Essay 4751

From The Chicago Tribune…

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On race issues, we should ask better questions

By Dawn Turner Trice

Say you were contacted for a national survey and this was one of the questions: Which of these statements comes closer to your view -- even if neither is exactly right: Blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race because the black community is so diverse OR blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.

How would you answer? Could you answer? We’ll revisit this in a moment.

This month, the Washington-based Pew Research Center released the results of a much-talked-about survey, “Optimism about Black Progress Declines, Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class,” that included the above question.

The study showed that Hurricane Katrina and the Jena 6 controversy, among other things, have African-Americans feeling pretty down about racial progress in America.

From Sept. 5 through Oct. 6, the folks at Pew contacted a diverse group of Americans with a larger sample of African-Americans. Interview questions addressed the economic prospects of blacks, their values, politics, and experiences with discrimination, integration, the criminal justice system, affirmative action.

One theme Pew wanted to focus on was the trends in income disparity for African-Americans since the civil rights movement. In 1970, the percentage of blacks with incomes of $50,000 and above, adjusted for inflation, was just 18 percent. In 2006, nearly 1 in 3 African-American households had incomes that high.

Indeed more and more blacks have seen their incomes move into the middle class and upper middle class ranges. Still, the gap between the black middle class and black lower class is increasing. And this is what served as the basis of the various questions relating to values.

The Pew researchers asked whether over the last decade values held by middle class blacks and poor blacks had become more similar or dissimilar.

Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the center, told me that when the values question was asked 20 years ago, about 50 percent of the respondents said the values among blacks of various incomes were more similar. This time there was a striking difference. By a ratio of 2 to 1, respondents said the values of poor blacks and wealthier blacks have grown more dissimilar over the last 10 years.

So, now to that original question up top: Should blacks be thought of as a single race or not?

I’m a fan of the Pew Center, but I found the question quite disturbing. First off, it’s a bad question because you have no clue what is meant by a “single race.”

Race is such a loaded term whose meaning is both based on genetics and a social construct. Either way, you’d have to believe that it’s possible for some people, based on their values (or, I guess, anything else), to splinter off. Impossible, right? So, what’s the point?

To ask whether blacks can be a single race, implies there’s an alternative. Is there?

Taylor said that researchers try not to direct people being surveyed, so they didn’t attempt to clarify any of this.

It all seems ludicrous actually.

There’s always been diversity within every racial group. There have always been people with questionable values up and down the economic scale. This is what sent entertainer Bill Cosby scurrying a few years ago to clean up his comments about poor people not holding up their end of the bargain in terms of racial progress. He was forced to stress that he meant some poor people, so that he wouldn’t unfairly paint all poor people with the same brush.

Perhaps what was more disturbing than the question were the answers. Thirty-seven percent of African-Americans said blacks shouldn’t be considered a single race.

Fifty-three percent of the black respondents said there should be no splintering off.

Taylor said both of these groups were diverse, with respondents spanning the class spectrum. Does that surprise you? It surprised me.

But maybe it shouldn’t. There are those who think that separating somehow can be a solution to the ills affecting black folk.

Distancing aggravates an already bad situation. There are many questions we should be asking to better understand what ails us. The above question really isn’t one of them.