02/25

 

The reading The Condemnation of Blackness by author Khalil Gibran Muhammad expresses important themes regarding racialized crime statistics, and how these statistics have been used as an excuse to overpolice and imprison Black Americans. He explains that the US has a long history of using crime data to prove Black inferiority, collecting bias statistics that have been used to support an inaccurate assumption of inherent Black criminality. A key term to define from this reading could be Social Darwinism, a racist ideology steming from Darwin’s Origin of Species. Social Darwinists espout that there is a biological difference between the races, trying to provide scientific proof for white supremacy so they can have an excuse for blatant racism and systematic discrimination. Phony theories like this were backed by statistics that counted disproportionately high rates of crime and imprisonment for Black citizens, all collected without any acknowledgement of the racist policing and justice systems that create these trends. In discussing this reading in class, we talked about the role of research in race-making, and one group asked if we can ever collect data that is truly objective. Upon reflection, I think decision-makers and staticians need to ask themselves why collect these statistics in the first place. The reading proves that racialized crime statistics sought to prove Black inferiority. The idea that Black people were inherently criminal came first, and only after did governments try to justify this with evidence. Why do judges or police need to know those stats at all? Race is incurably entangled with how Americans navigate the world, and I think often collecting statistics about racial disparities can help work toward a solution by diagnosing the problem. If statistics that prove Black men are disproportionately imprisoned helps to reform the system, then this provides a net-benefit, because how else would advocacy groups be able to draw these linkages. But if the only reason for segregating crime statistics by race is to provide a justification for overpolicing and mass criminalization, then maybe we shouldn’t be collecting them in the first place? Would that help the problem? I don’t know, because clearly the issue is so entrenched in our justice system that making data objective proves to be a near-impossible task.

Secondly, the reading Race, Education and the Pursuit of Equity in the Twenty-First Century by Pedro A. Noguera describes what have been termed as second generation forms of discrimination, academic racial disparities that are impervious to legal intervention. The 21st century flavor of racial discrimination in schools has been frequently referred to as the Achievement Gap: a term that describes how students of color underperform in schools when compared to their white peers. This phrasing has been pervasive in media, but is woefully undescriptive of the larger systemic factors that perpetuate these outcomes. Others describe this as an opportunity gap, or an education debt, which perhaps more accurately capture the nuance of the factors at play that eventually create an achievement gap. Noguera goes on to discuss the historical situation of racial discrimination in schools, explaining how the landmark case Brown v. Board, that ended legally sanctioned racial discrimination, was “a limited tool and a weak lever for change”.  As someone who did progress through the American public school system, this surprised me, as I was always taught that Brown was a crucially important tool in ending racism in schools. In my high school understanding of it, Brown flipped a switch in a sense, from racist schooling to non-racist schooling. But even though legally Brown mandated some system change, the opportunity gap is still clearly pervasive in the way American public schools are run. Noguera points to disparities in teacher salaries, spending per pupil, suspension rates and more to evidence this gap. He even claims that we haven’t lived up to the goal of separate but equal as laid out by the case Plessy, a decision universally acknowledged as racist. That comparison really drives home his argument, as he explains that the majority of African American and Latino students attend schools that are majority of the same racial background, and that those schools are statistically worse than their white counterparts. His argument implies that if we even just lived up to the goals of Plessy students would be better off: we are clearly still separate, but we’re not even equal.

Noguera draws comparisons that parallel those discussed in the Condemnation of Blackness reading, in explaining that culture has become a way to justify the ‘achievement gap’ in schools. In education, non-experts have used elements of Black culture to justify why Black children are underperforming in schools when compared to their peers. I liken this to a form of Social Darwinism, wherein culture has become the new biology. Both biology and now culture have been used to try and provide ‘scientific’ reasoning to explain racial disparities, yet both rely on assumptions that there is something about Blackness that is inherently inferior. In both fields, non-experts have extrapolated data to support assumptions of white supremacy that do nothing to address the root causes of these disparities.