The backdrop of core American values also sets the stage for our national consensus on race. We take great pride in our national values of personal responsibility and individualism, meritocracy, and equal opportunity, and we assume them to be race neutral. We understand these values to have the following significance:
Personal responsibility and individualism: The belief that people control their fates regardless of social position, and that individual behaviors and choices determine material outcomes.
Meritocracy: The belief that resources and opportunities are distributed according to talent and effort, and that the social components of “merit”—such as access to inside information or powerful social networks—are of lesser importance or do not matter much.
Equal opportunity: The belief that the employment, education, and wealth accumulation arenas are “level playing fields” and that race is no longer a barrier to progress in these areas.
In a perfect world, with all else held equal, our national values would translate directly into the reality of daily experience for all Americans. In our imperfect world with its many inequities, however, these values inevitably lead to different outcomes for different individuals.
| Where one starts out in life affects where one ends up to a greater degree than our national sense of economic mobility would have us believe. |
While we treasure notions of individual accomplishment, meritocracy, and equal opportunity, in fact, individuals are members of families, communities, and social groups, and their individual trajectories will be affected—though not necessarily totally determined—by the overall status of their group. Those born into disadvantaged communities cannot be blamed for the insufficient education they receive in their local public schools, and the consequent challenges they face as unskilled job seekers. |
A child born in the bottom 10 percent of families ranked by income has a 31 percent chance of ending up there as an adult and a 51 percent chance of ending up in the bottom 20 percent, while one born in the top 10 percent has a 30 percent chance of staying there and a 43 percent chance of being in the top 20 percent.
Ironically, when one member of a minority group “makes it” and manages to make a successful transition to adulthood—graduating from high school with honors, attending prominent colleges and universities, getting impressive jobs, and so on—that young person’s success is taken as evidence that the system is “working,” that our national values do indeed create an equal playing field and opportunities. But of course, a star performer from any racial or ethnic group is just that: a star performer. While we should applaud the fact that a highly gifted person of any racial group should be allowed to succeed in this country, we need to pay attention to the averages. On average, a person with a resource-rich background has a greater likelihood of succeeding than one without. Unfortunately, the availability of many of those resources is correlated with race in this country.
A structural racism lens does not call for the abolition of our national values. It calls instead for the rearticulation of those values in ways that recognize where all Americans stand because of their historical group experiences on these shores. The tension here is that structural racism focuses on unequal group outcomes while our core national values emphasize social, economic, and political philosophies that are centered on the individual.
Source: 2005 - Structural Racism and Youth Development: Issues, Challenges, and Implications, Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (pages 22-23).
| 
