In an earlier diary entry I made the following comment in response to a reader's comment where she asserted that sexism was the bigger problem:
If you look at the current situation you are far worse off being a BLACK MALE on average in this country than you are being a female on average. The only people who are arguably worse off than black males are black females. I believe that institutional racism is a worse problem than sexism for that reason.
She responded:
Sorry, statistics do not support your claim at all.
I don't want to make this a p*ssing contest between what is worse, racism or sexism. Both are nasty and hurt all of us. But the facts sure as hell do not support you. When it comes to poverty, overwhelmingly women are the largest group, in the country as well as in the world.
Since I'm working on a book on the subject of poverty and racism and how they are both interlocked in a deadly embrace, I disagreed. Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting that someone else could be so adamantly of the opposite opinion. This started me thinking...
How could we disagree on something so seemingly easy to analyze?
NOTE: As an aside, I should point out that since our discussion stemmed from comments made by Gloria Steinem in a New York Times op-ed concerning the U.S. Presidential candidates, our discussion was specifically about racism and sexism in the U.S. and not in the world in general.
The commenter cited some statistics to bolster her case:
When it comes to poverty, overwhelmingly women are the largest group, in the country as well as in the world. Women on average make less than men.
Government:
The percentage of African Americans in the US is about 14%. Their representation in national government:The Senate is 1% African American and the House is approximately 9.2% African American. Women comprise over 50% of the population. Yet as of 2007, 83.7% of Congress is male and 16.3% is female.
Business:
As of 2005, only eight Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs or presidents, and 67 of those 500 companies don't have any women corporate officers. This year (2005), the magazine honors 75 blacks in corporate America, of which 18 are CEOs.
While there are some issues specifically worse for Black males, there are some issues specifically worse for all females.
Her statistics on the glass ceiling seem to prove her point at first glance. But they paint a very narrow picture, and they measure something which I would argue does not affect as many people as poverty. And since poverty is a subject I have been studying for some months now, I thought I would dig deeper there to see if I had been missing something important.
Now, I don't have any particular stake in this argument since I am both white and male, so I thought I had reached the conclusion I did logically. I thought perhaps that I was simply counting the severity of the problem rather than the number of people affected but even when I look at the problem from that perspective, it still seems to me that racism is the worse problem in the U.S.
First, we need to keep in mind that the glass ceiling affects those who are already relatively privileged. There is plenty of evidence that women are not having problems getting into colleges, or graduating from them. For instance: "33% of young women 25 to 29 had a bachelor’s degree or more education in 2007, compared with 26% of their male counterparts." For blacks this disparity is worse, a recent studyindicates that more black men are in prison than attend college.
I have been trying to use my time and effort to help those in the worst conditions as I perceive them. The glass ceiling affects those who are moderately to highly successful. The poor have no such ceiling. They would like to find the steps to get in on the ground floor. The upper floors are not even a possibility.
The problem of poverty in the U.S. among blacks is much higher than it is among whites. Using data from the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau report: "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006", I notice three interesting breakdowns for the poverty rates:
Whites Only (Non-Hispanic)
Total: 8.2%
Children under 5: 12.3%
Children under 18: 10.0%
Male: 7.0%
Female: 9.3%
M/F Ratio: 1.33
Blacks Only
Total: 24.3%
Children under 5: 39.9%
Children under 18: 33.4%
Male: 22.0%
Female: 26.2%
M/F Ratio: 1.19
Black/White Ratio
Total: 2.96
Children under 5: 3.24
Children under 18: 3.34
Male: 3.14
Female: 2.82
These statistics show pretty clearly that race is a much stronger determinant than gender for inequality in income. So I am sure that most black women would rather trade economic places with an average white woman than with an average black man. I am equally confident that most white women would not trade places with an average black man under any circumstances.
If one uses poverty as the measure, in the U.S. at least, racism is the bigger problem. Which means that if one follows Gloria Steinem's arguments, it doesn't lead where she thinks it does.