Two sickening instances of bias are headliners at the New York Times' website today. Each one comes from deep within our culture and reminds us that "America The Beautiful" is a fantasy.
The first comes from our business and legal community where racism is, well, "good" for business.
Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to wind up in the more onerous and costly form of consumer bankruptcy as they try to dig out from their debts, a new study has found. ...A survey conducted as part of their research found that bankruptcy lawyers were much more likely to steer black debtors into a Chapter 13 than white filers even when they had identical financial situations. The lawyers, the survey found, were also more likely to view blacks as having “good values” when they expressed a preference for Chapter 13. ...NYT
Most debtors use Chapter 7, a faster, less complicated process. Almost inevitably, black bankruptcy filers are steered into the more onerous, costly process of Chapter 13. They're not just victims of Chapter 13. Additional research has already shown that the original mortgage has them paying more punishing rates than the rates paid by whites in the same income category.
How deep does the prejudice go? Pretty deep. Pretty embarrassing.
Results from the second part of the study, which illustrated the lawyer’s influence in determining which bankruptcy chapter to choose, came from a survey sent to lawyers asking them questions based on fictitious couples who were seeking bankruptcy protection. When the couple was named “Reggie and Latisha,” who attended an African Methodist Episcopal Church — as opposed to a white couple, “Todd and Allison,” who were members of a United Methodist Church — the lawyers were more likely to recommend a Chapter 13, even though the two couples’ financial circumstances were identical. ...NYT
It's not known, from this research, the extent to which the justice system -- bankruptcy judges and trustees -- are complicit. But a least once bankruptcy trustee admitted to having noticed the bias and wanting to change it.
We can try to chip away at the results of the research but they remain: financial and legal systems that are not only predatory but bigoted.
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The judicial system is further disgraced by its most prestigious court -- the Supreme Court -- where political bias is, by now, a done deal. Many white Americans are experiencing, depending on their political beliefs, the same sidelining and door slamming that blacks have experienced for generations. This Court opens its front door for Republicans and their racial biases in the state of Texas where a Republican legislature drew a redistricting map that seriously disadvantages minority voters. The map taken to a Texas court and thrown out. The Supreme Court effectively reinstates the legislature's redistricting plan.
The unanimous decision said that redistricting is primarily a job for elected state officials and that the lower court had not paid enough deference to maps drawn by the State Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. The justices sent the case back to the lower court, extending the uncertainty surrounding this major voting-rights case.
The new maps to be drawn by the lower court could play a role in determining control of the House of Representatives. Democrats need a net gain of 25 seats to take back the House from Republican control, and both parties are fighting for every advantage in the battle for the House majority. Experts in election administration said the new maps could influence outcomes in perhaps three Texas districts. ...NYT
If you're confronted with political and racial bias in a redistricting case, doesn't it make more sense to look for the middle of the road rather than show your political preference, as Clarence Thomas did? But Thomas thinks legislation that continues to monitor voting rights in states with historic racial bias, is a crock.
Justice Clarence Thomas said the Legislature's maps shouldn't have been held up by the Washington preclearance at all; he wrote that that provision of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. ...Texas Tribune
The state of Texas emerges from this having won this case for political and racial bias; the people of Texas lost. The loss is reserved for "non-white" Texans who, the census shows, are seriously under-represented in the electoral system. All Texas voters who would like to replace a biased legislature with a more balanced one also lose.
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The Washington Post looks at the context.
The Supreme Court’s opinion was the first round in a series of looming challenges in which the justices are likely to be asked to referee battles over redistricting, the application of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Obama administration’s vow to police voter law changes enacted by Republican-dominated state legislatures.
Just hours after the Texas ruling, the justices stayed a lower court decision that struck down West Virginia’s congressional redistricting plan because the judges said it deviated too much from the “one-person, one-vote” standard.
“In every decade since the 1960s, the court has stepped up its role in regulating the elections process,” said Heather Gerken, an election law expert at Yale Law School who is advising President Obama’s reelection effort.
Friday’s decision was a modest one, she said. “But my feeling is this begins with a whimper and ends with a bang.” ...WaPo
