Tim Wise
Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S., and has been called, "One of the
most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation," by best-selling author and professor
Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise is the 2008 Oliver L. Brown Distinguished Visiting Scholar for
Diversity Issues at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kansas: an honor named for the lead plaintiff in the landmark
Brown v. Board of Education decision. Wise is the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, Affirmative
Action: Racial Preference in Black and White, a collection of his essays, Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an
Angry White Male, and Between Barack and a Hard Place: Race and Whiteness in the Age of Obama.
Before you attend the Tim Wise keynote, take some time to consider the following data on race and racial conflict today. While the data
makes it clear that, despite progress we should be proud of, we remain far from declaring victory against racism in America. Yet data like
this, while widely known among scholars, is clearly not informing most public debates about race, since the prevailing wisdom today,
particularly among white Americans, is usually some version of ‘we have solved that problem already.’ Why is the conventional wisdom
contrary to the best available data? How does Tim Wise’s presentation help us answer this question, see the data and better understand why
so many are unwilling to do either seriously?
2000 Census Data
Average of all US home values = $120,000
Average value of African-American homes = $81,000
Median family income for all Americans = $50,000
Median family income for African-Americans = $33,000
Poverty rate for all Americans = 12%
Poverty rate for African-Americans = 25%
Median Income in Cuyahoga County, 1999
White Households $44,675
Black Households $26,232 ($18,443 less than white households)
Ohio Poverty Rates, 2002
White Poverty, statewide = 7.5%
Black Poverty, statewide = 22%
Black Poverty Rate in Cleveland (1999) = 33.8%
Minority Business Ownership, 1997
White Owned, 93.7%
Black Owned, 3.4%
Drug Abuse in Ohio, 2002
Marijuana Users, 64% White and 33% Black
Barbiturate Users, 95% White and 4% Black
Crime and Punishment, 2000
Akron Police Officers, 74% White, 26% Black
Ohio State Highway Patrol, 85% White, 11% Black
9.7% of Black Males were in prison
1.1% of White Males were in prison
Black youth make up the majority of adjudications in each county…
…and at rates twice their proportion of the juvenile population
“There ain’t a white person in this room who would change places with me…and I’m rich!
That’s how good it is to be white.” --Chris Rock
What's in a name?
A 2003 Gallup Poll found that 55% of white Americans “feel that racial minorities in this country have equal job
opportunities as whites.” However, the Akron Beacon Journal reported on a University of Chicago/MIT study that
provided powerful evidence demonstrating that overt racial discrimination in employment remains “easy to find—if you
know where to look.” Researchers sent out 5,000 fictitious resumes in response to help-wanted ads. Each resume was
identical, except for being randomly assigned either a white-sounding name (Emily Walsh, Brendan Baker) or a blacksounding name (Lakisha Washington, Jamal Jones). “The study found that applicants with white-sounding names were
50% more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with black-sounding names. What’s more higher
quality resumes provided little advantage for black applicants.” How can we explain this, other than to conclude, as one
scholar did, that “deeply entrenched racism still blocks equal opportunity for blacks in the labor market”?
Some questions to think about…
What do these findings suggest about how the free market really operates? In this context, what is the function of
affirmative action policies? If we eliminate affirmative action policies, would we be safe in assuming that this would
mean that the best person for the job will get the job?
Excerpt from Deadly symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh, Loic Wacquant
“To explain the astounding over-representation of blacks behind bars that has driven mass imprisonment in the United
States, one must break out of the ‘crime-and-punishment’ paradigm to reckon the extra-penological function of the
criminal justice system as instrument for the management of dispossessed and dishonored groups. This article places the
prison in the historical sequence of ‘peculiar institutions’ that have shouldered the task of defining and confining African
Americans, alongside slavery, the Jim Crow regime, and the ghetto. The recent upsurge in black incarceration results
from the crisis of the ghetto as device for caste control and the correlative need for a substitute apparatus for the
containment of lower-class African Americans….
REFRAMING BLACK HYPER-INCARCERATION
“Three brute facts stare the sociologist of racial inequality and imprisonment in America in the face as the new
millennium dawns. First, since 1989 and for the first time in national history, African Americans make up a majority of
those walking through prison gates every year. Indeed, in four short decades, the ethnic composition of the US inmate
population has reversed, turning over from 70 percent white at the mid-century point to nearly 70 percent black and
Latino today, although ethnic patterns of criminal activity have not been fundamentally altered during that
period.”
How is this possible without an explanation that focuses on race and racism? If we think about this carefully, it cannot be easily dismissed by
the usual sound bites. If patterns of criminal activity for black Americans have not changed, it is not soft on crime to seriously demand an
explanation for why it is that incarceration patterns have reversed…it is precisely the question any thinking and patriotic American cannot
but insist our leaders productively respond to, right?
Excerpt from Getting into the Black: Race, Wealth and Public Policy, Dalton Conley
(You can find the full article in Political Science Quarterly, Winter99/2000, v114n4)
“Wealth ownership is the socioeconomic measure that displays the single greatest racial disparity in America today.
Blacks own, on average, one-twelfth the amount of property as whites, and this gap in net worth continues to grow even
in the post-civil rights era. The importance of this asset inequality cannot be understated. If one takes an
intergenerational view and measures class by going beyond labor market measures to include property ownership, then
many dynamics previously seen as rooted in an alternative or "underclass" culture among African Americans should in
fact be viewed as a result of economic inequality. In many instances, the effects of race are dramatically obscured by the
impact of class dynamics and economic resources.
For example, if we simply contrast blacks and whites without regard to socioeconomic background, we find that
African Americans are more likely to drop out of high school and less likely to complete college, that they are employed
for fewer hours and earn less money per hour than whites, that they have lower levels of wealth, and that they are more
likely to have a child out of wedlock or to use welfare as young adults. But if we statistically compare blacks and whites
who are similar in terms of their individual characteristics (age, gender, number of siblings, and, in some analyses,
education and income levels), their family backgrounds (parents' age, whether they grew up in a female-headed
household or one that used welfare), and their class origins (parents' education level and occupational prestige, as well as
their family's permanent income, net worth, and types of assets), we find that these racial differences change significantly
in magnitude and sometimes even in direction. For instance, when class background is equalized, blacks are just
as likely as whites to have completed college. When we take into consideration parental assets, we find that the
black-white wealth gap among young adults disappears. Racial differences in the chance of using welfare
among this age group also vanish…
…While the impact of race varies depending on which outcome we examine, in almost all instances socioeconomic
variables have a much greater impact in predicting outcomes than does skin color or racial identity for young adults who
have grown up since the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. These findings represent both good and bad news
for policy makers, since money is a lot more transferable than race. But the important racial gap in wealth that stems
from generations of black-white inequality is not easily remediable, because it largely results from past dynamics rather
than from a dearth of "equal opportunity" in the post-1960s world. If wealth differences could be rectified by providing
equal access in housing and credit markets, a policy solution would be clear. But class differences that result from the
wealth of one's parents are not so easy to redress….”
Finally, write a short paper that compares our every day conversations about race, what our most mainstream public and private leaders say
about race, and the gap between these and the data presented here that draws on the data and insights provided by Tim Wise during his
keynote address.