Sometimes, what passes for serious academic research is so insulting to your intelligence that you just want to track down the report writers and snatch them by their rumpled, Ivy League collars. The purpose, of course, would not be to inflict bodily harm of any kind on the good researchers, but rather to ask them, face-to-face, if their entire report hadn’t really been some huge, overly-long, bad joke, like that recent movie, Jackass 3D.
I felt just like that after reading a recent report by two University of Pennsylvania economists – Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. Their study “proved,” they said, that much of (the) “racial gap in happiness” between blacks and whites “has closed over the past 35 years." They went on to say that most of the black gains in "happiness" had actually been “concentrated among women and those living in the South.”
As if that hadn't already been enough, Professor Wolfers was then quoted in a national periodical as saying that the study was “…the largest and most important change in happiness for any population I have ever seen.”
Can you spell “hype,” Professor Wolfers?
The Penn Professor had the courage to say all of that, even though the unemployment gap between blacks and whites continues to grow – to the detriment of black folks, even though the earnings gap between black and white households stands at about 40 cents out of each dollar, and even though huge healthcare disparities between blacks and whites have been well documented.
The first time I read about the survey results, I was dumbfounded. The third, fifth, ninth and tenth times I read it, I felt exactly the same way.
Black "happiness?" Images of minstrels, banjoes and watermelon came immediately to mind.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "happiness" is defined as “good fortune, prosperity or a state of well-being and contentment.” Having read that, and realizing that most African Americans were experiencing very few of those things, I wondered, more than ever, what was happening across Black America (Can we still say "Black America" without offending the current president?) that was causing black people to be so damned happy.
The second thing I wondered was what, aside from having too much funding and too much time on their hands, had led two Wharton School economists, of decidedly European descent, to express their “expert” opinions on the “happiness of black people in America?” On what grounds do they claim a knowledge of what constitutes "happiness" for African Americans? Sounds like a case wherein they could have used the services of a good, black psychologist, as part of their team.
In any event, journalists at the New York Times deduced, in that paper’s coverage of the story, that the whole report was probably explainable by the direct correlation between "black happiness" and the decrease in “day-to-day racism” in America. In trying to make that case, however, it’s clear that the Times and the two Penn professors haven't kept abreast of situations currently being played out all across the country, such as the throw-back, race-based tensions that have been experienced recently in Macon, Georgia, and that have been especially evident in the town’s City Council meetings.
It’s also fair to say, I would guess, that if they had known about that situation, the researchers would have begun to understand that, outside of the walls of the Wharton School, where this study was done, black folks in this country still don’t seem to have a whole lot to be "happy" about.
Essentially, what happened in Macon, was this: There was an acrimonious political debate being waged between a white City Councilman named John Williams and a black City Councilman named Daron Lee. At one point in the discussion, Lee, protesting what he thought had been unfair and racist treatment by Williams and other City Council colleagues at earlier meetings, told Williams that he was tired of being treated disrespectfully. He, then, reminded Williams that he (Lee) did not work in a “cotton field.” Williams paused just a second before looking Lee straight in the eye and responding, “You should be.”
Do you think that statement contributed to Councilman Lee’s “happiness?" Do you think it made black citizens throughout Macon, Georgia any "happier" than they usually are at this time of year?
In that same regard, I would want to know if the U.of P. researchers had looked up from their computer terminals long enough to take note of radio psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s insult to a black female caller to her show, recently? That was the time when Dr. Laura essentially told the caller, right in the middle of this wonderful “post-racial” era that we’re all living through, that if the caller wanted to avoid racial insults, she probably shouldn’t have married a white man.
I wonder if that little piece of friendly advice made the black caller “happy?” How about the millions of black folks who saw the story repeated over and over on cable news shows over that following week? Were they also “happy?”
And, how about all the African Americans who had to hear, immediately thereafter, the news about Sarah Palin’s “tweet” to Dr. Laura, supporting her racist commentary? It went like this: “Don’t retreat, reload.”
Many more millions of black Americans were also subjected to that exchange and I’m pretty confident that none of them were made much “happier,” as a result.
But maybe the two good professors at Penn didn’t include the opinions of any of these kinds of black Americans in their survey.
From virtually all of the data I’ve seen about current economic, social, housing and health conditions, “happy” would be one of the last words I would use to describe how black people are feeling, right about now.. With the country turning more and more every day toward right-wing conservatism, with the cries for “smaller government” constituting a virtual guarantee that predominantly poor blacks will be even further shut out of much-needed government services, what in the world do Negroes have to be “happy” about?
I don’t know about you, but when I want to know what credible research has been done on the subject of “happiness,” I tend to rely more on the 2006 report on the topic by the PEW Research Center. For a number of reasons, it seems a great deal more in keeping with the reality I see every day across America.
In summary, here’s what PEW found: Rich people (50 percent) are happier than poor people (23 percent); Republicans (45 percent), who, not coincidentally, tend to be richer, are happier than Democrats (30 percent); married people (43 percent) are happier than unmarried people (24 percent); and people who worship frequently (43 percent) are happier than those who don’t (26 percent).
More specifically, the people at PEW also found that both whites and Hispanics are happier than blacks, which would seem to make sense, given the strong correlation between income and happiness, and the fact that the poverty rate for black children, which stands at about 34 percent, is greater than that of Hispanic, Asian or white children.
But, if the PEW findings are accurate, and it’s very difficult to disagree with them, if you’re wide awake and are familiar at all with the black community, then where did the Wharton School professors come up with their stunning conclusion that blacks are becoming more “happy” every day?
To nobody’s great surprise, the University of Pennsylvania’s “Black Happiness Report” hit with a loud, incredulous thud across the country, and was quickly dismissed, much in the same way that the recent report that informed us that the Great Recession in the United States had actually come to an end, in 2009.
We didn’t believe that one either, for equally good reasons.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
No comments:
Post a Comment