THE MANY COSTS OF WHITE RACISM
CHAPTER 1

RACISM AND HUMAN HEALTH

Being black in America comes with many costs. In a previous study we asked a successful entrepreneur, What is it like to be a Black person in white America today?   She replied sharply:

One step from suicide! What I'm saying is--the psychological warfare games that we have to play everyday just to survive. We have to be one way in our communities, and one way in the workplace or in the business sector. We can never be ourselves all around. I think that may be a given for all people, but us particularly; it's really a mental health problem. It's a wonder we haven't all gone out and killed somebody or killed ourselves. . . . We learn the rules of the games, and by the time we have mastered them, to really try to get into the mainstream, and I mean economic mainstream . . . then they change the rules of the game.
The game becomes something else, because now you have learned how to play it.

This eloquent answer to a question about life in white America is full of insight, as well as of anguish, frustration, and pain. This woman is a creative and successful businessperson, and she is not actually contemplating suicide. Yet she described her life as a black person out in the white business world as involving psychological warfare games just to survive. The racist Agame necessitates a constant struggle on the part of black Americans to survive and to be successful in their individual lives and in their families. Because of continuing racism, living black in America usually involves confronting a range of physical and mental health problems that are not of one=s own choosing.

No matter how hard African Americans work, no matter what their hard-earned achievements may be, they still face high levels of discrimination, and this discrimination often leads to much additional life stress, some stress-related health problems, and the necessary development of a repertoire of fighting-back and countering responses to deal with the problems of everyday racism. African Americans are alternately baffled, frustrated, shocked, and outraged that the strong evidence of their hard work and personal achievements does not protect them from white discrimination. . . . Racial stereotyping, prejudice, and hostility still operate indiscriminately, despite the actual identities and achievements of the black individuals discriminated against.

The World Health Organization defines human health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. Thus, human health is much more than the absence of infirmity and disease; it involves positive well-being and the active possession of basic human rights, such as the right to be free of racial discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations and the right to fairness and social justice in one's everyday life.  The attainment of this well-being is made very difficult by the continuing reality of widespread racial discrimination. A recent report by the National Medical Association reviewed much data on the health conditions of African Americans in the past and in the present and came to this conclusion: According to the latest available data, African Americans are plagued with persistent race-based health disparities that . . . have existed for centuries. . . . The scientific literature is documenting increasing evidence that links compromised health status with biases based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, and culture that ultimately translates to discrimination in the health system. . . . As we enter the 21st century, institutional racism remains an insidious obstacle to improving and eliminating the disparate health status of African Americans in America.

What are described are the racial inequalities in health and health care that have lasted for centuries because of systemic racism--a concept that is central to our analysis in this book of the many costs of contemporary racism. We will show that contemporary racism--which includes both racial antipathy and active discrimination (see below)--is systemic and generates major barriers to the full health and well-being of African Americans, as well as of other Americans of color. Indeed, as we will see throughout this book, this systemic racism has serious negative consequences for the health of the society as a whole.

Over the last decade a growing number of research studies in the social and health sciences have demonstrated some of the personal health costs of systemic racism--of racial stereotyping, discrimination, and exclusion.  We will cite these numerous studies in later chapters. However, as of today, relatively little in-depth field research has traced out and examined the substantial range of costs of racial discrimination for African Americans, including not only the personal psychological and physical costs, but also the major family and community costs. In this book, we focus centrally on the everyday discrimination that is directed by whites against African Americans, on its consequences for those whom it targets, and on African Americans' reactions in terms of resistance to and countering this recurring discrimination. While workplace discrimination is our primary focus here, racial discrimination outside the workplace often comes into our respondents' multifaceted accounts. Indeed, it is this accumulating discrimination inside and outside their workplaces that over the long term likely accounts for the most harmful effects on their lives and health. It is the goal of this book to begin an in-depth examination of the substantial range of costs that African Americans still pay for the contemporary racism that crashes into many areas of their everyday lives.

The African American respondents that we quote in this book are almost entirely middle class. It is these economically successful African Americans who have most often been viewed by white Americans as having achieved equality, as doing well in U.S. workplaces, as living in full comfort and happiness, and as having achieved the American dream to at least the same degree as middle class whites. However, as we will see in later chapters, these views are generally well off the mark. For example, workplace integration for African Americans has in most cases been token or only one way. Black white-collar and blue-collar employees are often made to adapt to white workplace norms, yet few of their distinctive and important understandings and cultural norms, especially in regard to racial matters, are incorporated into these white-controlled workplaces. Integration has often created very stressful work situations for African American employees because of the many acts of blatant, covert, and subtle discrimination by whites that still await them there.

In addition, for many poor and working-class African Americans, psychological and physical health problems often arise not only from the direct discrimination in workplaces but also from physically difficult jobs or the lack of access to decent-paying jobs and to adequate and safe housing and neighborhoods. Difficult economic and housing conditions are usually linked directly or indirectly to the fact that many generations of African Americans have had to face much institutionalized racism. And these economic difficulties link directly to health problems. In a comprehensive analysis of the reality and privileges of whiteness, George Lipsitz, found that hazards in the living environments of many African Americans put their health at risk on a continuing basis: Environmental racism makes the possessive investment in whiteness literally a matter of life and death; if African Americans had access to the nutrition, wealth, health care, and protection against environmental hazards offered routinely to whites, seventy-five thousand fewer of them would die each year.

In his analysis Lipsitz demonstrates how large-scale job discrimination in the distant or recent past can mean lower income for present and future generations of black families. In central cities, government urban redevelopment programs, racially discriminatory home loan programs, and environmental hazards like toxic-waste dumping still increase the stress and add to the health risks for working class African Americans. Many white-controlled organizations and institutions are involved in these patterns of urban development, not just a few isolated bigots. This is what is meant by racism being institutionalized and systemic.
For the most part, our mostly middle class respondents do not face the direct health damage that comes from working in dangerous blue-collar jobs or that stems from not having a decent family income and adequate housing. In this sense, middle class African American represent a test case of whether living not-white in America is, directly and in itself, dangerous to one's health.

A STATE OF DENIAL

In spite of the painful reality of everyday racism--which time spent in candid discussions with even a few black acquaintances should make clear--most white Americans and many other non-black Americans insist on denying the reality of antiblack attitudes and discriminatory practices in the contemporary United States. One reason for this is that most whites live out lives that are racially segregated, and thus they have few substantial or enduring contacts with black Americans. Many, if not most, whites never become close enough to their few black acquaintances to have candid and consequential discussions about the racism these acquaintances face. Whites often see, in their workplaces or in the media, some African American strangers discussing personal experiences with racism. However, most whites seem to view such discussions as black paranoia, playing the race card, or blacks always complaining. Most do not try to go beyond these wrongheaded images to trying to understand the continuing realities of racial oppression. In addition, very few white Americans seem aware of, or are willing to acknowledge, the negative consequences and impact of ongoing racist attitudes, practices, and institutions.

White Views: Health and Economic Conditions

 The evidence of white denial and ignorance of the reality of discrimination and its heavy costs are substantial. For example, a recent national poll of 779 whites found that the majority (61 percent) viewed the average black person as having health care access that is equal to or better than that of the average white person.  However, contrary to this white majority opinion, the data show that whites are far more likely to have good health insurance and to get adequate or better medical care than Black Americans (see Chapter 7). This ignorance is particularly serious in light of the many serious health problems faced by African Americans. In addition, about half the white respondents felt that blacks had a level of education similar to or better than that of whites. Yet, white adults are much more likely to be college graduates, and are a little more likely to be high school graduates, than black adults. Half the white respondents also felt that, on the average, whites and blacks are about as well off in the jobs they hold. Once again, the data show that whites are much more likely than blacks to hold professional, managerial, or good-paying blue-collar jobs. Moreover, some 42 percent of the whites in this survey thought that the average black worker earned at least as much as the average white worker, although there is in fact a large gap in actual earnings.  When the results of the four questions were combined, 70 percent of these white respondents were found to hold one or more erroneous beliefs about white/black differentials. Just over half held two or more erroneous beliefs, while 31 percent were wrong on all items. Most whites hold to a fictional view of at least some aspects of the economic and health status of African Americans today.

On a general question in the same survey about opportunities in life, 71 percent of the white respondents thought that African Americans had opportunities that were equal to or better than those of whites. Moreover, only one in five among the white respondents evaluated the current societal situation accurately on a general question about how much discrimination African Americans faced--that is, they agreed that this situation today is one where African Americans face a lot of discrimination.  Yet, as we and other researchers have demonstrated in previous studies, and as we will show throughout this book, African Americans still face much racial discrimination.

Why Do Whites Deny the Reality of Racism?

Judging from this and other recent opinion surveys, a substantial majority of white Americans are greatly out of touch with social reality when it comes to estimations of the difficult health care and economic conditions faced by African Americans. These whites are either ignorant of these disparate and discriminatory conditions or are unwilling to fully acknowledge that they exist. Thus, it is not just African Americans who are paying a price for continuing racism in the United States. Today, one might argue that the majority of white Americans are mentally unhealthy because they deny easily ascertainable social realities B probably because they are conforming and lacking in introspection when it comes to their racial attitudes and views.  Also, for many of these whites, it would likely be too disruptive of their self-concepts to accept the fact that they live in a very unfair and non-meritocratic society. If these whites admitted to themselves that significant black disadvantages existed, then, conversely, they would have to acknowledge that significant white privileges also exist. If they accepted the hard reality of continuing racism, then they would have to question to what extent their successes result from their own efforts and to what extent their successes are linked to racial obstacles that confront Americans of color. Denial of the continuing racial discrimination and its negative impact allows many whites to keep their own self-conceptions intact, as well as their belief in a meritocratic society.

Another reason that whites downplay or deny the reality and costly impact of racism on African Americans is that they blame the victims. Many whites hold stereotypes that, directly or indirectly, blame black Americans for their lack of achievement or difficult socioeconomic situations. The common view is that black Americans bring whatever problems they still have on themselves. Indeed, most whites admit they still hold to negative images of African Americans. In one recent national survey of whites by Harvard researchers, 58 percent of the white respondents agreed with one or more of these listed traits as being applicable to African Americans: lazy, aggressive or violent, prefer to live on welfare, or complaining. Some 34 percent agreed with two or more of these negative traits.  Other surveys show a similar pattern of majority white acceptance of antiblack stereotypes and images.  Clear in these stereotypes is the idea that if African Americans would work harder and get rid of their poor values, they would do much better in society.

In addition to these overtly racist stereotypes, most whites also hold to individualistic values that lend themselves to de-emphasizing the racist realities of the society. Thus, there is much emphasis among white Americans on free will, on the supposed ability of each individual to achieve freely from among the many choices permitted in society. Again, those whites who deny significant antiblack racism likely believe themselves to have generally made it on their own--and believe that others are able to do the same. Whites see a few successful middle class or upper income African Americans in the mass media and may generalize from these examples to African Americans as a group. However, the routine assertion by whites of the ideological position that there are fully equal opportunities in the United States communicates that they do not understand that African Americans and other Americans of color are seriously limited by the contours of systemic racism.  Such a view is also supportive of white notions that there is no need for aggressive government programs to eradicate discrimination.

Denial of Racism in Health Care

A recent book titled PC, M.D. attempts to make the case that the Aracial disparities in health are real, but data do not point convincingly to systemic racial bias as a determinant.  The author, Sally Satel, is a white psychiatrist and fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. She reviews selected studies on racial differences in health care procedures and notes some flaws in a few studies. However, she downplays the findings that do show clear racial differentials and, more importantly, she ignores many other studies that point to racial discrimination, both subtle and blatant, on the part of health care practitioners and institutions (see Chapter 3). Like other conservative commentators, Satel also ignores the preponderance of data showing that a majority of white Americans, including many who are well-educated, harbor antiblack and other racial stereotypes, and that many whites still regularly discriminate against African Americans in such areas as housing and employment (see below). Even without the studies showing discrimination in health care, one should strongly entertain the possibility that the pervasive discrimination against African Americans perpetrated by whites in numerous other institutional arenas might well spill over into health care institutions. At a number of points Satel notes serious racial and economic differentials in health and health care, but does not see these as significantly linked to continuing racial or class bias in health care.

Indeed, at one point Satel raises the stereotypical question as to whether black respondents in one study Aoverreported episodes of discrimination.  This comment suggests the standard stereotype of African Americans as being Aparanoid about discrimination. Indeed, many whites reject or seriously play down black employees' reports of racial discrimination and its stresses inside or outside their workplaces, even though white employees' reports of health-damaging stress in the workplace are usually taken at face value. Research studies on stress generally accept workers' reports of job strain, daily work problems, and troubling life events.  These latter reports are rarely questioned by researchers or commentators as involving Aover reporting or Aonly their perceptions.

Moreover, like many whites who attempt to explain continuing inequality, Satel constantly reiterates the theme of this inequality problem being mainly the result of African Americans and other people of color not taking responsibility for their lives. Clearly, it is easy for an affluent white person like Satel to lecture those who are oppressed along racial and class lines on the need to take Apersonal responsibility over their health.  However, since Americans of color have little group control over the important institutions in U.S. society, there is only so much personal control that a person of color has over a range of important work, health, and healthcare matters. As groups, African Americans and most other Americans of color still have relatively little control of or influence over corporate workplaces, real estate firms, or healthcare organizations. As we will see in the data presented throughout this book, African Americans struggle daily over the barriers placed in their paths by white individuals and white-dominated institutions. Most do take responsibility for dealing with their own employment and health problems and, equally as important, for fighting the recurring white-generated racism they encounter. Given all that they face, and their remarkable perseverance in the face of major barriers, most African Americans do not need conservatives or others to lecture them about morality, especially from the discredited Ablaming the victim perspective.

We might add a more general note. Many well-educated conservatives deny the evidence on the many racial barriers that criss-cross U.S. society and seriously damage their targets. To take another example, the conservative Asian-Indian American journalist, Dinesh D'Souza, has written that, for groups like African Americans, AIrrational discrimination . . . is, as we have seen, a relatively infrequent occurrence. He also says that Ait does exist, but we can live with it.  Critical to such analyses is a denial of the many reported experiences of most African Americans about the widespread character of the discrimination that they face. Much of this conservative analysis denying racial discrimination is funded by right-wing foundations and institutes. Like D'Souza, Satel acknowledges financial and institutional assistance from a number of right-wing and conservative organizationsBin her case, the American Enterprise Institute, the Earhart Foundation, the Ethics and Policy Center, and the Center for Equal Opportunity. Since the 1980s, these and similar white-funded conservative organizations have intentionally engineered a large-scale conservative effort trying to shape the way Americans think about many important public policy issues, including racial and gender discrimination, immigration, welfare reform, and government health care programs.

Denial of Racism and Its Costs: A Recent Court Case

Most whites in this country's leadership seem to share, to some degree, in this denial of the seriousness of racism in U.S.. society. Not surprisingly, in both the past and the present, the overwhelmingly white and male elites at the helm powerful corporate, political, media, and academic organizations have played the key leadership roles in generating many stereotyped views of African Americans and in blocking or weakening government programs that might redress patterns of racial discrimination.

Take, for example, the white judges who in recent cases are backpedaling on government remedies for racial discrimination targeting African Americans.  For example, in a 1998 case, Etter v. Veriflo Corporation, the California Court of Appeals decided that frequent racist epithets directed at a black male employee (Etter) were not Asevere or pervasive enough to warrant a legal remedy under either federal or California employment discrimination law.  Etter reported that a white supervisor directed racially derogatory terms--among them ABuckwheat, AJemima, AboyBat him and other black employees, and that she mocked blacks' pronunciation of certain words. However, the court asserted that Etter was referred to as ABuckwheat by a supervising white employee Aonly twice, and also noted that Etter could not remember the precise dates when he was called Aboy. The court missed here one problem faced by many a black employee: Racial insults are common and are often ignored (or repressed) in order for the person to continue daily functioning--and thus may be hard to recall later.  Since subtle and blatant insults are recurring, it may be difficult to recall specific dates and insults. Furthermore, the court opinion referred twice to the fact that Etter had himself laughed at racially insulting comments, thereby implying that the negative impact of the racist comments was not serious or was only Ain the head of the victim, and thus beyond legal remedy. In fact, Etter may have laughed only in an attempt to get along with fellow white employees at the time, a common reaction of black employees who fear for their jobs.  Indeed, his laughter could also have been because of nervousness, shock, or disbelief.

This Etter court also questioned black reports of discrimination when they found it relevant, as in their noting that Etter had previously filed discrimination charges against another employee. The apparent reason for mentioning this fact is to suggest that Etter is overly sensitive. Or they may be suggesting that he is using his racial classificationBthat is, "playing the race card"  for the for the financial gain that might be won through a successful discrimination lawsuit. In this case, it apparently did not occur to these prominent judges that racial discrimination could be a common occurrence at a black man's workplace--or in his life generally.

The original Etter trial took place in Contra Costa County, California, and thus it is likely that jury was majority white. The jury was specifically instructed by the lower court judge to consider whether Aa reasonable person of the Plaintiff's race would have found the racial conduct complained of to be sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the person's employment and create a hostile or abusive working environment. However, one must question whether whites (and other non-blacks), as judges or a jury, are able to determine what is reasonable for an African American. In this case, the three appellate court judges acted, in effect, as a higher-level jury and all three were white men, as was the original district court judge. Since they are overwhelmingly white in composition, the California and U.S. courts do not ordinarily embed in their general understandings of workplace life the perspectives of the targets of racial discrimination. Instead, in their understandings the white-dominated courts embed the white (here, the perpetrator's) perspective. This is ironic since U.S. civil rights laws are supposed to take into full account the perspectives of those who are the targets of everyday discrimination. This Etter case suggests the reality of institutionalized racism in the U.S. justice system, what the leading constitutional scholar Roy Brooks has called "juridical subordination."  Only a jury, or group of judges, with a substantial representation of African Americans--those with much experience with everyday racism--could reach such a fair judgment about such workplace discrimination facing African Americans. Most whites simply do not have the knowledge or experience to make such judgments. It has been shown in surveys like those noted above that few whites have any significant understanding of the severity of the racism faced by black Americans.  The Etter court, in deciding that the plaintiff's experiences were merely episodic, and not pervasive, failed to understand the severity and impact of those experiences for black employees.

This case now stands as an important guide for judges in regard to the Areasonable person standard under both federal and California employment discrimination law. Clearly, the white judges here, and others with this view, are out of touch with social reality. Many if not most historically white workplaces have a hostile racial climate.  These workplaces have hostile racial climates largely because, as we noted above, most whites still harbor racist images, stereotypes, and propensities to discriminate against African Americans. Under the right circumstances, such stereotypes and prejudices play themselves out in subtly racist actions by whites. In yet other cases, the stereotypical images and related notions erupt in more overt and direct racist practices.     Discrimination in the workplace at the hands of fellow employees is bad enough, but when it is colluded in or made light of by higher-level and more powerful authorities, including immediate supervisors, top corporate executives, political leaders, and judges, its impact can be even more lasting and painful. Discrimination that is supported or ignored by higher-level authorities can be very negative in its effects because the targets of the discrimination do not know where to turn for help or redress. In many settings, most whites orient their actions to signals from these higher-level authorities, and racist behavior that is winked at or rewarded tends to be repeated.  The lack of significant remedial action by higher authorities to end the discrimination can contribute significantly to the damage it generates in the immediate period or over a longer period of time.
 
OUR THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: RACISM AS SYSTEMIC

There is a tendency in the analysis of racial matters in the United States to limit the concept of racism to just racial prejudices and stereotypes. However, we use here the original meaning of the term, and thus accent the structural and systemic character of contemporary racism. When Magnus Hirschfeld first used the term Aracism (in German) to describe the anti-Semitism directed against Jews in the 1930s, he had in mind much more than individual prejudices and stereotypes.  From the beginning this term racism was intended to mean a large-scale system of racialized oppression. A systemic perspective on racism directs us to pay attention to the particular social settings surrounding and generating racial discrimination and other forms of racial oppression. We can speak meaningfully of systemic racism because there are literally hundreds of thousands of social settings where discrimination or other racial oppression is daily imposed on African Americans and other Americans of color. These social settings include a myriad of private and governmental workplaces, educational classrooms, voluntary organizations, public accommodations, and other institutional settings.

In the structural regime that is everyday racism, whites act overtly, subtly, or covertly in order to single out and harm African Americans or other Americans of color. Discrimination thus involves actions, as well as one or more discriminators and one or more targets. In this book, we focus mainly on antiblack discrimination and its many consequences. Broadly viewed, the system of antiblack discrimination includes (1) the motivations, such as stereotyping and prejudice (2) the discriminatory actions, (3) the costs and benefits of discrimination, (4) the immediate social-institutional context, and (5) the surrounding community, societal, and global contexts.
In the late 1960s Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton made an important distinction between individual racism, such as the discriminatory actions of one bigoted white individual, and institutional racism, such as the institutional practices that result in large numbers of black children suffering inadequate nutrition.  This distinction is at the core of any deep understanding of contemporary racism. In many organizations and other societal settings, most whites have the ability and opportunity to discriminate as individuals, yet much of their power to harm African Americans or other Americans of color comes from their membership in larger white-dominated social networks and organizations, what have been termed "enforcement coalitions."  As we will see in later chapters, these white-dominated networks, coalitions, and other organizations usually undergird, or precipitate, the discriminatory actions of individual whites.

Antiblack discrimination today is commonplace, recurring, and institutionalized. For example, in many U.S. workplaces a racial hierarchy of dominant white workers supervising subordinate African Americans is often part of the organizational structure. In addition, institutionalized racism can be found in local cultures of organizationsBin the informal rules, the implicit protocols for workplace interaction, and the organizational memories. More generally, the racist culture of the larger societyBseen in everything from the language of epithets, to mass media images of black bodies, to distorted accounts of U.S. historyBconstantly interacts with, and reinforces, the social structures of racism.  Social psychologist James Jones suggests that cultural racism Acomprises the cumulative effects of a racialized worldview, based on belief in essential racial differences that favor the dominant racial group over others.  This worldview penetrates most areas of U.S. society.

In recent decades a number of scholars have shown how racial oppression intersects and interacts with other types of social oppression, such as class and gender discrimination and domination. For example, social psychologist Philomena Essed has used data from interviews with black women in the United States and the Netherlands to show that racism and sexism regularly interact in the lives of these women. As we will see in some of the comments of our respondents, the oppression of black women sometimes takes the form of racism, sometimes of sexism, and sometimes of gendered racism.  Scholars like Essed, Patricia Hill Collins, and Yanick St. Jean and Joe Feagin have in their research on the situations of black women and other women of color emphasized the importance of liberating these women from racial, gender, and gendered-racist stereotypes and discrimination.  In addition, Denise Segura has suggested the concept of triple oppression, the mutually reinforcing and interactive set of racial, class, and gender forces the cumulative effects of which Aplace women of color in a subordinate social and economic position relative to men of color and the white population.
 
In the routines of everyday life, the racist and gendered-racist norms imposed by white (or white male) enforcement coalitions are usually linked to, and perpetuated by, the antiblack stereotypes held by most white Americans. Many whites think and feel in racialized terms when they choose mates, neighborhoods, employees, and workplace buddies. Prejudice is not simply antipathy possessed by individual whites but is "rooted in a sense of group position."  As we noted above, opinion polls and social science research demonstrate that antiblack hostility persists among whites today, not because of a few isolated bigots, but because a majority of whites still cling to antiblack stereotypes or images. These images and stereotypes likely lie behind most of the discriminatory actions of whites--who are also imbedded in white networks and dominant in white-controlled workplaces and many other societal settings.

For nearly four centuries now, systemic racism has included a diverse assortment of exploitative, exclusionary, and other discriminatory practices targeting African Americans and other Americans of color. Some of this racialized mistreatment, as we will see in the accounts in later chapters, takes a direct and overt form, while other mistreatment is subtle or covert. Much of the racism encountered by African Americans today takes the form of what might be termed woodwork racism, that is, the racist incidents are so commonplace and recurring that many African Americans take them as an everyday aspect of their lives. If asked in a survey whether they have faced discrimination recently, many African Americans may not mention the many little racist events that cross their paths daily, but rather accent only the larger-scale and more dramatic incidents. In a previous study, a retired schoolteacher in a southwestern city recounted her experience with a racist epithet yelled by a clerk in a mall shop, then characterized the many recurring incidents of racism as the "little murders every day" that have made her long life so difficult.  It is clear in this statement that the everyday events, which might seem small and unimportant to outside white observers, in reality can cause great pain and stress. Racist practices are chronic stressors for most African Americans, stressors with often dangerous and deadly impacts.  The system of everyday racism is buttressed by white-racist ideologies, hostile prejudices, and negative images and stereotypes and is deeply imbedded in societal institutions that generate and preserve racial advantages for most white Americans.

UNJUST ENRICHMENT AND UNJUST IMPOVERISHMENT:     A BRIEF LOOK AT A LONG HISTORY

Historically, European adventurers and entrepreneurs from countries such as Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England generated a worldwide economic expansion involving much colonial domination over other peoples across the globe. This colonialism and imperialism involved seizing the land and labor of those seen as racialized Aothers. In the North American case, the European invaders subordinated or destroyed Indian societies and imported Africans as enslaved laborers used to help generate white wealth. They soon rationalized this theft of land and labor in extensive racist ideologies.

The Benefits and Costs of Slavery

 At the center of systemic racism are the many economic and political resources unjustly gained by whites over some fifteen generations since the 17th century. This unjust enrichment has included more or less exclusive white access to major social, economic, and political resources that were, until recently, denied to African Americans by slavery and segregation. Think for a moment about the length of  time that African Americans have been in North America, largely as the result of involuntary immigration as enslaved workers, beginning in 1619. For nearly two thirds of their total time in North America, African Americans were enslaved as the chattel property of white Americans. From the end of slavery in 1865 until the end of legal segregation in 1968, there was about another century of overt and blatant segregation (a system of near-slavery) for most African Americans. It was only about a third of a century ago that legalized racial oppression of an extreme type was abolished in the United States. For less than that ten percent of their total time in North America have most African American workers and their families been even legally free to pursue the American dream.

Beginning in the mid-17th century, African Americans were brutally and aggressively exploited in a growing, increasingly slavery-centered economic system that brought a range of benefits for white Americans at most class levels. Over nearly two and a half centuries, millions of enslaved black Americans labored for white slaveholders, large and small. Slaveholders were not the only beneficiaries of the slavery system. Those whites who held plantation jobs, those trading in products bought from or sold to plantations, and those working in support sectors such as shipbuilding, banking, and insurance also benefitted from the slavery-centered economic system of the long period up to 1865. In this slavery system, many white Americans in all social classes gained significant income and wealth unjustly, and at a high cost for African Americans.

The costs of slavery were far more than just economic, as one of the greatest Americans, Frederick Douglass, often indicated in his writings about his own enslavement. Writing in reference to a new white owner, he noted in an autobiography that: We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me. . . . At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear.

From the beginning, the system of enslavement had physical and psychological, as well as severe economic costs, for those enslaved. Under slavery, African American women not only suffered what Douglass described but also faced the added oppression of sexual victimization and violence from white slaveholders and other white men. Angela Davis has described well the lives of millions of enslaved black women Awho toiled under the lash for their masters, worked for and protected their families, fought against slavery, and who were beaten and raped, but never subdued.
 
We should also underscore the important point that for many enslaved African Americans engaged in an ongoing resistance to this racial oppression. For example, one day Frederick Douglass had a two-hour fight with his white owner, Mr. Covey. After an intense struggle, Covey decided to abandon the fight, and because of the resistance did not try to whip Douglass thereafter: This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. . . . My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.

Racial oppression not only means many personal and family costs but also requires the development of a range of resistance strategies. W. E. B. Du Bois captured the reality of this resistance when he long ago underscored the point that it was not white philanthropists, or Abraham Lincoln, who Afreed the slaves, but rather the constant resistance of enslaved African Americans Aby armed rebellion, by sullen refusal to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and Canada, by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many civilian helpers in the Civil War.   From the beginning, and now for centuries, African Americans have played a central role in their own liberation, both as individuals and as a group. As we will see in many of our respondents' accounts in later chapters, racial oppression operates in dialectical tension and interaction with acts of everyday resistance.

White Privileges and Black Oppression under Legal Segregation

After slavery the white majority continued to benefit, directly and indirectly, economically and psychologically, from an extensive system of legal and informal segregation, a system that lasted until the late 1960s. This white-maintained segregation had many major costs for African Americans, including physical, psychological, and economic costs. These included continuing violence against black men and black women, including widespread police brutality and some six thousand lynchings of African Americans by white lynchers often operating in mobs. Many whites, men and women, and workers at various class levels, gained much economically under this legal segregation. We do not have the space to demonstrate the substantial economic evidence of white benefits and black costs under legal segregation, so one dramatic illustration of these benefits and costs will suffice: Millions of white Americans today are the contemporary beneficiaries of very large giveaways of federal lands to their farming ancestors. The Homestead Act, passed in the 1860s, eventually provided some 246 million acres at minimal cost for some 1.5 million homesteads. Research by Trina Williams estimates that the likely number of current beneficiaries is likely in the range of about 46 million, almost all of whom are white because of restrictions on African American access to such lands during the period up to about 1930.  Until the 1960s, many other federal giveaways of wealth-generating resourcesBairline routes, radio and television frequencies, mineral resources, and government contracts and licenses--more or less exclusively benefitted whites.

Under legal segregation in the South, and similar informal segregation in the North, whites also got almost all the jobs above the menial level, whether in the blue collar or the white collar sectors of the economy. After World War II, whites got very privileged, or exclusive, access to a range of major government programs, including guaranteed home loans favoring buyers in white-suburban areas and veteran's (GI) programs for higher education favoring whites. Under legal and informal segregation, few but whites were able to attend many of the nation's historically white colleges and universities, at least until the 1950s and 1960s. This privileged educational access enabled many whites whose parents had modest means to secure the Acultural capital that they then translated into good-paying jobs, decent houses, and many consumer goods. These whites, in their turn, could translate their own prosperity into good educations and other benefits for their own children and grandchildren. Today, most whites continue to benefit not only from the unjust enrichment of their ancestors but also from the large-scale informal discrimination that still targets African Americans in housing, workplaces, public accommodations, and educational and political institutions.  While working class whites often have not been as well off as middle and upper class whites, they too have had access to a range of benefitsBsuch as white skin privilege and related benefits such as freedom from police brutalityB that no African Americans have had.

Once the structure of racial oppression was firmly in place, white privileges and enrichment came to be seen as natural, as they are seen today. The country's white leadership, strongly supported by most but not all ordinary whites, has long worked to maintain by discriminatory and exclusionary means this structure of unjust enrichment for white Americans. Individually and as a group, whites have helped to maintain the system of racism by subtle, blatant, and covert means.
The other side of unjust enrichment for whites is unjust deprivation and impoverishment for African Americans. Over time, the wealth-generating system of white racism has cost African Americans enormous amounts of economic resources and other wealth. One economic analyst has estimated that the dollar value of the labor taken from enslaved African Americans for just the years 1790-1860 is in the $7-40 billion range, depending on the historical assumptions.

Moreover, we should add to the value of this stolen labor the income and wealth that would have been generated by these African American workers—and, subsequently, by generations of their descendants--if they had been able, like many whites during this period, to put some earned wages into income-generating investments such as land, farms, other business enterprises, and education. Viewed over many generations, the lost wealth and other economic losses for African Americans that are rooted in the slavery period are doubtless enormous.

Interest that might have been made from saving it from then to the present, the current economic loss (income diverted) for black Americans is several trillion dollars.  In addition, under the system of legal and intensive informal segregation that was in effect from the late 1800s to the 1960s in the South and the North, much more income and wealth were lost because of high levels of discrimination perpetrated by whites in many areas, such as employment and housing. Yet more income and wealth have been lost to most African Americans since the end of that legal segregation, as a result of contemporary patterns of discrimination, again in such areas as employment and housing. Systemic racism has meant not only much less income and wealth for fifteen generations of African American families, but also fewer opportunities to overcome these huge losses because of continuing discrimination, to the present day. The economic debt alone that is owed to African Americans is today in the trillions of dollars. This substantial dollar amount does not include the costs of centuries of personal and family pain and suffering, or the many shortened lives.

Discrimination Today: A Brief Overview

 In previous books we have described in detail the data that shows conclusively the widespread character of the racial discrimination that still afflicts African Americans today.  Because this is not our main focus in this book, we will only briefly note some recent evidence on continuing racial oppression. Discriminatory practices that create heavy costs for African Americans remain commonplace and pandemic. They are to be found in all major employment sectors. For example, one Los Angeles study found that about sixty percent of more than a thousand black respondents reported discriminatory barriers in workplaces in just the previous year.  Those with more education, like many of our respondents, were more likely than those with less income to report such discrimination at their workplaces. In addition, a recent national survey found that more than a third of black respondents reported discrimination in regard to jobs or promotions.  Another recent large-scale survey of 40,000 military personnel found that nearly half, or more, of the Black respondents had encountered racist jokes, offensive racial discussions, or racial condescension just in the last year. Significant proportions also had experienced racist comments, published materials, hostile racial stares, and racial barriers in regard to career-related decisions. Still, employment in the military is considered by many African Americans to mean fewer problems with white racism than one would encounter in the civilian sector.

Reports of unfair racialized treatment by white police officers are commonplace. African American pedestrians and motorists are much more likely than whites to be stopped, questioned, or searched by the police. One urban survey found that black respondents were much more likely than whites to report being unfairly stopped and checked out by the police.  One ACLU study of Interstate 95 in Maryland found that, while black drivers made up just 18 percent of those in violation of traffic laws, they were about three quarters of all those stopped and searched by police.

One recent national survey found that more than 80 percent of the black respondents reported facing hostile racial acts in public spaces or public accommodations; these acts by whites included poor service, racial slurs, fearful or defensive behavior, and lack of respect.  Another recent survey of 131 black alumni of the University of Florida found that most had been victims of discrimination when they traveled as tourists. They experienced discrimination while shopping, dining, or staying in a hotel. Nearly eight in ten had experienced discrimination at a restaurant, while about seven in ten reported discrimination in hotels and in shopping.  Other research studies have found serious levels of discrimination for African Americans shopping for new cars, in bail setting by judges, and in medical treatment by physicians.

Several audit studies have found high rates of discrimination for black renters and home buyers seeking decent housing for themselves and their families. In field studies in several cities, when their experiences were compared with those of white tester-renters, black tester-renters were found to have faced discrimination some 60-80 percent of time depending on the city.  [[In a 2001 study in Houston, for example, a rental audit study using 40 paired testers found the discrimination rate was 80 percent in attempts to rent by African Americans and 65 percent in attempts to rent by Latinos. In the case of African Americans the discrimination took the form of openly discriminatory policies, misinformation about the housing, and differential treatment in regard to appointments, applications, and terms of contracts.   A 2001 Boston audit study included apartment complexes and real estate agencies. In 60 percent of the 4 phone tests and 31 in-person tests black testers received discriminatory treatment.

Thus, high levels of discrimination have also been found in audit studies involving home buying. A recent national survey asked 1,663 whites about their likely home buying choices. Each white respondent was given a statement asking them to consider how they would react if they were looking for a new house and found one that was much better than any other and in their price range. The researchers then varied what they told the respondents about the racial composition of the hypothetical neighborhood, the quality of local schools, the stability of property values, and the local crime rate. Controlling for other factors, the researchers found that while the percentage of the neighborhood that was Latino or Asian had no independent effect on white housing choices, the percentage black, controlling for other factors like crime and school quality, had a strong and independent effect on white housing choices. At low black percentages, the average white respondent would buy the house. However, Aafter about 15 percent black, net of the variables for which race serves as a proxy, the average white is unlikely to buy the house.

A major reason for the extensive residential segregation along racial lines, in U.S. towns and cities, lies in the unwillingness of many whites B including the owners of many apartment complexes and many owners or salespeople in real estate firms-- to sell or rent to African Americans (especially in historically white residential areas, as well as the unwillingness of many white families to consider housing areas with more than a small percentage of African Americans living there.

The consequent residential segregation is a key underlying factor that links to or generates other problems facing African Americans. Segregation of neighborhoods and communities often means, for African Americans, less access to schools with excellent resources, less access to key job networks, less access to quality public services such as hospital care, and less access to quality housing. The latter factor, less access to quality housing, limits the ability of African American families to build up substantial housing equities, a major source for the wealth passed along by white families now for several generations.

In addition to the major incidents of discrimination, such as being turned down for a job or for housing, there are the many everyday hassles, the “woodwork” discrimination that creates much stress. For example, in a recent Detroit study of African American women, researchers Brown, Keith, and Jackson found that 81 percent of their 331 African American respondents reported having faced everyday types of discrimination--with 62 percent reporting moderate to high levels of that mundane mistreatment. This major mistreatment included verbal insults, disrespect, and poor service from whites. These researchers also found that this woodwork racism had serious consequences, for there was a significant relationship between experiences with this mundane discrimination and reported psychological distress. [Diane R. Brown, Verna M. Keith and James S. Jackson, “(Dis)respected and (Dis)regarded: Race Discrimination and Mental Health,” in D. R. Brown and V. M. Keith, eds., In and Out of Our Right Minds: African American Women and Mental Health (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming]

Economic Costs Today

An early 1990s a United Nations report discussed the living conditions endured by African Americans compared to people in other countries. This report used a Human Development Index (HDI) to measure the quality of life. The index included data on education, income, and life expectancy. Considering the many countries (and subgroups) examined in the report, U.S. whites, taken separately, ranked first in overall quality of life. However, taken separately, African Americans ranked just 31st in the long list of countries and subgroups.

Why is there such a huge disparity in quality of life after three decades of apparent attempts by the federal government to eliminate discrimination and its effects? In the U.S. the remedies for racial discrimination, segregation, and other racial oppression since the 1960s civil rights movements have not brought the dramatic socioeconomic changes and redistribution that many African Americans and their non-black allies had hoped for. Today, there are huge and continuing inequalities in wealth, income, and education between white and black Americans. These inequalities are, as the distinguished Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once noted in a 1968 court case, the continuing consequences of past oppression: ASome badges of slavery remain today. While the institution has been outlawed, it has remained in the minds and hearts of many white men. Cases which have come to this Court depict a spectacle of slavery unwilling to die.
 
Black Americans today pay a heavy economic price for nearly four centuries of racial oppression, a price most dear for those African Americans with low-wage jobs. Over the last decade or two, black families, on the average (median), have had a family income only about 55-63 percent of that of white families. Today, African American families continue to endure poverty conditions at a much greater rate than white families, and black workers face an unemployment rate that is typically twice that of whites. Black workers are often the first laid off during economic recessions and are often the last to be recalled. Even more serious is the fact that today the wealth (net worth) of the average black family is about 10 percent or so of that of the average white family, a clear indication of the impact of unjust enrichment over many generations--unjust enrichment taking the form of more or less exclusive white access to material, educational, and cultural resources, often for many generations.
 
More than Economic Losses: Physical, Psychological, Family, and Community Costs

 Historically, antiblack racism has had a great impact well beyond the economic costs. Many if not most African Americans had their lives shortened under slavery and segregation, from the poor economic conditions and the direct killings, such as lynchings, by individual and organized whites. Later, those who participated in the 1950s' and 1960s' civil rights movements were sometimes injured or killed, just for seeking basic civil rights and an end to de jure and de facto segregation in education, housing, and other institutional arenas. Indeed, many brave black children were on the cutting edge of school desegregation, in the North and the South, and they often paid a heavy price. In one interview study, a Chicago mother who does counseling for homeowners discussed how they learned of her daughter's borderline epilepsy: AI moved out here in >69. We were one of the first black families. My daughter attended a predominantly white school that was becoming integrated. My neighbors were fighting it. I'd never seen a mob of whites until that time. Never in my whole life. . .There were maybe four hundred, five hundred whites protesting the black children. Then she notes the impact on her daughter, who was only fourteen and in the first year of high school: AShe began to get really nervous and didn't want to go to school. It got so bad that I thought maybe it was drugs. So I had taken her to a psychiatrist. We come to find out that it was just the fear of going to school there. I didn't know she was a borderline epileptic. The pressure brought it out.  Not only the child, but her family had to suffer through the extraordinarily intense pressures the daughter faced while simply trying to fulfill the American dream of a good education.
Today, antiblack discrimination and other aspects of racial oppression continue to have much more than just an economic impact on African American individuals, families, and communities. There are still physical, psychological, family, and community costs, as we will document in later chapters. In his provocative and widely read book, African American journalist Ellis Cose began his analysis with this comment: ADespite its very evident prosperity, much of America's black middle class is in excruciating pain. And that distressBalthough most of the country does not see itBilluminates a serious American problem.

The aforementioned United Nations HDI index included life expectancy, a statistic which is sharply different for black and white Americans. On the average, white Americans live about 6-7 years longer than black Americans. That is one summary indicator of the long term and present day effects of a Aslavery unwilling to die. Since the mid-1990s an increasing number of health and social science researchers have focused their work on the consequences of racial discrimination for the psychological and physical health of African Americans. For example, a metropolitan Detroit study looked in some detail at the situations of white and black women and found that black women had fewer economic resources, had more experience with unfair and discriminatory treatment, and had more serious life crises than did the white women. They also found that racial differentials in discriminatory treatment and life crises significantly, and independently of certain control variables, contributed to racial differences in health status.  In addition, a 1990s survey found that the level of discrimination reported over the lifetimes of black respondents was linked to psychological problems, overall well-being, and number of days sick in bed.  As we will see in later chapters, the physical reactions to racial discrimination often take the form of all-day headaches, stomach problems, chest pains, stress diabetes, and hypertension. In addition, a study of 1980s longitudinal data from black respondents interviewed at two points in time found that experience with racial discrimination at one point in time was associated with high levels of psychological stress at a later point in time.  And several recent studies of black respondents have used detailed inventories of racial incidents and found that, the more discrimination that a person reported, the greater the level of a person's psychological distress.  As we will see in later chapters, the psychological reactions to discrimination take many forms-- ranging from anger and bitterness, to anxiety and frustration, to a sense of fear or hopelessness. And these often link to physical health problems as well.

Linkages: Discrimination Translates into Health Consequences

Exactly how does everyday discrimination get translated into negative physical and psychological health consequences? One recent model proposes that the environmental stressors of racial discrimination are translated through the understandings of the targets of discrimination, which in turn generate coping responses to discrimination and negative health impacts from discrimination. In this proposed model, lying between the environmental stressors and the understandings and perceptions of individuals are an array of sociodemographic, psychological, and biological-constitution characteristics that can shape how the racism is received and understood by its targets--all of which factors in turn shape subsequent coping responses and personal health consequences.

While a full understanding of how past and present discrimination gets translated into negative health consequences is not yet possible, there is a general agreement that one central way this happens is through the generation of additional, often high, levels of stress beyond those faced by white people in the same or similar social settings--added stress that in its turn creates or aggravates psychological and physical problems. Racial or ethnic discrimination in the workplace often generates additional stress on top of the ordinary stress that comes from the commonplace problems that all workers face.  In the case of this Aordinary workplace stress, an employee often feels that the stress is caused by something that makes some sense in terms of their place or purpose in the workplace. Additionally, a worker can often take some action to gain more control over her or his situation, and thus to lower the stress level. In the case of stress in the workplace caused by racial discrimination, however, the source of the stress typically makes no sense in terms of the worker's purpose in the workplace. Even more importantly, despite many attempts, an African American worker may never find a way to gain some control over the source of racially generated stress in the workplace. Thus, stress caused by racial hostility or discrimination is typically different in kind or intensity than normal workplace stress.

While there are few medical studies dealing directly with the linkage running from discrimination to stress to physical effects, there is a substantial research literature showing that serious stress of other kinds can have negative effects on a person's cardiovascular, immune, and neurological functioning. Research shows that stress can create problems with breast cancer survival, heart disease, pulmonary disease, and respiratory infections.  Numerous research studies show that major life crises (for example, divorce), recurring role strain (for example, in the workplace), and economic problems (for example, unemployment) are stressors that can have a very serious effect on any person's psychological or physical health.  It seems very likely that the stress from racism's many incarnations, stress that is often great, has similarly negative effect on psychological and physical health. We will see much evidence on this point in late chapters.

The everyday stressors that target African Americans at work and in other social settings include specific overt, subtle, and covert acts of discrimination by white supervisors, peers, clients, and subordinates. In addition, experiencing white racism is more than a matter of a few isolated events over a black person's life. It almost always entails a long string of discriminatory events with accumulating consequences. In a previous study, Joe Feagin and Melvin Sikes developed the idea Athat experiences with serious discrimination not only are very painful and stressful in the immediate aftermath but also have a cumulative impact on particular individuals, their families, and their communities. A black person's life is regularly disrupted by mistreatment suffered personally or by family members.  When one faces a long series of discriminatory incidents over the course of a lifetime, often totaling thousands of incidents, these crises disturb an individual's life trajectory and force adaptations and countering responses. This long series of discriminatory events typically has significant family and community consequences. A person who suffers a discriminatory attack often shares the burden of this event with family and friends, and this in turn can create Aa domino effect of anguish and anger rippling across an extended group. An individual's discrimination becomes a family matter.  Particular instances of discrimination may seem minor to some outside (especially white) observers, particularly if they are considered in isolation. However, when blatant racist actions and overt mistreatment combine with discrimination in more subtle and covert forms, and when these discriminatory practices accumulate over weeks, months, and years, the effect on African Americans is more than what a simple summing of the impact of particular incidents might suggest. There is often a significant multiplier effect from recurring racial hostility on a person's work, health, and social relationships.

In addition, there is the related stress that comes from differential treatment that results from institutionalized racism and lies deeply imbedded in the social background. This institutional racism includes the relative lack of economic resources bequeathed on many black families as the multigenerational legacy of slavery, legal segregation, and contemporary discrimination. Past and present discrimination can be translated into negative health consequences by means of a reduction in the resources available to families and individuals, resources that might be used to protect or buttress economic, psychological, and physical health. These resources include not only economic and educational capital but also critical stores of personal intellectual and motivational energy. In a previous study, a retired black psychologist suggested that the interesting point that each human being gets one hundred ergs of energy to live out their lives. Then he added this sharp follow-up: ANow a black person also has one hundred ergs; he uses fifty percent the same way a white man does, dealing with what the white man has [to deal with], so he has fifty percent left. But he uses twenty-five percent fighting being black, [with] all the problems being black and what it means.  He had in mind the huge amount of energy that African Americans expend in dealing with everyday racism. The negative consequences of racism include the sapping of the critical human energies that shape success in a variety of endeavors.

A century ago the pioneering social psychologist, William James, noted that there is human isolation and marginalization are Athe greatest of evils for human beings.  Among those who are marginalized in social interaction an "impotent despair" and other psychological problems may develop. Writing in the 1940s in his influential book, An American Dilemma, social scientist Gunnar Myrdal underscored the link between widespread antiblack discrimination and social isolation and caste-like marginalization.  In the last two decades social scientists have documented the negative effects that marginalization and dehumanization can have on the physical and emotional health of human beings in a variety of settings.  The serious damage that racial discrimination inflicts on its African American targets includes such marginalization and dehumanization, which in turn can have serious physical and psychological consequences. In various accounts that follow from our respondents in later chapters, they experience being "outsiders" excluded from full human recognition, from important social positions, and from certain social and economic rewards.

Fighting Back

The costs of racism do not take place without major responses from African Americans. As we will see in Chapters  5 and 6, African Americans have had to craft an extensive array of ways to fight racism, from withdrawal, to sharing with family and friends, to open confrontation with the discriminators, to lawsuits. African Americans must live their lives in two communities. As Howard Ramseur has put it, “While most blacks live, have families, social friends and churches within the black community, they still must adapt to white-run schools, workplaces, military settings, and media, an adaptation that often requires them to juggle different values, behavioral styles and aspirations.” The social reality of racism is pervasive, but that does not mean that most African Americans do not develop strong and reasonably successful ways of coping and contending with that everyday oppression. For centuries, African Americans have been faced, as individuals and families, with developing an extensive array of strategies for fighting back. [Howard P. Ramseur, “Psychologically Healthy Black Adults,” in Black Psychology , edited by Reginald Jones (Third ed.; Berkeley, CA: Cobb & Henry, 1991), p. 355.

OUR RESPONDENTS

To begin a serious sociological examination of the perceived costs of racial discrimination, we conducted five exploratory focus groups with economically successful African Americans, two in the Midwest and three in the Southeast in the mid-1990s. We used informants in several communities as starting points to suggest economically successful African Americans who were likely to have significant experience in predominantly white workplaces. Our sample ranges from lower middle class to upper middle class, and most are over the age of thirty. We secured thirty seven participants, sixteen in the Midwest and twenty one in the Southeast. Of those reporting their age the majority were between thirty one and forty years of age, with five between twenty one and thirty and twelve between forty one and sixty.

 Among those reporting their education, most had pursued graduate work beyond a four year college degree, while thirteen others had completed some college work or earned a college degree. Only one reported not having gone to college. Among those who reported family income the majority had an income that was $31,000 a year or more, with fourteen reporting it above $50,000. Eight listed a family income at $30,000 a year or less. The respondents reported a variety of occupations, mostly professional, managerial, and other white-collar positions.  Twenty seven were female, and ten were male. In the analysis we quote from most of the focus group participants. A central feature of these focus groups was a set of questions probing how the respondents dealt with the discrimination that they faced in their everyday lives and what the costs of that discrimination were for them in personal, family, and community terms. Over the course of these focus groups, it became clear that most of these African Americans had long thought about the causes and consequences of the discrimination they regularly face at the hands of whites. Most had well-developed and considered answers to our questions about the contemporary realities of racial discrimination. They are indeed sage Atheorists of their own experiences.

In addition, we have supplemented these data with some data from a previous research study conducted by the first author and Melvin Sikes. This study involved in-depth interviews with more than two hundred middle class African Americans interviewed across the nation.  They too were selected in a snowball design involving various starting points in numerous cities in several regions, with about two thirds in cities of the South and Southwest, and a third in cities in other regions. This sample is roughly equal in men and women, and just over half are in the 36-50 age bracket--with another third younger, and a sixth older, than that. As with the focus groups, most are employed in white-collar positions; head their own small businesses; or are college students. Nearly one third had household incomes of $35,000 or less; about a fifth, in the $36,000-55,000 range; and about half, in the over-$55,000 bracket. This group too is well educated, with most having completed at least some college work.  The questions asked of the respondents in this national interview study covered more topics than were brought up the focus group study, and we use here only their commentaries on the costs of the discrimination and the strategies they use to contend with such discrimination, primarily in chapters 5 and 6. In addition, we should note that in the following chapters, we have kept the respondents from both studies anonymous by deleting or disguising names and places.

CONCLUSION

Recall that in several recent opinion surveys, a majority of whites still speak of African Americans as being lazy, violent, or desirous of living on welfare. Among whites--in homes, bars, work offices. and school corridors--the work efforts and other assumed characteristics of African Americans are often denigrated. Ironically, however, African Americans have long provided much of the hard labor that built the United States into a world economic and political power. Certainly, in the first two centuries African Americans provided much of the labor that enabled the fledgling colonies to become prosperous. Their labor under slavery, and later under legal segregation, enabled this country to continue to prosper over the two centuries since 1880. Their labor still remains important to the prosperity of the nation.
Economically successful African Americans, those in the middle class like our respondents, have often been viewed by white Americans as doing well in integrated workplaces, and as having achieved the American dream. As we will demonstrate shortly, however, such views are wrongheaded. For most African American employees, workplace integration has brought recurring discrimination if not a sense of being constantly watched and controlled. To this point in time, workplace integration has been required African American and other racially oppressed people to accept white norms without being given the power to significantly affect workplace cultures.  Some research has shown that this is particularly the case for middle class African Americans. Susan Toliver makes this pertinent observation: "There was a time in the very recent past when all or most of the social interactions experienced by black middle class Americans were with other blacks, and included other blacks from all walks of life. . . . Blacks in the middle class who were doctors, lawyers, or ministers not only had a black constituency or clientele but tended to be autonomous in the context of work. For example, those who were middle class and employed in occupations such as those mentioned here were often their own bosses. Today, black middle class managers do not have such autonomy on the job and work in companies that are white controlled."

Social science research shows that for most men, and many women, work outside the home is a Acentral and defining characteristic of life. For such individuals, it is through the work role that life achieves its primary meaning and value."  The traditional work ethic places a high premium on individuals working hard to provide for themselves and their families. The ethic stigmatizes as lazy those who are not successful in their work efforts. This work ethic is important for all U.S. workers. One major study of black men found that they held old fashioned views of the importance of hard work.  Their work perspectives and family values were much like those of whites who have been studied.

Central to white stereotyping is the fiction that white Americans are superior in work-ethic and intelligence to African Americans. These fictional images have held firm in white heads now for nearly four centuries. This general denial of African Americans' hard work, achievements, and intelligence is in effect a denial of their integrity and even their identity as full human beings. Thus, it is not surprising that hostile white attitudes and discriminatory practices--especially when they are omnipresent and recurring in settings where African Americans are seeking to make a living and provide for their families--often have a negative impact on their personal, family, and community health.

In this book we describe and analyze the character and range of racial discrimination's continuing high costs by examining the experiences of some middle class African American respondents who work in employment settings. Our general research questions include the following: Is there a link between workplace and other types of discrimination and personal stress for African Americans? If so, what are the psychological and physical consequences of that racially related stress? In addition, what are the family and community consequences of that discrimination and its stress? And what are the broader implications of these findings for questions of discrimination and hostile racial climates in U.S. workplaces and similar social settings?

And what are the implications of the high cost of racism for U.S. society as a whole? This country has indeed paid a heavy price in terms of the many human successes and achievements that have historically been blocked or destroyed, to the loss of all Americans, and in the betrayal of the nation's often-asserted ideals of Aliberty and justice for all. Ultimately, it is U.S. society as a whole that has paid, and that still pays, an extraordinarily heavy cost for the continuing high levels of discrimination against African Americans and other Americans of color.
ENDNOTES
 . See Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, Living with Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. vii.

 . Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism, p. ix.

 . S. S. Fluss, AInternational Public Health Law: An Overview,  in The Scope of Public Health, volume 1 of Oxford Textbook of Public Health, edited by R. Detels et alia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 371-390.

 . National Medical Association, ARacism in Medicine and Health Parity for African Americans:  The Slave Health Deficit,   Second Annual National Colloquium on African American Health, March 12, 2001, p. 1.

 . For example, see Rodney Clark, Norman B. Anderson, Vanessa R. Clark, and David R. Williams, ARacism as a Stressor for African Americans,  American Psychologist 54 (October 1999): 811.

 . George Lipsitz, AThe Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics,  in The Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class and Sexual Orientation, ed. Karen E. Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis (2nd edition; Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), p. 355; see also George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit From Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple Press, 1998).

 . Richard Morin,  Misperceptions Cloud Whites' View of Blacks,  Washington Post, July 11, 2001, p.  01.

 . For data on these economic matters, see Joe R. Feagin and Clairece B. Feagin, Racial And Ethnic Relations (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2003), chapter 7.

 .  Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard Racial Attitudes Survey,  Washington Post, July 11, 2001, p. A01.

 . See, for example, Feagin and Sikes, Living With Racism; Yanick St. Jean and Joe R. Feagin, Double Burden: Black Women and Everyday Racism (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998); and Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge: 2000).

  Thomas Pettigrew, "The Mental Health Impact." in Impacts of Racism on White Americans, Benjamin Bowser and Raymond G. Hunt, eds. (Beverly Hill, Calif.: Sage, 1981), p. 117.

 . Lawrence Bobo,  Inequalities that Endure?: Racial Ideology, American Politics, and the Peculiar Role of the Social Sciences,  paper presented at conference on  The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity,  University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, October 26, 2001.

 . A 1992 national survey by the Anti Defamation League asked whites whether they agreed with one or more of eight antiblack stereotypes. The majority (55 percent) agreed with two or more, and thirty percent agreed with four or more. Anti-Defamation League, Highlights from an Anti-Defamation League Survey on Racial Attitudes in America (New York: ADL, 1993), pp. 8-25.

 . See Norman R. Yetman,  Introduction,  in Majority and Minority: The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity in American Life, edited by Norman R. Yetman (4th edition; Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1985), p. 15. On white views of poverty and individualism, and on links between these views and racial views, see generally Joe R. Feagin, Subordinating the Poor (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975).

 . Sally Satel, PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 192.

 . Ibid., p. 27.

 . Ibid., p. 25.

 . See J. C. Quick, L. R. Murphy, and J. J. Hurrell (eds.), Stress & Well-Being at Work: Assessments and Interventions for Occupational Mental Health,(Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1992); and Clark, Anderson, Clark, and Williams,  Racism as a Stressor for African Americans,  p. 809.

 . Satel, PC, M.D., p. 14.

 . Dinesh D Souza, The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 538.

 . See Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado, No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America s Social Agenda (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), pp. 3-4.

 . See Steven Keeva, A Bumpy Road to Equality: Panelists Say Courts are Backpedaling on Minority Issues,  82 ABA JOURNAL 32 (1996).
 . Etter v. Veriflo Corporation, 67 Cal.App.4th 457, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 33 (1st Dist. Ct. App. 1998).

 . See Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism, passim.

 . See Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism, pp. 135-222.

 . Etter v. Veriflo Corporation, 67 Cal.App.4th 457, 79 Cal.Rptr.2d 33 (1st Dist. Ct. App. 1998).

 . Roy L. Brooks, The Structure of Judicial Decision Making From Legal Formalism to Critical Theory (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, forthcoming 2002). We are indebted here to the suggestions of Roy Brooks.

 . See Joe R. Feagin and Hernan Vera, White Racism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 135-194.

 . See Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism, chapters 4-5, and passim; and St. Jean and Feagin, Double Burden.

 . See Ruth A. Wallace and Alison Worl, Contemporary Sociological Theory (Fourth edition; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995), pp. 290-292.

 . Magnus Hirschfeld, Racism (London: Gollancz, 1938).

 . Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage, 1967).

 . Randall Collins, Theoretical Sociology (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988), p. 406.

 . We are indebted to Bette Woody for reminding us of this key point.

 . James Jones, Prejudice and Racism (Second Edition; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), p. 472.

 . Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1991).

 . See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990); and St. Jean and Feagin, Double Burden.

 . Denise A. Segura,  Chicanas and Triple Oppression in the Labor Force,  in Chicana Voices: Intersections of Class, Race and Gender, ed. Teresa Cordova, et al. (Austin, TX: Center for Mexican American Studies, 1986), p. 48.

 . Herbert Blumer, "Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position," The Pacific Sociological Review, 1 (Spring 1959): 3-7; see also Robert Blauner, Black Lives, White Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); and Feagin and P. Sikes, Living With Racism.

 . Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism, p. 54.

 . Our analysis here is inspired by a similar discussion in W. Michael Byrd and Linda A. Clayton, Race, Medicine, and Health Care in the United States: A Historical Survey,  Journal of the National Medical Association 93 (March 2001): 254-255.

 . Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself Entered, According to Act of Congress, in the Year 1845 (Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts, 1845), http://www.pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/digi009.pdf  (Retrieved March 10, 2002), pp. 60-61.

 . Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), p. 29.

 . Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself Entered, According to Act of Congress, in the Year 1845, p. 68.

 . W. E. B. Dubois, Darkwater, as published in Eric Sundquist (ed.), The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 551.

 . Depending on assumptions made about multiple ownership, mortality, marriage, and childbearing patterns, she estimates that somewhere between 20 and 93 million Americans are current beneficiaries of this wealth-generating program. The 46 million figure is in the middle range. Trina Williams, The Homestead Act--Our Earliest National Asset Policy,  paper presented at the Center for Social Development's symposium, Inclusion in Asset Building, St. Louis, Missouri, September 21-23, 2000.

 . For extensive evidence, see Feagin, Racist America.

 . Ibid.

 . Marketti estimates slave prices and the number of those enslaved for the decades between 1790 and 1860, with allowance for price variations by age and other status, and uses these figures to estimate the value of slaveholders  income from slaves. He also calculates the value of the diverted labor income (compounded via interest) for later points in time. James Marketti,  Estimated Present Value of Income Diverted during Slavery,  in The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices, ed. Richard F. America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), p. 118.

 . See, for example, Feagin, Racist America.

 . Lawrence D. Bobo and Susan A. Suh, Surveying Racial Discrimination: Analyses from a Multiethnic Labor Market,  in Prismatic Metropolis: Inequality in Los Angeles, ed. Lawrence D. Bobo, Melvin L. Oliver, James H. Johnson, Jr., and Abel Valenzuela, Jr. (New York: Russell Sage, 2000), pp. 527-529.

 . Richard Morin and Michael H. Cottman,  Discrimination s Lingering Sting,  Washington Post, June 22, 2001, p. A1.
  Jacquelyn Scarville et al., Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey (Arlington, VA: Defense Manpower Data Center, 1999), pp. 46-78; Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, Career Progression of Minority and Women Officers (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1999), pp. 46-85.

 . T. A. Forman, D. R. Williams, and J. S. Jackson,  Race, Place and Discrimination,  in Perspectives on Social Problems, edited by C. Gardner (New York: JAI Press, 1997), pp. 231-261.

 . American Civil Liberties Union,  ACLU Moves to Have Maryland State Police held in Contempt,  Press Release, November 14, 1996, at http://www.aclu.org/news/n111496a.html (Ret.: December 10, 2001).

 . Richard Morin and Michael H. Cottman,  Discrimination s Lingering Sting,  Washington Post, June 22, 2001, p. A1.

 . Kathy Ciotola,  Black Tourists Report Discrimination in Study,  Gainesville Sun, October 2, 2001, pp. B1, B3.

 . Ian Ayres and Joel Waldfogel,  A Market Test for Race Discrimination in Bail Setting,  Stanford Law Review 46 (May, 1994): 993; Ian Ayres, Fair Driving: Gender and Race Discrimination in Retail Car Negotiations,  Harvard Law Review 104 (February 1991): 820-830; Kevin A. Schulman, et al.,  The Effect of Race and Sex on Physicians  Recommendations for Cardiac Catherization,  New England Journal of Medicine (February 25, 1999): 618-626.

 . See Fair Housing Council of Fresno County,  Audit Uncovers Blatant Discrimination against Hispanics, African Americans and Families with Children in Fresno County,  press release, Fresno, California, October 6, 1997; Central Alabama Fair Housing Center, Discrimination in the Rental Housing Market: A Study of Montgomery, Alabama, 1995-1996,  Montgomery, Alabama, January 13, 1996; Fair Housing Action Center, Inc.,  Greater New Orleans Rental Audit,  New Orleans, Louisiana, 1996; San Antonio Fair Housing Council,  San Antonio Metropolitan Area Rental Audit 1997,  San Antonio, Texas, 1997.  Greater Houston Fair Housing Center, “Houston Rental Audit,” Houston Texas, 2001; Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston, “We Don’t Want Your Kind Living Here: A Report on Discrimination in the Greater Boston Rental Market,” Boston, April 2001.
 . Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai,  Race Versus Race-as-Proxy in Residential Segregation: Exploring the Mind s Eye of white Americans,  unpublished research paper, Rice University, January 2001, p. 11. The researchers note too that finding a pure  race effect  is impossible, because for many whites violent crime and poor schools are part of their very mental images of African American and African American communities, which are two of the  control  variables. This negative effect was greatest for whites with young children.

 . Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Equality (New York: Routledge, 1995).

 . See Carole Collins, "U.N. Report on Minorities: U.S. Not Measuring Up," National Catholic Reporter (June 18, 1993): 9.

 . Jones et Ux. v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. Et Al. 392 U.S. 409, 445 (1968). Our italics.

 . William A. Darity, Jr., and Samuel L. Myers, Persistent Disparity: Race and Economic Inequality in the United States Since 1945 (Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 1998), pp. 7-10; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Household Wealth and Asset Ownership: 1991, Current Population Reports P70 34 (Washington, 1994), pp. xiii.-p. xiv.

 . Studs Terkel, Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession (New York: The New York Press, 1992), p. 97.

 . Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 1.

 . A. Schultz, B. Israel, D. Williams, E. Parker, A. Becker, and S. James, Social Inequalities, Stressors and Self-Reported Health Status among African American and White Women in the Detroit Metropolitan Area,  Social Science & Medicine 51 (2000): 1639-1653.

 . David R. Williams, Yan Yu, and James Jackson,  The Costs of Racism: Discrimination, Race, and Health,  paper presented at joint meeting of Public Health Conference on Records and Statistics and the Data User s Conference, Washington, D.C., July 1997

 . Tony Brown. David Williams, James Jackson, Harold Neighbors, Myriam Torres, Sherrill L. Sellers, and Kendrick Brown,  Being Black and Feeling Blue: The Mental Health Consequences of Racial Discrimination,  Race & Society 2 (2000): 117-131.

 . See H. Landrine and E. A. Klonoff, The Schedule of Racist Events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of Its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences,  Journal of Black Psychology 22 (1996): 144-168; and X. S. Ren, B. Amick, and D. R. Williams, ARacial/Ethnic Disparities in Health: The Interplay Between Discrimination and Socioeconomic

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