be like to run into bigoted comments on a regular basis, and would feel marginalized if otherwise well meaning people sought to dismiss those concerns because they are isolated incidents and it was much worse before.

3) As WIM has noted, overtly racist acts aside, there is a much more pervasive and subtle form of bias (I will call it).  It may not arise from hatred and it may not even be conscious among those of us who perpetrate it (I say us because I don't think anyone is completely immune to the phenomenon as I will point out), but it is still damaging.

3a) I urge everyone here to take the implicit association test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).  It measures not overt racism but unconscious bias that tests the "strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory."  These include concepts not just of race, but also sex, weight, and age, and the implicit associations we make with them.

3b) Studies have shown that these unconscious biases have real-world effects.  For example, when prospective employers were sent resumes with African American sounding names, they were much less likely to call the applicant back than when the same resume was sent with a White sounding name (http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html).  African American cab drivers were tipped on average 1/3 less than White cab drivers (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?a...d=401201); interestingly the effect was seen even when the cab rider was Black.  This also occurred in restaurant tipping (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...bstract).  It occurs in medical decision making as well (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJ...3400806).  I truly believe most physicians go into medicine out of a sincere desire to help people, and obviously we (as a profession) are amongst the most educated Americans, and yet we are still susceptible to the sort of bias I am describing.

3c) It occurs in mentoring (http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-racial-gap...1443600872) as well.  As the latter article notes, "It is human nature for people to want to sponsor a “mini-me”—someone who reminds them of themselves—says Tai Green, a spokeswoman for the Center for Talent Innovation, which studies workplace issues. White men, who dominate corporate leadership roles, tend to seek out other white men to sponsor, she says. Meanwhile, women of color in leadership roles often shy away from sponsoring junior talent to avoid accusations of favoritism, she adds."  This means it is a double whammy; not only are there fewer women of color in leadership roles, but they are less likely to mentor aspiring junior executives like them.

3d) As I posted earlier in this thread, at Missouri, there is a disparity between the racial makeup of the state and the makeup of students in the University.  The disparity between the state's racial makeup and the makeup of faculty in the University is even more striking.  One could understand how an aspiring academic going through the school system might get the impression that there is no meaningful path forward for them in academia.  Ditto in a lot of professions (in medicine, for instance, only 12 Black doctors from Missouri graduated from medical schools in 2014: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/dis...ethnicity/).

3e) One can easily see how these sorts of obstacles can accumulate over a lifetime.  Moreover, even though it is less overt, it can be more insidious.  Imagine you are a young African American job applicant fresh out of college.  50 years ago, you might have submitted a resume and been told "we don't hire your kind here".  That is horrible, but at least it was out in the open, and if it were to happen today, at least there are legal protections against that.  Today, if you are a young African American job applicant fresh out of college with an African American sounding name, submit your resume and don't get a callback, you have no idea whether it's because of implicit bias on the part of the hiring manager, or if you just weren't good enough.  Functionally, there is no difference in the outcome (the African American in question has not gotten the job), so insisting that things are much better today is little solace.

4) If you add in the remnants of slavery and institutionally racist policies that leave many minorities starting out at a disadvantage, it is easier to see how the frustration at the current situation would boil over, especially because well meaning people dismiss the situation as "well, that was in the past; what are we supposed to do about it now".  This is why I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the idea that people who don't support the protesters are contributing to the problem (I don't completely agree with it, but I can see it from their perspective).  At the very least it would help if we all acknowledged that there is a continuing problem, even if we don't agree on the method to address it.

5) For all the reasons above, I am empathetic to the protesters, and I can certainly understand much of the source of anger, even if I cannot possibly do so fully.  And I can understand the frustration with the feeling that administrators are not sensitive to their concerns.

[continued on next post]

BC