[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
In a hurry, I’ll get back to this later. But, Boston, real quick: when real example A could be racism, and example B could be racism, and example C could be racism, and example E could be racism, when you run out of three letter combinations to code the examples that could be racism, you start to see the something.
Just because, for any particular example, that something else could be the cause, doesnt change the whole picture.[/quote]
This sounds a lot like talking with a gambler about luck or a recent convert about religion. The only difference is that in this case we know racism exists - but we still don’t know causation (or really, have anything more than a gut feeling about probability in a lot of cases). “Could be” in some of those examples was a generous description for “highly unlikely”, and in some examples for “nobody knows.”
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
As far as the store example goes, racism isnt just “the store owner doesnt like black people so he charges them more”. The store owner is taking advantage of the fact that most of the people in the area are poor and cannot afford to go elsewhere. Basically, he has them by the balls and can charge (just about) whatever he likes, so naturally he charges as much as he can.
But if you broaden the scope enough to ask the question of why he could do that in a black town and not a white one, its an example of systemic racism: he’s doing something else, benifiting himself, that contributes to black people being disadvantaged.[/quote]
orion makes a good point above.
Secondly, what makes that racism (as opposed to economic opportunism)? And if it were particularly profitable, why aren’t other stores coming in to compete on price - aren’t there other greedy capitalists who want to make money off of those poor people?
And that’s assuming arguendo that it’s actually “gouging” at all, and not just pricing that reflects the purchasing habits of the customer base. As I noted above, stocking high-quality items that don’t move quickly off the shelves entails a cost to the store owner. If the customers want twinkies instead of bananas, for whatever reason, it costs the owner money to even stock bananas (and he won’t get a good return for trying to get better quality bananas).
I also want to ask, per your sentence I underlined above: what about the examples listed or any study you’ve seen has led you to believe there is a juxtaposition between black and white neighborhoods that are otherwise equal in median income, education, number of other stores in the general area and accessibility to the store by public transit (to name but a few relevant categories), in terms of the prices charged. Of course, there are other categories by which to differentiate as well - each of which plays a part in either consumer preference or competition. To put it another way, all those factors, individually and together, play a part in causation of the pricing in a store for various items.
At the end of the day, I’d posit that a lot of the effects people view and attribute to racism are actually a product of economic class differences. To solve them, one would look to the cause of the underlying economic differences - educational issues, social issues, cultural issues, etc. Racism might be one small factor in there, but I don’t see why it should be more of a factor today for some ethnicities versus others, or even for natives versus more recent immigrants.