Measuring Human Rights (19): Measuring Racism

This blog contains numerous statements similar to this one:

There are large and important differences between blacks and whites in nearly every facet of life – earnings, unemployment, incarceration, health, and so on. (source)

We can assume that racism and discrimination are at least partially to blame for such discrepancies in life prospects between races, and that these discrepancies are therefore indicators of racism. If we want to measure racism, we’ll look at those discrepancies: are they becoming more important, then there’s more racism, and vice versa.

Of course, there are other explanations for such discrepancies (e.g. the stigma of acting white and the war on drugs) and there are also other, perhaps better indicators of racism.

For an example of other indicators, one can look at the frequency of the use of expressions of racism, such as racial epithets. This is an overview of the use of “nigger” in Google Books (via the Ngram tool):

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It seems the epithet is used much less than it used to be, but there’s no real pattern. Why did it increase in the late sixties and why did it go down again in the late seventies? Was that a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement? One can only speculate. And the same is true for the increase during the Great Depression and the decrease following the abolition of slavery. Also, when you use this as a measure of racism, it can only be a measure of overt racism. Political correctness may hide racism.

Another possible measure of racism is the frequency of discussions about racism. Again, an Ngram:

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Talk about racism only became common very recently, in the 1970s. Now, is that because there’s more racism since the 1970s? Most likely not. Frequent talk about racism can also be a sign of increased opposition to racism.

Another indicator of racism are the numbers of interracial marriages and interracial dating. If this becomes more common, one can assume that there’s less racism.

Residential or educational segregation may indicate racial animus on the part of people avoiding black neighborhoods or schools, but it may also be merely an economic issue or it may be motivated by worries about the quality of education.

More posts in this series are here.