Human Nature or Bad Priorities

I recently read an unpublished study by a group of economists and its findings raised a number of questions for me. The study was designed to see if there was a difference in what blacks and Hispanics spent their money on compared to their white counterparts. For a while now there has been this public discussion about whether blacks spend too much money on “flashy” items instead of on other things, like education and savings. The discussion was brought to a head by the recent comments of comedian Bill Cosby stating that blacks will spend $500 on a pair of sneakers instead of educational toys for their children. There was an outcry from many in the black community denouncing Mr. Cosby. I have to admit that I have also been involved in such discussions and have been ridiculed for making similar statements to Mr. Cosby’s.

The authors of the study entitled, “Conspicuous Consumption and Race”, are Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, and Nikolai Roussanov ; while their empirical data seems sound as with any study the conclusions are open to interpretation. The gist of the study is as follows, using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) the authors wanted to compare the spending habits of blacks, Hispanics, and whites of comparable income for things they labeled as “visible goods” (clothes, cars, and jewelry). Do blacks and Hispanics spend more on these items? Based on the results of the study the answer is a resounding yes. On average blacks spend 30% more on these items than their white counterparts of similar income.

The question now becomes why? The conclusion drawn by the authors of the study suggest that it is primarily based on how and where we demonstrate our wealth. In a consumer driven society the mark of one’s status is based directly on the fact that one is consuming and on what one is consuming. All who are able play the game, keeping up with the Jones. It’s just we play it in different ways.

Economists refer to items that we purchase in order to reveal our prosperity to others as wealth signals. But why use sneakers, as opposed to phonics toys, as a wealth signal? First off, for a signal to be effective, it needs to be easily observed by the people we're trying to impress. This includes not just those near and dear to us, but also the person we pass on the street, who sees our sneakers but would have a harder time inferring how much we're spending teaching our kids to read. For a wealth signal to be credible, it also needs to be hard to imitate—if everyone in your community can afford $150 sneakers, those Zoom Lebron IVs would lose their signal value.[1]

So according to the conclusions drawn by the authors, the reason blacks spend more on visible goods (clothes, cars, and jewelry) is because of where we are located. We are trying to impress different groups and each of those groups has different signals. Whites are trying to impress other whites and blacks are trying to impress other blacks. Their argument is as follows: based on median incomes and housing patterns blacks earning 42,500 which is the median income for blacks are surrounded by other blacks and so their income would be considered high on the neighborhood scale. Whites on the other hand making the same amount would be lower on the income scale in their neighborhood (66,800 is the median income for whites) and therefore could not financially take part in the signals game, so these whites are spared from having to spend on these visible goods.

Here is my problem with the conclusions produced from the study by the authors. If this is human nature then why don’t all people do it? The whites that are making the same income as blacks should still be playing the game even if it is on a smaller scale. Why do blacks that are making under the median income still purchase these visible items while whites don’t? Based on their analysis there is still cultural factors in the fact that what blacks are using to impress each other are not the same as the visible items whites are using.

I believe that the reason we see these differences is based on two factors. The first is the length of time blacks have had to accumulate wealth and the second is the cultural messages we have been taught. For many blacks the length of time that they have had to accumulate and handle wealth has been only a few decades. Why is this important? It is important because as we have seen with lottery and other sweepstakes winners people who have not had money blow it very quickly on foolish things. Also, as many of our athletes and entertainers have shown there are certain behaviors that are deeply embedded and acquiring money does not make them disappear. If you or your family has been poor for more than a single generation then your poverty is generational and you are governed by different standards. The things you value are developed by your environment, so in one sense the authors are right. If you are raised in poverty, then you will value wealth signals of that environment. Even after you leave that environment they remain with you. We see it every day on the television; you will have superstar athletes wearing 2 and 3 carat diamond earrings. Do you think a white of similar income would purchase those same items?

The second relates to the things we value as a culture. The reason we would rather spend the money on sneakers rather than books or educational toys is because those things are not viewed as having value. We don’t seem to value long-term rewards. We want instant gratification. The long-term values of having an education or saving money are not promoted in our communities. In other words, it is more important to have the child look wealthy today to impress than it is to invest in the child’s future to become wealthy later which is not impressive. Look at the cultures that value education, what is impressive to them is not flashy jewelry, clothes, or cars. Somewhere we have either chosen or been sold on the belief that these things denote class and wealth, when in actuality they denote neither. One of the main reasons the dope trade is so attractive is that it promises fast and easy money. Why wait and work hard trying to get an education when you can sell poison. The sad thing is that most of these guys aren’t even trying to get rich, they’re just trying to make enough to get a few things.

These are mostly grown folks so what difference does it make what they spend their money on anyway? First, making these purchases reinforces the false notion of wealth. Second, if you are spending more on one thing, then subsequently something is getting less. There is only so much income available to spend. So, if you are spending 30% more on flash, then some other areas are receiving less. There is only so much money to go around and usually according to the study the areas that are receiving less are education and savings. These are the two areas that actually help to build wealth in the long run.

The question now becomes, why are these areas not valued? I remember growing up in an atmosphere of hope and promise for the future, education was promoted even by those who didn’t have any. Children were encouraged to become educated and those that did were given motivation to go further. Have we sunk into a vicious cycle of poverty that begets poverty? Have we been seduced by the “pimp my” syndrome, where the façade is more important than the substance? Where does it end? I had a friend who’s two sons and a cousin, who were by all indications good kids, they went out and carjacked an old couple to go joyriding because her and her husband were not able to get them the gifts for Christmas they felt entitled to. Needless to say they are locked up and three more black boys are lost to the system.

The problem is that we as a nation are spending too much money on things that have no real value in order to impress people who make no difference in our lives. The problem for blacks is that we can’t afford it financially, spiritually, and culturally. Somewhere there has been this disconnect from obtaining things through hard work to this quick and easy idea. I don’t know where it came from, but I know it had better change soon or it won’t matter how much your sneakers cost when you’re laying in the coffin or in prison.

[1] http://www.slate.com/id/2181822

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Supreme Court Versus Brown Part Infinity

The fallout from the recent Supreme Court decisions concerning school desegregation is starting to surface in many communities now embolden to return to the segregated past. I recently read about the situation in Tuscaloosa, AL; where the majority white school board and the white superintendent have drawn up a rezoning plan that looks dangerously close to a return to segregation to many observers.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan. The results: all but a handful of the hundreds of students required to move this fall were black — and many were sent to virtually all-black, low-performing schools.

Black parents have been battling the rezoning for weeks, calling it resegregation. And in a new twist for an integration fight, they are wielding an unusual weapon: the federal No Child Left Behind law, which gives students in schools deemed failing the right to move to better ones.[1]

It is already difficult for most inner-city school districts to desegregate due to white flight and the private school dodge of many white parents. I have to acknowledge that as a parent I understand the desire to have your kids in a safe environment where they are getting a quality education. The problem I have is that instead of complaining about or laying blame why more parents don’t become involved to upgrade and change the existing public education system. It is to all of our benefits that we raise the level of education for all of our children.

Sometimes I just don’t get it; this country could have been the greatest experiment of human interaction in the history of the planet. We could have become the beacon for other nations by demonstrating that people of diverse backgrounds could in fact live together in peace and harmony. I guess alas it is not to be, because all we have done is to further illustrate how fear and divisiveness even among people of the same nation still trumps everything else. Either we are going to try and live together or we are not. It is time for those of us black and white who have a desire to make this thing work to overcome ourselves and come together. I am not advocating that we become one big melting pot, although I don’t have a problem with that, I am suggesting that we are able to atleast have a nation of mutual respect, honesty, and fairness.

We have so much abundance in this land and yet to look at the behaviors of many it would appear that we were in some third world nation struggling to survive on subsistent resources. I couldn’t imagine what this nation would be like if we really had to scramble for survival on a day to day basis. The level of racial animosity would be off the scale. As I have written before, because of our history we have to be compelled within the boundaries of our laws to integrate. I am speaking of integration in the sense of learning to accept our differences and our similarities with empathy and understanding for one another. I don’t expect to someday have us all standing holding hands singing, “We shall overcome” but why are we unable to live together as equals is beyond me. Why must one man dominate another man?

The plan in Tuscaloosa involved redrawing the lines of the district to place more minority students in the lower performing schools. The white parents had complained of overcrowding in the white schools, because so many of the black students wanted to go to the schools where they could get a quality education, go figure. Here is my question, why can’t all the parents come together in the district and raise the level of all the schools? Why must everything in this country be an either/or proposition? If you spread around the students and the resources evenly couldn’t you over time raise the level at all the schools?

Months later, the school board commissioned a demographic study to draft the rezoning plan. J. Russell Gibson III, the board’s lawyer, said the plan drawn up used school buildings more efficiently, freeing classroom space equivalent to an entire elementary school and saving potential construction costs of $10 million to $14 million. “That’s a significant savings,” Mr. Gibson said, “and we relieved overcrowding and placed most students in a school near their home. That’s been lost in all the rhetoric.”

Others see the matter differently. Gerald Rosiek, an education professor at the University of Alabama, studied the Tuscaloosa school district’s recent evolution. “This is a case study in resegregation,” said Dr. Rosiek, now at the University of Oregon.

In his research, he said, he found disappointment among some white parents that Northridge, the high school created in the northern enclave, was a majority-black school, and he said he believed the rezoning was in part an attempt to reduce its black enrollment.[2]

What good is saving money if you are not educating all of your children? No, Mr. Gibson, the cost savings have not been lost in the rhetoric, what has been lost in your calculations is that separate but equal has always been a cheaper way to educate. The way to alleviate the overcrowding in the white schools would have been to raise the level of performance in all the schools, but that would require hard work and commitment which the school board obviously didn’t want to pursue.

In a bizarre twist to the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation the parents of the black students are requesting transfers from the lower performing schools based on the criteria of that legislation. In the rhetoric of Mr. Bush, this was one of the goals of the legislation, but let’s wait to see their reaction to it being used as a tool of integration. I have a feeling we are going to see more of these cases as more school districts begin to remove race as a criteria of equal opportunity.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/education/17schools.html?hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/education/17schools.html?pagewanted=2&hp

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Why The Supreme Court Was Wrong

After having read all the reasons why the recent decision of the Supreme Court concerning school desegregation was wrong, I have come to the conclusion that we have all missed the boat. The purpose of integration was not to make black kids smarter by sitting them next to white kids. If you judge the process based on that criteria, it has been a failure. If you talk to the people who were on the front lines of bringing this issue to the forefront or read their stories, it was never for that reason.

The purpose of integrating the two separate systems was two-fold. First of all, it would bring badly needed funding to the black schools which were in such bad shape; it was a wonder anyone could learn how to tie their shoe, let alone reading, writing, and arithmetic. And the second was to give each child a chance to actually see and meet someone from a different place, diversity. An opportunity to talk, play and argue with someone who was not like themselves. It put a face and a life to “those people” that we didn’t talk about or for that matter even see. It made the invisible, visible. It allowed kids that were willing to see, that we were not so different after all, that a lot of those stories and stereotypes were just not true. If gauged in that light it was a great success.

Some will wonder how I can say it was a great success, I mean after all most of the white kids that went through it were those few whose parents believed in it or those too poor to go elsewhere. Why I say it was a success is in how the majority of young people today interact with each other. Think about what it was like before the Brown decision, how young people interacted across racial lines. Kids prior to this Brown would be amazed at how young people today can interact with relative ease. That didn’t come from television or church; it came from sitting next to each other day in and day out feeling the same way about school and being a kid. For that reason alone it should be mandatory that everyone attend a desegregated school.

I have always maintained and truly believed that the reason everyone should be allowed to attend college is not because of the great education that college provides in the classroom, but the great education it provides outside the classroom. The education one receives interacting with the many diverse races and nationalities in the dorms, in the dining halls, and at the parties is far more valuable. For those who are brave enough college can provide an opportunity get to learn about so many different cultures and people. It always troubled me to see kids come to college and be willing to interact with all this diversity only to go back home and pretend it never happened. To get back to their old friends and go back to their old ways, but I believe that internally they will forever be changed. They will know things that their friends will never know. Walls of prejudice will no longer be there even if they try to pretend they are.

I remember when I first went to college. I came from an all-black high school experience. Growing up I had known whites, but after we moved into the neighborhood most of them left. I learned more about how to be successful from the experience of being around all those different people than anything I learned in class. The truth is that success in life is about relationships, how we interact with each other. Those who choose not to participate in this experience will miss out on more than an opportunity for career advancement; they miss out on an opportunity at life advancement; to grow as a human being. We spend so much of our time trying to separate from each other. We build walls to separate ourselves both physically and emotionally, afraid to lower our guards. We take the easy way out believing the stereotypes and the worst about one another.

The Supreme Court was wrong because they were looking at the wrong measuring stick. In America we must constantly reinforce our unity, if we are to survive. It is too easy to forget that we are all Americans stuck in this insanity together. We need to have our walls broken down or we will just be a bunch of tribes struggling against each other when it would be so much easier if we pulled together. This Court chose fear and isolation over inclusion and diversity. In this place we call America, it is the government’s job to bring us together, even if that sometimes means against our will. Our ultimate survival depends on it. Will we someday have a colorblind society? I doubt it, but we can have a color tolerant society and that begins with coming together and learning together as little children.

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Brown vs. the Supreme Court 2007

And let us not grow weary while doing good,
for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart
Galatians 6:9

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected diversity plans in two major school districts that take race into account in assigning students but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricts how public school systems may attain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented. Federal appeals courts had upheld both plans after some parents sued. The Bush administration the parents' side, arguing that racial diversity is a noble goal but can be sought only through race-neutral means.[1]

With its latest decision on school desegregation the Supreme Court has once again rejected the concept of diversity in public education. We are steadily reviving the concept of separate, but equal. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling and the opinion of many White Americans, we have yet to overcome discrimination in this country. If we agree that there is still discrimination and yet we choose to do nothing about it, what does that say about how we really feel about discrimination?

To acknowledge the obvious requires no courage, but to stand on the side of right with action and sacrifice is another story. Let’s face it there is no easy answer to the race problems we face as a nation, but what bothers me the most is that in order for this country to become what it is today millions of Black men and women had to make a sacrifice unwillingly through slavery. Now that a sacrifice is needed from those who have benefitted from the previous sacrifice is required, we want to hide behind “reverse discrimination”. We want to say all things can now be equal; ignoring the past will not bring justice. Confronting it, acknowledging it, and making changes is how the past is remedied.

Can someone explain to me how you can repair racial discrimination without taking into account race in its mending? Did I miss the class where we learned how to fix gender discrimination without using gender? Does anyone remember the remedy for Title IX, for those who don’t remember let me give you some figures to chew on.

In 1972, Congress enacted Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education. In the 25 years since its passage, Title IX has helped women and girls make strides in gaining access to higher education, athletics, and nontraditional fields of study.
In 1972 women made up 44 percent of undergraduates; today women are 55 percent.
In 1971 girls made up 1% of high school varsity athletes; today they make up 40%.
Until Title IX, many high schools prohibited girls from taking certain courses, such as auto mechanics and criminal justice.
In 1970 women earned 0.7% of bachelor's degrees in engineering; in 1994 women earned 14.8% of these degrees.
In 1970 women earned 7.1 percent of law degrees and 9.1 percent of medical degrees; in 1994 women earned 43 percent and 38 percent of degrees in those fields.[2]

A conscious effort was made to give women preference in athletics to make up for past discriminatory practices and we can see the results. There were men who screamed “reverse discrimination”, but the country stuck to its guns, because it was the right thing to do. The justices talked about diversity being an admirable goal, but talk is cheap without the tools to carry it out.

Louisville's schools spent 25 years under a court order to eliminate the effects of state-sponsored segregation. After a federal judge freed the Jefferson County, Ky., school board, which encompasses Louisville, from his supervision, the board decided to keep much of the court-ordered plan in place to prevent schools from re-segregating.

The lawyer for the Louisville system called the plan a success story that enjoys broad community support, including among parents of white and black students.

Attorney Teddy Gordon, who argued that the Louisville system's plan was discriminatory, said, ''Clearly, we need better race-neutral alternatives. Instead of spending zillions of dollars around the country to place a black child next to a white child, let's reduce class size. All the schools are equal. We will no longer accept that an African-American majority within a school is unacceptable.''[3]

“We will no longer accept that that an African-American majority within a school is unacceptable”, to me this sounds dangerously close to separate but equal making a comeback. It is unfortunate that we as a nation require these types of remedies to bring us together. It would be preferable for us to just unite and say let’s all live together in equality and harmony, but that is not reality today. It is always easy to give up on doing good; to say, “We’re tired. Aren’t we there yet? Pull yourself up, we quit calling you ni**er, didn’t we?”

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Schools-Race.html?hp

[2] http://www.nncc.org/Release/title9.html

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Schools-Race.html?hp

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