Harvard’s Dr. James Sidanius played an intricate role in the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s. Over the years, Dr. Sidanius has studied the psychological effects of racism as a professor at UCLA, NYU and recently at Harvard University.
While on the Harvard University campus, rolling out magazine got a chance to speak with Dr. Sidanius about the current state of racial inequality in America.–amir shaw
Many people believed that getting rid of institutionalized racism would put an end to the imbalance in the quality of life for whites and blacks in America. But how has racism continued to hinder the quality of life for blacks?
There is a substantial amount of residual racism in the United States, especially against African Americans. And you see this in the hyper imprisonment rates of African American males in particular. An African American male has about a 33% chance of going to prison, of being arrested, or going to jail through his lifetime, compared to a much smaller percentage of white males. The rate of unemployment is 2.5 times that of whites. And it is still the case that black are the last hired, first fired. So in all of the domains of life, whether you are talking about the criminal justice system, the labor market, the housing market, the retail market, the educational system, there is pretty consistent evidence of racial discrimination against African Americans.
We see the disparity when it comes to numbers. But how damaging is racism to the psyche of blacks in America?
The most significant and damaging effects of racism on the African American community and young people within that community is the damage it does to a person’s self-esteem. There is a lot of evidence showing that African Americans don’t do nearly as well on certain academic tests as European Americans do. And a large part of that is not simply due to the inferior schools and inferior teachers they are exposed to, but also by a lack of self confidence and feeling that these types of studies are not for them, but for white people. This shows that in the minds of black students, there is this association between their racial or ethnic identity and them not doing as well academically or not being as talented academically. So this is just one of several kinds of pieces of damage or evidence of damage that’s done on African American youth.
How can blacks reverse these trends and achieve in spite of the racial disparities?
The black community must be aware of the mechanisms by which their own depression takes place. I think that African Americans are already aware of the injustice that’s done in the criminal justice system and in the court system. But they should also be made aware of the insidious effects of differential training in schools or differential expectation of teachers and the degree to which African Americans absorb this notion of inferiority. And there are several avenues by which this oppression of black folks takes place. It’s really important that black folks be aware of exactly how this takes place in order to combat it within their communities.
