#1:
Argument: “Systemic racism doesn’t exist, because there are no current laws that are discriminatory on a racial basis in any way.”
Refutation: This is a strawman. When people/progressives talk about systemic racism, we are not referring to any explicitly racist laws that are currently upheld. “Systemic racism” refers to two things:
The fact that the decades and decades of discriminatory laws in the PAST have led to a lack of equal opportunity for certain groups right NOW. Black Americans were left in economic despair and inequity when slavery ended with no compensation for them. For decades this was heavily exacerbated by wave after wave of explicitly discriminatory systems like Jim Crow, loan discrimination, and redlining, all of which left them very far behind white people. These things haven't happened for a long time, but the economic barriers and disparities they created do still persist. The areas that experienced redlining are proven to be the ones that are currently poverty stricken; one can look at redlining maps and see how they correlate with maps that show affluence from area to area. Also, The War on Drugs is an example of a currently intact system which is empirically proven to perpetuate and worsen the cycle of poverty and crime within black communities.
The fact that black people currently experience disproportionately bad outcomes in sentencing, police interactions, and education, making it harder for them to overcome the aforementioned economic disenfranchisement. The higher rates of individual racism against black people drastically impact the way that they are treated at virtually every level of the criminal justice system. Thus, these systems create racist outcomes despite not being explicitly discriminatory.
#2:
Argument: “Where is the evidence that black people are discriminated against within any current systems?”
Refutation:
Sentencing
Black men who commit the same crimes as white men receive federal prison sentences that are, on average, nearly 20 percent longer
The black/white sentencing disparities are being driven in large part by “non-government sponsored departures and variances”
This means that the disparity is caused by interpersonal prejudice among judges
All other factors being equal, black offenders were 75 percent more likely to face a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence than a white offender who committed the same crime.
Meta-analysis of 71 studies
“Analyses indicate that African-Americans generally are sentenced more harshly than whites; the magnitude of this race effect is statistically significant but small and highly variable”
High variability is explained by differences in methodology between studies
“Black defendants who kill white victims are seven times as likely to receive the death penalty as are black defendants who kill black victims. … Moreover, black defendants who kill white victims are more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death as are white defendants who kill white victims.”
Murderers who kill white people are three times more likely to get the death penalty than murderers who kill black people
“One quarter to one third of death sentenced defendants with white victims would have avoided the death penalty if their victims had been black.”
Black people are more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder when the victim was white. Only about 15 percent of people killed by black people were white, but 31 percent of black exonerees were wrongly convicted of killing white people. More generally, black people convicted of murder are 50 percent more likely to be innocent than white people convicted of murder
Black people are 3.5 times more likely than white people to be wrongly convicted of sexual assault and 12 times more likely to be wrongly convicted of drug crimes. (And remember, data on wrongful convictions is limited in that it can only consider the wrongful convictions we know about.)
This study found that when a black person was accused of killing a white person, defendants with darker skin and more “stereotypically black” features were twice as likely to receive a death sentence. When the victim was black, there was almost no difference
This study of about 48,000 criminal cases in Wisconsin showed that white defendants were 25 percent more likely than black defendants to have their most serious charge dismissed in a plea bargain. Among defendants facing misdemeanor charges that could carry a sentence of incarceration, whites were 75 percent more likely to have those charges dropped, dismissed or reduced to a charge that did not include such a punishment
After adjusting for numerous other variables, federal prosecutors were almost twice as likely to bring charges carrying mandatory minimums against black defendants as against white defendants accused of similar crimes.
Black defendants with multiple prior convictions are 28 percent more likely to be charged as “habitual offenders” than white defendants with similar criminal records
The authors conclude that “assessments of dangerousness and culpability are linked to race and ethnicity, even after offense seriousness and prior record are controlled.”
With firearm crimes black people are more likely to be arrested, more likely to get longer sentences for similar crimes and more likely to get sentencing “enhancements”
The study looked at 67,000 first-time felons in Georgia from 1995 to 2002
The average sentence for white men was 2,689 days
The average for black men was 378 days longer, but light-skinned blacks received sentences of about three and a half months longer than whites
Medium-skinned blacks received a sentence of about a year longer
Dark-skinned blacks received sentences of a year and a half longer.
Black federal judges are about 10 percentage points more likely to be reversed on appeal than white federal judges
The study adjusted for variables like who appointed the judges, judicial circuits and demographic data
This study of first-time felons found that while black men overall received sentences of 270 days longer than white men for similar crimes, the discrepancy between whites and dark-skinned blacks was 400 days
Black people are 80 percent overrepresented in prisons; only 61 percentage points can be explained by higher crime rates in the black population
Of course, those higher crime rates are due to socio-economic factors which are in great part influenced by systemic racism
The rest is probably because of racial bias
This study of bail in five large U.S. counties found that blacks received $7,000 higher bail than whites for violent crimes, $13,000 higher for drug crimes and $10,000 higher for crimes related to public order
These disparities were calculated after adjusting for the seriousness of the crime, criminal history and other variables
This study of more than 10,000 cases handled by a public defender’s office in San Francisco found that black and Latino defendants were more likely to be incarcerated while awaiting trial, had to wait longer for their trials to begin, were less likely to see their charges reduced and were more likely to see new misdemeanor charges added
Policing and Racial Profiling
A data analysis on 3933 killings to examine the intersection of race and reasonableness in police killings
They find that, across several circumstances of police killings and their objective reasonableness, Black suspects are more than twice as likely to be killed by police than are persons of other racial or ethnic groups; even when there are no other obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable
They suggest that the addition of training components that specifically address the role of race in officers’ perceptions of risk and their decision-making in potentially dangerous interactions with citizens may remediate both the incidence of police shootings and their apparent racial and ethnic disparity
Bias in policing isn’t just a “few bad apples,” nor is it a problem among white police officers specifically; policing practices inherently operate in a discriminatory manner.
The disproportionate killing of African Americans by police officers “is likely driven by a combination of macro‐level public policies that target minority populations and meso‐level policies and practices of police forces.”
“Much research in organizational theory suggests that the problem of disproportionate killing may be fundamentally institutional.”
Also outlines past studies on policing that recognize the disproportionate impacts of institutional policies on minorities
Black, Indian, and Native people are significantly more likely to get killed by the police than white people
“For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.”
Highlights the philosophical (social power and group power) and racial reasons why white police officers have a discriminatory bias against African-Americans
Data collected via nationally representative survey which focuses on a number of specific racial attitudes of police officers to gain a broader understanding of their racial views and biases
Finds that officers believe blacks are more violent, lazy, and should not be given special treatment compared to whites
Further highlights that those with less education adopt conservative views on race and the harmful impacts discrimination denial can have (i.e. shows how denial of racial discrimination can lead to the establishment of racial hierarchy)
Photos of capital inmates shown to entry-level criminal justice students for them to evaluate the trustworthiness of the faces
Students rated the light skin pictures as more trustworthy when they preceded dark skin pictures
Most study participants (79.9%) were white, but the study predicted that this wasn’t a major factor - “When controlling for race, no statistically significant result was found. This suggests that each race, White and non-White, were consistent in their rating outcomes. Prior research has found similar results, where Whites and light-skinned Blacks are likely to share similar attitudes towards darker-skinned Blacks”
Of 4.5 million traffic stops by the 100 largest police departments in North Carolina found that blacks and Latinos were more likely to be searched than whites (5.4 percent, 4.1 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively), even though searches of white motorists were more likely than the others to turn up contraband (whites: 32 percent, blacks: 29 percent, Latinos: 19 percent)
Between 2012 and 2014, black people in Ferguson, Mo., accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations and 93 percent of arrests, despite comprising 67 percent of the population
Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched after traffic stops, even though they proved to be 26 percent less likely to be in possession of illegal drugs or weapons
Between 2011 and 2013, blacks also received 95 percent of jaywalking tickets and 94 percent of tickets for “failure to comply.” The Justice Department also found that the racial discrepancy for speeding tickets increased dramatically when researchers looked at tickets based on only an officer’s word vs. tickets based on objective evidence, such as vs. radar
Black people facing similar low-level charges as white people were 68 percent less likely to see those charges dismissed in court. More than 90 percent of the arrest warrants stemming from failure to pay/failure to appear were issued for black people.
It should be noted that the traffic stop research didn’t control for arrest warrants. Additionally, the charge dismissal research did not control for diversion programs.
This study finds that citizen complaints against police officers in North Charleston, S.C., between 2006 and 2016 found that complaints by white citizens were about two-thirds more likely to be sustained than complaints filed by black citizens. When the complainant alleged excessive force, white complaints were sustained seven times more often than black complaints.
This study of stop and frisk incidents in Boston between 2007 and 2010 that did not result in a citation or arrest found that 63 percent of such stops were of black people. Blacks made up 24 percent of the city’s population. Incredibly, 97.5 percent of these encounters resulted in no arrest or seizure of contraband.
In nearly half of the more than 700,000 stop and frisk searches in Milwaukee, the police failed to demonstrate reasonable suspicion as required by the Constitution
The study found that between pedestrian stops and traffic stops, black people were six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and that less than 1 percent of those searches turned up any contraband
Here again, while black and Latino drivers were more likely to be searched, they were 20 percent less likely to be in possession of any contraband.
Analysis of 125,000 police stops by NYC police department over a period of 15 months
Finds that even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation, black people were still disproportionately stopped relative to whites
This study of police shootings from 2011 to 2014 found “a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.”
The study also found “no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.”
Black drivers in Florida are nearly twice as likely to be pulled over for “seatbelt violations”
Statewide and National seat belt wearing behaviour by race does NOT explain this
Researchers compiled and analyzed data from more than 100 million traffic stops in the United States. What they found: Police were more likely to pull over black drivers. The researchers were able to confirm racial bias by measuring daytime stops against nighttime stops, when darkness would make it more difficult to ascertain a driver’s race.
It should be noted that the study does not control for arrest warrants
They also found that legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has caused fewer drivers to be searched during a stop, but that it did not alter the increased frequency with which black and Latino drivers are searched
Black and Hispanic residents were “significantly over-represented as targets of narcotics search warrants,” even after adjusting for usage rates
“The risk of incarceration in the federal system for someone who uses drugs monthly and is black is more than seven times that of his or her white counterpart”
Education / Academia
“Black students are disciplined more frequently and more severely for the same misbehaviors as White students”
“Principals endorsed more severe discipline for Black students compared with White students”
“Further, this discipline severity was explained through Black students being more likely to be labeled a troublemaker than White students”
“The results generally support hypotheses that schools and districts with relatively larger minority and poor populations are more likely to implement criminalized disciplinary policies, including suspensions and expulsion or police referrals or arrests, and less likely to medicalize students through behavioral plans put in place through laws such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act”
Access to experienced teachers: Black, Latino, American Indian and Native-Alaskan students attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers at a higher rate (3 to 4%) than white students(1%). English learners also attend these schools at slightly higher rates (3%) than non-English learners(2%).
Teacher salary disparities: Nearly one in four districts with two or more high schools reports a teacher salary gap of more than $5,000 between high schools with the highest and the lowest black and Latino student enrollments.
Access to certified teachers:While most teachers are certified, nearly half a million students nationwide attend schools where 60% or fewer of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.Racial disparities are particularly acute in schools where uncertified and unlicensed teachers are concentrated; nearly 7% of the nation’s black students – totaling over half a million students – attend schools where 80% or fewer of teachers meet these requirements; black students are more than four times as likely, and Latino students twice as likely, as white students to attend these schools.
Research demonstrates that academic gaps begin before high school. Without solid academic foundations established in primary and secondary school, African American students will continue to be academically underprepared for college in large numbers.
When students are not adequately prepared on the K–12 level, they are more likely to need remedial or developmental courses in college, which offer no course credit, yet students often have to pay for these classes. This leads to longer completion times and the need for additional financial aid, both factors that contribute to higher rates of attrition. Unfortunately, research demonstrates that African American students are more likely to need remedial courses than other students and also have significant financial need for higher education compared to other students.
African American students are more likely to be in schools that offer less rigorous courses, which can hamper the college admissions process.
Biology and physics professors from eight large, public, U.S. research universities were asked to read one of eight identical curriculum vitae (CVs) depicting a hypothetical doctoral graduate applying for a post-doctoral position in their field, and rate them for competence, hireability, and likeability
The candidate’s name on the CV was used to manipulate race (Asian, Black, Latino, and White) and gender (female or male), with all other aspects of the CV held constant across conditions
Physics faculty rated Asian and White candidates as more competent and hirable than Black and Latino candidates, while those in biology rated Asian candidates as more competent and hirable than Black candidates, and as more hireable than Latino candidates
An interaction between candidate gender and race emerged for those in physics, whereby Black women and Latino women and men candidates were rated the lowest in hireability compared to all others.
During 2018 and 2019, TEAM-UP, the National Task Force to Elevate African American representation in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy, examined the reasons for the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in physics and astronomy in the US
The task force finds that African American students have the same drive, motivation, intellect, and capability to obtain physics and astronomy degrees as students of other races and ethnicities. Many African Americans who might otherwise pursue these fields are choosing majors that are perceived as being more supportive and/or rewarding
The briefest summary of the TEAM-UP report is this: the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in physics and astronomy is due to (1) the lack of a supportive environment for these students in many departments, and (2) to the enormous financial challenges facing them and the programs that have consistently demonstrated the best practices in supporting their success. Solving these problems requires addressing systemic and cultural issues, and creating a large-scale change management framework.
#3:
Argument: “Even if black people used to not have any opportunity, they've had plenty of time to pull themselves up ever since then.”
Refutation: Poverty and crime beget more poverty and crime; it is a self perpetuating cycle. The first piece of evidence here is the way that generational wealth works in America. According to research by Pew Charitable Trusts: “While a majority of Americans exceed their parents’ family incomes, the extent of that increase is not always enough to move them to a different rung of the family income ladder. Forty-three percent of Americans raised in the bottom quintile remain stuck in the bottom as adults, and 70 percent remain below the middle. Forty percent raised in the top quintile remain at the top as adults, and 63 percent remain above the middle.” On the topic of familial wealth, “Sixty-six percent of those raised in the bottom of the wealth ladder remain on the bottom two rungs themselves, and 66 percent of those raised in the top of the wealth ladder remain on the top two rungs.” According to an OECD report, on average it would take 5 generations for a family in the bottom 10% to move to the median 50% of incomes in the USA. Thus, when an entire demographic is subjected to huge economic barriers for decades and are left with a meager amount of generational wealth, it is not some temporary issue that corrects itself. When economic mobility is so limited, those disparities will persist even after many generations. When the aforementioned poverty and crime is being tackled by a punitive and authoritarian justice system (like that of the US), it worsens this cycle. A prime example of this is the deterioration of inner cities and rise of gang culture within them, and how this all relates to systems such as the War on Drugs.
Despite making up just 13% of the US population, black people are 26% of those arrested for drug related charges. Numerous studies and surveys have found that black and white people use and sell drugs at similar rates, and that the disproportionate incarceration rates are due to the extremely heavy police presence in poor, urban communities. So, we know that the history of repeated systemic oppression and economic barriers have led to economic decay and high crime rates in black communities (this is covered in depth in section #5). We also know that our justice system is one that deals with said crime by increasing police presence and incarceration rates in poor, violent communities. These facts display the vicious cycle that has been caused by America’s history of systemic disenfranchisement and punitive, authoritarian justice. The centuries of slavery, lack of reperations, and Jim Crowe put African Americans in economic despair. During the Great Migration (particularly the 2nd wave), redlining and urban spatial segregation, and white flight caused this poverty-ridden racial group to languish and fester in decaying urban inner cities. Growing up in these conditions has been frequently linked to developmental issues in adolescents. Naturally, many within these communities turned to crime in order to get by and take ownership of their situation. Crime turns into gang activity, and gang activity turns into gang violence as territory disputes arise. Violence creates more gang membership, as juveniles join for protection and certain streets or housing projects become associated with certain gangs (a modern example of this is Chicago’s Parkway Gardens housing project, which is associated with the Black Disciples gang). When an area becomes crime ridden in this manner, more police get allocated there. This is in large part due to the big budget enforcement agencies introduced and strengthened during the War on Drugs campaigns of Nixon and Reagan. The police presence results in mass incarceration among black communities, creating large swaths of single mother households. Single parenthood worsens economic conditions and is linked to developmental/behavioral issues in children. Additionally, the extra work required for a single mother to get by can leave juveniles to hang out with friends and get involved in delinquency after school. The combination of all these factors results in a generation of youths assimilating into the violent environment that surrounds them. This means that they, too, will be targeted by the justice system, creating similar conditions for their children and for their children’s children. The cycle continues.
#4:
Argument: “This issue is not due to systemic wrongdoing, it is because of cultural issues in the black community such as single motherhood, higher crime rates, gang culture, etc…”
Refutation: Well, where do you think these destructive cultural tendencies come from? It is not as if black people are genetically or neurologically predisposed to any of that behavior. Single motherhood and gang culture is not present in Africans. In fact, Nigerian immigrants are statistically one of the most successful ethnic groups in America. Thus, there is obviously something unique about the experience of the Africans who were brought to America as slaves that resulted in these cultural trends; their socioeconomic conditions. “Cultural issues” are a symptom of socioeconomic discrimination; they do not exist independent of it. If a group of people spend decades toiling in a cycle of systemic poverty, then of course they will be disproportionately linked to criminality; this isn’t limited to black people. When Italian Americans heavily populated the ghettos of New York and Chicago, Italian American organized crime was by far the most prominent in America. Tendencies such as single motherhood and glorification of gang violence are perfectly explained by the aforementioned poverty-crime-incarceration cycle; a cycle that has been started and perpetuated by systemic issues.
#5:
Argument: “You just want to blame everything on the system and avoid all individual improvement.”
Refutation: There is absolutely nothing wrong with individual improvement, but it is not effective when applied to issues that are perpetuated by the system. We cannot sit around and wait for some impossible to predict cultural shift that likely will never happen. If systemic issues create a certain problem (as they do here), then that problem must be fixed through the system. Individualistic improvement will not apply to such a broad group, especially when all the odds are stacked against them. That is not to say that all issues must be systemic; I care about what the facts indicate.
#6:
Argument: “Many other ethnic/racial groups have faced systemic discrimination in the US, along the same lines as black people. None of them seem to have the same persistent issues today, they overcame that lack of opportunity. If Asian immigrants and other groups like Italians pulled themselves up, why should black people be treated differently?”
Refutation: Looking at history, one can find explanations for the current socioeconomic status of every racial/ethnic group in America. We can see numerous systemic barriers which only affected African Americans, barriers which only affected nonwhites, and unique opportunities that were afforded to groups that are successful today. Let us analyze why European immigrants and Asians were able to “pull themselves up”, and why their success does not invalidate the existence of systemic oppression against black people.
European Immigrants: It’s important to note that European immigrants had what was effectively a 60+ year head start. From the first big wave of European immigration around the turn of the century all the way up to the 60s, black people were 2nd class citizens, and could not build wealth during that time. Even if we disregard that truth, there has still never been any sort of even playing field between African Americans and European Americans. Immigrant groups such as the Italians and Irish weren’t well off, but at the end of the day, they were still white. Thus, they were not subjected to the badly funded segregated schooling that was given to black people. Throughout the mid 20th century, black income was significantly lower than white income and average income, even among black and white men in the same occupation or with the same level of education. The same was true for black women. Ever since their first arrival, European immigrants had access to industrial economies in cities, and the relatively well paying jobs that were offered there. Many of them, such as the Jews, already had the skills and/or capital to start businesses. That is the nature of immigration; immigrants have skills and economic potential that would be better utilized in America, by and large. In contrast, black people experienced centuries of living as literal property, after being violently uprooted from their native culture. Few of them were literate, and none of them had any knowledge of how to do any jobs besides menial rural labor. After centuries of this, they were cut loose, with absolutely no economic relief. Thus, while other groups were doing factory jobs and starting small businesses, black people were mostly dirt-poor sharecroppers, living in a rural South which imposed almost as much discrimination against them as when they were slaves. These demographics would greatly shift over the course of the Great Migration, though, particularly in its 2nd wave. The 2nd wave of the Great Migration occurred during and prior to America’s entry into World War II. Wartime production created huge labor demand, and black people poured into Northern cities en masse to fill industrial job positions. There was even executive action on the part of the Roosevelt administration to create the FEPC, which fought against racial discrimination in industrial sectors. The FEPC was underfunded, constantly under attack by Congress, and lacked strong authority, but it still has been found to have helped African Americans enter into labor jobs. This period was a huge economic boost for them, yet it is still an example of how they were not allowed the same opportunity as working class European-Americans. Research by the University of Cambridge found that from 1940-1949, the occupational upgrades for black laborers were less than the upgrades for occupationally similar white laborers. They also found that black occupational upgrades were higher on average, but this is because the economic situation of black people was so much poorer than that of white people prior to WWII. For example, going from $20,000/ year to $60,000/year is technically a bigger upgrade than going from $100,000/year to $125,000/year. This research displays that even when black people had improvements in economic opportunity, they were still not reaping its benefits to the same extent that white people (including European immigrants) were allowed to. Another research paper, by Oxford University, analyzed the tremendous hiring discrimination faced by black women, as well as how they were the first to be shafted after the war ended. Historical records also show that certain areas experienced mass layoffs of black workers as soon as white workers returned from the war. The GI Bill was another wartime economic boost that wasn’t afforded to black people. The GI Bill provided a wide range of benefits for returning WWII veterans, including paid education, training programs, unemployment insurance, low cost mortgages, low interest business loans, and others. The bill was a huge economic success, resulting in millions of veterans becoming productive and skilled contributors to economic growth. However, research from the JBHE Foundation, NBER, and numerous historians has revealed that the 125,000+ black veterans of WWII were hardly allowed to benefit from this bill. The educational benefits were nearly rendered useless by the fact that most universities did not accept black students, particularly in the South. Only 1/5 of all black people who applied for educational benefits got registered for college, and the colleges that did accept them were underfunded and low quality. The bill created a net increase in black enrollment, but the educational divide between white and black people widened. Another issue was that since black poverty was so high, pursuing education was hard, since the families of most black veterans were in need of income and labor. Then, the mortgages and business loans that helped white veterans build wealth were largely unattainable by their black counterparts, because of how common it was for financial institutions to refuse loans on the basis of race. Another huge reason why black people could not pull themselves up in the same way white immigrants did was redlining and urban spatial segregation. As African Americans flooded into cities during the 2nd Great Migration, they were sequestered into racially homogenous communities by government housing agencies and real estate companies. Cheap housing blocks and projects were built isolated from more affluent parts of the cities, designated for the oncoming African American migrants. Racially restrictive covenants were often imposed, which legally restricted African American residency in certain areas. Along with this segregationist city planning, racial violence from whites also caused African Americans to stick together. This resulted in overcrowding and urban decay. Overcrowding, racial tensions, and the boost in spending power among whites post WWII kickstarted white flight. Scores of middle class whites moved to the suburbs, draining the tax base of urban areas and speeding up urban decay even more. This horrific combination of redlining, discriminatory zoning, and white flight effectively created a near permanent form of segregation that only affects nonwhites, specifically African Americans. This is what caused the violent inner city/peaceful suburb dichotomy that we see in almost every major American city today.
Asian Americans: Asian Americans are perhaps the racial group that is most commonly used to discredit systemic racism. As they are nonwhite, many of the aforementioned advantages afforded to European immigrants do not apply to them. On top of enduring a fair bit of segregation and racial violence, they experienced unique systems of oppression, most notably the WWII internment camps and systemic poverty around the turn of the century. Why, then, are Asian Americans currently the most financially secure and well educated racial group in America? Surely, they must have achieved this through their own volition, in a way that black people can emulate. Well… this is a very deceptive and ahistorical narrative. The reality is that the Asian Americans who faced all that oppression never actually pulled themselves up. Their current statistical success comes from the huge influx of high skill Asian immigrants which started in the 1980s. At present, these wealthy high skill immigrants constitute the overwhelming majority of the Asian American population. These immigrants did not face any of the systemic poverty, segregation, and interment which held down the Asians who lived in America for generations past. Thus, the population’s education and income rates are heavily skewed upwards. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that that small percentage of systemically oppressed Asians actually never “pulled themselves up”. Despite rates of incredible economic security within the broader Asian population, they actually have a poverty rate that comfortably exceeds that of white Americans. In cities like New York and San Francisco, Asians experience moderately to extremely high poverty rates, constituting a sizable amount of the poor populations there. Coincidentally, these were primary places of residence for oppressed Asian immigrants during the early 20th century.
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