一个普林斯顿华裔学生对种族歧视的思考

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编者按：本文作者是普林斯顿大学2020届毕业生，Fulbright奖学金获得者。在这篇信息量巨大的文章里，她真诚、成熟、理性地讨论种族歧视问题，每一个华裔父母，不管立场如何，都可以通过此文了解下一代的想法，打下和他们更好地沟通的基础。“BLM不是一场比较哪个群体面临更大歧视的竞赛，而是一个了解每个群体面临的不同歧视的机会。”文章由编者翻译成中文，英文原文附在文后。

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我父母在90年代后期从中国来到美国。父亲来美国时只有20块钱（每次讲这个故事时这个数字都会变），但他获得学位，孜孜不倦地工作，终于使我们家能享受目前舒适的生活。这是一个经典的移民成功故事，其他朋友的中国移民父母的故事也很类似。

从我父母以及许多中国父母的角度来看，努力工作是成功的关键。他们将华裔美国人的成就归功于勤劳的文化价值观，并期望其他人以同样的职业道德获得同样的成功。他们相信美国的精英制，而华裔美国人是“模范少数民族”，因此中国父母可能很难理解非洲裔美国人在成功道路上面临的障碍。中国父母强调自力更生，但努力并不是成功的唯一因素，我们需要检视华裔美国人在美国获得的机会。

受教育的机会使我父亲凭学生签证来到美国路易斯安那大学学习。这是他在美国上升的故事的起点。像其他华裔美国人的父母一样，我父母为了在美国获得成功离开了家人、朋友和祖国熟悉的一切。他们的旅程很不容易，一路上遇到许多障碍。他们通过辛勤劳动使家庭过上了舒适的生活。

但是他们的勤劳是和机会并存的——而许多非裔美国人由于种族的原因没有获得这些机会。这些机会也为我进入K-12教育的magnet program并获得普林斯顿大学的学位铺平了道路。我的父母和我利用了我们在教育、住房、执法各方面获得的公平待遇。这些都是非洲裔美国人在1965年平权法案之后一直努力争取的，但他们仍然没有得到。

Getty/ Gary Waters的插图，来自美国进步中心。

我听到的中国父母的论点是，非洲裔美国人已经在美国社会享有足够的好处，奴隶制发生于很久以前，与现在无关。他们很愿意将注意力集中在他们听说过的现代黑人成功故事上，例如巴拉克·奥巴马，迈克尔·乔丹或奥普拉·温弗瑞。他们看到了平权行动对亚裔美国学生的负面影响。但他们没有意识到当前的美国社会中普遍存在的系统性种族主义。

系统种族主义意味着当前的美国机构会因为种族而产生不同结果。今天对非裔美国人的歧视超出了我们在美国历史课上所学的范围，也超出了我父母在华裔圈子中所了解的范围。华裔美国人没有直接受到系统种族主义的影响，但这并不意味着它不存在。事实和统计数字清楚地表明了非裔美国人在机会方面面临的障碍。

教育机会

中国文化重视教育。许多中国父母都非常注重他们的孩子获得良好的成绩并获得学位。华裔父母经常认为非洲裔美国学生在学校表现不佳是因为他们缺乏勤劳的习惯以及他们的基因。但将黑人学生学业成绩较低的现象归咎于种族的做法，忽略了一些导致他们学业成绩不佳的实际问题。

美国社会的“从学校到监狱”的现象更大地阻碍了非洲裔美国学生获得教育机会。根据《教育容忍》杂志的说法，“从学校到监狱”其实是“鼓励警察出现在学校、使用包括身体约束、自动停学等严厉惩戒手法的一系列政策”。非洲裔美国人和有学习障碍的学生受到这种制度的更大的危害。根据美国教育部民权办公室在全国范围内进行的一项研究，黑人学生被开除或停学的可能性是白人学生的三倍。非裔美国儿童占停学多于一次的学生人数的46％，尽管他们仅占学生的18％。

杰西·伦茨（Jesse Lenz）的照片插图，来自美国前景。

种族偏见导致了黑人学生比白人学生高得多的停学率。印第安纳大学咨询与教育心理学教授拉塞尔·斯基巴（Russell Skiba）表示，黑人学生通常是出于主观而非客观原因而被送往办公室。白人和黑人学生犯下具体过失——例如将武器带入教学楼——的比例是相同的，但是黑人学生则更可能因为主观的原因——例如威胁性行为或不尊重——被停学。

斯坦福大学的研究人员詹妮弗·埃伯哈特（Jennifer Eberhardt）和杰森·奥科诺法（Jason Okonofua）进行的一项研究进一步证明了停学决定中的种族偏见。埃伯哈特和奥科诺法向老师讲述一些有关学生行为不端的事件，随后询问是否以及如何惩罚学生，但对不同的老师使用了不同的学生名字。一些老师被提供了听起来更像白人的学生名字，而另一些老师则被提供了非裔美国人常用的名字。他们发现，如果学生使用传统上听起来像黑人的名字，教师更有可能建议停学或使用其他严厉处罚。

一些学校使用的“违反某些学校规定的学生将面临强制性处罚，包括停学和转送执法部门”的“零容忍”政策，更经常地被用于黑人学生。绝大部分停学都是针对轻微行为，而非严重罪行。学生被停学后，更有可能在学业上落后，从而导致进一步的自暴自弃和与学校脱节，而这又与少年犯罪紧密相关。

由于父母的工作，这些被停学的孩子往往没有成年人监督，因此将来辍学的可能性更高。被停学的学生更有可能最终进入少年拘留所，而在高一新生期间被停学的学生一年内完全辍学的可能性是原来的两倍。这些学生大多数都没能从高中毕业。

这些家中通常有虐待、忽视和贫穷问题，或者自己有学习障碍的学生，不但没有得到迫切需要的额外咨询和教育服务，反而被惩罚，被孤立，被驱出了美国教育系统。这种政策当然是为了使学校更安全，但学生却因轻微违反规定而被作为罪犯对待。

将叙述重点放在“加倍努力”上，忽略了非洲裔美国学生在课堂上面临的挑战，而“从学校到监狱”的现象也是因为公立学校资金不足。这些学校面临“拥挤的教室、合格老师的匮乏、以及诸如辅导员、特殊教育服务甚至教科书之类的额外费用的资金不足”，这对黑人学生的影响尤其严重。非营利组织EdBuild的一份报告发现，以白人为主的学区获得的资金总额，比以有色人种为主的学区要多240亿美元，白人学区的每个学生平均比非白人学区的学生多得到2,000美元经费。

我不是看不到美国华裔学生和他们的父母付出的努力。但是美国学校系统中存在系统性种族主义，这减少了黑人学生的机会。如果教育机会是如此重要，那么有必要承认由于美国现有的制度，非洲裔美国人在获得这些机会方面有很大的困难。“从学校到监狱”的输送管道、种族偏见和零容忍政策阻碍了黑人学生享有许多华裔美国学生享有的教育特权。与其指责黑人学生的成就率较低，不如考虑如何改善教育机构来提升所有种族的学生更有建设性。如果没有机会，努力工作也不会带来成功。

房屋所有权的机会

拥有房屋所有权，特别是在马里兰州顶级学区的房屋所有权，是我和我父母都从中受益的又一个机会，而非洲裔美国人从历史上看在这上面是没有得到公平机会的。

长期以来，非裔美国人由于“红线政策”（Redlining）而被剥夺了住房机会。在1930年代后期，房屋贷款公司绘制了自己的地图，这些地图将基本上由种族构成决定的等级分配给每个街区，少数民族占多数的社区被贷款银行视为“高风险”并标为红色，这也是这个政策的名称由来。

联邦住房管理局拒绝向这些红色居民区提供抵押保险，与此同时却为白人居住的郊区提供补贴，要求这些房屋不得出售给黑人。这种早期的隔离阻碍了居住在隔离社区中的家庭的向上流动。

纽约五个行政区的红线政策。来自NPR的“MappingInequality”的屏幕截图。

联邦住房管理局一直到1960年代都禁止黑人购买郊区房屋，使他们无法与白人积累相同的房屋产权。根据对《法律的色彩》（The Color of Law）的作者理查德·罗斯斯坦（Richard Rothstein）的采访，“有些非裔美国人能够像白人美国人一样负担这些房屋，但被禁止购买。”里士满大学数字奖学金实验室主任罗伯特·尼尔森（Robert Nelson）说，由于红线政策，有色家庭“无法利用20世纪实现家庭和个人财富积累的最重要途径，那就是拥有自己的房屋。”

由于私人投资者和金融机构减少了对内城黑人社区的投资，住房隔离制度被建立起来，而且一直延续到今天。2014年，白人家庭拥有房屋的可能性比黑人家庭高30％，能够拥有住房的黑人家庭生活在贫困集中地区的可能性是白人家庭的4.6倍。

尽管1968年的《公平住房法》从名义上终止了红线政策，但针对黑人的房屋所有权歧视仍然存在。2009年，巴尔的摩的官员起诉富国银行（Wells Fargo），理由是他们针对非裔美国人来兜售高息次级抵押贷款，导致数百宗对黑人家庭的止赎和驱逐。杜克大学经济学教授帕特里克·拜耳（Patrick Bayer）进行的一项研究发现，相同社区中的相同单位对非洲裔美国人的销售价格要高于白人，而且越是在白人人口较多的社区，这种差距越大。

华裔美国人拥有住房比例高的原因可以归功于他们做出的牺牲和他们的勤劳，但不应责怪非裔美国人没有这样做。系统性种族主义对当今的非洲裔美国房屋所有权和社区产生了持久影响。因为公立学校的经费来自地方房产税，这些影响也扩展到教育上。

由于历史上的住房歧视，许多非裔美国人被限制在高贫困、低价值的住房区，从而将其子女限制在资金不足的学校就读。当学校获得较少资金时，学生成功的可能性就较小。在教育与卓越委员会（Equity and ExcellenceCommission）2013年的一份报告中，前教育部长Arne Duncan简洁地总结了这种影响：“我们的系统无法公平地分配机会。”

被执法部门公平对待的机会

作为华裔美国人，我和我的父母也有机会免受执法歧视，而非裔美国人则会受到美国执法机构的不公平对待。社会上有一种认为非裔美国人更容易犯罪的偏见，这加剧了对黑人的负面刻板印象，以及许多中国父母持有的歧视性观念。

吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）时代的媒体形象让人们认为非裔美国人更倾向于从事犯罪活动。1915年的电影《一个国家的诞生》（The Birth of a Nation）将黑人描绘成攻击白人妇女的“野蛮人”，却将残酷对待黑人的三K党刻画成英雄。现在黑人的媒体形象也同样刻板。黑人男性是暴力犯罪肇事者的新闻报道的比率高于他们的实际逮捕率。

媒体将黑人罪犯化的方式包括：展示入监照，对外表的贬损性评论，对犯罪行为的指控，以及谈论他们以前的定罪。这些种族偏见可以从对在仇恨犯罪中枪杀九名非洲裔美国人的白人枪手Dylann Roof，和对因看起来可疑被白人枪杀的未持枪的黑人高中生Trayvon Martin的不同态度看出来。

新闻媒体认为Roof的行为是因为精神疾病，并引用社会心理治疗资源不足的信息，来将他人性化。Martin则被刻画成危险人物，被媒体使用诸如“想变成街头硬汉”和“可能的暴徒”之类的语言来描绘。这种差距绝非零星的例子。与白人相比，非洲裔美国人始终是犯罪者和侵略者的代表。这些刻板的观念引发了美国刑事司法系统中的系统性种族主义。与美国白人相比，非裔美国人会面临更高的罚款，不成比例地无法缴纳保释金，以及因非暴力犯罪而被判刑。

20世纪下半叶的“毒品战争”进一步加固了这一形象。尼克松的前国内政策顾问明确解释了毒品战争背后的种族主义：

我们知道，反对战争或生为黑人都不是非法行为。但是，通过让公众将嬉皮士与大麻联系起来，将黑人与海洛因联系起来，然后将大麻和海洛因都定为刑事犯罪，我们可以破坏这些社区。我们可以逮捕他们的领导人，突袭他们的房屋，冲散他们的会议，并每天晚上在晚间新闻中丑化他们。我们知道我们在撒谎吗？当然。

因此，尽管表面上看毒品战争的目的是使社会更安全，但它制造了一个非洲裔美国人比其他群体更广泛地使用毒品的幻象。虽然白人和黑人使用毒品的比率相当，但“毒品战争”在为黑人定罪的同时也为白人脱了罪。

在1980年代至90年代的严厉打击中，非洲裔美国人和拉美裔的快克可卡因（一种劣质可卡因：译者注）用户被妖魔化，而以白人为主的可卡因用户则面临较少的惩罚。快克可卡因和可卡因具有相同的化学组成，但可卡因用户的用量是快克可卡因用量的18倍才会触发联邦刑事处罚。

共和党总统候选人理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）于1968年9月在宾夕法尼亚州费城的栗树街上游行。照片由Dirck Halstead/ Getty Images通过Business Insider拍摄。

尽管统计数据显示，白人和黑人吸毒率相似，但黑人吸毒受到的惩罚要大得多。美国公民自由协会（ACLU）在2010年发现，尽管黑人和白人以相似的比率使用大麻，但拥有大麻的黑人被捕的可能性却高出3.7倍，他们的监禁率几乎是白人的六倍。

从全国有色人种协进会的统计数字中可以看出惩罚和罪行的不相称：在州一级机构中因毒品犯罪而被监禁的人中有33％是黑人，因毒品犯罪而被捕的人中有29％是黑人，但实际上黑人仅占非法毒品使用者的12.5％。

在量刑方面，白人面临的惩罚远不如黑人严苛。同样的罪行，黑人美国人面临强制性最低刑期限制的可能性是白人的两倍。吸毒是当今困扰美国的一个问题，但它在美国刑事司法系统中对非裔美国人的影响是不成比例的，而且导致了非裔美国人是罪犯的负面刻板印象。

认为非裔美国人更容易犯罪的偏见也导致了执法人员的种族歧视。根据美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）的说法，“种族歧视”是指“执法人员基于种族、宗教或国籍而怀疑某个人有犯罪行为的歧视性做法。”研究表明，种族归类（racial profiling）是警察常用的方法。

加州大学洛杉矶分校和菲利普·阿蒂巴·戈德博士的社会心理学家对来自12个不同警察部门的数据进行的研究发现，白人居民遭遇警力的频率比黑人居民要低。斯坦福大学社会心理学家詹妮弗·埃伯哈特（Jennifer Eberhardt）博士从奥克兰市警察局观察类似数据后，发现60％的警察拦截是针对黑人居民的，尽管他们仅占总居民的28％。在交通停靠地点，黑人被搜查的可能性是白人的四倍，尽管搜查的结果显示黑人嫌疑并非更可能携带违禁品。

纽约公民自由联盟分析了2014年至2017年纽约市警察局“截停和搜查”（stop-and-frisk）的数据，发现被截停的有38％是14至24岁之间的年轻黑人和拉丁裔男性，尽管他们只占纽约市人口的5%。他们当中有80％无罪。

一名警官于2019年10月10日在加利福尼亚州圣罗莎拦下一名驾驶员。克里斯托弗·钟（ChristopherChung）/美联社（AP）通过卫报（Guardian）摄。

种族归类的做法并不局限于警察截停之中，在警察截停之外的场合也导致非裔美国人被以更高的比率逮捕和起诉。例如，旧金山的一项2018年的研究发现，尽管黑人仅占旧金山人口的6％，但41％的被捕者，38％的被起诉者，以及43％的入狱者，都是黑人。司法部2016年的调查结果显示，旧金山警察部门有明显的种族偏见迹象。

大多数州都要求被捕者缴纳保释金以离开监狱。被捕后，非裔美国人比白人美国人更有可能被拒绝保释，并面临更高的保释金额。结果成千上万的黑人在监狱中待了几个月甚至长达数年的时间等待审判，而被指控犯有同样罪行的白人则可以通过保释回家。

美国黑人也更有可能被检察官判处较重的刑罚。美国判刑委员会2017年的一项调查发现，即使犯了同样的罪行，黑人男子的刑期也比白人长20％。2018年的一项研究发现，非裔青少年仅占青少年总人口的14％，但在因犯罪而被转移到成年法院的未成年人中占53％，尽管被指控的白人和黑人青少年的百分比几乎相等。这进一步使非裔美国学生失去了受教育的机会。

美国刑事司法系统中的系统性种族主义，从种族归类到更高的逮捕率和起诉率，导致了对非洲裔美国人的更高的监禁率。非裔美国人的监禁率至少是白人监禁率的五倍。在爱荷华州、明尼苏达州、新泽西州、佛蒙特州和威斯康星州，非洲裔美国人的监禁率是美国白人的十倍以上。在马里兰州，监狱人口中有72％是非裔美国人。在12个州中，超过50％的监狱人口是非裔美国人。考虑到非洲裔美国人仅占美国人口的13.4％，这一数字令人震惊。

美国监狱系统对非裔美国人的影响，也限制了他们在教育、就业、住房和投票方面的大量机会。那些被送进监狱的人本来技能和教育水平就比较低，出狱的时候也没有改进甚至更差。美国监狱系统注重惩罚而不是修复，并不教导囚犯，尤其是那些患有精神疾病的囚犯，如何从心理上改善自己的行为，结果被囚禁的人在重返社会时面临挑战。出狱后，有犯罪记录的申请人获得工作的可能性降低了近50％。辛勤的劳动可以改变一个人的生活，但这只有在可以获得劳动的机会时才能办到。

Golden Cosmos通过《纽约客》的插图。

1865年废除了奴隶制，1870年非洲裔男性获得了选举权，1964年种族隔离法结束，但这并不意味着美国现行的制度对非洲裔美国人是公平的。他们缺乏和被剥夺教育和住房的机会，以及遭受执法机构的不公正待遇，表明系统性种族主义在美国屡见不鲜。

作为华裔美国人，应该认识到如果没有机会，再愿意辛勤劳动也无济于事。尽管作为少数群体的华裔美国人在当今美国享有相对成功，但我们不应该轻视其他少数群体的挣扎和奋斗。我们可以学着同情黑人社区，而不是批评和指责。“黑人的命也是命”不是一场比较哪个群体面临更大歧视的竞赛，而是一个了解每个群体面临的不同歧视的机会。

2020年6月7日，在弗吉尼亚州诺福克市举行的城市集体祈祷游行中，一名抗议者举着标志游行。摄影：Annette Holloway / Icon Sportswire。

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我写这篇文章，是想澄清一些从华裔父母那里听到的关于华裔与非裔美国人的误解和刻板观念。这里陈述的观点是我在与中国父母交往中听到的。本文的目的是利用事实和统计数据来了解系统性种族主义如何影响美国非洲裔美国人的某些机会。还有很多对非洲裔美国人的不平等本文没有提到。我还想指出，华裔美国人的经历也并不是单一的，社会经济阶梯的所有梯级中都有华裔美国人存在。

Opportunity Privilege: Addressing the Role of Self-Reliance in Chinese American Success 

by Cathleen Kong

Our system does not distribute opportunity equitably 

— Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan

My parents immigrated to the United States from China in the late 90’s. They tell me how my father came to America with just twenty dollars in his pocket (this amount changes each time he tells the story), earned a degree, and worked tirelessly so that our family could enjoy our current comfortable lifestyle. It is a classic immigrant success story, similar to the stories of friends’ parents who also immigrated from China. From my parents’ perspective, and the perspective of many Chinese parents, working hard is the key to success. They attribute Chinese American achievement to cultural values celebrating hard work, and expect that others should be able to attain the same success with the same work ethic. They believe in American meritocracy and that Chinese Americans are a “model minority.” From this perspective, it can be difficult for Chinese parents to understand the barriers that African Americans face on the path to success. Chinese parents emphasize self-reliance, but effort is not the only factor that contributes to success. We need to examine the privilege of opportunities that Chinese Americans have been presented with in the United States.

Educational opportunity enabled my father to immigrate to America on a student visa, in order to study at the University of Southern Louisiana. This is where his story of upward mobility in America begins. Like other parents of Chinese Americans, my parents left their family, friends, and all that was familiar in their home country for the chance of success in the United States. Their journey was by no means easy, and they faced many roadblocks along the way. They achieved a comfortable life for our family today through their work ethic. But their hard work went hand in hand with the presence of opportunities — many of which African Americans are either denied or deterred from because of their race. Opportunities are also what paved the path for me to attend magnet programs in my K-12 education and earn a degree from Princeton University. My parents and I reaped the benefits of fair treatment in education and housing, and by law enforcement. These are opportunities that African Americans fought for after the 1965 Voting Rights act and continue to advocate, but still do not have equal access to.

I have heard arguments from Chinese parents that African Americans already enjoy sufficient benefits in American society, and that slavery happened so long ago that it has nothing to do with the present. They are quick to focus on stories of modern Black success they have heard about, like Barack Obama, Michael Jordan, or Oprah Winfrey. They jump on the negative impacts of affirmative action for Asian American students. However, they do not realize how prevalent systemic racism is in our current American society. Systemic racism means that current US institutions and systems produce disparate outcomes based on race. Discrimination against African Americans today is outside the scope of what we learn in US history class, and what my parents are exposed to in their Chinese circles. Chinese Americans are not directly impacted by systemic racism, but that does not mean that it does not exist. Facts and statistics paint a clear picture of the obstructions that African Americans still face in terms of opportunity in America.

Educational Opportunities

Education is valued in Chinese culture. Many Chinese parents focus on their children obtaining good grades and earning a degree. Lack of work ethic combined with genetic factors are often cited by Chinese parents as reasons for why African American students do not perform as well as Chinese American students in school. But pinning lower academic achievement by Black students on their race ignores the actual issues that contribute to lower educational achievement as compared to Chinese American students. The school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately hinders African American students from many opportunities in education. According to Teaching Tolerance magazine, the school-to-prison pipeline is a set of “policies that encourage police presence at schools, harsh tactics including physical restraint, and automatic punishments that result in suspensions and out-of-class time.” Under this system, African Americans and students with learning disabilities are grossly overrepresented. Based on a study conducted nationwide by the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, Black students are three times more likely to be expelled or suspended than their white counterparts. Furthermore, African American children account for 46% of students who have been suspended more than once, even though they constitute only 18% of students.

Racial bias contributes to much higher suspension rates among Black students versus white students. According to Russell Skiba, professor of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University, Black students are more often sent to the office for subjective rather than objective reasons.Concrete offenses, like bringing a weapon into a school building, are committed by white and Black students at the same rate. But for more subjective reasons, such as threatening behavior or disrespect, African American students are more likely to be suspended. Racial bias in suspensions is further demonstrated in a study conducted by researchers Jennifer Eberhardt and Jason Okonofua at Stanford University. Eberhardt and Okonofua presented anecdotes about student misbehavior to teachers, and afterwards asked whether and how the students should be punished. The names were changed for different teachers, while the anecdotes stayed the same. Some teachers received students with more “white” sounding names, while others received names that are more commonly African American. They found that teachers were more likely to suspend or recommend harsher punishment in the future if the student had a conventionally Black-sounding name.

The “zero-tolerance” policy, by which “students who break certain school rules face mandatory penalties, including suspension and referral to law enforcement,” is more often applied to Black students due to racial bias in schools. The vast majority of suspensions are for minor behavior and not serious offenses. After a student is suspended, they are more likely to fall behind in their academics, resulting in further discouragement and school disengagement, which is then strongly linked to juvenile delinquency. More often than not, these suspended children are unsupervised because their parents are working, resulting in a greater chance of future drop-out. Students who have been suspended have a higher likelihood of ending up in a juvenile detention center, and students who are suspended during their freshman year of high school are twice as likely to drop out of school entirely by a year’s time. Most of these students never see their high school graduation. Rather than receiving the added counseling and educational services they need, these children, many of whom deal with abuse, neglect, and poverty at home, or suffer from learning disabilities, are punished, isolated, and pushed out by the American educational system. On the surface, the policy is meant to make schools safer, but in reality students are criminalized for minor breaches of rules.

Focusing the narrative on “trying harder” ignores the challenges that African American students face in the classroom, and the school-to-prison pipeline starts with public schools that lack proper funding. These schools face “overcrowded classrooms, a lack of quali¬fied teachers, and insufficient funding for “extras” such as counselors, special edu¬cation services, and even textbooks” that disproportionately affect Black Americans. A report by the nonprofit EdBuild found that predominantly white school districts receive a total of $24 billion more funding than districts with predominantly students of color. Each student in a white school district receives, on average, roughly $2,000 more than a student in a nonwhite school district.

I am not discounting the effort expended by Chinese American students and their parents. But systemic racism in the US school system is present, which shrinks the pool of opportunities for Black students. If educational opportunities are so important, then it is necessary to acknowledge the difficulties faced by African Americans in attaining those opportunities because of existing systems in America. The school-to-prison pipeline, racial bias, and zero-tolerance policy hinder Black students from educational privileges that many Chinese American students enjoy. Instead of blaming Black students for lower rates of achievement, it is more constructive to think about how educational institutions can be improved to lift students, no matter the race. Hard work cannot lead to success without opportunity.

Opportunities in Homeownership

Homeownership, particularly in a top school district in Maryland, is another opportunity which my parents and I have benefitted from, and which has been historically discriminatory towards African Americans. For a long time, African Americans were denied opportunity in housing due to redlining. In the late 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maintained maps that assigned grades, largely influenced by racial makeup, to each neighborhood. Deemed “high-risk” by mortgage lenders, predominantly minority neighborhoods were marked in red, hence the term “redlining.” The Federal Housing Administration then denied mortgage insurance to these red neighborhoods while concurrently subsidizing suburban neighborhoods for white Americans, requiring that none of those homes be sold to Black Americans. This early segregation has hindered the upward mobility of families that live in these segregated communities.

The FHA prohibited Black Americans from purchasing suburban homes through the 1960s, preventing them from obtaining the same amount of equity as white Americans. According to an interview with Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law, “African Americans were equally able to afford those homes as white Americans but were prohibited from buying them.” Robert Nelson, director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, said that families of color “couldn’t avail themselves of what is arguably the most significant route to family and personal wealth-building in the 20th century, which is homeownership,” as a result of redlining. Because private investors and financial institutions reduced investments in Black neighborhoods in inner cities, a system of housing segregation was created and still exists to this day. In 2014, white families were 30% more likely to own homes than Black families. Furthermore, Black families that were able to own homes were 4.6 times more likely to live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty than white families.

While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ended redlining practices in name, discrimination in homeownership for Black Americans is still present. In 2009, officials in Baltimore filed a lawsuit against Wells Fargo for singling out African Americans for high-interest subprime mortgages, which led to hundreds of foreclosures and mass evictions of Black families. A study by Duke University Professor of Economics Patrick Bayer found that for identical units in identical neighborhoods, African Americans pay higher sales prices than their white counterparts. They further found that this disparity increases in neighborhoods with higher white populations.

High rates of Chinese American homeownership can be attributed to making sacrifices and working hard, but African Americans should not be blamed for failure to do the same. Systemic racism has lasting impacts on African American homeownership and neighborhoods today. Because public schools are funded through local property taxes, these effects trickle down to education too. A large number of African Americans are confined to high-poverty, low-value housing districts due to historically discriminatory housing practices, limiting their children to underfunded schools. When schools receive less funding, students are less likely to succeed. In a report by the Equity and Excellence Commission in 2013, former Education Secretary Arne Duncan summarized this effect succinctly: “Our system does not distribute opportunity equitably.”

Opportunity to Fair Treatment by Law Enforcement

As Chinese Americans, my parents and I also enjoy the opportunity to freedom from discrimination by law enforcement. In contrast, African Americans are subject to unfair treatment by American law enforcement. This can be attributed to the criminalization of African Americans, which fuels negative stereotypes of Black Americans and discriminatory beliefs that many Chinese parents hold. Media portrayals from the Jim Crow era have contributed to the view that African Americans are naturally more inclined to engage in criminal activity. The 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” heroically portrayed the Ku Klux Klan for brutalizing Black men depicted as “savages” who attacked white women. Media representations of Black men are similarly stereotyped now. In news coverage, Black males are disproportionately presented as violent crime perpetrators, as compared to actual rates of arrest.

Mug shots, derogatory comments about appearance, allegations of criminal behavior, and previous convictions are all ways that Black people are criminalized in the media. This racial bias can be detected in the differing attitudes towards white shooter Dylann Roof, who shot nine African Americans in a hate crime, versus Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black high school student who was shot by a white man because he looked suspicious. News media humanized Roof by attributing his actions to mental illness and citing inadequate resources for treatment of mental health. Martin, on the other hand, was portrayed as dangerous, with the media using language such as “aspiring street tough,” and “would-be thug” to depict Martin. This disparity is far from isolated, and African Americans are consistently overrepresented as perpetrators and aggressors as compared to white Americans. These stereotypes drive systemic racism in the US criminal justice system, as African Americans are subject to heavier fines, rendered unable to pay bail, and sentenced for nonviolent offenses disproportionally compared to white Americans.

The “War on Drugs” in the latter half of the 20th century further drove this image. Nixon’s former domestic policy advisor explicitly explained the racism underlying the drug war:

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Black Americans with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

And so while on the surface the intent of the drug war was to make society safer, it birthed the misconception that African Americans use drugs more heavily than other groups. It created a “reciprocal relationship between the criminalization of Blackness and the decriminalization of whiteness,” even though drug use and abuse rates are comparable for white Americans and Black Americans. African American and Latino crack users were demonized in policy crackdowns in the 1980s-90s, while predominantly-white powder cocaine users faced less punitive measures. Crack and cocaine have the same chemical makeup, yet there is a 18:1 ratio for the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine required to trigger federal criminal penalties.

While statistics show similar rates of drug use amongst white Americans and Black Americans, drug use is much more heavily punished for Black Americans. The ACLU found in 2010 that for marijuana possession, Black Americans were 3.7 times more likely to face arrest, even though Black Americans and white Americans use marijuana at similar rates. And in terms of imprisonment for drug charges, African Americans are imprisoned at almost six times the rate of white Americans. The disproportionate punishment can be seen in statistics from the NAACP, which show that 33% of those incarcerated for drug offenses in state facilities, and 29% of those arrested for drug offenses, are Black. However, the reality is that Black Americans represent just 12.5% of illicit drug users. And in terms of charges, white Americans face less harsh punishments. For the same offense, Black Americans are twice as likely to face a mandatory minimum sentence. Drug abuse is an issue that afflicts the United States today, but it has been a problem disproportionately pinned on African Americans in the American criminal justice system, and has led to negative stereotypes of African Americans as criminals.

The criminalization of African Americans has also led to racial profiling by law enforcement. Racial profiling, according to the ACLU, refers to the “discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion or national origin.” Research has shown that racial profiling is preset in policing. In a study of data from 12 different police departments done by social psychologists at UCLA and Phillip Atiba Godd, PhD, Godd found that white residents were subject to police force less often than Black residents. Observing similar data from the Oakland police department in California, Jennifer Eberhardt, PhD, social psychologist at Stanford University, found that 60% of police stops were for Black residents, even though they make up only 28% of the total residents. At traffic stops as well, Black men were four times as likely to be searched than white men, although results show searches of Black suspects were no more likely to recover contraband. The NYCLU analyzed NYPD stop-and-frisk data from 2014–2017, and found that 38% of reported stops were young Black and Latino men between the age of 14 and 24, despite only comprising 5% of New York City’s population. These males were innocent in 80% of these cases.

Racial profiling has far-reaching consequences outside of police stops, contributing to African Americans being arrested and prosecuted at higher rates. For example, studies of San Francisco in 2018 have found that 41% of those arrested, 38% of prosecutor-filed cases, and 43% of those booked into jail were Black, even though they represent merely 6% of the population of San Francisco. In findings by the Justice Department in 2016, there were significant signs in the SF police department of racial bias. Most states require those arrested to pay cash bail in order to leave jail. After arrest, African Americans are more likely to be denied bail and are faced with higher bail numbers than white Americans. As a result, disproportionate numbers of Black Americans wait for trial while still in jail for months and up to years, while white Americans who are accused of the same crime are able to go home by posting bail. Furthermore, Black Americans are more likely to be charged with heavier sentences by prosecutors. A 2017 survey from the US Sentencing Commission found that Black men are given sentences 20% longer than those of white men, even when committing the same crime. As for youth, a 2018 study found that African American youth comprise just 14% of the total youth population but make up 53% of minors who are transferred to adult courts for offenses, even though the percentages of white and Black youth that are charged are nearly equal. This further disadvantages African American students from educational opportunities.

The pipeline of systemic racism in the US criminal justice system, from racial profiling to higher rates of arrest and prosecution, leads to higher rates of incarceration for African Americans. Incarceration rates for African American are at least five times the rate in which white Americans are incarcerated. In the states of Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, and Wisconsin, the African American incarceration rate is more than ten times that of white Americans. In Maryland, 72% of the prison population is African American. In 12 states, over 50% of the prison population is African American. Considering the fact that African Americans represent just 13.4% of the US population, these numbers are shocking. The United States prison system disproportionately impacts African Americans, thereby limiting a host of opportunities in education, employment, housing, and voting. Those who are sent to prison enter with low skill-levels and low education-levels, leaving in similar or worse circumstances in which they entered in. The US prison system also focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation, which does not teach prisoners, especially those with mental illnesses, how to psychologically improve their behavior. As a result, people who have been incarcerated are faced with challenges upon reentry into society. After leaving prison, applicants with a criminal record see their likelihood at a job offer reduced by almost 50%. Hard work can turn a person’s life around, but not when the opportunity to do so is unattainable.

Slavery was abolished in 1865, African American men gained the right to vote in 1870, and segregation laws ended in 1964. But this does not mean that current US institutions and systems are fair for African Americans. Lack and denial of opportunities in education and housing, as well as unfair treatment by law enforcement show that systemic racism is ever-present in America. As Chinese Americans, it is constructive to realize that work ethic cannot pay off in absence of opportunity. Although Chinese Americans, as a minority group, enjoy relative success in America today, we should not discount the struggles of other minority groups. We can learn and empathize with the Black community, rather than criticize and accuse. The Black Lives Matter movement is not a competition to see which group has faced greater discrimination; instead, it is an opportunity to understand the different modes of discrimination that each group faces.

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My motivation for writing this article was to address certain misconceptions and stereotypes that I have heard from Chinese parents about Chinese American versus African American success. The views presented are what I have heard in my personal experience with Chinese parents.The goal of this article was to use facts and statistics to inform on how systemic racism impacts certain opportunities for African Americans in the US. There are also many more unequal opportunities that exist for African Americans which are not mentioned in this article. I would also like to acknowledge that the Chinese American experience is not monolithic, and that Chinese Americans live across all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.

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