White economic privilege impacts crim justice system.

White privilege statistics.

I’ve been writing a memoir of late about how four murders seriously changed my career as a criminologist. So, how do white privilege statistics come into play?

Well, among the many reasons the murders changed my worldview was the fact that the crim justice system treated the killers well. They were all white and given remarkably light sentences in comparison to black killers who committed similar crimes.

This was back in the late 1960s and 1970s, and much of the white privilege they enjoyed re the crim justice system stemmed from the economic disparity between whites and blacks at the time. At the simplest level, whites had the economic resources to be

better informed about the crim justice system
able to pay attorneys to work the system in their favor, and
able to make favorable impressions on personnel from arresting officers to judges to parole boards.

Interestingly, if this economic basis for leniency is true, it’s likely that white privilege will continue to skew crim justice outcomes for a while.

A new study suggests that the economic gap between whites and blacks is as great today as it was in 1967. A law professor, not a sociologist,** recently wrote a piece in the New York Times with graphs and data explaining this gap.

Official card for “White privilege statistics?”

White Economic Privilege Is Alive and Well.

In the words of Professor Campos from the University of Colorado:

“In 2015 — the most recent year for which data are available — black households at the 20th and 40th percentiles of household income earned an average of 55 percent as much as white households at those same percentiles. This is exactly the same figure as in 1967.

Indeed, five decades of household income data reveal a yawning and uncannily consistent income gap between black and white Americans across the economic spectrum. Fifty years ago, black upper-class Americans had incomes about two-thirds those of white upper-class Americans, while the black middle class — those in the 60th percentile — earned about two-thirds as much as its white counterpart. Those ratios remain the same today.”

Understanding white privilege statistics.

On the one hand, this stagnation seems shocking. During the 1967-2015 period, all manner of economic programs (augmented by social and affirmative action protests and policies) were instituted in the US. Martin Luther King Jr.focused a good deal on economic injustice— witness the Poor People’s Campaign he was involved in when he was killed.

Bayard Rustin and others, who planned the March on Washington that culminated with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, intended the event to highlight and protest “the economic subordination of the American Negro.”

On the other hand, the historical pervasiveness of racism and white privilege in America may better explain what is a troublesome state of affairs re racial economic inequality. According to one report, sociologist Devah Pager found in 2009 that black job applicants for low-wage jobs receive callback interviews or job offers at half the rate of equally well-qualified white applicants.

White privilege statistics perpetuate themselves.

In the Times article, we learn “the median white household has about 13 times the wealth of the median black household — and much of that wealth is transferred between generations. This remarkable gap helps perpetuate the consequences of centuries of social and economic injustice.”

As Alex Bain noted in his comments on the Times article”

“Since the 0.1% enjoys a lower effective tax rate on their wealth than the rest of us, it’s not surprising that the historic imbalance between whites and nonwhites hasn’t shrunk.

Any effects of government intervention have been overwhelmed by the rapid accumulation of wealth by the already-rich, which are mostly white. Under present US policies the concentration of wealth will get worse, not better. Although the wealthy naturally cheer this trend (and pay others to cheer too), the rest of us should reflect that historically, concentration of wealth has never made a free country freer: quite the contrary.”

What’s your take on the causes and effects of white privilege statistics?

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** The Sociology specialty fields of Demography and Stratification routinely track these economic data.

French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out the effects of white economic privilege in the U.S. nearly 200 years ago.

More recently, sociologist-turned-US Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, tracked and commented on the state of black-white economic affairs in the US.

My latest book, PRIVILEGED KILLERS, is a true story about a half-dozen Dark Triad people in my everyday life - narcissists, manipulators, and psychopaths. Three of 'em murdered people, and one came after my wife and me. Print and e-book versions of this (and CLEFT HEART) available at Amazon and elsewhere online. Also at your local bookstore.

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