I write in response to John McGee's article entitled "Is The USA Still A Systematically Racist Nation?" published in the Feb. 24 edition of the Pea Ridge Times.
Mr. McGee obviously had several enlightening and life altering experiences in regards to racism and political structures during his time in Birmingham, Ala., and southeast Missouri in the 1980s and 1990s. However, I don't follow his rationale that the systematic racism he encountered in those two decades doesn't exist in the culture and institutions of today. Such reasoning would be like saying that since the wishbone offense is no longer utilized in today's football, then option running plays are nonexistent in the modern game.
I recently retired back to my hometown of Pea Ridge after living 19 years in a county seat town in south Arkansas. There I became very involved in several justice causes and efforts to build relationships between black and white communities because of rampant systematic racism that continues to exist in that town. Let me cite a few examples:
In 2007, the State of Arkansas was closing a nearby small school with with a predominately black population. The school and city leaders of the town in which I lived lobbied extensively to have the students of that nearby school transferred to a school district in an adjoining county because to have them admitted to their own district would have made it a predominately black district.
A few years later the same town creatively expanded its city limits, taking in white communities and excluding black neighborhoods because as one city leader said, "so the blacks won't gain power."
To this day the school district does not have a parent-teacher organization that is representative of the racial makeup of the district. Instead an all white sorority organizes school-community activities.
Sadly, I have family and friends across the country who have told me similar stories. Additionally, the prejudicial language I've heard in racially homogeneous communities makes me think that if the racial composition was more diverse in those places, the same injustices would exist there as in the town I've described.
Antidotal evidence, however, is, at best soft evidence. So I offer a few statistics and studies to substantiate current day systematic racism:
According to a 2016 Harvard study only 10% of black candidates for American jobs received callbacks from their resumes, but if they omitted ethnic details on their applications, the callback ratio increased to 25%. A study by the National Economic Research also reveals that applicants with African American names have to apply to 50% more jobs than their white counterparts to receive a call back.
An NPR Investigation into FEMA's services found that white communities nationwide have disproportionately received more federal buyouts after a disaster than communities of color.
According to the Sentencing Project, blacks are 38% more likely to be given a death sentence than white people for the same crimes.
Similar statistics reveal discrepancies between white and ethnic minority people regarding wealth, housing, environmental threats within communities, incarceration, political gerrymandering, etc.
The bottom line is this: To suggest that systematic racism does not exist is naive and unsubstantiated, and to be in denial of this reality let's us "off the hook" to do something positive about a social problem that keeps our country from being its very best. I encourage us all to not be afraid of multiplicity, to acknowledge that we are healthy as a society only to the extent that none are marginalized, and to seek out and build relationships, not just with those who look and talk like ourselves, but with all God's wonderfully diverse and beautiful human creations.
James Mark Lasater
Pea Ridge, Ark.