Caucasians and agression

Factual Questions
1

My girlfriend and i were having a discussion yesterday about why most CEO’s tend to be white, and the vast majority of serial killers have been white.

She is 100% Hmong and has been raised in a Hmong household her entire life. She does not think social standing or what you accomplish in life is all that important, its how you live it, who you meet, etc.

I am 100% Scandinavian. My quest for power and accomplishment is almost unquenchable, when i have a project im doing or find something i want i become almost obsessive until it gets done.

My other white friends seem to have the same ambitions, while friends of mine who are in a minority tend to have different goals, which usually dont involve money or power.

Have there been any studies about this sort of thing?

My WAG is because of my Pagan and Viking ancestry somehow that stuck in my bloodline and i have more agression than minorities.

This very well could be a topic for GD, but i am hoping to find some case studies on this sort of thing.

So any thoughts?

2

It’s not racial, it’s cultural. Hmong culture tends to be non-confrontational and frowns on things like boasting about social status and such.

3

Start with Malcolm Gladwell. His book "Outliers" is all about answering your question. There are studies on this topic out there. All I can is try to read this guy’s books.

http://www.gladwell.com

4

how about Chinese? How is that for drive?

One way to look at it as through the prism of Learned helplessness - Wikipedia . If you are unable to get even fairly basic things done for lack of conscieousness, intelligence, social cohesion, decent governance or a thousand other reasons, you will eventually stop trying. When you have an entire nation of people with that syndrome, you can get, in the extreme case, Haiti.

5

Most (American) serial killers are white.

Most (American) CEO’s are white.

Most (Americans) are white.

Noticing a trend? Lets apply this to another country.

Most (Chinese) Serial killers Han Chinese.

Most (Chinese) CEO’s are Han Chinese.

Most (Chinese) are Han Chinese.
Just going to venture a guess, there. Also, in the USA I’m going to go out on a limb and say the CEO thing is disproportionate in representation to income.

ETA: If you really want to note something interesting, look at the proportion of Males to Females, historically, for serial killings – not race. IIRC, for every 10 “mass murdering males,” there’s 1 “mass murdering female,” might’ve even been less than that… been a while since I saw the number.

6

Seems silly. There are plenty of historical aggressive non-whites. The Monguls, the Empire of Japan, the Aztecs, the various Islamic Caliphates, all were noted for pretty treating their neighbors pretty aggressively.

Wow, the Hmong certainly don’t have much in common with their Vietnamese neighbors, whose values I would describe as being pretty close to the opposite of that.

7

incidentally, the economic dominance of Chinese diaspora in South East Asia is well known. I don’t think any of them read Gladwell and his ilk, but if you ask them (especially after some drinking), I am sure they will tell you all about the key differences between them and the Filipino, Malay, Indonesian, Thai and others that they have out-competed in business decades if not centuries ago. I don’t think that Gladwell is too keen to hear their opinions though.

8

You also have to think most Americans are white. Is the percentage of serial killers who are black around 12% or 13% that would make it fit the population as a whole.

9

My thoughts…

One theory I saw says that being a serial killer is an affectation of being left alone and allowed to fester in your own psychological mess - classic “loners”; something more likely to happen with white middle class kids left on their own in the suburbs, than black kids in close urban settings unable to avoid family or neighbours. A society of closeness, confrontation and in-your-face is more likely to force social interaction than the polite, don’t bother-him northern european culture wrt emotional/social issues.

As for male vs. female - well, there’s testosterone. Plus, a lot of serial killers are using misplaced sexual drives. Most women have no problem satisfying their sexual drive if that’s what they want. Not as many men do. Being socially awkward makes it harder for men than women to “get laid”. In our society, a woman will get approached while a man has to (a) have the confidence and assetion to approach a woman and (b) the social grace and sufficient social smarts to “follow through”.

Of course, women compalin about criminal violence and death, forgetting that men not only commit 10 times more crimes but are also 5 times more likely to be the victim.

As for CEOs - the dominant social group tends to hire similar people. Not only do they hire white males, but they hire white males that will drink in the same bars and play golf and poker like they do - not the geeky computer nerd or the Jesus freak or the anal retentive neat freak. Those types will be hired for the task they excel at, but will hit the same glass ceiling as women and minorities - “not like us, makes me uncomfortable”. The CEOs of today started their career 30 or 40 years ago, before a lot of the affirmative action hiring practices were in place. Plus, it helps to be aggressive in some fields - business, politics - to succeed. Women tend to defer more than men, usually. It’s a fine line for women to be firm without being labelled “bitch”, whereas being a bit of a “prick” is considered an asset by some managers.

10

Are you equating aggression with ambition? Some groups tend to be more physically aggressive than whites, but turning that into fruitful career ambition can be difficult if they don’t have the skills/education/intelligence.

11

A related construct is the cooperation/competition dichotomy. When I was doing research for a dissertation about racial prejudice, I came across a great deal of experimental data regarding cooperation and competition, often using various games as a theater of those tendencies. Most researchers attributed the differences between people as a reflection of their cultural experiences. Incidentally, white people almost always acted more competitive and minorities almost always were more cooperative. You can create your own hypotheses from that, but it’s easy to speculate that minorities have to fend for themselves more often than majorities, have to band together, have to defend territory and ways, and cooperation is an adaptive behavior in that sense. It gets to be a way of being after a while, I believe. xo, C.

12

CC,

it is well known that blacks have less “social trust” than whites, e.g. see here http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/4/3/8/p104389_index.html . It’s hard to do much cooperating without that, if you have a strong and not altogether unfounded suspicion that the guy that you are trying to cooperate with is likely to cheat you.

The reason why I bring this up is to point out that results of your research may have found some interesting partial truth, but it is not the whole story. It is quite possible that those minorities were more “cooperative” in the more superficial things where there was little cost or threat (like a game) while whites were more “competitive” in this case. The behavior you labeled as “cooperative” might be just a matter of greater social skills as opposed to a strong commitment to work together to achieve significant goals.

So it may well be that you could construct many games where the opposite would be observed, at least for whites vs blacks, not necessarily whites vs Japanese or Hasidic Jews. One of these games is called “real life in an American neighborhood”.

Yes, and another major source of our minorities, Mexico, is not known for high social trust also nowadays. The old rural communities in Mexico might have been great at it in the good old days, but the new urbanized areas, not so much.

13

Well, I’m as white as can be, but I’m basically non-confrontational.

In terms of physical aggression however, I think the OP may have a point. I don’t believe that any one race is inherently more or less prone to violence, but it’s pretty clear that fifty or a hundred years ago, overt racism was more generally prevalent and accepted. It’s also evident that physical fighting was more accepted as well; how else can we account for the audience being expected to sympathize with Gary Cooper’s character in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, who responds to real or perceived slights by putting people’s lights out? Among certain segments, fighting was just a matter of boys being boys (and men being men). But if the fighting was among nonwhites, the reaction of the mainstream was much more negative. Lurid newspaper articles would provide the details, while editorials and letters would decry the “fact” that the (fill in ethnicity) were getting out of control. The violence would be viewed as a natural attribute of the ethnicity in question.

14

One claim I’ve heard about gender differences in serial killers is that just as male serial killers tend to have Serious Issues about such things as control and sex, female serial killers tend to be focused on profit and status. So, this makes it harder to even identify a female murderer as a serial killer, because their killings appear to have more normal motivations. If woman kills husband after husband to inherit or marry a higher status man, or a prostitute kills jon after jon and robs the corpses, the assumption people are likely to make is that the killing was a means, not an end.

Also, the evidence is that males are simply more prone to mental extremes than females, both good and bad. So, it’s to be expected that there would be more male serial killers just as there are more male geniuses.

15

I know that what I am about to say is horrendously un-PC, and also possibly quite racist, but in my limited experience I’ve come to believe that people of African decent tend to be more physically aggressive than people of other cultural and racial backgrounds. I know it sounds terrible, but look at all the media influences that African Americans are subjected to. Culturally, they are taught that it is of vital importance to show your physical and social prowess by being confrontational, and to possess and display wealth through their possessions.

You can see it in so many public stereotypes and media outlets. Black rap artists frequently brag about their cars, jewelry, and houses, while simultaneously expounding how badass they are and how many women they can get. In contrast, the subject material of the only white rap artist I know of (Eminem) is much less focused on material wealth and more so on the struggle he went through to get through life, and on his family. On the street, black men are much more likely to respond to a percieved or real insult with violence or confrontational behavior, while Caucasians and Asians are much more forgiving and passive. Clearly, the inclination to be aggressive is not completely determined by genetics, because you see these things increasingly in Caucasians as well (wiggers, if you will). I think that is a sort of cultural crossover from the African American community to the poor Caucasian community.

No one likes to say these things, but I think there are reasons why people are more frightened of black males than asian or white males on the street at night. Its not politically correct, but like any stereotype, there is at least a shred of truth to it.

I’m not sure if anyone else has seen the viral video, but Epic Beard Man vs. Tyrone seems to be a pretty good synopsis of the whole situation. Basically in the video, a 67 y/o white guy was talking to his friend about a shoe shine on the bus, and a black guy overheard it and took it as an insult and began threatening the white guy. The white guy wasn’t looking for a fight and physically moved away from the black man, while maintaining that he wasn’t intimidated. The black man couldn’t let that go, seeing it as an insult to his manhood, and picked a fight with the white man.

I’m not sure if that makes me racist or not. I certainly have nothing against African Americans I meet in my workplace, since those individuals typically display none of the traits I have just described. I guess I am sort of racist. Not against their skin color, but I do hate their cultural bravado with a passion as I feel it signifies a lack of self-restraint.

16

That’s not a race thing, it’s a culture thing.

American ghetto & gang culture. It applies equally to whites or blacks raised in a specific area, it just so happens that there are more blacks who are at an economic disadvantage than whites. You see the same thing in areas of extreme white economic depression, we just tend not to notice it too closely, because there are more non-economically depressed whites (by comparison).

They’re called trailer trash.

17

Do you think it was just coincidental that the old redneck guy was talking about shoe shining at the particular moment a black guy is sat facing him? I’ve seen the video, and it’s a shame Tyrone didn’t kick 10 barrels of shit out of the 67 yr old racist fuckwit who walks around with “I AM A MOTHERFUCKER.” on his t-shirt.

18

Actually it was a coincidence. If you watch the video carefully and listen to what beardman says, and then compare that with the spike tv interview and the video of the continued footage off of the bus, you can see that beardman is going to attend his mother’s funeral, and that he needs his shoes shined beforehand. He was speaking to his friend on the bus, not to Tyrone.

Hell, moments before the fight breaks out, he even mentions the funeral to Tyrone. That is proof that he didn’t make it up for spike tv as a cover story.

Even if beardman had used racial slurs, the right thing for Tyrone to do would have been to walk away. I have no pity for that hoodlum, and I’m glad he got his comeuppance.

Watch all three videos again, and listen closely to everything that is being said. You can quickly gather what really happened with a little bit of effort.

19

Also, I think that if some white guy goes on a rampage, he gets called a serial killer. If some black guy goes on a rampage, he gets called a gangsta. If some brown guy whose lastname ends in -z goes on a rampage, it’s called a gang war… it’s not exact terms, but I think you’ll see what I mean.

20

Or if a Muslim/Arab does it, he’s branded a terrorist.