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Skin Color Discrimination in the U.S.
Light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than those with darker complexions, and the chief reason appears to be discrimination, a researcher says.Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.
“On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education,” Hersch said.
Hersch took into consideration other factors that could affect wages, such as English-language proficiency, education, occupation, race or country of origin, and found that skin tone still seemed to make a difference in earnings.
That means that if two similar immigrants from Bangladesh, for example, came to the United States at the same time, with the same occupation and ability to speak English, the lighter-skinned immigrant would make more money on average.
Although many cultures show a bias toward lighter skin, Hersch said her analysis shows that the skin-color advantage was not due to preferential treatment for light-skinned people in their country of origin. The bias, she said, occurs in the U.S.
Excerpts from Associated Press, “Study Says Skin Tone Affects Earnings,” New York Times, January 26, 2007
Black Cherokees Kicked Out of Cherokee Nation
A Letter from 26 members of the Congressional Black Caucus to the Bureau of Indian Affairs
The undersigned members of the Congressional Black Caucus are shocked and outraged at the March 3 vote by Cherokee Nation members to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 black descendants of the Cherokee Nation.
The black descendants are of mixed African-Cherokee heritage. Their lineage extends back for well over a century when they accompanied other tribal members to new settlements in Oklahoma after the Cherokee Nation had been expelled from its traditional lands in North Carolina and Georgia. Many African descendant Cherokees died during the forced migration, which has become known as the "Trail of Tears."
The Cherokee Nation fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. After the war it signed a federal treaty, in 1866, committing that its African-Cherokee descendants would be absorbed as citizens of the Cherokee Nation. In 1983, the Cherokee Nation expelled many African descendants by requiring them to show a degree of Indian blood through the Dawes rolls. A tribal court reinstated them in March 2006. The most recent March 3 vote is an apparent attempt to override the March 2006 court decision.
We question the validity, legality, as well as the morality of the Cherokee Nation's March 3 vote to disenfranchise its African descendants. A sizeable number of persons throughout the United States who can rightfully lay claim to Native American tribal citizenship and lineage are of mixed ancestry. The tribal lineage of black Native
American descendants is rich in history and precedent that equals, if not surpasses, that of other racially and ethnically mixed Native Americans who have sought and been granted full tribal status.
We respectfully request an interpretation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the March 3 vote, particularly the legality of the vote, as well as what actions can be taken by the Bureau to correct this egregious violation of the rights of Cherokee Nation members of African descent.
We are resolute in our efforts to undo this outrage.
Income Inequality Grows
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Prof. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
“If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness,” Professor Saez said. “It can have important political consequences.”
Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for the poor, said that the data understates the widening disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country.
He said that in addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more than the affluent. These include health care, child care and education spending.
“The nation faces some very tough choices in coming years,” he said. “That such a large share of the income gains are going to the very top, at a minimum, raises serious questions about continuing to provide tax cuts averaging over $150,000 a year to people making more than a million dollars a year, while saying we do not have enough money” to provide health insurance to 47 million Americans and cutting education benefits.
Mr. Greenstein’s organization will release a report today showing that for Americans in the middle, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been essentially unchanged across four decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the income ladder.
Excerpts from David Cay Johnston, “Income Gap is Widening, Data Shows,” New York Times, March 29, 2007.
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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