I am characterizing asians in NYC in general as poorer than whites. So when people say that opportunity=outcome I ask what extra opportunity do asians have that yields them better academic outcomes than whites? I’m not really making the arguments wrt stuyvesant right now. I can open a new thread about that issue in a separate thread if you like.
What I am citing for in that article is the notion that asians have a higher incidence of poverty than other groups. And no, the asian population in NYC is not nearly as diverse as the article makes it seem. Oot of the over 1 million asians in NYC, they have to mention Cambodians to make their point. There are maybe 100 Cambodians in NYC. The overwhelming majority of asians in NYC are east asian or suth asian.
Averages are averages and as long as I don’t change the constituents in those averages, it shouldn’t matter that there are some cambodians included in those averages. The Cambodian kid might be dragging down income a bit but if opprtunity=outcome then it should also drag down outcome to a similar degree.
I understand that income is not the alpha/omega of opportunity but what extra opportunity do the asians nin NYC have that the whites do not?
I’m not the one that brought up stuyvesant except to say that this is how i came by the information that asians are poor in NYC.
So I’m confused. Do you think that equality of opportunity = equality of results or that equality of opportunity between two races can still lead to disparity in results due to things like culture?
NYC has 10 million people. It is what I have statistics for. I can’t use nationwide statistics because every time I try that, people will point out the income gap between whites and asians and try to pin it on that.
Well that is not true in NYC. Asians are poor there. And it’s a fairly large sample size (with over 10 million people in NYC.
A lot of the race arguments of the left break down and sometimes disintegrate when you depart from the black-white scenario.
This is even more apparent when comparing the arguments and theories surrounding the hispanic-white racism model. Anti-black racism is distinguishable from anti-asian racism and its hard to get away from the distinguishing factors.
But when you compare hispanics to asians, there is not the same stark historical difference.
I think it’s pretty well established that busing (done right) can close achievement gaps.
It also gets white people so riled up that they vote in racists. Even the most liberal groups of white folks get pretty riled up about school zoning. A while back, there was a school rezoning meeting in a fairly liberal gentrifying part of Brooklyn where a black parent had to stand up in the middle of the meeting and say something to the effect of “can we please have this conversation without saying that the black children are stupid or criminals?”
No matter how much you can cow those supposedly liberal white parents in a public forum, they get to vote in private. And those white parents did not find the arguments that seemed great in the abstract to be so good when it was their kids engaging in the rezoning.
So even if busing is an effective solution it is not a politically viable one.
So I presented you with the experience of the least wealthy group in NYC achieving the best academic results. How do you explain this if not a difference in culture? Are asians just a shit ton smarter than everyone else? Or do they just work their asses off and make sacrifices that most americans consider borderline crazy. Anecdotally speaking, it’s the latter.
We have always lived in that world, the deficient cultures generally died.
So then how are millions and millions of asians bucking your theory? If it’s all rigged by whitey then how the hell are the asians doing as well as they are?
In what way is stating your conclusion = taking you out of context. You seem to believe that equality of opportunity=equality of outcome
You can cry straw man all you want. You’re wrong. I am using your actual words in their actual intended meaning to say that you believe that equality of opportunity leads to equality of outcome. I never implied you thought this occurred at the individual level. This whole conversation has been about large groups. So maybe if you could stop whining and present an argument to support your position we could have a debate. or not.
Asian kids study harder that other kids. I would suggest that asian parents make more sacrifices for education and place more value on education than other parents. And this is largely a result of differences in culture.
One of the problem with this realm of debate is that “equality of results” is fairly easy to define - things like test scores, academic attainment, income, etc. - but “equality of opportunity” is so malleable and flexible a term that it can be shoehorned into anything someone wants it to be.
I’m not uncomfortable talking about Asian Americans. I’ve just pointed out, repeatedly, that Asian Americans are a small part of the issue of race in America. But you try to steer every conversation about race to Asian Americans.
Do you think that Asians are well-represented in American power structures (business, government, academia, etc) generally? Because talking about school achievement doesn’t really add up to that much.
No, but with government, for example, one reason is because Asian-Americans generally haven’t been as interested in running for public office as other ethnic/racial groups. That isn’t to say that anti-Asian discrimination isn’t a factor, but by and large Asians have shown little interest in running. You can’t win if you don’t run.
With Andrew Yang and others of late, there is starting to be some change in this regard.
Well, it adds up to money, which increases opportunity, which increases general happiness, which leads to a better overall well being, but yes, doesn’t add up to much.
So, how do you propose measuring equality of opportunity? Do you think that equality of results is, at least, a rough proxy? Do you have a better one?
Also, do you understand why saying that some people will just be more motivated or want to be artists or whatever is a straw man? No one is saying that all people will be equally successful. But, it seems like a reasonable goal to work towards the day when differences between people is not so easily explained by their race, income level, etc.
I’m not trying to steer every conversation towards asian americans to focus on asian americans but I find that a lot of the arguments surrounding race fall apart when you introduce asian americans into the debate. Asian are the race that some people want you to forget and consequently asians get forgotten.
This doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist or does not have real world effects but it does mean that some of these absolute statements are probably untrue. Statements like “equality of opportunity would lead to equality of outcome” They make this claim because they want to pass laws and regulations that will equalize (or at least reduce disparity) differences in results on the basis that the difference in outcome MUST be because of differences in opportunity.
Let’s use a specific example; unemployment. Black Americans are more likely to be unemployed than white Americans. Why?
One possibility is that there’s some inherent trait in black people that makes them choose not to work as much. They have a laziness gene or something like that. In my personal opinion, that’s a racist view.
Another possibility is that black Americans are discriminated against in the job market; employers are less likely to hire a black job applicant than a white job applicant.
Or maybe it’s background. Black people are more likely to have received a poor education because the school where they grew up received less money. Or black people are more likely to have a criminal record because the police are more likely to arrest them.
These are all outside factors. None of these were choices the black person made. They were choices that other people imposed on them.
It’s not even necessarily true that people are choosing to discriminate against black people based on their race. The employer might be honest when he says he chooses applicants with no criminal record over applicants with criminal records. He’s not being racist; it just happens that black people are more likely to have a criminal record and his race-neutral policy leads to the outcome of him hiring less black people.
And the cop will tell you that he doesn’t choose who to arrest based on their race. He arrests the people who commit crimes. And the reason he arrests more black people is because they’re more likely to be committing crimes.
By themselves, neither policy is a sign of racism. But connect them together and look at the pattern. Why do black people commit crimes? Because they need to earn money and they have a hard time getting a regular job. Why do black people have a hard time getting regular jobs? Because they have a criminal record.
And once the pattern is established it feeds into itself. If black adults are more likely to be committing crimes then black children are more likely to grow up knowing people who commit crimes - and therefore are more likely to have entry into a life of crime. And if black adults aren’t working regular jobs, then black teenagers are less likely to be part of an employment network where somebody will say something like “Hey, there’s an opening in the warehouse. Call up Phil and tell him I know you. I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Shodan pointed out that children raised by single mothers are more likely to have problems in their later lives. But boys who have problems in their lives are more likely to grow up and abandon their children. And girls who have problems in their lives are more likely to grow up and be abandoned.
Children who go to bad schools are going to have more difficulty graduating and having a good academic record. So they’re more likely to be unemployed and poor. And unemployed poor people have less money. And schools in neighborhoods where there’s less money are going to be underfunded and bad. The bad schools produce the poor people and the poor people produce the bad schools.
There are very few places where we can point to a single thing and say “This thing is wrong. Stop doing it.” We solved most of those problems fifty years ago. Now we’re looking at subtler problems. You see one problem and try to figure out what factors caused it. Then you try to figure out what caused those factors. Then you try to figure out what caused the things that caused the factors. And a lot of times you end up back where you started. The problems are part of a cycle.
Some people just shrug their shoulders and say “What can you do? The problem is too big to solve.” I don’t believe that. We’ve seen huge things like world wars and moon landings done successfully. I feel we can solve big problems if we’re willing to do the work.
Other people will say “Why should I care? It’s not my problem. I’m white (or I’m Asian-American).” There’s the issue of morality but I’ll put that aside. Instead I’ll say it’s in your self-interest to do something about other people’s problems. When other people are poor or uneducated or criminals, you have to pay for their problems. Even if you choose to stop paying for any form of social assistance, you’ll still be paying because you see an increase in crime and you’ll need to pay more for police and prisons. Even if you’re not personally poor or uneducated or a criminal, you benefit from living in a society where other people are also not poor or uneducated or criminals. It’s in your self-interest to pay for programs that reduce poverty and bad education and crime, even if you just look at it from a financial point of view. Spending the money now to reduce the things that cause these problems will mean you don’t have to spend the money in the future on the problems.
If arguments about racism fall apart when you discuss Asian Americans, what does that prove? If I said “Look, Americans of Scottish descent don’t experience racism” does that prove that racism isn’t a problem? Of course not, it just proves that Scottish-Americans don’t experience racism. That’s great for Scottish-Americans. Now can we go back to talking about the people who aren’t Scottish-Americans and who are experiencing problems?
You didn’t provide any cites that they are “the least wealthy group” (and IIRC, you’ve said the same before in another thread and I showed you cites that proved this was incorrect, but I don’t recall which thread). In any case, unless you’re seriously arguing that Asians (or white people!) are the most mistreated “out group” in the country (or in NYC), then this wouldn’t apply to my point anyway. My point is about how the groups with the worst outcomes are treated, not the groups with generally “good” outcomes.
So the Jews of Europe had a “deficient” culture? Native Americans? Native Australians? The Armenians in Turkey? The dozens of other groups that suffered genocides (or near-genocides)? That doesn’t seem like remotely a serious argument. If this is seriously what you’re arguing, then it’s a horrendously bigoted and hateful argument.
This is not my argument. I’m not even sure what this has to do with my argument.
The “rigged by whitey” just shows how simplistic this issue is so often seen. These systems weren’t “rigged by whitey” – they were rigged by the wealthy and powerful. Not to protect and serve “whitey”, but to protect and serve the wealthy and powerful. Most of them are white, but these systems hurt a lot more white people than they help. They only help the rich and powerful, and any other benefit seen by whites on the lower end due to discrimination is massively beat by the way they’re exploited. Racism is a tool for these systems, since poor whites + poor blacks + poor Hispanics + poor other groups would be an absolute juggernaut and unstoppable political force, and the wealthy and powerful need these groups to oppose each other. And attacks on culture just help this system.
Black people are just human beings. They’re really not different in any significant way from those of you who aren’t black. The vast majority are peaceful, love their families, are very willing to work hard, and just want a decent chance at a comfortable life and good future for their families, just like any other group. That’s black culture, at least the most important parts. There are negative aspects to inner city gang culture in Chicago, just like there are negative aspects to poor rural Appalachian culture, and Wall Street culture, and the million other sub-cultures around the country and the world. There’s no simplifying this stuff for groups of millions; the vast majority are just regular, decent people who want decent lives and good futures for their kids.
Refusing to see this and insisting upon blaming millions of decent folks, many of whom are suffering despite having tried to do the right thing, just aids the system, which seeks to divide the poor and suffering so that the wealthy and powerful can continue to exploit as they see fit.