# 'Blacks need to get their act together' vs 'AA social troubles are an American problem' **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660 "2010-10-19T14:46:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/81 "2010-10-24T05:30:34Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Right, so what was the point of your comment above that “they are from another country”? It wasn’t clear that you were referring to East Asians in America when you simply said East Asians. However, the difference between East Asians in America and the rest of America can be explained by the influence of East Asian culture on East Asians. Either by being born there or through being raised by people who were born there. Their biology has nothing to do with the difference. > [@](#): > > And the major factor underlying the gender difference in criminal behaviour is testosterone (p 90 Handbook on Crime and Deviance By Marvin D. Krohn, Alan J. Lizotte, Gina Penly Hall) > > [Handbook on Crime and Deviance - Google Books](http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=kKLeD2lYOrwC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=testosterone+and+gender+crime+differences&source=bl&ots=e2wHiRmJlh&sig=6EJ1C0yWi2DhWAPhdr8sEqWqcdE&hl=en&ei=JrbDTO2-I4nAsAOOz4nsCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDwQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=testosterone%20and%20gender%20crime%20differences&f=false) Then why does your site say that: “No one claims that testosterone is a major or even minor cause of criminal behavior, only that it is the major factor that underlies gender differences.” (p. 90) > [@Blake](#): > > **The obvious conclusion** : Because Blacks are simultaneously exposed to \*\*multiple \*\*conditions that have proven to have an adverse effect on performance, we would expect that removing just \*\*one \*\*factor would not equalise performance. This conclusion is borne out by our results. > > **Your hasty conclusion** : Despite Blacks being simultaneously exposed to multiple conditions that have proven to have an adverse effect on performance, removing just one factor should still equalise performance. Because it doesn’t, racism must be the cause of the inequality. > > Do I really need to explain to you why your conclusion is a textbook example of a hasty induction, and hence completely logically invalid. OK, I’ll agree with you here. But what is causing blacks to have more conditions than whites that have been proven to negatively affect school performance? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/82 "2010-10-24T08:42:14Z")
> [@Lakai](#): > > But what is causing blacks to have more conditions than whites that have been proven to negatively affect school performance? Culture. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/83 "2010-10-24T08:47:14Z")
> [@astro](#): > > It took over 300 years to destroy male + female black families. Expecting that the damage is going to be erased if only those shiftless Negroes would pull up their socks and get on with it is kind of insane. How do you “fix” black male disenfranchisement and virtual social emasculation that’s so socially and culturally ingrained at this point it’s practically organic? Waving their arms and saying “get over it” is about as much as white people are willing to contribute to that fix. The problem with this argument is that the problem was nowhere near as severe until the late 1960s. So in that regard the problem has been \*created \*by liberated, socially equal Blacks with full civil liberties. IOW the family unit was destroyed by Blacks, not by whites. So in that regard it is indeed a self created problem. This really isn’t a problem that White people can fix. Contraception is as freely available to Blacks as Whites, Blacks can’t be forced to use it. Since the problem has worsened as Black education has improved, it seems pretty clear that education isn’t going to solve it. This is a problem where the cause is so private and personal that the the solution can only possibly be achieved internally. And until people start admitting that for the vast majority of women and children, single parent families are very bad things indeed, that ain’t gonna happen. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/84 "2010-10-24T10:00:44Z")
> [@Lakai](#): > > It wasn’t clear that you were referring to East Asians in America when you simply said East Asians. However, the difference between East Asians in America and the rest of America can be explained by the influence of East Asian culture on East Asians. Either by being born there or through being raised by people who were born there. Their biology has nothing to do with the difference. > > Then why does your site say that: “No one claims that testosterone is a major or even minor cause of criminal behavior, only that it is the major factor that underlies gender differences.” (p. 90) How do you know that biology has nothing to do with differences in criminal offending between individuals or groups? Science is only just starting to uncover the genetic variants that increase the risk of violent behaviour. Genes differ in frequency across groups. [Information Processing: Metric on the space of genomes and the scientific basis for race](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html) > **['Warrior Gene' Predicts Aggressive Behavior After Provocation](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121093343.htm)** > > People with the so-called "warrior gene" exhibit higher levels of behavioral aggression in response to provocation, according to new research. In the experiment, subjects penalized opponents by administering varying amounts of hot sauce. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/85 "2010-10-24T13:02:50Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > That post consisted in a series of anti-racism pieties, followed by a closing statement chock full of racist presuppositions. > > Very strange. I do not get your point. I have black nieces and nephews and they are not of a different race, so how can it be racism? There is just one race, that is the human race. The fact that there are so many young black people in the cities, like Chicago killing each other, (and of course it isn’t because they are black), but even the Black people there are concerned about so many good young blacks being killed. The one’s who do the killing belong to gangs (in the most part), and kill a lot of other’s in their homes buyshooting at another and hitting someone sitting in their living room or on their porch etc.. What is raciest about that? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/86 "2010-10-24T19:13:51Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The problem with this argument is that the problem was nowhere near as severe until the late 1960s. So in that regard the problem has been \*created \*by liberated, socially equal Blacks with full civil liberties. IOW the family unit was destroyed by Blacks, not by whites. > > So in that regard it is indeed a self created problem. > > This really isn’t a problem that White people can fix. Contraception is as freely available to Blacks as Whites, Blacks can’t be forced to use it. Since the problem has worsened as Black education has improved, it seems pretty clear that education isn’t going to solve it. This is a problem where the cause is so private and personal that the the solution can only possibly be achieved internally. > > And until people start admitting that for the vast majority of women and children, single parent families are very bad things indeed, that ain’t gonna happen. The disorganisation and instability in black families is a direct result of generations of slavery which still resonates to the present day. Black family structure was crushed for over 200 years and the black male essentially booted out of the standard male+female resource model. As you note a workable solution is complex and may be impossible to achieve in the near term, but the matriarchal centric black family with the single female household at it’s center and the black male on the periphery has been the default black family model for many generations, not just since the 60’s. ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/87 "2010-10-24T19:30:30Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > How do you know that biology has nothing to do with differences in criminal offending between individuals or groups? Science is only just starting to uncover the genetic variants that increase the risk of violent behaviour. Genes differ in frequency across groups. [Information Processing: Metric on the space of genomes and the scientific basis for race](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html) > > ['Warrior Gene' Predicts Aggressive Behavior After Provocation | ScienceDaily](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121093343.htm) Until science proves conclusively that race causes someone to become more violent, I’m not going to assume that differences between races are significant enough to treat the races differently. > [@Blake](#): > > Culture. Now we’re back to the question of how this culture that drives problems in the black community was created. At one point I said “how does a white kid and black kid grow up to be different?” What I should have said is how did they come to have different cultures. If they both live in America and both have American families, and they’re both from the same neighborhood, why are their cultures different? ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660/88 "2010-10-24T20:24:21Z")
> [@Lakai](#): > > East Asians are from another country. Differences between sexes can be explained by biology. > > How do you explain a black and white child of the same sex and nationality growing up to be different? Both Nurturing and Biology. Biology is much more specific for racial groups than for “nationality.” One is the country you define as home. The other is the gene pool from which your specific set of genes is drawn. A black Norwegian isn’t very likely to get fine blond hair and a pale complexion, for example. Any number of studies show that eliminating differences in nurturing does not eliminate outcome differences among various groups, including the very large and loose groups of “self-identified race/ethnicity” (SIRE groups). Even when you take children of different races raised in the same family–i.e. adopted blacks into white families–you still can’t eliminate differences. And of course, if you take children from the same biologic parents raised in the same family, you still get variation. It’s different genes that drive our differences when we normalize nurturing, whether it’s at a family level or a group level. It’s an incorrect, but common, assumption that “race” groups don’t differ biologically in the overall gene pool from which they derive their genes. They do, and so gene prevalences for traits vary by race (and many other types of) groups. And of course there are many, many, more specific sub-groups other than the crude one of self-defined “race” whose biological differences can be even more specifically shown. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blacks-need-to-get-their-act-together-vs-aa-social-troubles-are-an-american-problem/557660.md?page=4)