A disconnect on economic equality and racial progress
Americans, especially wealthy whites, vastly overestimate progress toward racial economic equality despite evidence of persistent gaps between black and white workers when it comes to hourly wages, annual income and household wealth, according to a new paper by Yale University researchers published this week.
The study’s results come in the wake of census data released last week that showed that AfricanAmericans were the only racial group still making less than they did in 2000.
The average black household made 60 percent of what white households made in 2016 and less than half of what Asians made, according to census data. For every $100 of wealth accumulated by a white family, a black family has little more than $5 — a gap just as wide as it was 50 years ago, according to federal statistics cited by the Yale researchers.
Yet both black and white Americans of all income levels remain unaware of the economic inequality between the two groups, said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The misperceptions could negatively affect public policy as the country grows more diverse, researchers said, with politicians championing misguided legislation rooted in false impressions.
Not tied to reality?
“This is evidence that our beliefs about racial progress and economic equality are fairly inconsistent with reality,” said Jennifer Richeson, a Yale psychology professor who co-wrote the study. “The magnitude of the misperception is shocking, and it’s an obstacle to actually achieving the progress that everyone seems to be celebrating.”
Their findings are problematic, the researchers said, because you can’t solve problems you don’t know you have.
Researchers asked black and white Americans at the top (making more than $100,000 a year) and the bottom ($40,000 or less) of the national income distribution to estimate differences between average black and white Americans in employer-provided benefits, hourly wages of college graduates and high school graduates, annual income, and accumulated wealth in the present and in the past.
Across four studies, participants overestimated progress toward blackwhite economic equality, with average estimates exceeding reality by about 25 percent.
Wealthy whites
Most delusional are wealthy whites, the only group that was overly optimistic about racial economic equality even before the civil rights movement, according to the study.
Low-income whites were most on the mark when it came to estimating racial economic inequality in the past. Black Americans, both poor and rich, were overly pessimistic about past inequality.
The researchers found both psychological and structural underpinnings to explain people’s optimism. Those who most believed in a just world and the American ideals of societal fairness and meritocracy were also most likely to overestimate racial economic equality. Higherstatus individuals — i.e., wealthy whites — are especially motivated to perceive society as fair so they can justify their elevated status as merit-based rather than resulting from luck or discriminatory systems, researchers said.