Measuring Human Rights (33): Measuring Racial Discrimination

The measurement of racial discrimination may seem like a purely technical topic, but in reality it comes with a huge moral dilemma. In order to measure racial discrimination, you have to categorize people into different racial groups (usually in your national census). On the basis of this you can then collect social information about those groups, and compare the average outcomes in order to detect large discrepancies between them. For example, do blacks in the US earn less, achieve less in school etc. Only then can you assume that there may be racism or discrimination and can you design policies that deal with it.

Now, categorizing people into different racial groups is not straightforward. You need to do violence to reality. Racial classifications and categorizations are not simply a reflection of factual reality, of “real group identities”. Instead they are social constructions or even fantasies influenced by centuries of prejudice, stereotypes and power relations. If we want to use racial classifications to measure discrimination, then we give people labels that may have little or nothing to do with who or what they are and how they identify themselves. Instead, these labels perpetuate the stereotypes and power relations that were the basis of the racial classifications when they were first conceived centuries ago. For example, “black” or “African-American” is not a simple descriptive label of a well-defined and existing group of people; instead it’s an ideological construction that was once used to segregate certain groups of very different people and subordinate them to a lower station in life. (Evidence for the claim that race is a social construct rather than a natural fact can be found in biology and in the fact that racial classifications differ wildly from one country to another).

In other words, the “statistical representation of diversity is a complex process which reveals the foundations of societies and their political choices” (source). In this particular case, the foundation of society was racism and the political choices were segregation and discrimination. If today we use the same racial and ethnic classifications that were once used to justify segregation and discrimination, then we run the risk of perpetuating racist social constructions. As a result, we may also help to perpetuate stereotypes and discrimination, even as we try to go in the opposite direction. It’s a form of path dependence.

Statistics are not just a reflection of social reality, but also affect this reality. Statistical categories are supposed to describe social groups, but at the same time they may influence people’s attitudes towards those groups because they contain memories of older judgments that were once attached to those groups. The dilemma is the following: the use of racial classifications to measure discrimination means giving people labels that have little or nothing to do with who they are or what they are; but they have something to do with how others treat them. It’s this treatment that we want to measure, and we can’t do so without the use of classifications. Using such classifications, however, can help to perpetuate the treatment we want to measure and avoid.

More posts in this series are here.

Racism (25): What Do We Know About Race?

At least the following 5 things:

1. There are no human races in the sense of biological or genetic divisions within the human species. About 94% of genetic variation between individuals lies within so-called “racial groups” - or rather ”groups which are conventionally labeled as races” on spurious grounds (for example on the basis of vague and ambiguous differences in appearances). This means that two Africans may be as genetically different from one another as an African and a European. Continued interbreeding throughout history and the resulting exchange of genetic material has maintained humanity as a single species. There are no clearly divided species of humanity that are biological distinct. Humans aren’t monkeys. The concept of race has no genetic basis and genetics doesn’t provide support for those dividing humanity into different races.
2. Even divisions based solely on appearances rather than genetic characteristics are flawed since those appearances show a continuum across individuals rather than a clear division between discrete groups of individuals. There are indeed superficial visual differences between people living in different parts of the world, but those differences are individual gradations on a continuum rather than divisions between groups. If you move towards the equator, skin color darkens because darker skin helps to avoid the cancerogenous effect of the sun entering the atmosphere at a right angle. These superficial differences are not only continuous and gradual rather than discrete; they also have no connection to other, supposed differences such as IQ or morality. Even if IQ and morality are determined by genes – and that’s a big “if” - then there is no reason to believe that the genes that determine these qualities “cooperate” with the genes that determine skin color. Hence no reason to assume a causal link between skin color and intellectual or moral faculties.
3. So, even if you manage to divide humanity roughly into groups according to broad ranges of skin color – and provide a category called “mixed” for descendants of two individuals belonging to different groups (“Creoles” for example) or for people belonging to borderline groups (Arabs for example) – nothing useful can be concluded from such a division. There is nothing – no gene, no trait, no color, no moral or intellectual characteristic – that distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.
4. As a result of this, observed inequalities between groups that are wrongfully labeled as racial groups must be the result not of biological inheritance but of differences in education, rights and treatment. Biological or genetic arguments for intellectual or moral differences between races are groundless because the denominator – race – is a fiction.
5. The word “race” only has meaning in the sense that it is something some people believe in, talk about and act upon. “Race” is something that exists only in the minds of people. In other words, it’s a social construct. However, a social construct can have real life effects given the fact that people treat other people on the basis of their mistaken ideas about “race”. Likewise, race can be meaningful as a form of self-identification, subjective allegiance and group belonging. But also in this sense, the word race refers to nothing in biology or genetics.

Amazonian Indians

More on race here. More posts in this series here.

Human Rights Maps (157): Homicide in NYC is Primarily a Problem of and for Male African Americans

Apparently, it’s more dangerous to be a male black person in NYC than a person of any other race or gender:

(source, where you can find an interactive version of these maps)

African Americans represent only 25% of NYCs population, but 61% of murder victims. The racial distribution of the perpetrators is strikingly similar to the racial distribution of the victims; and men are not only the main victims but also the perpetrators in 92% of cases.

A note of caution: correlation doesn’t imply causation. In this case, this means that the race of most of the perpetrators shouldn’t lead you to the conclusion that black people are more likely to engage in murder because they are black. A third element, hidden in the correlation and more common among blacks, is most probably the cause of the high murder rate (perhaps poverty). In which case, distorted homicide rates may be a symptom of racism and discrimination.

Another note of caution: a common feature of a lot of statistical data in map form is that they exaggerate the prevalence of the phenomenon that is measured, and so it is with these images of murder in NYC. The town is full of it, if you can believe the images. But that’s obviously not true. 500 or so homicides per year, on a total population of 8 million, amounts to one murder per 16.000 people, only slightly higher than the 1 in 18.000 for the US nationwide (it’s not surprising that it’s higher for a densely populated urban area).

Also, the numbers have trended downwards in NYC:

(source)

Apparently the same pattern can be seen in Chicago:

(source)

And Washington DC as well – data are here:

(source, where you can find an interactive version)

More maps on violence are here, and more human rights maps in general are here.

Economic Human Rights (36): Homelessness in the U.S. by Gender, Race and Age

There are roughly 750,000 American citizens who are homeless on any given night, with one in five of them considered chronically homeless. That’s a homelessness rate of one for every 400. Who are these people? As you can see from the graph below, being black, male or middle aged makes it much more likely that you end up sleeping in the streets. Veterans and the disabled are also overrepresented:

(source)

More on homelessness here.

The Causes of Poverty (41): Racism

Poverty in Baltimore

There’s a clear discrepancy between poverty rates for blacks and whites in the U.S. (as between races in many other countries):

The question is to what extent racism is to blame. I mentioned here, here and here that some of the irrational and self-destructive behavior of a lot of poor people causes many to believe that the poor are themselves to blame for their poverty and that one shouldn’t look for external reasons such as racism.

If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period. I have repeatedly felt the air go out of the room upon putting this to black audiences. No one of any political stripe can deny it. It is human truth on view. In 2004, the poverty rate among blacks who followed that formula was less than 6 percent, as opposed to the overall rate of 24.7 percent. Even after hearing the earnest musings about employers who are less interested in people with names like Tomika, no one can gainsay the simple truth of that advice. Crucially, neither bigotry nor even structural racism can explain why an individual does not live up to it. (source)

Opinions like this are very common:

But are these opinions correct? Is it true that “neither bigotry nor even structural racism” can explain why an individual does not make a few simple choices that will drastically improve her life?

At first sight, it does seem that a few simply rational decisions about life will allow you to escape or avoid poverty. But on closer inspection that’s just begging the question: if things are so simple, why don’t people make those choices? Hell, it’s so simple that it should be obvious even to the stupidest among the poor! But if it’s not stupidity that causes people to fail to take the advice of finishing high school and not having children early, and not bigotry or racism, then what?

[The] insistence that the failure of so many blacks to avoid the perils that come with not finishing high school and getting pregnant before marriage cannot be explained by structure or bigotry is too outrageous to let pass with no reply. In fact they can be easily explained by structure. …

The school systems in black neighborhoods are underfunded and undeniably worse on average than those in white neighborhoods.  The quality of the school, its teachers and leadership has a direct influence on graduation rates.  Sex ed and access to contraceptives are also far worse in black communities.  The public health failures come well before this for many black youth.  The failure to provide adequate health care and nutrition to black adolescents has been linked to the behavioral and learning disabilities so prevalent in black schools.  The diagnosis of a learning disability is one of the biggest predictors of eventually dropping out of school, particularly in poor urban schools. (source)

And having more trouble finding a job because you’re name sounds black obviously has an impact on your prosperity, also for your children. And growing up in a poor family has consequences for your adult prosperity. When we look at incarceration rates by race, and assume – wrongly – that there’s no racism in play, what do you think it does to a child having to grow up without a father?

This means that there’s one less parent to earn an income, one less parent to instill the sort of discipline all children need to graduate school and avoid unplanned pregnancies.  Even if the incarceration only lasts briefly, it still means that once the parent is out of jail he or she will find it much harder find employment. (source)

More posts in this series are here.

Related Articles

• “Depressing Because It Is So Persuasive” Ctd (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• “Depressing Because It Is So Persuasive” (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
• Those Who Broke it Can’t Always Fix It (theatlantic.com)
• “”Race, Wrongs, And Remedies”" and related posts (advicegoddess.com)
• Letters: The Causes of Poverty, and the Cures (nytimes.com)

Racism (17): Racism is Ghostbusting

There’s a huge assumption underlying talk by racist and anti-racists alike, namely that there are different races. That may be an uncontroversial assumption at first sight, but once you start to think about it things get muddled. Are there races? Not in the biological sense. Most genetic variation occurs within so-called racial groups, not between them.

Races are social constructs rather than a biological reality. Centuries of interbreeding have made it impossible to distinguish different human gene pools. Differences between groups of homo sapiens sapiens are purely cultural and constructed. The apparent skin, hair or other physical differences are indeed natural and biological but they are

• only skin deep, which means genetically irrelevant and certainly irrelevant for comparative merit or superiority,
• and they are gradual variations rather than discrete groupings (some “black” people are more similar to “white” people than to others from their “race”).

Groups are self-identifying and other-identifying entities, and this identification is based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry and history and on the removal of the gradual nature of differences in appearances. They are constructs, the product of beliefs and traditions, a particular way that some people talk about themselves and others.

Racism is a specific way people talk about themselves and others. It isn’t a descriptive exercise about factual differences between the “biologies” of different groups; it’s a normative exercise in which groups form beliefs about the merits of other groups, and these other groups are constructed through talk about them. They are not “natural” entities, and their members aren’t scientifically identifiable. Superficial characteristics that form a continuum are given extraordinary importance (skin color determines merit) and the gradual continuum is believed to be ruptured. Individual differences are grouped into discrete race differences, and individuals are reduced to a constructed entity.

An example. Some say that racial disparities in the US are caused by a specific culture or mentality that is rampant in “black America”, namely a culture of crime, family breakdown and lack of educational aspiration and achievement. Black America, it’s claimed, “should do something about this”! But once you try to imagine this “black America”, you’ll find that it’s impossible. There is no black America, let alone a black culture. There are certain individuals who are situated at a certain point in a skin color spectrum who may or may not belong to “black America” and who may or may not exhibit certain mentalities. But that is all one can say. There’s no way one can plausibly claim that all or most members of “black America” exhibit certain mentalities, first because it’s impossible to unequivocally determine a threshold value of skin color which puts a person inside or outside “black America”, and second because with each randomly determined threshold value you’ll end up with a very diverse group of people exhibiting many different mentalities.

(source)

Does that mean that all talk about race is superfluous? If so, then the same is true about all talk about racism. But that’s not the case. The absence of a factual reality about race doesn’t remove the salience of race in the minds of racists. Hence, racism can have consequences even in the absence of races.

Members of socially constructed racialized identities suffer real harms, and laws might have to distinguish individuals according to their racialized identities in order to compensate for such harms. (source)

People continue to label each other and themselves according to racial categories, and to act accordingly. If we want to address the negative consequences of those labels and actions, we have no choice but to use the same labels. If people impose disadvantages on another group, based on the random delineation and construction of that group, countermeasures can’t help but work with the same group. Also, this group may find the concept of its race useful in its efforts to mobilize against racist measures. It just has to careful that it doesn’t start to believe the essentialist claptrap of its racist foes and that it remains conscious of the ghostlike nature of the concept of race.

Racism (16): Race and Crime

Banksy mural depicting a scene from the movie Pulp Fiction, starring Samuel L Jackson and Jonh Travolta

It’s well-known that African-Americans make up a disproportionate part of the U.S. prison population. Racists of course have an easy explanation for this, but what is the real explanation? Part of it is probably racial profiling and bias among jury members. Another part of the explanation can be poverty, unemployment and lower education, burdens from which African-Americans also suffer disproportionately. And although crime has many possible causes, there’s some evidence that at least some types of property crime go up during recessions. This indicates that there’s a link between crime and poverty, something which in turn can explain different arrest ratios across races given the different poverty rates across races.

Screenshot from the film Pulp Fiction (1994), showing Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in their well-known pose

There’s an interesting paper here studying the effects of both labor market conditions and asset poverty on the property crimes involvement of American males. It turns out that poverty and labor market outcomes account for as much as 90% of the arrest rates ratio. More on racism and crime. More Banksy.

Related Articles

• Human Rights Facts (206): Race and Consumer Behavior (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Discrimination is the well-documented cause of race disparity in prison (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Nazism Between Utopia and Anti-Utopia

Adolf Hitler

On the one hand, Nazism was clearly a utopian movement. It wanted to create a perfect world for the pure Aryan race, devoid of degenerating forces. In a sense, it was idealistic. It had an ideal view of humanity and wanted to realize it, in part by way of the destruction of the less than ideal human beings and of those who were considered enemies of and dangerous to the better humans. Nazism had a peculiar kind of love for humanity. It’s love for humanity implied the destruction of those who abase, bring down and pollute it. Humanity was of course defined in a very particular way: true humans were the Aryans. The love for Aryans rather than hatred of Jews and other inferior beings was the prime motive. Love was what mattered, not hate, sadism, rancor or revenge. The future mattered, not our origins. People’s origins and race mattered only to the extent that racial mixing would threaten the future existence of the better race. And although there was blind and violent rage, the Nazi killings were in general rational, dutiful, professional, organized, and framed in terms of self-defense against degenerating forces.

On the other hand, as George Steiner has pointed out, Nazism was also a movement based on rancor towards Judaism and towards the impossible promise of unbearable and unattainable moral demands emanating from Judaism. Judaism presented to the world an impossible ideal, and we never hate anyone more than those who present us an impossible ideal. Nazism wanted to exterminate the Jews because Jews continuously confront humanity with its failings. The unbearable perfection caused the destruction of the emissaries of this perfection.

Steiner puts the following words in the mouth of Hitler (in “The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.):

Related Articles

• Human Rights and Utopia (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Hitler exhibition in Berlin breaks taboos on how Germany embraced the Nazis (dailymail.co.uk)

Human Rights Maps (90): Race and Poverty in the U.S.

Here are two maps, one showing the percentage of white people per county in the U.S., the other one the percentage of poor people per county. And when you compare these two maps, it’s quite striking that the less white a county, the more poor it is. In many cases, such as South Dakota, Montana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, the resemblance between the maps is almost perfect:

(source)

It’s not that there aren’t any white poor in the U.S. – obviously there are – but poverty is mainly a colored problem. More precise statistics on poverty and race in the U.S. are here and here. Something about poverty as a human rights issue is here. More human rights maps are here.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (75): The Importance of Race

This is not about how important race actually is in the minds and behavior of many, but about how important it should be. On a more serious note, here are some data on how people really think about race.

Capital Punishment (24): The Probability of Capital Punishment in the U.S., by Race

The U.S. population is about 300,000,000. Whites represent about 80%, or roughly 240,000,000. If you check the numbers of executions in the U.S., you’ll see that there were about 1,000 in the period from 1977 to 2005. 584 of those executions were of whites. That’s about 20 executions per year on average, meaning that whites have a chance of 1 in 12,000,000 of being executed.

There are about 40,000,000 African Americans, representing roughly 13 % of the U.S. population. 339 executions in the 1977-2005 period were of African Americans. That’s about 12 a year, meaning that blacks have a chance of 1 in 3,300,000 of being executed.

A black person in the U.S. is therefore almost 4 times more likely to be executed. Even if we assume that this higher probability of being executed correctly reflects a higher probability of being involved in crime that comes with capital punishment – and that’s something we shouldn’t assume, because it’s likely that there are injustices involved, e.g. inadequate legal representation and such – that shouldn’t put our minds at ease. We then still have to ask the question: why are blacks more likely to be involved in capital offences? Surely not because of their race. Something happens in society that leads to this outcome, and it’s likely that there are injustices involved: for example, inadequate education, poverty levels, discrimination etc.

More statistics on capital punishment are here. More statistics on racism are here. My opinion on capital punishment is here.

Racism (8): Homelessness and Race in the U.S.

The correct answer is here.

Human Rights Maps (52): Racial Profiling Bans in the U.S.

(source)

More on racial profiling.

Racism (2): Racial Profiling

Definition of racial profiling

Racial profiling occurs when someone’s race is used by law enforcement officials (police, airport security, counter-terrorist agencies etc.) as a basis for criminal suspicion. The reason for suspicion is race rather than suspicious behavior, criminal clues, witness reports, evidence etc.

Profiling doesn’t cover “be-on-the-lookout” (BOLO) tactics. If someone has committed a crime, and a description of this person is forwarded to the police, the description can and even should include the suspect’s race like all other characteristics which can help his or her apprehension. This isn’t profiling. A crime has been committed, and there is evidence regarding the characteristics of the likely criminal.

Some of the problems caused by racial profiling

• It undermines national unity.
• It makes us less safebecause:
  • it wastes law enforcement resources,
  • criminals who do not “fit the profile” get overlooked, and
  • it lowers respect for law enforcement.
• It lowers people’s self-esteem and self-respect.
• It can very rapidly turn into a vicious circle: profiling may lead to a disproportionate number of minorities convicted (see here), and this number of convictions enhances suspicions against minorities, which again increases the number of convictions.
• This kind of self-fulfilling prophecy can have wider ramifications. Racial profiling, as in the case of counter-terrorist activity (see below), can spill over in the wider society, contribute to xenophobia and cause hate crime.

Racial profiling is illegal

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (source)

The “probable cause” means that a search (frisking, stopping a car etc.) can only take place for a good reason. Being of a certain race can never be a good reason, since there are no races that are criminal a such. Most people of all races are law-abiding citizens. Being of a certain race doesn’t in itself make you more likely to commit a crime.

(source)

Racial profiling versus criminal profiling

Racial profiling should be distinguished from criminal profiling. Criminal profiles are a set of personal and behavioral characteristics associated with particular crimes. Police use such profiles, often with great success, to predict who may commit crimes in the future, or identify what type of person may have committed a particular crime for which no credible suspect has been identified or eye-witness description provided.

As such, this isn’t wrong. It may even help to solve crime, but only if it goes beyond (literally) superficial attributes such as race and includes types of observed behavior, known associates, internet use etc. (This is often called “data-mining“). When race does enter the equation, and especially when it’s the only element, then profiling can easily turn into racism. A criminal profile can state that a particular crime is associated with African-Americans, in the sense that African–Americans have in the past been more often convicted for such a crime than other groups (even if this is true, it may be the consequence of profiling, see above). As a consequence, people may start to think that someone’s race can predict a crime. Someone’s race turns this person into a potential criminal which is obviously ludicrous at best and insulting and demeaning at worst.

Terrorism

These last years, following 9-11, racial profiling has become a hot topic in counter-terrorism circles. People with Muslim sounding names or Muslim/Middle Eastern appearance have been disproportionally stopped at airport security points, have been added to no-fly-lists, and have been the target of surveillance.

However, experts say that this isn’t the most successful strategy. Focussing on behavior rather than ethnicity is much better .The latter even alienates the very people authorities need to help them catch terrorists. It’s well-known that not all terrorists fit the Muslim clichés, and that those who do often change their appearance before an attack.

Data

This is from a study on policing in L.A.:

We found persistent and statistically significant racial disparities in policing that raise grave concerns that African-Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles are, as we put it in the report, “over-stopped, over-frisked, over-searched, and over-arrested.” … We did look at the officers involved, and we found that the racial disparities in the likelihood of arrest were substantially lower when at least one of the stopping officers was the same race as the suspect. [Some] argued that the results are not valid because officers often don’t know the race of the suspect when they decide to pull over a car. That may or may not be true. But our study looked not just at motor vehicle stops, but at pedestrian stops as well, which also showed racial disparities. We also found that, once people were stopped, officers were more likely to frisk, search, or arrest African-Americans and Latinos than whites.  Ian Ayres and Jonathan Borowsky (source)

It is implausible that higher frisk and search rates are justified by higher minority criminality, when these frisks and searches are substantially less likely to uncover weapons, drugs, or other types of contraband.

More on racial profiling here and here.

Discrimination (1)

I’ve written before on discrimination, especially gender discrimination (also here) and discrimination based on sexual orientation. This post tackles the subject more generally.

Definition of discrimination

Discrimination, in its non-political and non-legal sense, simply means the recognition of differences. In the political and legal sense, it means unjustifiable differences in treatment between groups of people, most often the unjustifiable denial of the equal enjoyment of human rights.

Types of discrimination

Groups of people are discriminated because they have certain group-specific attributes that set them apart from the rest of society and that warrant, in the eyes of the people who are discriminating, less favorable treatment. One can make the following distinctions:

• Discrimination can come in different degrees, affecting large or small numbers of people to a large or small extent: from government policy to an unspoken mentality of a small part of the population, and everything in between (such as states not acting to counter discrimination, very active and outspoken discrimination in some parts of the community, entrenched cultural practices such as the caste system etc.).
• It can be exercised in different ways. People may be discriminated on the grounds of their race, gender etc. They can be discriminated in relatively harmless ways (denial of a promotion because of a likely pregnancy for example) or very brutal ways (slavery, denying of equal education etc.). They can also be discriminated in many different fields of life: education, employment, justice, health care etc.

Some people have the misfortune of finding themselves in a state which has an overt and active policy of discrimination, and in different discriminated groups at the same time (black lesbians in Apartheid South-Africa for example). As a result, they may also be discriminated in different fields of life at the same time (employment, family law, education etc.).

There are many types of discrimination, and the concept of discrimination is often linked to others such as racism, agism, sexism, xenophobia, intolerance, religious fundamentalism, genocide, ethnic cleansing etc. Whereas all these phenomena undoubtedly have a dose of discrimination, they are not the necessary result of discrimination. Discrimination can be much more limited.

One can distinguish between types of discrimination according to the groups that are discriminated, and the ways in which these groups are discriminated.

Groups:

• racial discrimination
• gender discrimination
• discrimination based on one’s sexual orientation
• discrimination based on one’s language, culture or national origin
• discrimination based on one’s religion or one’s status within a religion
• discrimination based on one’s political convictions
• age discrimination
• health discrimination (e.g. discrimination of HIV patients, disabled persons or obese persons)
• etc. (when it comes to cruelty, man’s imagination has no limits I’m afraid)

Ways:

• economic discrimination (e.g. persistent differences in poverty levels between groups)
• employment discrimination (e.g. discrimination in career opportunities, pay, “Berufsverbot” etc.)
• housing discrimination
• family law discrimination (e.g. the inability of homosexuals to marry or to adopt)
• education discrimination, different levels or quality of education for different groups
• discrimination of the access to public service or elected positions
• judicial discrimination, discrimination in the justice system
• health discrimination, different levels or quality of healthcare for different groups
• cultural practices such as honor killings, female genital mutilation,…
• legal discrimination such as Jim Crow or segregation
• etc.

Causes of discrimination

• racism, sexism etc.
• a history of discrimination, creating a burden on future generations
• immigration
• xenophobia
• recession or economic scarcity
• education
• cultural practices (e.g. the caste system)
• religious doctrine
• legislation (e.g. the Jim Crow laws or other types of legally enforced discrimination)
• etc.

Article 2 of the Universal Declaration prohibits discrimination:

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

Some data

The following graph shows that discrimination is a that also exists in countries with well-developed legal protection mechanisms. The graph gives information on perceived discrimination in minority groups in the Netherlands (click on the picture to enlarge):

(source)

(Perceived discrimination is not the same as real discrimination: people can believe they are being discriminated against without there being any actual discrimination, while actual discrimination may not be perceived as such).

The following graph show the perception of the worsening plight of African Americans in the U.S.:

(source)

However, when asked for the reasons, most consider discrimination not to be the most important one:

Discrimination and poverty

Although poverty has many causes, discrimination is undoubtedly one of them. Large differences in wealth between groups (for example racial groups) may indicate the existence of discrimination. Here are some data on the situation in the US:

(source)

Discrimination and justice

Statistics on the differences between races in incarceration or execution rates may indicate the existence of discrimination in the justice system, although these differences may have other causes besides discrimination, e.g. differences in poverty rates (see above), differences in levels of education etc. Of course, the latter differences may be caused by discrimination so that discrimination is indirectly the cause of the differences in the application of justice. Here again are some data on the situation in the US, showing that blacks, although they make up only 12% of the population, account for more than 1 in 3 of the prison population and of the executions. 5% of black men are in jail, compared to less than 1% of white men.

Blacks are also about twice as likely as whites to be a victim of a crime.

Here’s a post on affirmative action or positive discrimination, a common tool to counteract discrimination.

Cultural Rights (9): Ethnic Cleansing

Definition and methods of ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is the violent displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory in order to create an ethnically “clean” unit, i.e. a territorial unit composed of only one ethnic group. The means used to achieve ethnic unity are:

• direct military force
• police brutality
• genocide
• the threat of force
• intimidation
• rape
• pogrom
• demolition of housing, places of worship, infrastructure
• discriminatory legislation or policies
• tribal politics
• economic exclusion
• hate speech, propaganda
• rewriting of history, fabrication of historical resentment
• a combination of the above.

Given these various “tools”, it is not correct to equate ethnic cleansing with genocide. There are more or less violent forms of ethnic cleansing, although all forms contain some kind of force, otherwise one would speak merely of voluntary migration. Deportation or displacement of a group, even if effected by force, is not necessarily equivalent to destruction of that group.

Given the element of force it is correct to denounce all forms of ethnic cleansing, not only on the grounds of some kind of ideal of multiculturalism, but also on the grounds of the self-determination of the people involved, of their right to settle where they want, their freedom of movement etc. It is defined as a crime against humanity.

Cases

The best known cases of ethnic cleansing are:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s
• Iraq during the Iraq war
• India and Pakistan during their partition
• The Georgian-Abkhaz conflict
• Rwanda during the genocide
• The relocation of Native American peoples from their traditional areas
• The forced removals of non-white populations during the apartheid era
• The Palestinian exodus
• Central and Eastern Europe during and immediately after World War II
• Darfur
• etc.

However, it seems that this tactic has been known to humanity since a long time. Some even believe that the Neanderthals were victims of ethnic cleansing.

Justifications

Some of the justifications given in defense of ethnic cleansing are:

• To remove the conditions for potential and actual opposition. According to Mao Zedong, guerrillas among a civilian population are fish in water. By draining the water, one disables the fish.
• To create a separate state for one ethnic group. A nationalist believes that a people or a nation can only have an autonomous and authentic existence, according to their own traditions, language, values and norms, in a state of their own. A multicultural nation can never be legitimate according to nationalism, because one assumes that in such a state it is inevitable that some groups are ruled by others and hence do not have an authentic and autonomous existence. The only way to have homogeneous territories in our multicultural and melting-pot world with no clear territorial separation of groups within states, is the use of force.
• To redeem a society that is literally “unclean” and “sick” because of the presence of inferior humans.

Bosnia

The following two maps show the ethnic composition of Bosnia before and after the war:

The next map clearly shows the destruction inflicted on certain very specific areas of the country, namely the areas populated by ethnic Muslims:

Baghdad

The following map from the Washington Post shows the evolution of the ethnic composition of the different parts of Baghdad in 2006 and 2007:

Other posts on ethnic cleansing are here and here.