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Thoughts On Race, Systems, And The Problem Of Invisible Discrimination

Last Updated on August 28, 2021June 8, 2020
This post may contain affiliate links. Affiliate Disclosure.This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

Sometimes, I wonder if my legal career might have been different if I had some more help along the way. That isn’t to say that no one helped me – there were a lot of lawyers who took an interest in me and helped to guide me. But as a young Asian-American lawyer, I always had a nagging feeling that I didn’t quite belong.

That’s because, as is the case in most professional industries, there just weren’t a lot of people that looked like me in higher-level positions. This wasn’t necessarily something that was done on purpose. It was a combination of conscious and unconscious biases, systematic things, and historical factors that led to a partnership that was ultimately not very representative of the overall population.

Unfortunately, this had an impact on the younger, minority lawyers like me. As in any system run by people, nothing is ever really equal. Systems are designed by people. And people create things based on the things they know, which, of course, tends to benefit the creators of that system. And when it’s a system that requires people to pick other people – well, they tend to pick people that look like them, consciously or not.

At my firm, it was a well-known fact that the vast majority of Black, Asian, and Hispanic associates typically left after 3-5 years. There were a number of reasons for this, but perhaps most telling might have been the fact that, from what I understood, billable hours for minority associates tended to be lower compared to the overall associate population. 

It wasn’t quite clear why this was the case, but when you think about it, you can probably formulate some theories. Billing requires partners to give you work and take you under their wing. This requires partners to pick you. Most partners (as with most people) tend to gravitate towards those that remind them of themselves. And because most partners are white men, naturally, white male associates tend to get more assignments, build more skills, and accordingly, rise in the ranks sooner. The next group of partners then tend to be white and male and so the cycle continues (for example, see this New York firm’s partner class for 2019).

Which brings me to my ultimate point with this post. We live in a world that relies on systems. Systems created by people over hundreds of years. People that have their own biases and prejudices. If you don’t think that race matters in America, you’re simply wrong. It permeates every aspect of our lives, from where we live, to where we work, to where we go to school, to how we go about our day to day lives. And yes, it permeates our financial lives too.

I live in Minneapolis, so it pains me to see what happened to George Floyd happen in my own backyard. This wasn’t just an unfortunate accident or the result of a rogue cop or bad apple. It’s a result of a system that put police on the scene because a Black man allegedly used a $20 counterfeit bill. A system that allowed three other police officers to sit by and do nothing. A system that made it so that Black bystanders could only speak up and plead for a man’s life, but couldn’t do anything else while a man was being killed in front of them. 

If we don’t acknowledge that the way things are right now isn’t natural – rather, it’s man-made and created by those in power to benefit certain people at the expense of others – we’ll never be able to critically think about why the world is the way it is and think about what we can do to make it better.

Personal Finance – Race Matters

There’s this insidious idea that comes about with personal finance and financial independence where success with money is often seen as something based on your own ability and self-control. Even as wages stagnate and as education and the cost of healthcare and other essential goods and services increase, the principles of personal finance and financial independence tells us that if we aren’t successful, it means we’re probably spending too much somewhere or not doing enough to earn more. It’s all our fault.

But if we dig a little deeper, we know that this can’t be the whole story. Money is a system, created by people in power to benefit themselves. For our entire history, power has been concentrated in men, specifically white men. If you aren’t part of that group, you’re automatically going to be at a disadvantage because the system was not designed to benefit you. It was designed to benefit them.

Out in the real world, our individual money experiences are never universal, and what one person can do cannot be done by everyone because of born characteristics they cannot control. If you want to see what I mean, just consider my own experiences with side hustling. I act like everyone can do it. But is that really true? 

Take Airbnb for example. I write about how it’s possible to make significant income by house hacking a spare room in your house or renting out your entire house while you travel. But we know that Airbnb has a discrimination problem, with Black guests much more likely to have problems booking a place compared to non-Black guests. This isn’t something that Brian Chesky was trying to do when he created Airbnb. Rather, he was basing the system he created from his own experiences. He’s an upper, middle-class white male. He’s never experienced discrimination when it comes to housing, so it didn’t occur to him that a system where people choose who to let into their home based on names and pictures might create a system rife with conscious and unconscious discrimination.

For hosts, the problem must be the same as well. That is, Black Airbnb hosts likely receive fewer bookings, are forced to charge a lower rate in order to get bookings, and likely get lower quality guests as a result. Would a Black host living in my neighborhood receive the same number of bookings at the same rate as I do? I think absolutely not.

In fact, any of the gig economy stuff I do is subject to this same problem, where I’m at an advantage simply because I’m an Asian-American man, rather than a Black man. For example:

  • Would I have the same success dogsitting on Rover if I was Black? I highly doubt it. The same discrimination and biases that occur with Airbnb most definitely occur with Rover. Do White dogsitters do better than I do because of their race? I think that’s definitely a possibility.
  • Would I make the same amount of money doing food and grocery deliveries if I were Black? Would my delivery ratings be as high? Studies suggest that I’d receive smaller tips and would get worse ratings.

All this is to say, everything money-related is inherently going to be impacted by your race, gender, national origin, and many other factors that you do not get to control. Where you live, where you work, where you go to school – all of this matters when it comes to money. And it’s all determined by a system that might or might not benefit you. If we act like money is available to anyone if only people would step up and take responsibility for themselves, we’re being naive or ignorant. 

Racism And Discrimination Isn’t About What You Can See – It’s About What You Can’t See

I think if you ask most people if they’re racist, the answer is going to be no. And I think this is generally true – most people understand that racism is objectively wrong and are not overtly racist. 

The thing is, it’s not overt racism that’s the problem. Every law in existence prohibits racism and discrimination based on race. The problem is that most racism and discrimination isn’t overt. It’s unconscious, created by centuries of policies that were designed to marginalize certain people and promote some people over others. 

The things you take for granted didn’t just happen. For instance:

Where you live isn’t an accident. Where you live has a dramatic impact on your income and overall life outcomes. And yet, where you live isn’t really a choice. It’s a product of centuries of discriminatory policies designed to segregate races. It’s easy to find plenty of evidence about the racist history of the suburbs. We know that Black homebuyers couldn’t get loans and weren’t allowed to buy homes in White neighborhoods. Today, neighborhood segregation continues to be as bad as it was when the Fair Housing Act was passed over 50 years ago. Segregation in housing is illegal. But it’s still happening because of an undercurrent of unconscious racism that isn’t being addressed. Look at where you live and who your neighbors are. That’s not an accident.

How your city looks isn’t an accident. Sometimes, I look at a big highway that cuts through a city and I ask myself, what was there before? The answer is that it was usually a poor neighborhood, and more often than not, it was a Black neighborhood. Building giant roads cutting through houses – typically Black houses – had a dramatic impact on people’s ability to build wealth. Worse yet, these huge roads completely split people apart, creating essentially de-facto walls dividing people. Look at how your city is laid out. That wasn’t an accident,

Where you go to school isn’t an accident. Schools were desegrated over 65 years ago. No school district can legally discriminate based on race. And yet, school segregation is actually getting worse. Residential segregation got worse. Schools were divided based on neighborhood lines. We stopped bussing in students from other places. Think about the school you went to and what the student body looked like. That wasn’t an accident.

I could go on forever with this. Healthcare is empirically worse for Black people than it is for White people. Standardized testing favors those with the means to study for these tests in advance. Jobs are harder to get if you have a Black sounding name. And of course, we know that the police state systematically targets Black men over anyone else.

The point is that racism and discrimination isn’t something that is always overt. It’s a mistake to think that racism only means you hate Black people or hate Hispanic people, or hate Asian people. That’s not the racism we really need to worry about. It’s the racism that we can’t see, the unconscious biases that all of us have.

Here’s an easy thought experiment. Imagine if everything you see today was happening to White men, rather than Black men. If White men were getting killed by police at extraordinarily high rates, or had military-style police presences in their neighborhoods, or were segregated into poor neighborhoods and bad schools, or had their homes destroyed to build a road to move people from the suburbs into a city . . . how much uproar would there be?

It’s not about what you can see. It’s about what you can’t see. If we don’t recognize this, we can never change things.

Final Thoughts 

When it comes to race, being an Asian-American in the United States is sometimes a bit strange. The racism that we face isn’t as perverse. It gets to the point where even though Asians are an obvious and visible minority that also faces their own overt and systematic discrimination, we’re often treated as if we don’t face any problems.

I can see why people think this way though. Asian-Americans are often held up as the model of minority success in America. There’s the whole concept of the model minority – a racist concept in itself designed to downplay the systematic racism that exists in our system and place the blame on the affected group for why they aren’t able to make it (the idea being, if this race can do well, why can’t you?). It’s a backhanded thing – like when someone says a Black person is articulate.

But the history of Asian-American success in the United States wasn’t because Asians were just somehow able to overcome the prejudices against them. It was because America simply became less racist towards them. What a concept.

I don’t have answers to all these problems. I’m not a policy person. All I can do is recognize the problem, speak up, and do what I can to combat it.

As for personal finance and financial independence, it’s up to all of us to recognize the role we play in how people view money. We can teach others and give people ideas. But if we blame people and say it’s their fault they can’t do it, we’re discounting the system that makes what might be easy for us very difficult for others. And if we do that, it means we’re cool with the status quo. You can’t change things if you’re cool with the status quo. 

Additional Reading

If you’re looking for policy books about the impact of systems, one such book is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. I read this book back when I was in law school and it really opened my eyes to how the criminal justice system has shifted over the past 50 years to essentially create an underclass of Black men, relabeled as criminals, and then denied housing, jobs, education, voting rights, etc. This is essential reading if you really want to understand what is going on in policing and the legal system.

This post may contain affiliate links. Financial Panther has partnered with AwardWallet and CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Financial Panther, AwardWallet, and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

More Recommended Ebike/Scooters

Check out these other ebikes and scooters I've reviewed:

  • Urban Arrow Ebike – Last year, I made one of the largest purchases I’ve ever made – I bought a $9,000 electric cargo bike from Urban Arrow. In my Urban Arrow review, I will discuss what it is and why I decided to buy this bike, as well as discuss how impactful a bike like this can be on your journey to financial independence.
  • Troxus Explorer Step-Thru Ebike – The Troxus Explorer Step-Thru is a fat-tire ebike that I’ve had the pleasure of riding for a while now. It has amazing power, great looks, and awesome range. If you’re looking for a great fat-tire ebike that offers a lot for the price, the Troxus Explorer Step-Thru is definitely one for you to consider. Check out my Troxus Explorer Step-Thru Review.
  • Hovsco HovBeta Ebike – The HovBeta is a folding ebike with great specs and a lot of interesting features, and importantly, it’s sold at a good price point. I’ve had a blast commuting with it and using it to do deliveries with DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub. Check out my Hovsco HovBeta Ebike Review.
  • Vanpowers Manidae Ebike – The Vanpowers Manidae is a fat tire ebike that I’ve been riding as my primary winter commuting bike and have also been using it to do food delivery with apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub. After clocking in a decent number of miles with this ebike, I wanted to write a post sharing what my experience with the Vanpowers Manidae ebike has been like. Check out my Vanpowers Manidae Review.
  • Sohamo S3 Step-Thru Folding EBike Review – A Great Value Folding Ebike – The Sohamo S3 Step-Thru Folding Ebike is an entry-level folding ebike that offers a lot of value for the price point. I’ve been riding the Sohamo S3 for a while now, putting the bike through its paces, and I have to say, this bike has exceeded all of my expectations. Check out my Sohamo Review.
  • KBO Flip Ebike – The KBO Flip is an excellent bike. I’ve had a great time riding it and think it’s a versatile bike that can be used for a lot of purposes and can fit a variety of lifestyles. It’s worked out great for me as a general commuter bike and as a food delivery bike. Check out my KBO Flip Review.
  • Hiboy P7 Commuter Ebike – The Hiboy P7 is an excellent electric commuter bike that’s offered at an affordable price point. The range and speed of this bike are both very good, so you won’t have any trouble getting anywhere you need to go with it. As a food delivery vehicle, this is also good – with how much range it offers, you’ll be able to work all day on a single charge. Check out my Hiboy P7 Commuter Electric Bike Review.
  • Himiway Escape Ebike – The Himiway Escape is an interesting bike for anyone looking for a moped-style ebike. If you’re a gig economy worker, the Himiway Escape is particularly interesting and it’s possible to think of it as an investment, especially if you can opt to do deliveries with the Himiway versus using a car. It’s not cheap, but you can definitely make your money back when you compare the mileage you’ll put on your car versus using an ebike. Check out my Himiway Escape Bike Review.
  • Espin Sport Ebike – The Espin Sport is a good ebike for someone who is looking for an ebike that feels and rides more like a regular bike. There are many ebikes that are really only bikes in name. In reality, they’re basically electric mopeds. The Espin Sport, by contrast, is a bike you could probably ride without the battery and you’d feel like you’re just riding a regular bike. Check out my Espin Sport Review.
  • Varla Eagle One Scooter – The Varla Eagle One is an excellent scooter that can make sense for a lot of people. It can work as a primary mode of transportation. You can use it to work on gig economy apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub. And it can also be a recreational vehicle if you’d prefer to use it for that. Check out my Varla Eagle One Review.
  • Varla Falcon Scooter – The Varla Falcon is an excellent scooter that offers a good amount of power at a lower price point compared to more powerful scooters. It’s not exactly an entry-level scooter, nor is it a high-powered scooter. I think it fits somewhere in-between those two categories – an intermediate scooter if I had to give it a category. Check out my Varla Falcon Review.
  • Hiboy S2 Scooter – The Hiboy S2 is an excellent entry-level commuter scooter that's perfect for someone looking to save some money in transportation costs and improve their commute. Check out my Hiboy S2 Review.
  • Hiboy S2R Scooter – The Hiboy S2R is one of the more interesting electric scooters I’ve been able to test out. It’s not a high-powered scooter, but for an everyday transport option, it’s very useful, especially given some of the unique features that it has. Indeed, for the price, the Hiboy S2R might be the best value scooter I’ve used. Check out my Hiboy S2R Review.
  • Fucare H3 Scooter – The Fucare H3 is a fun scooter and I’ve enjoyed testing it out. For a daily commuter or quick trips or errands, the Fucare H3 is probably the scooter I’ll use. It’s portable and easy to maneuver, so it’s just easier to take on the road when I need it. Check out my Fucare H3 Scooter Review.

More Recommended Investing App Bonuses

For additional investing app bonuses, be sure to check out the ones below:

  • M1 Finance ($100) – This is a great robo-advisor that has no fees and allows you to create a customized portfolio based on your risk tolerance. You also get $100 for opening an account. Check out my M1 Finance Referral Bonus – Step-By-Step Guide.
  • SoFi Invest ($25) – SoFi Invest is an easy brokerage account bonus that you can earn with just a few minutes of work. Use my SoFi Invest referral link, fund your SoFi Invest brokerage account with just $10 and you’ll get $25 of free stock. I also have a step-by-step guide for the SoFi Invest referral bonus.
  • Webull (20 free stock shares) – Webull's current promotion gives you 20 free shares valued between $3-$3,000 each if you open an account using my referral link. Here’s a guide I wrote about how to earn your free shares using Webull.
  • Moomoo (15 free stocks) – Moomoo is a free investing app currently offering 2 different referral bonuses if you open an account using a referral link. Read my Moomoo referral bonus guide for more information.
  • Robinhood (1 free stock) – Robinhood gives you a free stock valued between $2.50-$225 if you open an account using my referral link.
  • Public (1 free stock) - Public gives you a free stock valued between $3-$70 if you open an account using my referral link.

More Recommended Bank Account Bonuses

If you’re looking for more easy bank bonuses, check out the below options. These bonuses are all easy to earn and have no fees or minimum balance requirements to worry about.

  • Upgrade ($200) – Upgrade is a free checking account that’s currently offering a $200 referral bonus if you open an account and complete a direct deposit. These bonus terms are easy to meet, so it’s well worth doing this bonus as soon as you can. Here’s a post I wrote with more details: Upgrade $200 Referral Bonus – Step By Step Directions.
  • Ally Bank ($100) – Of all the banks out there, Ally is, without a doubt, my favorite. At the moment, Ally is offering $100 to customers who open an eligible Ally account and meet the requirements. Here are the step-by-step directions to earn your Ally Bank referral bonus.
  • Fairwinds Credit Union ($175) – Fairwinds Credit Union is offering a referral bonus for users that sign up using a referral link. Fairwinds has no fees or minimum balance, so this is a particularly easy bonus to earn. Since this is a smaller credit union, my gut instinct tells me this offer won’t be around long, so if you’re in a position to meet the bonus requirements, grab this bonus before it’s gone. Here is my step-by-step guide on how to earn your Fairwinds Credit Union bonus.
  • Chime ($100) - Chime is a free bank account that offers a referral bonus if you use a referral link and complete a direct deposit of $200 or more. In practice, any ACH transfer into this account triggers the bonus. This bonus is easy to earn and posts instantly, so you’ll know if you met the requirements as soon as you move money into the account. I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to earn your Chime referral bonus that I recommend you check out.
  • US Bank Business ($900) – This is a fairly easy bank bonus to earn, since there are no direct deposit requirements. In addition, you can open the Silver Business Checking account, which comes with no monthly fees. Check out how to earn this big bonus here.
  • GO2Bank ($50) - GO2Bank is an easy bank bonus that I recommend people take advantage of if they have an easy way of meeting the direct deposit requirement. I like that it’s easy to open the account and that the bonus pays out quickly. Check out my step-by-step guide on how to earn your GO2Bank $50 referral bonus.
  • Current ($50) – Current is a free fintech bank that’s offering new users a $50 referral bonus after signing up for an account using a referral link. Current is an easy bonus to earn and also gives you access to three savings accounts that pay you 4% interest on up to $2,000. That means you can put away up to $6,000 earning 4% interest. That’s very good and makes Current an account I recommend to everyone. Check out my step-by-step guide on how to earn your Current Bank bonus.
  • Novo Bank ($40) - Novo bank is a free business checking account that’s currently offering a $40 bonus if you open a Novo business checking account using a referral link. In addition to being a good bank bonus, Novo is also a good business checking account. It has no monthly fees or minimum balance requirements and operates a good app and website. Indeed, it’s the business checking account I currently use for this blog. Check out my post on how to easily open a Novo account.
  • Varo ($25) – Varo is a free fintech banking app similar to Chime or Current. It’s currently offering a $25 bonus to new users that open a new Varo account with a referral link. The bonus for this bank is very easy to meet, all you need to do is spend $20 within 30 days of opening your Varo account. Check out my step-by-step guide to learn how to earn this bonus.
financial panther

Kevin is an attorney and the blogger behind Financial Panther, a blog about personal finance, travel hacking, and side hustling using the gig economy. He paid off $87,000 worth of student loans in just 2.5 years by choosing not to live like a big shot lawyer.

Kevin is passionate about earning money using the gig economy and you can see all the ways he makes extra income every month in his side hustle reports.

Kevin is also big on using the latest fintech apps to improve his finances. Some of Kevin's favorite fintech apps include:

  • SoFi Money. A really good checking account with absolutely no fees. You'll get a $25 referral bonus if you open a SoFi Money account with a referral link, and an additional $300 if you complete a direct deposit.
  • 5% Savings Accounts. I'm currently getting 5.24% interest on my savings through a company called Raisin. Opening a Raisin account takes minutes to complete, it's free, and all of your funds are FDIC-insured. I explain how it works, why I'm now using it to store my emergency fund and any other cash savings I have, and why I recommend everyone check it out in this review.
  • US Bank Business. US Bank is currently offering new business customers a $900 signup bonus after opening a new account and meeting certain requirements.
  • M1 Finance. This is a great robo-advisor that has no fees and allows you to create a customized portfolio based on your risk tolerance. You also get $100 for opening an account.
  • Empower. One of best free apps you can use to monitor your portfolio and track your net worth. This is one of the apps I use to track my financial accounts.

Feel free to send Kevin a message here.

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