On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> All I am saying that the concept of "racism" is
> extremely ill suited to explain these path dependencies because it does
> not allow analytical separation of various factors affecting those
> paths.
I see your point. I agree that the common indicators of racism are confounded with other social disadvantages (e.g., poverty, class discrimination, access to health care, etc). However, I'm not as skeptical as you are about demonstrating racial discrimination. For instance, HUD does some great research on housing discrimination: they send out equally qualified applicants of different racial and ethnic groups to the same housing units (homes/apts), and see what happens. Overall, despite equal qualifications, whites receive better treatment than other groups (they're more likely to be shown the housing, more likely to be told a unit is available, more likely to be told about rental incentives, etc.) Isn't this a clear demonstration of racism in our society, methodologically untangled from correlated social factors?
Miles