Race Free Zone

Please continue scrolling to examine myths and facts about equality-related issues: Racism in America, women’s issues, slavery, the history of minorities in America, and other topics.

MYTH: That America is more racist than in the past.
FACTS:
1940’s:
More than half of all whites said that blacks were less intelligent than whites.

More than 60% of whites favored segregated schools, and just over 50 percent preferred to ride in segregated public transportation.

Some 55% of whites declared themselves opposed to proposed legislation to abolish the poll tax and end job discrimination.

An overwhelming majority or whites opposed intermarriage between blacks and whites.

A majority or whites aid that if a white man and a black man were equally qualified, the white should be given preference (a remarkable case of support for affirmative action---for whites).

1990’s:
More than 75 percent of whites assert that both whites and blacks are equal in intellectual capacity.

More than 80 percent of whites say they are willing to vote for black political candidates.

At least 90 percent of whites say that blacks and whites should have the same rights to public accommodations and to attend the same schools.

Virtually 100 percent of whites say that blacks and whites should have an equal chance to compete for jobs.

Cited from a study by Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, and Lawrence Bobo, Racial Attitudes in America

MYTH: That programs to help minorities and girls go into science or math will be unconstitutional after Civil Rights Initiatives are passed.

FACT: It is true that some programs targeted to specific genders or races may end, but this is a consequence of real equality. From Diane: “What if we ask this: should a white boy who needs help in math or science be denied that help? How about if we just treat them like students and not like colors or sexes, and give help to those who need help? Why would I vote to help my daughter, but leave my son behind?”

MYTH: That women’s college sports programs will suffer or disappear. Opponents claim: "Women's college sports will be endangered." Or “threatened” or “put at risk,” or other shady language.

FACT: California, Washington State, and Michigan passed the same measures: Did women's sports disappear at State-funded colleges? Let's check the college websites:

UCLA: Women's Varsity basketball, cross country, golf, gymnastics, rowing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, volleyball and water polo

University of California Santa Barbara: Women's basketball, cross country, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, track and field, volleyball, water polo

Humboldt State University: Women's cross country, basketball, rowing, soccer, softball, track and field, volleyball

San Jose State University: Women's soccer, basketball, gymnastics, swimming, softball, water polo, tennis

University of California: Women's lacrosse, basketball, golf, cross country, rowing, track, tennis, swimming and diving, volleyball, basketball

University of Southern California: Women basketball, cross country, golf, rowing, truck, tennis, swimming and diving, volleyball, water polo.

Western Washington University: Women's basketball, rowing, golf, soccer, lacrosse and rugby

Eastern Washington University: Women’s basketball, soccer, track, tennis, golf.

University of Michigan: Women’s basketball, cross country, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, soccer, swimming/diving, tennis, track and field, rowing.

Michigan State University: Women’s basketball, golf, volleyball, rowing, swimming/diving, soccer, tennis, track and field, softball.

Eastern Michigan University: Women’s basketball, cross-country, golf, gymnastics, rowing, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis, indoor/Outdoor Track and Field, volleyball

Northern Michigan University: Women’s Nordic skiing, basketball, swim and dive, cross country, track and field, volleyball.

Women's sports did not disappear from state-funded colleges because of the end of discrimination between the sexes by California, Washington State or Michigan governments.

MYTH : That “Women make 67 cents for every dollar earned by a man.” That doesn’t compare apples to apples. Statistically, women tend to choose jobs that pay less but have more flexibility, less risk, and can be left and picked up later, so we can have children and raise families. When comparing jobs that are high-risk, require years of uninterrupted dedication, might require moving across the country, and using statistics that analyze single women with no children, then wages statistics become equal between men and women, and often women even earn a little more.

“Consider that while black men on average earn substantially less than white men, black women at all levels of education earn about the same as white women with comparable credentials. Remarkably, black women with college degrees earn more than white women with college degrees.” (Dinesh D’Souza, The End of Racism, p 301, citing The Economic Status of Black Women, An Exploratory Investigation, Staff Report, U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, Washington D. C. 1990) (continued) “This result directly contradicts to the theory of discrimination which holds that black women are subject to the ‘double jeopardy’ of both racism and sexism. Moreover, since black women are no less black than black men, their relative earnings parity with white women suggests the possibility that factors other than race might account for the black male earnings deficit.”

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED . . . The differences in income between men and women is not legitimately tied to employer discrimination. See the following:

“As women began having fewer children—a trend that began in the 19th century and continued on into the 1930’s—they became better represented in higher levels of education and professional occupations. Then, then birth rates began to rise again, from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, women began to be less well represented in these higher educational and occupational levels. The role of men in all this was primarily that of fathers of the children born to women. . .

“The very same trends occurred in the hiring of faculty at women’s college, run by women administrators.” (Thomas Sowell, citing Helen Astin, “Career Profiles of Women Doctorates,” 1973)

MYTH: Trish Knight, president of Business and Professional Women of Michigan, said that despite gains in recent years, Michigan women still lag behind in pay and in advancing to the top rungs of companies.
FACT: “The cold fact is that women were in many ways better represented in higher occupational levels in the 1930’s than the 1960’s. This can scarcely be credited to movements that had not yet begun in these earlier times, much less to affirmative action policies that began in the 1970’s. (Thomas Sowell, AAAW, p 133) see below:

“After birth rates began to decline again in the 1960’s, women’s representation in higher levels of education and occupation began to rise again. The crucial role of marriage and child-bearing on women’s economic level can be see by breaking down the female population as a whole into those who do and those who do not become wives and mothers, those whose careers are continuous and those who interrupt their careers to assume domestic responsibilities. As far back as 1971, women who remained unmarried into their thirties and who had worked continually since high school earned slightly more than men of the same description. (“The Economic Role of Women,” The Economic Report of the President, Washington D.C., 1973. Academic women who never married averaged slightly higher incomes in 1968-69--before (gender-based) affirmative action—than academic men who never married. (Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Reconsidered, 1975)

“Substantial male-female differences in income reflect the fact that women do get married, do have children, and do interrupt their careers for domestic responsibility more than men do.”

“Women tend to specialize in careers where career interruptions are easier to accommodate – teaching rather than computer engineering, for example. Another factor in male-female differences in earnings is that men tend to specialize in more hazardous occupations that pay higher compensation. Although men are 54 percent of the workforce, they account for 92 percent of job-related deaths.”

FACT: WOMEN’S HEALTH RESEARCH IN CALIFORNIA, WASHINGTON STATE, and MICHIGAN CONTINUE TO THRIVE. Our opponents claim that the CRI’s endanger and possibly end research on women’s health. How is it possible that the following state-funded agencies exist at all?:

In Washington State, the Center for Women’s and Gender Research, which focuses on “developing and expanding collaborations between investigators that study women’s health and gender disparities through collaboration with Washington State University, the University of Alaska, The University of Hawaii and West Virginia University.

The State of California Office of Women’s Health, California Department of Health Services: Reproductive Health Issues, Young Women’s Health Issues, Gynecological Cancer Information Program, California Women’s Health Survey, Women’s Health Council, and Women’s Health Month.

The California Breast Cancer Research Program: studying risk, prevention, detection, treatment, and living well after cancer diagnosis.

MYTH: That Proposal 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, resulted in a dramatic drop of black students in California colleges.

FACT: AFTER 209 “In the University of California system as a whole, the enrollment of black freshmen dropped from 917 in 1997 to 739, but rose again to 832 in the year 2000—a decline of 9 percent over this period—and then rose to 936 in 2002.”
Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, p160

More importantly, the black students who were admitted to these college did something that many black students had not been doing under affirmative action admissions: they graduated. See below:

“On the flagship Berkeley campus, the decline was much sharper, from 222 in 1996 to 122 in 1999 and the recovery was only to 142 by the year 2002. At UCLA, the decline from 230 black freshmen in 1996 was likewise never fully recovered and by 2002 there were just 161 black freshmen on that campus. However, on some other campuses within the University of California system—Santa Barbara, Riverside, Irvine, Santa Cruz—there were increases in the number of black freshmen. (Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, p 160, quoting statistics from the University of California Office of the President, Student Academic Office) What this meant was that black students redistributed themselves within the University of California system, with no net decline between 1996 and 2002. It was much the same story in the California State University system, where there were more black freshmen enrolled in 2002 than there had been back in 1996, before the end of affirmative action—a fact receiving remarkably little attention in the media, which had publicized earlier hysterical claims about an impending “resegregation” of higher education. (Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, p 160, quoting download from internet, ww.calstate.edu/AS/stat_reports/1996-1997

“In the United States, mythical results – affirmative action as the basis for the economic rise of blacks, for example – have so completely supplanted facts that few who discuss this policy find it necessary to check historical evidence at all.” (Sowell p21)

FACTS: “In the United States, the proportion of the black population going to college doubled in the two decades preceding the civil rights revolution in the 1960’s, and this was reflected in the occupational rise of blacks. While it is an often-cited fact that the proportion of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations rose substantially in the years following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is an almost totally ignored fact that the proportion of blacks in such occupations rose even more substantially in the years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
(Sowell, p. 20, citing the U. S. Bureau of Census, “Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p380, and Daniel P. Moynihan, “Employment, Income and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” p 752)
“The percentage of black families with incomes below the official poverty line fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960 – all of this before the civil rights legislation of that decade, much less the affirmative action policies of the 1970’s.”

MYTH: That black children growing up in shabby neighborhoods need affirmative action to get into college. “ . . . implying that black Berkeley students have been primarily children from, if not precisely the ‘hood,’ then only a few blocks over. . . . Most of the black students at Berkeley have long been children of middle managers, municipal administrators, management consultants, educational administrators, and even doctors, lawyers and college professors—not food service workers, airline attendants or bus drivers. Of the 257 African American freshmen who entered Berkeley in the last class before the ban on racial preferences took effect, only 83 had parents whose total yearly income was $30,000 a year or less, a commonly used metric for ‘lower income.’ No less than 174 or the 257---62.5 percent of the class—came from homes where the parents income was at least $40,000 and usually much more. For those who resist considering even this a middle-class income, the parents of 107 of the 257 made at least $60,000 a year.” (John McWhorter, Losing the Race, p 167) (It is considered irrelevant) how many of the minority students at Berkeley and like schools have ever been ‘disadvantaged.’” Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World.

“Despite many hysterical media reports and dire predictions of minorities losing “access” to higher education in the wake of bans on affirmative action, there were very modest changes in the numbers and proportions of black students in the state university systems in both California and Texas—and, in the end, a rise.” Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, p 161)

MYTHS THE MICHIGAN CIVIL RIGHTS INITIATIVE petition campaign: That MCRI petitioners lied to 125,000 minority voters to get enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot.

“To gain ballot access, MCRI needed 317,575 signatures. 508,202 were submitted. To prevent it from appearing on the ballot, over 180,000 signatures would have to be proven invalid. BAMN alleges up to 125,000 were acquired fraudulently. Even if their most exaggerated guess was accurate, enough valid signatures remained for ballot access.

“The Michigan Civil Rights Commission (a taxpayer paid commission which has demonstrated non-objective goals of being opening against MCRI) claims it collected 500 to 1000 “affidavits” alleging petitioners misrepresented the petition. None of the “affidavits” is notarized and MCRC has only released 75 of them to the public for viewing.

“197 people spoke before the MCRC. At least 46 of them did not sign the petition. 12 are members of, or affiliated with, BAMN.

From RaceFreeZone: Everyone in the world understands the legal ramifications of his personal signature. BAMN and MCRC wants us all to believe that 125,000 minority registered voters were too ignorant to understand the significance of signing their names to a legal document, and also that they were too (you fill in the adjective) to read what they were signing. We don’t believe 125,000 minority voters were that (you fill in the word).

SEE THE COLUMN “THIRTY-SEVEN WORDS” by Diane Carey on the main blog page for an analysis of the petition process in Michigan.

From RaceFreeZone: Indentured servitude, in all its forms, is indefensible, anti-American, and should be unremittingly condemned. RaceFreeZone stands against all forms of human bondage, physical, economic, or psychological. Americans must be aware of the lessons of the past, not ruled by it.

“Blacks have been seen as a group whose economic and social disparities today are a direct consequence of their enslavement and maltreatment in the past, as well as continuing racism and discrimination in the present. . . . The general cause has been believed to be the behavior of whites. . . . Virtually all these widespread explanations of social pathology among black Americans are demonstrably false. . . . The facts of history contradict much of today’s prevailing vision.

“While such things as lower labor force participation of blacks and the much lower marriage rates among blacks today are often attributed to a ‘legacy of slavery,’ in reality blacks had higher rates of labor force participation than whites and slightly higher marriage rates than whites in the late 19th century, when they were just one generation out of slavery. Indeed, this continued to be true well into the 20th century. The drastically different patterns seen today began after the 1960’s.” (Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, p117)

“Black education rose substantially . . . in the decades preceding the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s and the affirmative action policies of the 1970’s.

“As of 1940, 87 percent of black families had incomes below the official poverty line. By 1960, this was down to 47 percent of black families. This dramatic 40-percentage point decline came at a time when there was no major federal civil rights legislation. (Thomas Sowell citing Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, “America in Black and White; One Nation, Indivisible,” 1997

“While it is an often repeated fact that the number of blacks in professional and other higher level occupations increased in the five years following passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is an almost completely ignored fact that the number of blacks rising into such occupations was even greater in the five years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” (Thomas Sowell citing Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the Negro Family,” 1965)