Does Race Matter? - 2

This is the second post with this title. Here's a link to the first, which is probably more thoughtful and in-depth than this one. Today I'm just adding some new examples.

We have a black President so it is clear that the US has come a long distance since I was in high school and segregation was the law in the South. But the fact that we have a black President has made those who still define themselves primarily by race feeling desperate. As I pointed out in the previous post with this title, White Supremacist groups are planning for a new civil war so they can be allowed to live with their racial compatriots.

While most people don't want to talk about it, I suspect everyone is expecting some crazy racist to take a shot at our President. The first thought I had, after the surprise of hearing Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize so early in his administration, was that perhaps they were afraid to wait too long since they only give Nobel Peace Prizes to living people. (There's an interesting account of how Gandhi did NOT win the Nobel Peace Prize on the Nobel site and how the decision was made not to award it posthumously.)

While most overt, "You can't come in because you're black" racism is gone, it's still buried deep in all our psyches. You can't have watched US movies and television and not come away with a feeling that blacks are, with some exceptions, not as good, not as desirable, and not as safe as whites. Even the most liberal whites, even blacks, have this buried deep in their souls. That's one of the reasons that Obama's election itself, even if he did nothing as President, was so significant. It symbolized that the US that elected Bush twice, was also capable of looking beyond race. I think the Peace Prize was justified simply because Obama's election changed world dynamics and the chances of peace in general. I had people in Thailand tell me that the fact that a black man was elected president of the US made them - as darker skinned people - feel more powerful and hopeful. Name anyone else who had a bigger impact on peace and reconciliation in the world.

If you doubt that racism still lives inside us all, consider your reaction to the idea of marrying outside your race, particularly if you are white and the other race is black. Yeah, it's ok for other people, but wouldn't you find some good, rational reasons why your daughter would be making her life far more difficult when she brings home her black fiance? Be honest. Even if you said, "No problem" didn't you hesitate just a little? If you didn't you're unusual.

Here's a study done by a computer dating company - OKCupid.

We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well.

My son sent OKCupid's report to me. Using their computer dating data base they studied how often people responded to others based on race. They controlled for other aspects and just focused on the race of the person sending the message. I'm trusting my son, who's far more statistically savvy than I am to have checked the data before sending it on. The tables of data are there for you to look at on the site. Here's the summary:

* Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.
* White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
* White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.
* Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
* White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It’s interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America’s next racial bogeyman, maybe there’s some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don’t.)

That's the subtle racism - from people who wouldn't think twice about hiring someone of a different race and might never tell a racist joke. But despite how far we've come, out-and-out racism is still alive and well in little pockets, even among public officials who deny people their rights based on their race.

The LA Times has a short AP piece in the paper today which shows us that racism, in its most blatant forms, is still alive and well in the US. A government official, a Justice of the Peace, in Louisiana regularly refuses to marry mixed race couples. I found a longer version of the AP story on The Grio:

A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

Go to the Grio for the rest.



So Obama is one of those children this guy is concerned with. He's concerned, what, that they may become president? Or the black and white blood is mixed inside them? Blood is red.

Race does still matter. For some barely at all. For others, only when it gets close to family. For some it's still an all consuming issue and while most still mask it with other issues (people opposed naming 9th Avenue in Anchorage because "it would disturb the numerical integrity of the street names"), but some, like the justice of the peace in the story above, still believe the races shouldn't mix.