We have a thing in sound called signal-to-noise ratio.
Signal-to-noise ratio (abbreviated SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power, often expressed in decibels. A ratio higher than 1:1 (greater than 0 dB) indicates more signal than noise.
So let me introduce the progress-to-perception ratio (abbreviated PPR or P/P)
Perception-to-progress ratio is a measure that compares your perception of the world which is what you actually live everyday to our progress, which is defined by actual facts and numbers.
So for a white person maybe the ratio is about 5:1, indicating that white people see a decent amount of good things going on while the actual progress is 1. Maybe 1:1 for poor white folks.
For black and brown people though it’s going to be 0.8:1 if not 0.2:1. Just an example from a recent article in Baltimore:
of the nearly 1,000 people killed by police officers in 2015, 40 percent were unarmed black men. Now consider, black men make up just 6 percent of the national population.
Let that sink in. Ponder. Imagine the impact on people like me, realizing that we’re definitely the target. It’s not just a “we talk a lot about it in the news”. It’s real. We knew this before, now we have HD footage.
So even if progress happens, it happens at a slower rate for people of color: if all violence goes down but black and latinos are still targeted far, far more than we should –at a rate that never went down- then violence doesn’t really go down for us. And because violence *does* go down globally, it makes us wonder quite a lot what is going on because that’s not what we witness or how we feel.
That changes a lot of things in the way we go on with our lives and it’s hard to describe it, that was my attempt. I wish there was a “apply to all” button for progress so that we flatten those enormous disparities.