# Donald Trump: The First White President \[article in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 7, 2017, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725 "2017-09-07T13:01:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 30
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/581 "2017-09-25T18:46:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What do mean? Like school bussing? Is THAT what Coates is talking about? IIRC he’s talked about bussing a lot in other articles, if not this one, and he thinks it was good policy that was ended prematurely for political reasons. In my reading and understanding of the subject, he is correct – bussing didn’t harm any schools, and helped a lot of children get good education which otherwise would have been very hard to achieve. > [@](#): > > So do you think there is anything the black community could be doing differently along the lines of what Shodan suggests that could accelerate or complement the changes we all want to see in society? None of these broader discriminatory policies and practices have ever been the fault of “the black community”. They’ve always been the fault of political leadership and society at large. Stereotypes of black people as violent or likely to rape white women have never been based on fact – they were created and spread at times in which white people were far more violent towards/likely to rape black people than the reverse. There’s nothing black people could do to change these sorts of beliefs, since they were never based on fact in the first place. IMO, it’s akin to asking whether there’s anything an abuse victim could do to “accelerate or complement” changes we’d like to see in her abuser. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/582 "2017-09-25T19:00:52Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Nothing in that cite contradicts my claim. Read the whole page. It completely supports what I said. I see part that says:“Most of the first-wave immigrants were well-educated, financially comfortable, and proficient in English.[17] According to 1975 US State Department data, more than 30 percent of the heads of first-wave households were medical professionals or technical managers, 16.9 percent worked in transportation, and 11.7 percent had clerical or sales jobs in Vietnam. Less than 5 percent were fishermen or farmers.[18]” According to this cite, the first wave was about 130,000 city dwelling refugees were skilled and educated as you say but I don’t think they had much wealth to speak of when they arrived. BTW, I don’t think “medical professionals and technical managers” = wealthy to begin with. The much larger second wave of 750,000 refugees started arriving a mere 3 years later were a pretty even cross section of the country, how were they screened? It doesn’t really seem that the screening was for economic desirability but maybe they were. > **[ILW.COM - immigration news: From Refugees To Americans: Thirty Years Of...](https://www.ilw.com/articles/2006,0313-campi.shtm)** > > Immigration law news on visas, greencard and citizenship. Find how to get US visas, green cards and citizenship. Immigration CLE Seminars for Lawyers. Immigration Law Books for Attorneys. > [@](#): > > Less than that, per capita per year, by any reasonable definition of “black programs” that makes them comparable to the programs offered the Vietnamese. But to be clear, that’s not really the dispositive factor. So we’re talking about ~$450 per capita for the Vietnamese since 1975. If we count ONLY federal funding of Howard University (~100 million for 1975 and funding has increased more or less in line with inflation to about ~$250 million in a recent budget), I agree that federal funding isn’t the difference. > [@](#): > > It has a lot more to do with who immigrated, where they were able to live, and what institutions they were able to establish (with help). The whole Confucian narrative is a crock. Nice short summary here: [The Asian American Achievement Paradox | RSF](http://www.russellsage.org/asian-american-achievement-paradox) I’ve only read the excerpt that you linked but this extract seems to be saying that while Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants had vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds their children had similar socioeconomic results. They seem to attribute this to more selectivity among immigrants (which doesn’t seem to make that much sense when you already said that there is are “vastly different socioeconomic profiles of their immigrant parents” And you also say that the kids end up pretty much the same. It also attributes this success to the fact that “They bring a specific “success frame,” which is strictly defined as earning a degree from an elite university and working in a high-status field. This success frame is reinforced in many local Asian communities, which make resources such as college preparation courses and tutoring available to group members, including their low-income members.” Now to be clear, these extra resources did not exist in the 1970’s. The teachers and educational institutions did not presume “that Asian American students are smart, disciplined, and studious, provide them with extra help and steer them toward competitive academic programs.” Not in the 1970’s What you have is a culture where they valued education enough that there was a market for tutoring and college prep that did not exist in most other minority communities. Academic success caused teachers to start viewing Asians as students that took academics seriously, not the other way around (there may be a virtuous cycle there but it wasn’t just handed to Asians, it was earned. People in the 1970’s used to think of Asians as stupid because we couldn’t speak English well, just like some (white) people think Hispanics are stupid because so many Hispanic immigrants have poor English language skills. Sure, its all more nuanced than that but ultimately, the Vietnamese immigrants as a group had precious few of the benefits of the Taiwanese immigrants and yet their kids seems to do as well if not better than their Taiwanese counterparts (when you adjust for the socioeconomic status of the parents) and they both do much better than the average American student. But it is largely the parent’s almost universal emphasis on and sacrifice for (those tutoring programs are not free and can be a sacrifice for poorer Asian families) education that leads to these better academic results. All those Vietnamese dirt farmers (that come from a culture where academics had a thousands year old traditional role as the vehicle for social mobility) KNOW that education is the pathway to success in a way that blacks (whose grandparents and great grandparents might have been hung or punished for learning how to read) do not. There is a faith in the power of education that exists in Asian culture that doesn’t exist in white culture of black culture, etc. Sure, everybody thinks they value education but when you see the choices that families make with their time and their money, you can’t help but wonder if they aren’t fooling themselves just a little bit. There are plenty of bad things about Confucian culture. It demands a level of respect for hierarchy, tradition and order that can lead to a significant degree of male chauvinism, conservativisms and over-reverence of authority. And as the excerpt points out it creates a higher bar for Asian students that many Asian students cannot achieve leaving them with fewer avenues for social achievement compared to a culture that is not so focused on academics. But I believe it informs the Asian culture and it leads to better academic outcomes and consequently better socioeconomic outcomes than you might otherwise get. > [@](#): > > Maybe. Maybe not. “There is very little truth in the old refrain that one cannot legislate equality. Laws not only provide concrete benefits, they can even change the hearts of men—some men, anyhow—for good or evil.” - Thurgood Marshall. What laws do you suggest would create more equality? ISTM that most of the reasonable laws that would create more racial equality are all pretty much already in place. > [@](#): > > But that’s not really the point. The point was your spurious claim that somehow black culture is responsible for the astounding gap between average black household wealth and income and that of Vietnamese or Jews. That has nothing to do with legislation. Spurious claim? Young black men kill each other in numbers not seen in any other demographic. Black women have children out of wedlock more frequently than any other demographic. These are not signs of a great culture. What is the out of wedlock birthrate among poor Vietnamese? Poor Jews? Compare that to the out of wedlock birth rate of poor blacks. It actually does matter if there is only one poor parent trying to raise a child and if there are two poor parents trying to raise a child. I’m not saying that culture is the ONLY variable in play here but it is a significant one and one that seems to get waved off as insignificant or even worse, racist. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/583 "2017-09-25T19:09:08Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Since the context shows that I was not talking about that, we can disregard the rest of your silly post. **Richard Parker** also talked about what the point I made was, as he pointed out, you are just relying on ignorance. You said: “And others did manage to successfully get their wealth into America to start with advantages that no former slave ever had.” How the fuck is that NOT saying that the Vietnamese had money. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/584 "2017-09-25T19:49:16Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Even if that’s true, that’s just moving the goalposts. The question was about effective political action by Asians. I think that talking past one another is often mistaken for moving the goalposts. There was (I thought) an implication that political action was part of what buttressed the success of Asians and jews in society. I pointed out that Asians are absolute shit at politics. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/585 "2017-09-25T19:52:25Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I’m not saying that culture is the ONLY variable in play here but it is a significant one and one that seems to get waved off as insignificant or even worse, racist. The reason it is racist is that you’re just identifying the second-order effects of racism and calling it race. That’s what racism _is_, much of the time. Let’s take your example of “black on black” crime. If you don’t police the killing of a subgroup of people for a long period (in this case, because of racism), what you produce in some of those communities is gangs and vigilante justice. In a lot of neighborhoods in America in 2017, if your cousin gets shot (much less if he gets his TV stolen), your first instinct isn’t to hope that the detectives solve it. Odds are, they won’t. Lots of places have clearance rates in the 20-30% range even for murder. No, instead, you make sure the shooter finds justice. And you band together in self-defense, block by block. White people do this too, when the circumstances are right. People the world over do it, in fact. This phenomenon happens across many different cultures and histories. It’s how _humans_ respond when the state loses a monopoly on violence and doesn’t try very hard to get it back. This isn’t the only source of disproportionate black murder. There are lots of criminogenic aspects of racism. We could also talk about the consequences of being pushed in black market professions, or the traumas inflicted by poverty, the effect of racist overpolicing (as distinct from the underpolicing that is the main genesis of gangs and community vigilantism behavior), and lots of other things besides. You look at all that and you call it “black culture.” It may be “culture” in some loose sense of the word, in the way that mass shootings at schools is “culture.” But in what sense is it “black?” It is how a small subset of black people behave. It is also how other people subject to similar oppression behave. The tendency to identify it as an element of black culture is not the result of some careful study of how it emerged. Most people who cite it don’t know the first goddamn thing about it, other than that it a convenient racist trope reflecting over a century of suggesting that black men are inherently violent. It’s possible, of course, for young black men to suck it up and just stop seeking community justice and collective self-defense for violent crimes. In some cases, they have done just that. There are countless stories of former gang members making real progress in persuading young men to put down their guns. But putting the blame on the community is putting it in the wrong place. Moreover, asking people to be extraordinary, instead asking that we change things so they don’t have to be extraordinary, is what we do when we don’t want to pay the cost of change (or, sometimes, as a concession to the overwhelming power of white supremacy, as in the case of Booker T. Washington). ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/586 "2017-09-25T19:54:46Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Guess who said that? [Coates did.](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2009/03/why-do-black-immigrants-do-better-than-native-blacks/6891/) I would posit that the sort of mass exodus refugee situation we have with the Vietnamese kind of undermines his definition of immigrant. Vietnamese refugees are a pretty fair cross section of the Vietnamese society. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/587 "2017-09-25T19:58:24Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I don’t know exactly, but I suspect it’s a combination of many factors, including modern and less formal forms of redlining and segregation. Why don’t black people move to Vidor, TX, which is ~100% white in one of the blackest parts of the country (East TX/SW Louisiana)? That’s a town that I probably drove through about 30 times a year in the late 90s and early 2000s (driving between Baton Rouge/New Orleans and Houston), and almost every time I remember seeing KKK or Neo-Nazi imagery/graffiti in the town. I imagine that kind of culture is part of why black people didn’t move there, and the ones that did left pretty damn quickly. Vidor Texas is the exception that proves the rule. The fact that that name (and no others) keeps coming up tells me that Vidor Texas is not typical of anything. Sure there are poor white towns out there but show me that the government is pouring more money in to the schools and infrastructure of poor white towns compared to poor black towns. I mean this is not the first time I have heard the theory that government spends more money on white neighborhoods so SURELY someone has done a study proving that the government spends more money in poor white towns compared to poor black towns. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/588 "2017-09-25T20:04:56Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I think that talking past one another is often mistaken for moving the goalposts. There was (I thought) an implication that political action was part of what buttressed the success of Asians and jews in society. I pointed out that Asians are absolute shit at politics. Huh? There have been Asian Americans at all levels of US government except for the Presidency and Vice Presidency. Asian Senators, House reps, governors, cabinet members, etc. By what measure are Asians “absolute shit at politics”? The only significant instance of reparations in America came from the activism of Japanese Americans. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/589 "2017-09-25T20:07:20Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Vidor Texas is the exception that proves the rule. The fact that that name (and no others) keeps coming up tells me that Vidor Texas is not typical of anything. Sure there are poor white towns out there but show me that the government is pouring more money in to the schools and infrastructure of poor white towns compared to poor black towns. I mean this is not the first time I have heard the theory that government spends more money on white neighborhoods so SURELY someone has done a study proving that the government spends more money in poor white towns compared to poor black towns. That name comes up over and over again because it’s a town I’m intimately familiar with. I expect there are many others scattered around the country (and various researchers have posited many other examples that are rather easily found online), but most don’t stand out as much since few areas of the country have as many black people proportionally as SW Louisiana and East Texas. An all white town in Kansas won’t stand out at all, even if they have various informal practices and agreements meant to keep out non-white people, and thus would be much harder to definitively identify. As for government spending statistics, I’ll look when I’m able. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/590 "2017-09-26T15:20:16Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > I think this line of argument has merit, but the magnitude of that merit decreases with each passing year. It was strongest immediately after the civil war I’d say, when you had those directly impacted, and those directly responsible. There was a bit of white privilege before Lincoln freed the slaves too, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/591 "2017-09-26T17:48:39Z")
> [@treis](#): > > Your analogy falls apart because a country isn’t a company. If you acquire stock in a company you buy into all of it’s existing liabilities. If you don’t want them, then you don’t buy the stock. None of us chose our parents or to be born in any country. The idea that children are not responsible for the actions of their parents is uncontroversial. If this were a thread about the Dreamers, for example, we would see many posts about how they didn’t do anything wrong and shouldn’t suffer for something they have no control over. It’s only the sin of slavery/racism that is seriously mooted as something this country should be responsible for. > > The idea that a generic white person benefits from the historic enslavement and discrimination of black people is wrong. The legacy of that is an underclass of people who are a drain on society. Imagine that, instead of racism, it was a disease that caused 5-10% of our country to be more violent, commit more crimes, and be suited only for menial jobs. Would that make you richer? Of course not. It would make everyone poorer as society is robbed of the potential talents of those people, suffers the effects of their crimes, and must pay to support them. My housekeeper is a recent immigrant. Neither she nor her ancestors had any voice in incurring the massive amounts of federal debt we are burdened with and yet her tax dollars are being used to repay debt that goes back to the Civil War, she could use that money for other things but she has to pay taxes that go towards paying debts incurred centuries ago. Similarly, this nation incurred a debt during our period of legal slavery and segregation that it must repay and it must do so with the resources of this nation. If we carve out some number of acres of land and a tractor and a gun on arable federal park lands around the country for the descendants of slaves on a homesteading basis (they can live and farm on that land but the land may not be sold during the lifetime of the homesteader), why would that be so unjust to current citizens? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/592 "2017-09-26T18:04:21Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > IIRC he’s talked about bussing a lot in other articles, if not this one, and he thinks it was good policy that was ended prematurely for political reasons. In my reading and understanding of the subject, he is correct – bussing didn’t harm any schools, and helped a lot of children get good education which otherwise would have been very hard to achieve. I don’t know much about the busing issue but if recent (a few years ago) events surrounding the rezoning of schools in gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods are any indication, most liberals don’t seem to be real keen on sending their kids to poor black schools or having poor black kids going to their schools. I don’t know what the answer is but busing seems to be deeply unpopular with most parents across the country and drive a lot of white liberals into the welcoming arms of the racists. > [@](#): > > None of these broader discriminatory policies and practices have ever been the fault of “the black community”. They’ve always been the fault of political leadership and society at large. Stereotypes of black people as violent or likely to rape white women have never been based on fact – they were created and spread at times in which white people were far more violent towards/likely to rape black people than the reverse. There’s nothing black people could do to change these sorts of beliefs, since they were never based on fact in the first place. IMO, it’s akin to asking whether there’s anything an abuse victim could do to “accelerate or complement” changes we’d like to see in her abuser. I don’t think that is what Shodan was suggesting. Do you think that there is anything the black community could be doing to improve their situation beyond political agitation? Is there anything they can learn from Jews and Asians or is there no possible analogy between Jews/Asians and blacks? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/593 "2017-09-26T18:13:01Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > The reason it is racist is that you’re just identifying the second-order effects of racism and calling it race. That’s what racism _is_, much of the time. > > Let’s take your example of “black on black” crime. If you don’t police the killing of a subgroup of people for a long period (in this case, because of racism), what you produce in some of those communities is gangs and vigilante justice. In a lot of neighborhoods in America in 2017, if your cousin gets shot (much less if he gets his TV stolen), your first instinct isn’t to hope that the detectives solve it. Odds are, they won’t. Lots of places have clearance rates in the 20-30% range even for murder. No, instead, you make sure the shooter finds justice. And you band together in self-defense, block by block. > > White people do this too, when the circumstances are right. Yes, when their culture is broken. When their society has broken down. > [@](#): > > People the world over do it, in fact. This phenomenon happens across many different cultures and histories. It’s how _humans_ respond when the state loses a monopoly on violence and doesn’t try very hard to get it back. This isn’t the only source of disproportionate black murder. There are lots of criminogenic aspects of racism. We could also talk about the consequences of being pushed in black market professions, or the traumas inflicted by poverty, the effect of racist overpolicing (as distinct from the underpolicing that is the main genesis of gangs and community vigilantism behavior), and lots of other things besides. So it is your contention that the police exercise a monopoly on violence in poor white neighborhoods? Are poor whites and Asians also traumatized by poverty? I am trying to identify the difference between poor whites and poor blacks in your analysis. > [@](#): > > You look at all that and you call it “black culture.” It may be “culture” in some loose sense of the word, in the way that mass shootings at schools is “culture.” But in what sense is it “black?” It is how a small subset of black people behave. It is also how other people subject to similar oppression behave. The tendency to identify it as an element of black culture is not the result of some careful study of how it emerged. Most people who cite it don’t know the first goddamn thing about it, other than that it a convenient racist trope reflecting over a century of suggesting that black men are inherently violent. No, I think I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m saying the flaws are NOT the result of genetics. I am saying it is the result of a broken culture. Or is it racism to say that there is some mutable element of poor black communities that is harmful to their progression out of poverty? > [@](#): > > It’s possible, of course, for young black men to suck it up and just stop seeking community justice and collective self-defense for violent crimes. In some cases, they have done just that. There are countless stories of former gang members making real progress in persuading young men to put down their guns. But putting the blame on the community is putting it in the wrong place. Moreover, asking people to be extraordinary, instead asking that we change things so they don’t have to be extraordinary, is what we do when we don’t want to pay the cost of change (or, sometimes, as a concession to the overwhelming power of white supremacy, as in the case of Booker T. Washington). No, I don’t think it is asking the extraordinary to ask young black men to put down their guns and start studying. Other than school busing, I have yet to identify a change that is being proposed other than more complaining about racism. Sure go ahead and advocate for whatever solution you think might work but don’t absolve yourself from any responsibility to improve your own situation. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/594 "2017-09-26T18:17:03Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Huh? There have been Asian Americans at all levels of US government except for the Presidency and Vice Presidency. Asian Senators, House reps, governors, cabinet members, etc. By what measure are Asians “absolute shit at politics”? The only significant instance of reparations in America came from the activism of Japanese Americans. [http://muse.jhu.edu/book/26987](http://muse.jhu.edu/book/26987) [http://www.thirdway.org/report/the-untapped-political-power-of-asian-americans](http://www.thirdway.org/report/the-untapped-political-power-of-asian-americans) We’re shit at politics. After correcting for socioeconomic status, we are horribly under-engaged politically. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/595 "2017-09-26T18:20:42Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > That name comes up over and over again because it’s a town I’m intimately familiar with. I expect there are many others scattered around the country (and various researchers have posited many other examples that are rather easily found online), but most don’t stand out as much since few areas of the country have as many black people proportionally as SW Louisiana and East Texas. An all white town in Kansas won’t stand out at all, even if they have various informal practices and agreements meant to keep out non-white people, and thus would be much harder to definitively identify. > > As for government spending statistics, I’ll look when I’m able. OK I see what you’re saying. There are racists places where the racism isn’t obvious because there is no one around to be racist against. But, their racism still affects the general racist environment because other non-racist whites might drive through and internalize that racism. Or something like that? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/596 "2017-09-26T19:02:54Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I don’t know much about the busing issue but if recent (a few years ago) events surrounding the rezoning of schools in gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods are any indication, most liberals don’t seem to be real keen on sending their kids to poor black schools or having poor black kids going to their schools. I don’t know what the answer is but busing seems to be deeply unpopular with most parents across the country and drive a lot of white liberals into the welcoming arms of the racists. I recognize that this would probably be a political loser. > [@](#): > > I don’t think that is what Shodan was suggesting. Do you think that there is anything the black community could be doing to improve their situation beyond political agitation? Is there anything they can learn from Jews and Asians or is there no possible analogy between Jews/Asians and blacks? I don’t know if there’s anything they (the vast majority, anyway) should be doing that they’re not already (except any who aren’t voting should vote!). The vast majority are good citizens, good parents, peaceful and law abiding, opposing violence, opposing criminality, etc. I wish all bad black people would stop being bad, just as I wish all bad people of all types would stop being bad. But I don’t see what “the black community” can do that it’s not already doing. Individuals can learn from other individuals, certainly. Anything that could be learned from other communities can also be learned from the best examples within their own communities. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/597 "2017-09-26T19:07:00Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > OK I see what you’re saying. There are racists places where the racism isn’t obvious because there is no one around to be racist against. But, their racism still affects the general racist environment because other non-racist whites might drive through and internalize that racism. Or something like that? This looks like you’re asking me the reasons why racism is bad even in places black people usually aren’t around. I don’t think you need me to answer that. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/598 "2017-09-26T19:12:35Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > [Project MUSE - Asian American Political Participation](http://muse.jhu.edu/book/26987) > > [Third Way](http://www.thirdway.org/report/the-untapped-political-power-of-asian-americans) > > We’re shit at politics. After correcting for socioeconomic status, we are horribly under-engaged politically. These are interesting statistics, but they just sound like diversity of opinion, rather than “shit at politics”. Asians are very obviously incredibly diverse, since so many different groups live in Asia, and there have been so many conflicts within Asia. It’d be quite surprising if they did not have a lot of diversity in political views. This is different than African Americans, who (for most of American history) had no group to possibly identify with but each other, and perhaps even Latin Americans, whose immigrants mostly speak a common language and (in my understanding) have more similarities in ancestral culture than, say, a Korean American would with an Indonesian American. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/599 "2017-09-26T19:39:43Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I don’t know if there’s anything they (the vast majority, anyway) should be doing that they’re not already (except any who aren’t voting should vote!). Lots of those things that they should be doing have already been pointed out. The vast majority of black children in the US are born to single mothers - this is not true of Jews and Asians, and explains much of the socioeconomic disparity between the several groups. So that’s something that the vast majority isn’t doing, but should be. Likewise education, and criminal behavior - both are found to be different when comparing Jews and Asians with blacks. Again, that’s something the black community could learn to do. > [@](#): > > The vast majority are good citizens, good parents, peaceful and law abiding, opposing violence, opposing criminality, etc. That almost misses the point - the majority of blacks who are good citizens/parents/etc. is a smaller majority than the larger majority of Jews and Asians who are good citizens/parents/etc. If [blacks in the US commit homicide at a rate of 17.3 per 100K, and Asians commit homicide at a rate almost ten times lower](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf), the problems of the black community are going to be worse even if a majority of both groups are law-abiding. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725/600 "2017-09-26T20:03:05Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Lots of those things that they should be doing have already been pointed out. The vast majority of black children in the US are born to single mothers - this is not true of Jews and Asians, and explains much of the socioeconomic disparity between the several groups. Correlation does not = causation. It seems just as likely (probably more likely) to me that this is a symptom and not a cause of various disparities and discrimination (or at least that it’s much more complicated then simply “single mothers cause poverty”). That single mothers have poorer outcomes is news to no one – the question is what causes this, and how can it be addressed? > [@](#): > > So that’s something that the vast majority isn’t doing, but should be. Likewise education, and criminal behavior - both are found to be different when comparing Jews and Asians with blacks. Again, that’s something the black community could learn to do. But honestly, what the hell does this mean? Most of the black community aren’t criminals. Most value education. Why is this the fault of “the black community”? What can “the black community” do as a whole when most of them already have these values? > [@](#): > > That almost misses the point - the majority of blacks who are good citizens/parents/etc. is a smaller majority than the larger majority of Jews and Asians who are good citizens/parents/etc. That sounds like it’s quantifying something that can’t really be quantified. If black people are more likely to be jailed for marijuana (for example), but don’t use marijuana any more than white people, then in terms of marijuana usage black people aren’t any worse citizens than white people. They just get caught and punished more. It could even apply to motherhood and parenting – if white people have just as much sex outside of marriage as black people, but have superior education about and access to birth control and abortion, then there will be fewer single mothers in the white community, despite no difference in citizenship and parenting. The same could go for many other instances of criminality, such as that revealed by the Ferguson report – black motorists were significantly more likely to be stopped for random searches despite having a lower likelihood of contraband than white motorists. As for violent crime, that could well be explained by **Richard Parker** explanation – that it’s a natural human response “when the state loses a monopoly on violence and doesn’t try very hard to get it back”, as well as other “criminogenic features of racism” (which is a new term for me). > [@](#): > > If [blacks in the US commit homicide at a rate of 17.3 per 100K, and Asians commit homicide at a rate almost ten times lower](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf), the problems of the black community are going to be worse even if a majority of both groups are law-abiding. > > Regards, > Shodan There’s no “if” – a great majority of black people are law-abiding. The overwhelmingly vast majority of black people do not commit murder or any other violent crime. But this doesn’t address the cause. If these various hypotheses are correct, even partially, then much or most or all of the blame for these various disparities lies outside of the hands of “the black community”. I’ve asked you many times, but here I’ll go again – do you at least recognize that the fundamental difference in our opinion is in how significant and prevalent racism and white supremacism still is in broader society and institutions? As long as we feel so strongly and so differently on this, there’s no chance of convincing each other of the best solution. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725.md?page=29) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/donald-trump-the-first-white-president-article-in-the-atlantic-by-ta-nehisi-coates/795725.md?page=31)