"As a Black woman in economics... I know that part of what’s going on with [Lisa] Cook has to do with the ongoing mistreatment Black women in economics face."

"Back in 2017, Governor Cook and I authored an an op-ed in the New York Times titled 'It Was a Mistake for Me to Choose this Field.' In the piece, we discussed how the disproportionate harassment and discrimination Black women face in the economics discipline as well as the severe underrepresentation we experience. Since writing the piece, the Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession reported in 2024 that only four Black women graduated with doctoral degrees in economics among 1,385 graduates, or nearly 0.3 percent of doctoral recipients.... I keenly remember when Cook was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2022. Critics and naysayers loudly questioned her expertise and the bigotry and harassment that she and I wrote about in 2017 became her harsh reality...."

Writes Anna Gifty, in "Trump's attack on Lisa Cook is an attack on Black women/We all stand to lose if he gets away with it" (Public Notice).

"Now a major bank has put a price tag on how much the economy has lost as a result of discrimination against African Americans: $16 trillion."

NPR reports.

Since 2000, U.S. gross domestic product lost that much as a result of discriminatory practices in a range of areas, including in education and access to business loans, according to a new study by Citigroup.... Specifically, the study came up with $16 trillion in lost GDP by noting four key racial gaps between African Americans and whites:

• $13 trillion lost in potential business revenue because of discriminatory lending to African American entrepreneurs, with an estimated 6.1 million jobs not generated as a result
• $2.7 trillion in income lost because of disparities in wages suffered by African Americans
• $218 billion lost over the past two decades because of discrimination in providing housing credit
• And $90 billion to $113 billion in lifetime income lost from discrimination in accessing higher education

Here's the study.

Sign posted in my neighborhood tells white people we "don't get to criticize" the choice of protesters to resort to rioting.

It's "white privilege," we are told, to express a desire for order and security:



A second sign attempts to convince us to abolish the police because they "uphold an inherently racist system" and "protect whiteness and capitalism":



ADDED: I anticipate that my post title will be criticized on the ground that there were a lot of peaceful protesters and we don't know whether any of them participated in anything that can properly be called "rioting." I want to keep the facts straight, and I want to know the facts. I agree that that those who broke windows and looted shops may have been an entirely different set of people from the people who were there to protest police brutality. I await the news reports and investigations that can bring these facts to light. I keep looking!

But that post title is just telling you what the sign says! It's one of the many problems with the sign. Whoever wrote that sign made no effort to separate the peaceful protesters from the rioters. It tells me to shut up about any objection I might have to the rioting because those in the oppressed group get to choose how to fight their oppression. This implies that the form of protest chosen was, in fact, theft and vandalism, and white people are not even allowed to criticize this expression.

"A black security guard at West High School said he was defending himself from a student who called him the N-word last week, repeating the word as he told the student not to use the slur..."

"... which led to his termination Wednesday. Marlon Anderson said he no longer works for the Madison School District after 11 years because of his response to a disruptive student calling him a 'flurry' of variations of the N-word. But Madison School District officials say there is a zero-tolerance approach to employees using racial slurs. 'I just don’t understand getting fired for trying to defend yourself,' Anderson, 48, said.... 'As a black man, I have a right not to be called that word.'... 'As you know, our expectation when it comes to racial slurs has been very clear,' [West High Principal Karen] Boran said. 'Regardless of context or circumstance, racial slurs are not acceptable in our schools.'... During his time at East and West, Anderson said he’s been called the slur by students 'many times,' and it’s resulted in 'restorative conversations' where he explains the history, context and meaning of the slur. Even if he hears students using the N-word in casual conversations with friends, Anderson said he’ll intervene to try and get them to stop, telling them: 'Don’t look at yourself like that. You are not that word.' Boran said the zero-tolerance approach on the use of racial slurs 'has been applied consistently and will continue to be applied consistently.'"

Madison's Capital Times reports.

And that's zero tolerance for you!

"She bristles at the notion that Students for Fair Admissions represents Asian Americans."

"[Edward] Blum, the group’s founder, had previously challenged affirmative action at the University of Texas. For that case, he recruited a white female plaintiff who said she was rejected from UT because of her race. When that suit failed, Blum tried again, this time arguing race-conscious admissions policies penalize Asian Americans.... He found support for his crusade among well-educated and wealthy Chinese Americans in places like Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area, people who had grown suspicious when their high-achieving children were rejected from top-flight schools. They spread the word of their fight through WeChat, a Chinese messaging program. In Lee’s eyes, it is Students for Fair Admissions, not Harvard, that doesn’t recognize socioeconomic diversity among Asians. 'It’s very specific groups filing this lawsuit, and yet we’re all being clumped together,' she said. She is skeptical that eliminating race from college admissions decisions will benefit Hmong students, young people who, like her, grew up poor and in households where no English was spoken. 'It will definitely hurt them,' she predicted."

From "The Forgotten Minorities of Higher Education/What affirmative action means for low-income Asians" in The Washington Post Magazine.

But if using race as a factor were forbidden, I think schools would pay more attention to "young people who... grew up poor and in households where no English was spoken." So why shouldn't those who champion the interests of less well-off Asian groups support the lawsuit? I see that there's an estimate that 43% of Harvard students (instead of 23%) would be Asian if only GPA and test scores were used. Maybe the idea is that if there were a higher proportion of Asian students, the Asian students attempting to rely on low economic status would be discriminated against, because the schools would be afraid of looking too Asian. Asian, as the article points out, is a very large category, comprising many subgroups, but if school are concerned about looks, the question is whether these subgroups are visually distinguishable to... who?... white Americans. And that's the problem with using economic deprivation (rather than race) as a factor: It's doesn't show. Not vividly anyway.

"White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys raised at the top, however..."

"... are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households. Even when children grow up next to each other with parents who earn similar incomes, black boys fare worse than white boys in 99 percent of America. And the gaps only worsen in the kind of neighborhoods that promise low poverty and good schools.... Though black girls and women face deep inequality on many measures, black and white girls from families with comparable earnings attain similar individual incomes as adults."

This looks like an important study, and the NYT has done an interesting job of displaying data on animated graphs, but I don't think the title is properly scientific: "Extensive Data Shows Punishing
Reach of Racism for Black Boys."

The data don't tell us the cause of the disparities, only that the disparities exist. In fact, just looking a the data, it seems easier to say that the cause is not racism, because we see black women doing not only as well as white women but a bit better? The article uses the lack of disparity among women as a basis for refuting the hypothesis that black/white disparities can be " explained by differences in cognitive ability":

If such inherent differences existed by race, “you’ve got to explain to me why these putative ability differences aren’t handicapping women,” said David Grusky, a Stanford sociologist who has reviewed the research.

It is quite possible that there's gender-specific racism that is causing this effect...

“It’s not just being black but being male that has been hyper-stereotyped in this negative way, in which we’ve made black men scary, intimidating, with a propensity toward violence,” said Noelle Hurd, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia.

And it's also possible that the male reaction to racism is generally very different from the female reaction, but I don't see how these data show that. The article is using the data as basis for speculation.