Is giving up television really a hardship?

To White Americans, giving up television is a hardship; being Black is not. That’s the upshot of a series of studies by researchers at The Ohio State University.

As part of the studies, Whites of different ages and geographic regions were asked how much they deserved to be paid for living the rest of their lives as an African-American.

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.

Researchers suggest that whites don’t really understand the extent of disadvantages based upon race.  There were 958 subjects in the study, drawn from all across the United States.

I’d be curious to see how the questions were phrased–I seem to remember a similar study that showed that while whites tended to dismiss the effect of racism on African Americans, they simultaneously stated that they would need at least $1 million dollars to compensate for becoming African American.

Story here.