when it comes to discussing racism in america the debate usually focuses on how immoral or entrenched it is and while it is definitely both of those things it's hard to quantify the. impact just what it is the price of prejudice and who's responsible for are perpetuating or ending it all to discuss that i'm now joined by sean rochester author all of the black tax the cost of being black in america it's very good to talk to you think you very much for giving us this opportunity. it is a wonderful thing to be on the platform thank you very much for having me and for engaging in this really important conversation now in your book you cited a number of studies of discrimination in the job market all of which are pretty distressing but they wanted me away completely was already a fact names why sounding names versus black sounding names who would know that there's such

a distinction and he talked more about this yeah so the university of chicago decision really groundwork breaking our research right on this and they sent out resumes to over 5000 different employers across private public sector large companies medium size small businesses they were trying to get a sense of the amount of discrimination in the labor market what's really important to know is in the resumes that they sent out it would be the same resumes they would just switch the names right the other thing that they would do is they would stress you know augment the strength of the quality of the resume right so increase the quality institution depth of experience length of experience so on and so forth and what they found was if you have you know. a black you know white sounding name you know your callbacks would be 50 percent higher right on the other thing that they found was you know if you were at a white sounding name as the strength and quality of their resume increased right

because we want to talk to the stronger candidates because back when it by 30 percent makes total sense right but if you had a black sounding name as the strength and quality resume went up the callbacks did not go up at all statistically you know 0 no interest level you actually needed the incremental 8 years of experience to overcome this this. bias associated with that figure in and of itself is amazing but for our international audience which may not be very familiar with being a particular areas of you know being in the united states what have. why sounding at whatever black sounding name it's so you know black sounding names might be something like a tyrone you know rashida which is actually more arabic right then than anything else it might be. he should write these these kinds of names whereas you know like a white sounding name which is typically more like a you know like a christian name might be it might be emily it might be samantha it might be

patricia it might be you know names that you know give the impression that the holder of that name is likely you know a white person or ok well i'm sure it's just air strikes me as european sounding and i mean it is i mean you don't see the piece positive or a negative rise because you know. i had. i remember i went to an interview where the person when i showed up the person said they were expecting someone who is irish right which which was pretty interesting that they would share that with me. you know from the me but in terms of the name you know not so much in terms of you know how people react to you in a room yeah absolutely now you mention that here or over time to be a fact of the name of a person mean after. years of experience which is bringing a mind blowing out of europe is going to terry but it's also clear from your book

that this kind of discrimination doesn't apply to other minorities or poor in war and people say it's not like i marry cans or even the american system or our wholesale races i think there is something far more specific about how this dynamic applies to the black community and i suppose i mean it's just like gas it's not just about the color of this he n. what he said. so this is 2 things right discrimination does exist across the spectrum right so people who are are immigrants and don't look you know typically white will absolutely get some discrimination when we have to remember it's not a gala tearing is not the same level of discrimination across groups black has it's the most intense when it comes to black people and in discrimination falls over time and that's a really important point to note right because people face have faced severe

discrimination but the rate falls over time faster for kind of you know for non-black groups on the mansion and it seems likely white people but it's also well known that certain african minorities for example the nigerians very successful that can dynamically and economic i mean that on almost any measure you take from my you know university grad. good employments you have household incomes the ad out there for me you know us war and people both blacks and black how do you describe that phenomenon i mean it can also trace it up to africans people would clearly have darker skin color so there's a couple things that we have to take into consideration so a place like nigeria i think has like 180000000 citizens right so and there's a normal kind of normal distribution cows and spread amongst all populations and

ethnicities and groups which is 70 percent of the people are in the middle 15 percent is substantially above average 15 percent are substantially below average so that you know that 15 percent for a place like nigeria is 45000000 people right and only a small percentage of those folks are getting the opportunity to to leave the country and to participate otherwise in other places so you're just we're getting a glimpse of that top 15 percent of our brilliant that exist in all populations you're seeing it in nigeria and i have to rethink representation because the group is is so large right the other thing is you also have the immigrant effect which is people who tend to leave countries and come to us or other countries where there's more prosperity they they've had to go through much more to get better at much more motivated than the typical kind of populations they may have access to more resources right so more of their ability to develop talent and skill tends to

happen the challenge is for something similar happen after emancipation in the u.s. where people are trying to get a better education but they lived in a time where he outcomes were deterministic it didn't matter how brilliant you were you couldn't participate i think it's pretty avid and that even in the communities that have read and the united states for all time and i agree with you that it's an important factor the united states. it has been getting the cream of the crop the it you know that as the bride is the strongest the most determined so it definitely shows but it's not only about you know newcomers it's also about people in the 2nd 3rd and 4th generation and in many of those communities that the chinese. you know many of the african community in this skin color is also i mean it's really different from why it doesn't seem to be holding them back where do we put the set of. laws of action is it all about the system or is it also about the

community it is it is so there's 2 parts to it there is the individual and then there is the environment but the environment is the vast portion of the determinator outcomes right where you're born and who you know the resources that you have available to you all of that has everything to do with your ability to develop skills to your fullest and then to deploy them so it was some interesting research that was written in the washington post where they kind of talked about like you know people asian people which is a terribly broad kind of category of folks but what they talked about is that you know people assume that the the reason why you know asians have done so well in the u.s. is is because of family structure desire for education and those type of things and it's all real and very true but what the researchers say is what you have to understand is that the rate of discrimination against asians has fallen far more quickly right than the rate of discrimination against against black people date they actually experience much higher levels of discrimination in the past and in

the us you the level of discrimination against your in group is actually very directly proportional to your ability to communicate to accumulate wealth matters quite quite a bit now as that level of discrimination falls your desire for education that the wonderful structures that they put in place the commerce that they do amongst themselves gets a multi. of the euphoria of discussing specific also just let me ask you what did you find the current framing of the of the problem as the white privilege to this very conspicuous focus on the skin color do you find it helpful. it is this is a couple things which is what is white white privilege it means different things to different people right on the flipside of anti-black to scrim a nation is something that's known as are white automatic white preference right and in vast majority of come the country has that what people talk about when you talk about white. race i mean do you know anything has every ashy you know it's jim

color represented i mean it's not like russia where you you have a more sort of homogeneous scanner representation i mean if you can say that there had been discrimination against blacks automatically means the profits for white because they simply didn't distribution is so no no no no no again i'm just sharing with you to date the dated like not my opinion on it so harvard has done a tremendous amount of work on something known as implicit of some concepts bias that they have articulated that based on the many millions of people that have taken these kind of these online tests which you are not able to break that system you can think of $5000.00 times the outcomes are going to be the same right the levels of automatic white preference amongst the population is about 75 percent it's almost 8 in 10 americans that that's impera cool and demonstrably you know to me i wish it wasn't for that but you know also all minorities they all prefer why

they think it's also yeah it's not just white people it exists within that the general kind of population so even black people have ordinary white preference right and by the way even black people have anti black bias right so that's part of the problem and chance and i just want to share that so we're anchored in in the data i absolutely wish it was different but it's not well this is why i really like the. title of your book did black tax because it frames the issue. deschanel cost him considerable once last bead on to black people i know when it's framed that way i think you'll find far more warrant in removing those additional costs down calling on somebody to do so and that white privilege which. i think many people don't believe that having in the 1st please what do you think about that yeah i think it makes it's consistent with what people understand and they've been told in that they believe and what i want to do is kind of interject like what is the data

saying right so unfortunately there is then what is this an earned white privilege so when i'm talking about the black tax i'll talk about how when you're looking for a home right you'll be treated as if your credit is $75.00 points lower you have 3 times more likely to have a mortgage that's $150.00 basis points higher if you buy a 400 $1000.00 house that's almost 20144000 incremental payments if you're white you're not receiving that now you didn't ask for it you don't you don't agree with it you're not giving those people permission you may totally disagree with it but you're getting it nonetheless and it's an economic benefit so it is a flipside there is a cost to to to black people or sure which i'm highlighting but the flipside of that is a is our massive under an economic benefits that again that's just what the data showing and it exists in pretty much all industries well mr i just 11 discuss all this issue here is a short break that we have to take right now see and it. is

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in the depths. aura made in the shallowness of. secret prisons are not usually what comes to mind when thinking about europe however he even the most prosperous can be deceived we've been busy roads all the way to view houses were allowed to leave prison was located only cia people had access to the story for investigators hell they uncovered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean. the great ignore in. d.c. may be a sort of. thing for justice. welcome

back to worlds apart rochester the author all in black tax the cost of being black in america mr rochester we are on the eve of the presidential elections and the racial issue in the united states has always been a political issue and it's no secret your anyone dead. certain political groups consider black voters as that old electorate i'm not going to name any names but do you think that that party has delivered on the promises that it made to the black community. no. when you look at you know it's it's been 153 years since emancipation when you look at it's been 400 years right since black people have been in the u.s. and extracting their labor for the construction of the country and then you think that black people want about 2 percent of u.s. wealth and a disproportionately high is kind of great almost everything that's negative i just

don't say that that i don't see how anybody any working to find that is as a when well the reason i'm asking about this is because there is also an increasing our body of reach says fitch that just the problem of thought this structural discrimination or does it not just structural institutional this is that it's all the black community it lays not so much in the history of slavery but actually in the history of social welfare that introduced for example minimum wage introducing many of the regulations that were supposed to benefit the poorest of the poor actually disadvantage down in the long term and made them far less economically strong and they could have and what do you make of that argument yeah i would say that that argument that those people are are making is flawed in many ways firstly that if you look at the financial impact that labor extracted from people millions of people for a quarter of a millennia you know that the ranges are from like $24.00 to the $97.00 trillion

dollars and it's a gargantuan number even if you look at what these people don't value discussing the impact of slavery i mean that's a given nobody is disputing that it was a wrong thing to do and many people who benefit from it the question is all or at centered on that now because in most countries in any country you would find that minorities being unfairly used taking economic and by the job for it's not specific to the united states of america it exists in pretty much every country but the fact that you this. black americans remain economically disadvantaged getting you can only pin it on slavery it's it's so i agree that it's discrimination everywhere and people get disenfranchised everywhere but those levels are not the same right and so we need to be very very guy careful with that like i don't necessarily want to go into the horrors of slavery to explain why is a unique grotesque and offense against you know mankind i'm just saying the

impact of what was extracted from the folks which now you do not have to use in the past down from generation is up to 50 trillion and then they went into a pseudo form of slavery called the jim crow which is a horrible name that really describe what happened but it was another form of pseudo extraction of labor those people were earning basically 0 income for about a 90 year period so it's very difficult to build an economic infrastructure and then when you put the social supports in place unfortunately even that was done in a discriminatory way right because when they put social security in place and when they put a minimum wage in they said all those hours they were doing it in the 1930 s. right as a result of the great depression where it was sensitive to even conceive that black people could earn the same thing as a white person so they they fired right over half a 1000000 black people off the payrolls because it was anathema to literally think in the south of making sure that they even though it was

a minimum wage that they would be earning the same thing you have all of this illogical kind of discriminatory behavior that's actually skewing what could be really good programs that you may disagree with me but i tend to believe that at least a part of the criseyde affairs could be explained by the exaggerated political choices that black communities have been cherry doing and i'm not suggesting that people who are members of it was one way or another but i wonder if you read that. that black voters in particular have to be more just cerny and more demanding of politician and ask for a bit more than just anti a racist rhetoric and symbolic gestures like taking and yes i think the need for specificity is very important so in the book i talk about this economic framework that i call ph d. which is purchased kind of positive ways they create jobs create and expand businesses and provide capital in the black community is specificity should be are

there programs policies and initiative stimulative for job creation stimulated for business development and are you making capital available and affordable right in the communities in particular to actually deal with the underlying jobless issues that have been persistent for 150 years to deal with the underlying lack of a business infrastructure which has been a problem for the last 150 years and to deal with the capital gap so i agree right there requests need to be specific and they need to be economic and they need to be scalable and that's kind of part of the problem sometimes the symbolism takes a front seat to actual substance right and the substance should be there by this to be defined in terms of jobs business and capital available ity and affordability now mr officer buys it works both ways it can be positive and negative we all are now dealing with the economy at $9000.00 condemning 2 which african-americans are

more vulnerable than other demographic groups because of the higher rates of obesity image of all of diseases within that group now it's well know that there is a huge body of free says that just in the food companies are far more likely to do african-americans in their ads than whites and they do that when they help all be black stars and role models like for example the role of james. do you see any problem with that not midday if with marketing it's all christians on a bit big black stars ultimately using this positive bias that black kids have for him just sowed them products that ultimately damaging our house. so i just to be clear i'm not aware of look look ron jeans and soda and some stuff like that so i really can't speak on that. gray stuff on track with major food company

and i mean that's a public record but anyway it's so the the issues are are massive and structural so if you look in like within the black community your ability to have you know strong health outcomes directly proportional to wealth your ability to have strong educational outcomes directly proportional to wealth and when you have like 2 percent of the wealth and that wealth isn't even evenly distributed across the group that your system matic issues that you have to deal with right you're 10 times more likely not sure if the party i agree that you know cannot make i balance is president he mongers bit what troubles me in this whole discussion about race is a total absence of any responsibility on the part of the community and we know that there are certain yeah. if i could interject absolute the entirety of the

last 150 years the onus has been on black people to raise themselves and to do better and to drive and get ahead and all that kind of stuff the onus has been on the beyond on the individual it has not been on the environment right so what i'm trying to shed light on is the role that environment place right after emancipation and a 1000000 people who are black fell ill and or died because of exposure and lack of food and all the sustenance and so on and so for the outcomes are often blame. by the individual when we don't look at the import of environment right so when we talk about the structural issues it's very very very important people are are products of their environment right they rarely overcome their barring any outliers commission or bulls free will of the person and the environment and you never know if for example if you are hyper exposed to poverty it's race independent it's not about your desire to overcome it the probability says that if you come from

a place of persistent poverty you're 99 percent less likely to graduate from a 4 year degree in the richest country in a in a fist face of the earth that has ever existed and black people are 10 times more likely that's one in 100 that is not about the individual not working hard enough that is a structural issue associated with poverty and if you took any group on planet earth and you put them under that condition you're going to get the same outcome that now while we are on the issue of community it. higher percentage of single mothers and absent fathers have long been an issue in the black community and that many people who believe that this is also a consequence of racism and that a forceful pulling a family is a part of it i am not convinced it's supported by data because if you actually look at their stats you would see that the nuclear family back in the sixty's back in the seventy's was a much stronger and a black community than it is right now how beagle is savagery is that family

structure and there are patches of black hats that the family structure is critical the question is how does the environment affect the family structure because what we're not talking about is i'm familiar with those numbers right it was close to 70 percent it's less than 50 percent you know right now what is what has transpired in between there right firstly you have a movement of the manufacturing sector out of the inner city which is where black people fled to terrorism to the south to into local. last year's dictions all over the world 70 percent of black jobs were associated with that manufacturing infrastructure they were never in replaced if you have man of any kind of form that have high levels of unemployment an ability to earn they don't want to commit to relationships and they tend to be more you know fluid in kind of their movements that's not a black kind of phenomenon you have another issue that's associated with policing right the tough on crime and all these kinds of things right where you've gone from

200000 kind of less than that in the us jail probably lation to well over 2000040 percent of whom are are black people and then you go on with the issue of the flooding of drugs into those into those communities and the reaction to that not taking the form of hey this is a public health issue or hey this is economic issue it's no this is a criminal activity and now we're going to put those people those people in jail you're taking men literally out of the community you're putting a scarlet letter on them of having been kind of imprisoned and then you can never get rid of that and then the sixty's you're moving out of a period of state sanctioned apartheid that existed in the u.s. right so part of the what the work that i do shows is this level of discrimination is extraordinary and has now verse stop it changes forms right but it's never stopped and is a cumulative fact that helps us to understand why we're in this current situation right now you know in the u.s.

in particular there are still we have to move it up but let me ask you a very short question you know for a person almost. like heritage in the united states listening to us right now the odds are stacked against him or her but what are some of the things she or he can do to improve he's or her life chances. yes it is a bunch of different things i think the ph d. framework is very important to us where possible when possible how do we do business with ourselves how. we share that with corporations that we work with the say hey you know employment levels matter how you use your balance sheet matters having more black businesses in your supply chain matters how do we share that with our politicians our representatives to let them know that we're interested in concrete economic outcomes in terms of jobs business and capital and not just symbolic things that kind of make everyone you know feel good how do we let our allies know that all of this is actually bad for the economy and it's bad for

business right it reduces earnings it reduces profits. but it i mean it is sad for everybody when you develop people right and when you'd help them to deploy their skills it's better for everyone if you only care about the dollars it's better for your dollars right it's a powerful message the pie is actually bigger i know we think it's a 0 sum game it's really not and that's kind of how. we have to leave it there really appreciate your being with us today and sharing your thoughts make it very much thank you so much for having me to your platform i greatly appreciate it i look forward to continuing the conversation and thank you for watching this year again next week a world apart. americans

love by and all meant. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at large understood the bargain you get a home and then you know rebel right as the things you don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. and be really interesting to dial it back and think about the longer deeper history play housings men in the united states not just that old

question of the american dream that the bigger question if you dream is and for. 11 people arrested in france following friday's brutal killing of a teacher this witness video captured the moment the suspect an 18 year old chechen man was shot dead by police. armenia and azerbaijan sign a 2nd ceasefire in the space of a week but before the ink even had time to dry this weekend there were accusations of new attacks in the disputed region of the gorn a car bomb. shells rained down on areas surrounding the disputed territory as well with civilian casualties reported in azerbaijan's 2nd largest city we hear from both sides of the conflict who started to lose the war that was built.