Class Division

Have African Americans escaped inequality? Not even close.

By Ellis Cose, Published: July 7

The Obama presidency notwithstanding, America has not become post-racial. But it has become post-caste.

This is a colossal achievement that places us awfully close to that world imagined by Martin Luther King Jr. in which “little black boys and black girls . . . join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” For there are plenty of places in today’s America where children of various hues bond and play together, happily oblivious to the differences that might once have kept them apart.

But the realization of that dream does not mean America has reached true equality. King understood this difference, as his later anti-poverty crusade made clear. Financial fragility, he realized, could be even more crippling than segregation, especially when undergirded by a history of economic discrimination that left many blacks only marginally better off than lower caste members in India. So he died fighting to level — or at least make more even — the economic playing field.

King’s legendary “I have a dream” speech focused on ending American apartheid for one simple reason: Racism loomed so large, and its clasp was so suffocating, that for African Americans of the era, it was the great, inescapable evil, and one that made it hard to focus on much of anything else. But even as the uglier forms of racism receded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks of all classes, including those with Ivy League degrees, despaired of escaping the confines of race. It was that hopelessness festering among the black elite that led me, in the early 1990s, to write a book, “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” about African Americans frustrated by their inability to shatter the glass ceiling.

Yet, in a remarkably short time, the ceiling began to crack. Corporate chief executives, the whitest cohort in America, suddenly got some color. Richard Parsons became president of Time Warner in 1995, and in 2002, he was named chief executive. Kenneth Chenault landed the top job at American Express in 2001. Oprah Winfrey became not only one of the world’s richest women, but the arbiter of middle-American taste. Meanwhile, black actors such as Denzel Washington, Will Smith and Halle Berry ascended to the top ranks of Hollywood. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice became secretaries of state. Then, of course, came the stunning rise of Barack Obama.

On the eve of Obama’s inauguration, a CNN poll found that two-thirds of blacks believed that King’s dream had been “fulfilled.” In a narrow sense, it had been. If Obama’s election proved nothing else, it proved that the previously impermeable American caste system was at long last dead. Dark skin could no longer bar someone from the nation’s positions of power — not even from the most powerful job in the land.

The end of caste has had a huge impact on a rising generation of black achievers, a cohort that I studied extensively for my new book, “The End of Anger.” In my research, I surveyed 200 black alumni of Harvard Business School and more than 300 alumni of A Better Chance, a New York City-based program founded in 1963 that sends minority children to selective high schools across the country.

I found a massive generation gap: Many of those under age 40 had boundless faith in their ability to crash through, navigate around or simply disregard barriers that bedeviled talented blacks of earlier generations. Their outlook struck many older black respondents as naive, yet it reflected their experience of coming up in a world where African Americans are no longer imprisoned in a subordinate caste.

But of course, the reality of these highly educated young people is not the reality of the poor and unlettered. In the less privileged America, blatant racism may be forbidden, but brutal unfairness remains a fact of life.

The percentage of black men with jobs, always lower than that for whites, has dropped to its lowest level since the Labor Department began keeping such records in the early 1970s. Even before the Great Recession, the wealth gap between blacks and whites was growing. That gap, excluding home equity, stood at $20,000 in 2007 dollars in 1984; by 2007, it had increased to $95,000, according to Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy. And the subprime mortgage meltdown made things much worse, hitting with particular force many communities occupied largely by blacks and Latinos. The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, estimated that property depreciation related to foreclosures between 2009 and 2012 would end up costing black communities $194 billion and Latino communities $177 billion. The center also concluded that “nearly 8 percent of both African Americans and Latinos have lost their homes to foreclosures, compared to 4.5 percent of whites.”

How could such things happen at the very time the nation’s racial caste system was collapsing? Because the end of American apartheid did not erase the caste system’s effects. America’s history of economic discrimination left most blacks unable to accumulate the intergenerational wealth — trust funds, mortgage-free property and unencumbered cash — that would have permitted them to weather the economic storm. And residential segregation made Zip codes largely inhabited by blacks and Latinos easy to target for subprime loans.

During a visit to India a couple of years ago, I spent time with Martin Macwan, a lawyer born in a small village to Dalits, or “untouchables,” who has made the elimination of untouchability his life’s work. He has started schools for young Dalits shunned in their home villages; created programs to provide alternatives to the menial jobs normally reserved for lower castes; and fought for Dalit rights in the courts, although untouchability was outlawed by the Indian constitution in 1950. The “social system,” Macwan told me, “is more powerful than the law.”

The United States is discovering something similar. The caste system has officially ended, particularly (as in India) in cosmopolitan circles. Yet its legacy hasn’t vanished. Even though formally sanctioned racism may have effectively disappeared, racism’s effects linger.

There is no term to describe this new reality — a world where the economic system, culture and customs conspire to keep many people trapped in what seems very much like the old caste system, even as we celebrate the collapse of the caste system. Neither the old rhetoric of racism nor the new talk of post-racialism remotely captures where we are. Nor does the oft-used phrase “structural racism” really sum it up. “Structural inequality” comes closer, but even that inelegant term does not adequately describe how history and present-day hurdles to achievement come together to keep certain communities down.

Perhaps it is time to put such language aside and to recognize that the struggle for equality was never just about race. And it was certainly not just about expanding the circle of opportunity so that privileged blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans could enjoy the same prerogatives as privileged whites. It was about expanding that circle for the underprivileged, period.

Ellis Cose, formerly a columnist for Newsweek, is the author of “The End of Anger: A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/post-racial-no-post-caste-sure-post-inequality-not-even-close/2011/06/27/gIQA2QtS2H_story.html

BPA Still Safe Until Proven Otherwise?

Study links BPA exposure in womb to behavior problems in toddler girls

By Dina ElBoghdady, Published: October 24

A chemical used widely in plastic bottles, metal cans and other consumer products could be linked to behavioral and emotional problems in toddler girls, according to a government-funded study published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

After tracking 244 Cincinnati-area mothers and their 3-year-olds, the study concluded that mothers with high levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in their urine were more likely to report that their children were hyperactive, aggressive, anxious, depressed and less in control of their emotions than mothers with low levels of the chemical.

While several studies have linked BPA to behavioral problems in children, this report is the first to suggest that a young girl’s emotional well-being is linked to her mother’s exposure during pregnancy rather than the child’s exposure after birth. Girls were more sensitive to the chemical in the womb than boys, maybe because BPA mimics the female hormone estrogen, which is thought to play a role in behavioral development.

The results add to a growing body of research that suggests exposure to BPA poses health risks in humans. While the federal government has long maintained that low doses of BPA are safe, the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies are taking a closer look and investing in more research about the chemical’s health effects.

In the Cincinnati study, the authors cautioned that their results could have been skewed by the eating habits of the mothers observed. For more than 40 years, BPA has been used to make plastic bottles and the lining of metal-based cans. It’s possible that mothers who ate a lot of packaged foods simply didn’t eat enough nutrients essential for brain development, said Joe M. Braun, the study’s lead author.

None of the children exhibited behavior outside the normal range, said Braun, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. But they behaved worse than children whose mothers had relatively low traces of BPA in their urine, he said.

The results were based on urine samples from the mother (two during pregnancy and one at birth) and urine samples from their children taken at ages 1, 2 and 3. The mothers then filled out surveys about their children’s behavior at age 3.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry, dismissed the study, saying it has “significant shortcomings” in design and its conclusions “are of unknown relevance to public health.”

The group cited the study’s small sample size as one drawback. Braun said it’s difficult to conduct this type of research with a larger group.

Several experts who track the issue said they would like to see the study repeated with another group of children.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the sample size is reasonable and its results support studies that show similar effects in animals. The challenge with observational studies such as this one, she said, is that the effects are subtle and, therefore, tougher to tease out.

“These are not the kinds of effects that hit you over the head,” Birnbaum said. “We’re not looking for missing arms and legs.”

Birnbaum’s group and the Environmental Protection Agency funded the study.

Meanwhile, she said, the marketplace has spoken.

Due to consumer pressure, some companies have voluntarily removed the chemical from products or started offering BPA-free alternatives. A number of states and cities, including Maryland, have banned BPA in some children’s products. France has taken action to prohibit BPA use in food packages altogether, but the ban has not yet taken effect.

Earlier this month, the American Chemistry Council petitioned the FDA to ban the use of the chemical in baby bottles and sippy cups. The group said the chemical hasn’t been used in those products for years, but that the ban would help clear consumer confusion. The council maintains that BPA is safe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/study-links-bpa-exposure-in-womb-to-behavior-problems-in-toddler-girls/2011/10/24/gIQA6ihRDM_story.html

Food Labels

Nutrition rating, labeling system proposed

By Dina ElBoghdady, Published: October 20

A symbol, such as a check mark or a star, should be displayed on the front of every food item and beverage sold in grocery stores so harried shoppers can judge nutritional value at a glance, according to a government-sponsored report released Thursday.

In the report, a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine told federal regulators that the epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases warrants a single rating system to help consumers sort through nutritional information. The panel devised a labeling plan intended to be simple enough for kids to use. But it’s unclear what regulators will do.

The food and beverage industry, which launched its own labeling initiative this year, immediately resisted the plan, arguing that consumers do not want the government to interpret information for them. But the panel concluded the opposite. It cited the success of the Energy Star ratings for appliances and five-star safety ratings for cars.

“Simply providing information about healthy choices has not consistently translated into changes in dietary behavior,” said Ellen Wartella, head of the panel and a professor of communications, psychology and human development at Northwestern University.

Under the panel’s plan, products would be graded in three categories — added sugar, sodium and fats. If the sodium level is acceptable, for example, the product would get a point (or check mark, or maybe a star). The same goes for the added sugar and fats, for a maximum of three points or symbols for each product.

Some products may earn no points. For instance, a sugary soda may have low levels of sodium and fat, but it would not be eligible for points because of its high sugar content, the group said.

Also, the calorie count would have to be displayed in familiar measures, such as “per cup.”

The appeal of this method is that it does not require consumers to have a deep knowledge of nutrition, said Matthew Kreuter, one of the panel members. “You just need to understand that three [symbols] is better than two, two is better than one, and one is better than zero,” said Kreuter, a health communications professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Food and Drug Administration, which co-sponsored the study, has been pressing for a front-of-package label since 2009. Back then, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg decried the barrage of sometimes inaccurate slogans displayed on food. Her criticisms came soon after the industry launched its now-defunct Smart Choices program, which gave its trademark green check mark to sugar-laden foods such Froot Loops.

Since then, the industry has launched a new program known as Facts Up Front. Under that voluntary initiative, food makers display nutrients that should be limited (such as fat) and some that should be encouraged (such as fiber.) But they do not rate products.

“Consumers have consistently told us that they want more information in a clear and easy-to-use format,” said Scott Faber, a vice president at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which helped launch the effort. “What they don’t want are summary symbols that make judgments for them.”

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the panel’s proposal is far more promising than the industry effort. But it’s not flawless, he said. For instance, a diet soda would get three points under this system, even though it contains artificial coloring and other chemicals.

But the FDA and its partners, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who co-sponsored the study, may not get the chance to act.

“The reality is that even if the FDA wanted to do something, it would take a few years to implement the plan,” Jacobson said. “If the Obama administration departs next year, kiss the whole effort goodbye.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/nutrition-rating-labeling-system-proposed/2011/10/20/gIQAp8Dg1L_story.html