How much would you need to be paid for switching racial teams for the rest of your life? How about giving up television? A recent study suggested whites would expect to be paid much more for forgoing TV than for becoming black. One researcher considers this prime evidence that many whites have no idea of the extent to which differences between the two races go above and beyond the physical in the United States.

Respondents generally requested less than $10,000 to become Black. However, they said they’d have to be paid $1 million to give up television for the rest of their lives.

“The costs of being Black in our society are very well documented,” says study co-author Philip Mazzocco. “Blacks have significantly lower income and wealth, higher levels of poverty and even shorter life spans, among many other disparities, compared to Whites.

“When Whites say they would need $1 million to give up TV, but less than $10,000 to become Black, that suggests they don’t really understand the extent to which African-Americans, as a group, are disadvantaged,” says Mazzocco.

When the questions were made less specific and the respondents were asked how much it would cost for them to switch from being part of the racial majority in a fictional country to the racial minority, which was characterized by many of the issues faced by blacks in America, many said they should be paid $1 million to be the minority. If nothing else, this explains the anti-affirmative action movement perfectly.

[RR, DE]