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May 5, 2005
Hub blacks speak of persistent race bias
Jeremy Schwab
Banner interviews with anti-discrimination activists, analysis
of studies on discrimination and interviews with ordinary citizens
found that subtle discrimination permeates life in Greater Boston,
confirming the findings of a recent report.
The Harvard University Civil Rights Project report, released last
month, found that a large minority of blacks and Latinos felt
unwelcome or received poorer service at sports venues, museums,
restaurants and shopping areas.
The percentages of those reporting recent discrimination in housing
and the workplace were lower, ranging from 10 to 21 percent.
Those in higher socioeconomic categories were just as likely to
report discriminatory treatment, and blacks were more likely than
Latinos to report discriminatory treatment.
Mayor Thomas Menino questioned the findings of the report, differentiating
racial attitudes in Boston from those in surrounding communities.
“I am troubled by the presentation of the survey’s
polling data that suggests that opinions on race relations are
uniform throughout such a large region, including seven eastern
Massachusetts counties,” he wrote in a letter to Gary Orfield
of the Civil Rights Project. “Diversity is the strength
of our city, and I believe the residents and businesses of the
city of Boston share this point of view.”
Menino did not return calls for comment for this article, but
interviews conducted by Banner reporters suggest that black Bostonians
are every bit as likely to report experiences of racism within
Boston’s boundaries as they are in surrounding communities.
Black Bostonians interviewed on the street reported being followed
suspiciously by store employees in local stores and malls.
“While shopping at the Art Store in Fenway, employees insisted
that we check our bags, but they waited until we had walked around
the store,” said 17-year-old Dorchester resident Taryn Williams.
“The funny thing is that they questioned my group, but this
group of white kids that came in just ahead of us weren’t
questioned or looked at.”
The NAACP Boston Branch office receives many calls from people
who believe they have been harassed at the South Shore Plaza in
Braintree because of the color of their skin.
“People are harassed and humiliated by security guards,”
said Boston Branch President Leonard Alkins. “The store
detectives and salespeople make the unwarranted assumption that
because of the color of your skin your intent is to steal something.”
While harassment at malls may interfere with people’s shopping
trips, discrimination in the real estate industry can hurt their
chances of living where they want or receiving loans.
David Harris, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of
Greater Boston, described a range of discriminatory techniques
employed against renters and homebuyers of color.
“Discrimination can be falsely denying that housing is available,
providing different terms and conditions to people, providing
different amenities and different prices, making discriminatory
statements such as, ‘We don’t want children’
or, ‘We don’t take Section 8,’” said Harris.
“There are different standards for credit.”
Professionals of color face negative stereotypes in the business
world that hurt their ability to advance. Bennie Wiley, president
of The Partnership, a nonprofit that works with businesses to
retain and develop leaders of color, said she consistently hears
similar complaints from employees of color.
“We have incidences where somebody tells you you just don’t
have what it takes to advance here,” she said. “It
doesn’t matter how many hours you work, what effort you
make. Incidents where senior executives feel that no matter how
many times they demonstrate their competence, there is the presumption
of incompetence.”
Racial stereotypes are not the only reason people of color are
passed up for opportunities in favor of whites. Sometimes, it
is a matter of who you know.
In the construction contracting field, for instance, racial bias
is more a problem of insufficient networking rather than intentional
discrimination, according to David Lopes, who has worked for 30
years in the construction industry and currently serves as chief
operating officer for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Boston.
“In small contracting, I believe you can make your own way
when you are dealing with homeowners, if you run a good business
and know what you’re doing,” he said. “It’s
when you get into the commercial construction field that the problems
really get exacerbated. You’d be hard-pressed to find a
person of color who is a project manager. And [project managers]
hire people they know or are used to working with. In most cases,
they don’t hire black or minority sub-contractors.”
Racial profiling by police officers is another persistent problem
impacting people of color.
Professor Jack McDevitt, associate dean of Northeastern University’s
College of Criminal Justice, authored a 2004 study that found
that police officers across Massachusetts stop black and Latino
motorists and search their vehicles far more often than they do
with white and Asian motorists. He hypothesized that racial profiling
could be to blame for the disparities.
“I believe some officers practice it, in the same way I
believe some college professors profile their students,”
said McDevitt. “Our whole society acts on different stereotypes.”
In the past, people of color have complained regularly to the
NAACP Boston Branch about police profiling in mostly-white suburbs.
“The calls don’t come as often as they used to come
since the racial profiling study was done,” said Alkins.
But there may be other possible explanations besides racial profiling
to explain the racial disparities found in traffic stops, suggested
McDevitt.
“Let’s say there are more calls for service from a
particular neighborhood,” he said. “That means police
may patrol that neighborhood better. Say you are doing drug interdiction
because a community asks you to.”
McDevitt’s hesitancy to blame profiling for the disparities
underscores the difficulty in pinpointing clear-cut incidents
of profiling. While many people of color feel they are victims
of negative stereotypes in certain situations, they cannot get
inside the head of the white people who they feel are disrespecting
them.
But a test designed by Harvard and Yale researchers suggests that
subconscious prejudices and biases are more widespread than most
people suspect.
Dubbed the Implicit Association Test, the test measured sub-conscious
attitudes on a range of topics, including race. Test subjects
are presented with a rapid succession of negative words such as
“nasty” or “horrible” and positive words
such as “glorious” and “love” and asked
to associate them with either whites or blacks.
About 80 percent of whites and 50 percent of blacks show a pro-white
bias, according to University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek,
who works on Project Implicit, which designed the test. The majority
of white test takers, however, said prior to taking the test they
had no bias.
“Black and white respondents have both experienced the same
American cultural context that has these stereotypes and biases
present,” Nosek commented. “We don’t need to
endorse biases for them to exist in our mind. We only need to
learn them. Our brains are excellent at learning associations.
The fact that they’re around everywhere means that our brains
are going to keep recording them.”
The gap between white and black perception on race was underscored
by a 2004 Boston Police telephone survey, which found that most
Boston residents do not think racial profiling is a problem. Yet
66 percent of Roxbury residents and 70 percent of Mattapan residents
think it is a problem, the poll found.
Meanwhile, Menino’s de-emphasis of the problem of discrimination
reflects an attitude shared by many whites who note that more
blatant forms of discrimination, such as legalized segregation,
have been outlawed.
Calls to Menino’s office were re-directed to Charlotte Golar
Richie, director of the Department of Neighborhood Development.
Golar Richie emphasized the progress made by people of color,
and blamed the media for furthering stereotypes by focusing on
the problems faced by people of color.
“I would say that if there is one area where we should try
to pull together and work on in terms of creating greater opportunities
for people of color that would be the media,” she said.
“I think the way people of color are depicted by the media
creates a strong impression. We know there has been great progress
and great strides made.”
Banner reporters Sahar Lawrence and Lucretia Williams contributed
to this report.
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