Vegas
07-19-2007, 07:01 PM
http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/content/local_news/stories/2007/07/19/BLACKTAX.ART_ART_07-19-07_B4_B17AQSA.html
What would a white person have to be paid to live the rest of their life black?
About $1,500, according to a study co-written by an Ohio State University professor.
Researchers asked 958 whites nationwide how much they would require to trade public status with blacks, without changing their skin color.
The median amount: $1,500.
The same respondents said they would require $1 million to live without television for the rest of their lives.
The low dollar amount shows whites aren't troubled by the prospect of living as blacks, said Philip Mazzocco, assistant professor of psychology at the Ohio State University Mansfield campus, who wrote the study with four other researchers, including OSU psychology professor Timothy Brock.
But it also reflects some ignorance of how much harder life can be as a black person, Mazzocco said.
"The benefit of white privilege is largely invisible to them because they have nothing to contrast with," he said.
The researchers conducted the study between 2002 and 2004 to help understand white Americans' attitudes on financial reparations for American descendants of African slaves.
A 2002 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that nine out of 10 white Americans said the government should not pay reparations to blacks. However, 55 percent of black respondents supported reparations.
Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard University psychology professor and one of the study's authors, said the study illustrates that people oppose reparations because they don't understand the financial costs of being black.
In an effort to reflect the true cost of being black, the study also asked 188 of the respondents what price they would seek to trade places with someone in a fictional country who actually faced the same income, discrimination and other challenges faced by black Americans.
Those respondents said they would have to be paid $1 million under those circumstances, which to the authors meant whites have a blind spot when it comes to the real hardships of being black but understand such hardships when they are presented fictionally.
While whites in the study cited a figure for trading races, for those who are black, sometimes there is no amount to compensate for discrimination, said G. Michael Payton, executive director of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.
"How do you measure if someone is breathing down your neck and you are walking through the store just because of the color of your skin?" he said. "It's an indignity that hurts deep within. … That stings."
What would a white person have to be paid to live the rest of their life black?
About $1,500, according to a study co-written by an Ohio State University professor.
Researchers asked 958 whites nationwide how much they would require to trade public status with blacks, without changing their skin color.
The median amount: $1,500.
The same respondents said they would require $1 million to live without television for the rest of their lives.
The low dollar amount shows whites aren't troubled by the prospect of living as blacks, said Philip Mazzocco, assistant professor of psychology at the Ohio State University Mansfield campus, who wrote the study with four other researchers, including OSU psychology professor Timothy Brock.
But it also reflects some ignorance of how much harder life can be as a black person, Mazzocco said.
"The benefit of white privilege is largely invisible to them because they have nothing to contrast with," he said.
The researchers conducted the study between 2002 and 2004 to help understand white Americans' attitudes on financial reparations for American descendants of African slaves.
A 2002 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that nine out of 10 white Americans said the government should not pay reparations to blacks. However, 55 percent of black respondents supported reparations.
Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard University psychology professor and one of the study's authors, said the study illustrates that people oppose reparations because they don't understand the financial costs of being black.
In an effort to reflect the true cost of being black, the study also asked 188 of the respondents what price they would seek to trade places with someone in a fictional country who actually faced the same income, discrimination and other challenges faced by black Americans.
Those respondents said they would have to be paid $1 million under those circumstances, which to the authors meant whites have a blind spot when it comes to the real hardships of being black but understand such hardships when they are presented fictionally.
While whites in the study cited a figure for trading races, for those who are black, sometimes there is no amount to compensate for discrimination, said G. Michael Payton, executive director of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.
"How do you measure if someone is breathing down your neck and you are walking through the store just because of the color of your skin?" he said. "It's an indignity that hurts deep within. … That stings."