EthnicMajority

SAN FRANCISCO — Mrs. Cheng feels like she’s living under siege in her own home.

In January, an 83-year-old neighbor, also a Chinese immigrant, was beaten into a coma. Days after he died in March, Mrs. Cheng, 53, was attacked and pushed off a public transit platform, coming to minutes later with front teeth knocked out and her mouth full of blood.

Both attacks happened within a block of her house. Now Mrs. Cheng avoids going out, gets rides to work, and keeps her two daughters close to home. She doesn’t want to be identified for fear of retaliation, but she doesn’t want too much to be made of what happened to her, either. She repeatedly said through a translator that she just wants everyone to live in peace.

Still, such attacks and the death of a Chinese immigrant from San Francisco who was assaulted during a visit to Oakland have focused the anger of Asian-Americans here, pushing them to vent in emotional rallies their long-simmering perception that they are targets of racially motivated violence. In all cases, the perpetrators were black teenagers, police said.

Full story…

In watching the television coverage of the staged protests at town hall meetings to discuss healthcare reform, it occurred to me that there are some noticeable faces missing from these mobs – those of people of color. While this demographic could be mistaken for the Republican party, who openly encouraged turning public discussion forums into angry shouting matches, I can’t help but think of the racial overtones in this debate (or lack thereof).

Many of the protesters expressed a common theme about why they are opposing healthcare reform. Almost all of these folks already have health insurance, private or public (Medicare), and it appears their main concern is that they will be footing the bill for covering the 50 million people who don’t.

So who are the uninsured? According to the Centers for Disease Control, 14.8% of the population is uninsured, including 19.8% of the working age adults (age 18-64). Amongst the caucasian population, only 10.5% are uninsured. This compares to 33.1% of Hispanics, 16.0% of Blacks, and 13.3% of Asians. Clearly people of color represent a disproportionately high percentage of the uninsured.

What the protesters fail to realize is that the insured bear the cost of treating the uninsured, which is substantial since they are getting treated by hospital ERs instead of neighborhood doctors. These costs are passed on to the insured in the form of increased premiums. So if you are already paying for the uninsured, wouldn’t you rather get a better bang for the buck by increasing competition amongst insurance carriers and stop using hospital ERs to treat minor illnesses?

Ethnicmajority Healthcare page.

Early public opinion polls seemed to indicate that the public blamed Professor Henry Gates more than Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley for their high-profile incident in Boston. I found this very curious because you would think the general distrust of the police and sympathy for Gates getting arrested in his own home would shift the blame to Crowley. Guess again.

So I asked my barber, who has had his own run-ins with the cops, which side he was taking. To my surprise, he also sided with the police officer. This, in spite of his acknowledgment that Gates committed no crime and the officer not having any justifiable reason to arrest him (which was borne out by the Cambridge Police department immediately dropping all charges against Gates).

Then I realized that, like most polls, the answers depend on how you ask the question. My barber explained that he sided with the police officer because he thought Gates got what was coming to him by challenging the cop, which he thought was utterly idiotic. In other words, his interpretation of the question was “who acted more stupidly” in this incident, and he knew only one of the participants had the power to arrest the other.

So this week CNN published its own poll, specifically asking who acted “stupidly”: Gates, Crowley, and President Obama. In its reporting, the Boston Globe botched its reporting of the survey results, saying that “58 percent of whites surveyed blamed Gates for the confrontation, 59 percent of blacks faulted Crowley”. Not true. If you look at the survey, it shows that 59% of blacks think Crowley acted stupidly and 58% of whites think that Gates acted stupidly. But the “blame” question is clearly different and more complicated to answer than the actual survey “stupidly” question. Even 44% of blacks think Gates acted stupidly.

When the survey goes on to ask who the public “sympathizes with more”, this is where the answers divide along racial lines. Blacks side with Gates 61% to 19% versus whites, who side with Crowley 45% to 29%. The African American answer is no surprise, but I think caucasian answer is illuminating. Even though 58% of whites think Gates acted stupidly and 58% think Crowley did not act stupidly, 29% still sided with Gates and another 26% did not side with Crowley.

I think the “teachable moment” here has less to do with race relations than it does the public’s attitude toward law enforcement. We would all acknowledge that being a police officer is one of the toughest jobs around and that they take more than their fair share of verbal abuse on a daily basis, however like any other profession, they have their share of “bad apples”. I don’t think Crowley is a bad apple, but when a significant percentage of white America sides with an African American for speaking out even though they think it was a stupid idea, that tells me there are more bad apples than the nation’s local police departments care to admit.

How many 911 calls begin with: “there’s a strange black man breaking into my neighbor’s house”? I am not surprised that the 911 operator would ask for a physical description later in the call. I don’t think Lucia Whalen was deliberately casing her neighborhood and targeting African Americans for suspicious behavior. That would be a clear case of racial profiling. But I am not ready to assume Ms. Whalen acted in a color-blind fashion either.

If you review the 911 call transcript, when asked whether the perpetrators were white, black, or Hispanic, Ms. Whalen said “there were two larger men, one looked kind of Hispanic, but I’m not really sure. And the other one entered and I didn’t see what he looked like at all.” Professor Gates is multi-racial and his lighter skin could be confused with being Hispanic when viewed from behind at a distance. Ms. Whalen also acknowledges that she wasn’t sure whether this was a break-in or the owner trying to get into his own house: “I noticed two suitcases so I’m not sure if these are two individuals who actually work there, I mean who live there”.

So here’s my question. If you saw someone in broad daylight with two suitcases on the front porch trying to enter your neighbor’s house, what would you do? Since most burglaries do not occur during the daylight hours through the front door, this situation would appear to me to fit the profile (pardon the pun) of someone returning from a trip and accidentally locking himself out of his house. I would be more inclined to help him rather than call 911.

Had Ms. Whalen seen two white people trying to enter the house instead of one who looked Hispanic, might she have been inclined to help them rather than call 911?

Was Harvard professor Henry Gates the victim of racial profiling? I say yes, but not at the hands of the police. It was his neighbor, who saw a mysterious-looking black man breaking into an expensive house in an affluent neighborhood in Boston, and called the police. Would she have called 911 if the man was white? Maybe she would have figured the man locked himself out of his home (which Gates was) and brought him a crowbar. One thing is certain – Professor Gates should get to know his neighbors better.

According to the police report, Gates became belligerent and called the officer a racist. According to Gates’ account, he denies calling the officer a racist and believes he was arrested because he asked the officer for his name and badge number. As with many situations with two radically different accounts, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But that said, how crazy would Gates have to act in order to justify being arrested?

There have been reports of complaints of police mistreatment by black students at Harvard, so it appears we do not have an aberration – we have a trend of a more serious racial profiling problem. But in Professor Gates’ case, it seems he was more of a victim of racial discrimination than racial profiling. Either way, he is owed an apology and the Cambridge Police Department has a problem that needs to be addressed.

Ethnicmajority racial profiling page.

Now that we have an African American President, it seems like the politically correct thing to do. Barack Obama’s immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both expressed heartfelt regret for slavery but never moved to issue a formal apology.

So now the U.S. Senate has unanimously voted to issue a formal apology for slavery, and the wheels are in motion for the House to approve it and Obama to sign it. Then all will be forgotten, right? Not by a long shot.

In approving this resolution, the Wall Street Journal quoted Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA): “Let us make no mistake: This resolution will not fix lingering injustices. While we are proud of this resolution and believe it is long overdue, the real work lies ahead”. What “real work” is he referring to? Clearly the work does not include any accountability by the government. The apology does not include any admission of guilt or acceptance of liability: “Nothing in this resolution (a) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or (b) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States”.

While I am not in favor of reparations, nothing spells insincere quite like an apology filled with CYA disclaimers written by government lawyers.

Ethnicmajority Civil Rights page.

In a recent New York Times article, the headline screams: “home ownership losses are greatest among minorities”. Given that African and Hispanic Americans were more likely to get subprime loans during the housing heyday up to 2006, you would think they would be the most negatively impacted by more recent foreclosures and more stringent mortgage approval standards.

In reviewing the research conducted by the Pew Research Center that the Times used to reach this conclusion, it does not appear that the news is as bad as the headline purports. Overall home ownership reached a peak of 69% in 2004 and declined to 67.8% in 2008. During the same time period, whites fell from 76.1% to 74.9%, Asians 60.8% to 59.1%, Blacks 49.4% to 47.5%, and Hispanics 49.8% to 48.9%. While home ownership rates declined more than the average for Asian and African Americans, the differences were marginal. And Hispanic declines were less than average, especially for more recent immigrants.

That said, the future does not look bright. African and Hispanic Americans are still two or three times more likely to get a subprime loan, pay 3 percentage points more for it, and borrow more for the same income levels when compared to whites.

This could lead to another foreclosure crisis, and we are still feeling the effects of the last one. But lets not jump the gun by making things sound worse than they really are today.

Ethnicmajority housing page.

After Barack Obama became the country’s first African American President, I wrote on the Blog that we shouldn’t jump the gun on assuming America had become a color-blind society. Maybe I was wrong.

According to a New York Times public opinion poll, two thirds of the public feel that race relations are generally good, up 25% since last July. The percentage of African Americans answering affirmatively doubled during the same time period.

Obama’s election has accomplished what no affirmative action program ever could – convincing the public that diversity might actually be a good thing. Whereas much of the public views affirmative action a modern version of forced integration, Obama was the public’s choice.

Just as the Cosby show in the 80’s portrayed African Americans in counter-stereotypical way, Obama’s performance in the world’s toughest job and the class of the Obama family on display for all the world to see has definitely opened a lot of eyes. And a lot of minds.

Ethnicmajority politics page.