The Cost of Being Black

Wannabes on VH1's White Rapper Show aside, a new study says that the average white person would have to be paid around $10,000 to become black permanently, reports the Lantern. The relatively low amount shows that "White Americans are blind to the cost of being black," as one researcher put it.

Researchers from Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Georgia Southern University asked white Americans how much they would need to be paid to live a certain way. When asked how much it would take to forgo television for the rest of their lives, the majority said about $1 million.

The study aimed to determine why white people were unenthusiastic about supporting reparations for descendents of slaves, finding a strong correlation between people who requested large amounts of money to be black and people who supported reparations.

The study's cofounder says the results most likely spring from white people's ill-informed concept of everyday struggles blacks face both economically and politically. Stay tuned for more "duh" conclusions, as researchers plan to do follow-up studies with other social groups including women and Asian Americans. –Jackie Mantey