I’m more optimistic than the majority on this issue (though, for full disclosure - I’m not American).
After all, in my own lifetime, in my city we have gone from having the police beat up gays (to popular approval) and having male homosexual acts as criminal offences, to having the police marching with the mayor in gay pride parades, and legal gay marriages.
No doubt in the 1960s, one could have advanced compelling reasons based on history and culture as to why official and popular homophobia could never change … but change it did, nonetheless.
If a bigotry as fundamental as that can change, why not racism?
And how much progress was made on systemic racial issues over the same period? I think most people would agree there were some positive signs, but it didn’t go from 0 to 60 the way gay rights has. And you could make some really strong arguments that things are going backward in important ways.
Well, assuming the gay rights analogy as a template for systemic racism in the US, the hope is that we are right now in the equivalent of the 1960s - that is, the progress is yet to come.
That’s a very nice hope, but in terms of systemic racism, the 1960s were the 1960s. I don’t see why things are going to change for people of color the way they started changing for gays and lesbians. My general impression is that it’s getting easier to talk about how individuals experience racism today - social media helps - and we’re seeing more people of color become celebrities and achieve all different kinds of success. But I don’t think we’re making much progress on the systemic stuff because it’s complex and not fun to talk about, and it might be getting worse.
My point is not that it will improve, or even that it is improving, but rather that improvement is not impossible because of factors like history or culture.
For the former question, because of what I have seen and read. I’m not an expert, and I might be wrong. For the latter question, two parts: (1) because “success” is defined differently in different cultures. For some it is material wealth, for some it is access to education, for some it is family. It’s complicated. (2) Because, in a culture where the educational institutions systematically discriminate against you, your culture might not value those institutions. I’m not aware of a culture that doesn’t value learning, but that learning might be a craft or “street smarts” or the ability to make money or something other than formal education. Again, this isn’t a dig at the culture: it is predicated on the assumption that the culture is reacting to forces beyond its control.
The beautiful thing is, you don’t even need race to be a racist.
Look at the Balkans : Croatians and Serbs and Bosniaks and Albanians all hating the living guts of each other, centuries of oppression and horrible murder. True story : even among the younger generation, only 7% of Croatians say they’d ever marry a Serb. 15% would consent to having a Serb neighbour.
Put 'em in a lineup, how can you even tell which is which ?
Lack of academic success (relative to whites and asians) cannot be both because the data say it is neither. Assertions like “it originates in the oppression by the dominant subculture, who impose the structure” is just so much rhetorical bullshit. What originates there? An inability to reason? To learn? To think? To calculate? What? The “oppressed subculture” reacts by crapping out on the one thing that would most avoid oppression–excellence in academic achievement?
It’s just a pretty idea to blame culture or socioeconomic status, utterly without support. People want an explanation for why race groups perform differently that does not invoke fundamental and immutable differences such as biological average differences. We desperately want all humans to be “equal” and all groups to be equal.
Perhaps we will find non-biological reasons for average differences in outcomes between groups, but two explanations that fail are socioeconomic explanations and cultural explanations.
SES fails because we can study outcomes while adjusting for SES. We can look at large numbers of blacks from high SES backgrounds–wealth and education–and compare their academic performance averages with whites or asians from low SES backgrounds. If a gap persists (and it does) then SES is not an explanation.
A cultural explanation for this performance gap requires an assertion that some sort of oppositional culture is at play which so distorts the average ability to perform that blacks achieve poorly despite equivalent advantage because they just don’t care, or don’t want to educate themselves maximally, or just can’t grasp the importance of performing well in school, or some other sort of “cultural” explanation. As I said, I find this patronizing. John Diamond finds it unsupported. If you find this sort of explanation persuasive, have at it. But there’s no data.
As I said, provide them the same tools that “white middle class neighborhoods” get and let them adapt. I never said that this would be an easy fix, it’s a long term strategy that requires a lot of effort on the part of a lot of people, both inside and outside.
It’s not that they are black, it’s that they are focused on things that aren’t education-oriented. That is my point.
Yes, because there are other priorities. Even in a “middle class” and/or “doctor” household, it’s not like they turn into a WASP family by the magic of cash flow. It’s easy to see where these values lie. Black culture have a pretty heavy value on the family. For not only the parents and children of any given nuclear unit but also the extended family, togetherness is a big item.
White families are more distant than this from one another. Instead of fostering togetherness, they foster things like television and computer time, and a vanishing set fosters book reading. By absorbing media as a heavier focus, they absorb information, too. In addition, there is a long-running “Study hard and you’ll become the next Bill Gates! You know, he even dropped out of college!” meme that is a common thread throughout the white families.
Additionally, that same link from above says
Which makes it seem like progress has been made. So, is this progress simply due to AA? Or couldn’t it be said that a cultural change happening in the US in the lower-test-ranking cultures?
Wow.
Of course what you implied I said was ridiculous. It’s also not what I was saying.
You are reducing an entire group of people down to “stupid” or “lazy” with no options for anything else. I mean this in a non-inflammatory way, but do you realize how ridiculous that makes your post seem?
It is not patronizing to seek to understand the problem and try to get a grasp of what’s going on to work towards an actual fix. AA has done nothing or little, so why not refine our methods and move towards a way that would actually help those move out of where they are?
There have been, actually, several studies about blacks raised in white households all-but closing that gap of test scores. If not for culture, what would account for this?
A culture doesn’t have to be oppositional, and it doesn’t mean that blacks just plain “don’t want to educate themselves” or that they are too stupid to “grasp the importance of performing well in school” it means that they have different values.
We have groups of people in this country that migrate from other countries and then settle in well established areas for their particular culture and their culture doesn’t disspate quickly. Multiple generations persist within the culture, and it takes a lot of time for that culture to ebb and for them to assimilate (even if they do lose members over time to the outside culture).
Does that mean they are too stupid to “grasp the importance of performing well in school”? No. It means their values are different from the dominant culture. I cannot fathom why having different values than what you do somehow means that another culture is automatically lazy or stupid.
I am trying to figure out which particular “cultural” explanation you find persuasive to explain the academic under achievement between black kids from wealthy and educated households and poverty-stricken whites from households with poorly educated parents. (“Son; we blacks don’t worry too much about doing your best in school. It’s not that important for us, culturally. Let the homework ride. Let’s go play some hoops.” )
In households with money and educated parents, presumably the parents have already doped out the value of an education. They have the resources to provide that education to their children. Yet the gap persists.
There’s no question better opportunity maximizes potential. But you are arguing that high SES status for blacks is so overwhelmed by “culture” that children from that environment underperform other groups from very low SES. Really? Middle class blacks are just lousy parents? The value system toward education of a wealthy black professional (and only blacks, with “black culture”) is so deficient their children can barely perform on a par with poverty-stricken, uneducated whites in lousier school systems?
Well, OK. But if “culture” is the reason for this stubbornly persistent gap (which is not closing any more in the last 20 years), then all the more reason we need race-based AA to make sure we preserve diversity. Because apparently the black middle class cannot get beyond its cultural failure to grasp the importance of an education for its children even if the parents figured it out.
Why do you assume this is a position of active self-disinterest? I gave an example of a value that is different between two cultures and how it impacts time spent on “educational” things. Is this bad? No. Does it offer a glimpse of differences between cultures that might impact test scores (but not innate intelligence)? Yes.
Let me put it this way: Assuming a person is white, he likely grew up with the cultural icons of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. A person will “grow out” of believing in these things, but they will turn around and use the same cultural devices on their progeny without reluctance. Why? Is it because they are parts of the culture and it’s generally expected that their children practice SantaClausism? I believe so.
I’m going to get hyperbolic to illustrate what I am saying: Let’s say that you have two families that are both well off ($120,000 a year in income from a single provider…because my hyperbole exists in the 1960s). One family buys nothing but sports equipment. One that does nothing but visit family and engage in fellowship.
Which one of these would you presume to have a better test score? I would say that the family concentrating on sports. Why? Because as the child of this family you are generally closer to home, thus closer to a study space when you stop playing football. If you are constantly going to family and friends with your parents, to contrast, you are further from home (even if those family and friends are close by) which means when you do get home, you have, in general, less time to study.
Now, are either of these one dimensional family traits bad? Is playing sports bad? Is fellowship with your family bad? No. We certainly wouldn’t demonize one because they are spending time in fellowship. And yet we can think this out and find that one lends itself to higher test scores (again, not innate intelligence) than the other.
Because, we have spent 40-60 years assuming that just getting the black population on par financially with whites that their issues in terms of performance would go away. This has proven to be nothing but a politically convenient lie. It has done nothing but keep people in power. I mean, it’s easy to illustrate that just giving people money doesn’t cause a massive shift in how they handle life. Just look at how many people win the lottery that were poor/struggling with money before winning and are then broke less than 5 years later. Why? Because giving them money didn’t change their behavior and how they respond to and manage money.
And, once again, I have to point out that you make the assumption that having different values make them “worse” than the dominant culture with your reference to “lousy parents.” Why do you assume this? Why do you think educational scores are paramount to success? Are all of those white trash folks that score far and above even the middle class blacks that you keep bringing up raking in the cash? Could it be that poorness is determined by other factors? That any variety of cultural factors may come into play to affect things outside of education? That time that might be available for learning is spent elsewhere because the value structure is different?
This does not mean they are “lazy” or “stupid” or “lousy parents” it means that they have different values than the dominant culture. That’s it. That’s all it means. If, however, we understand these differences and how they interact to under-represent 13% of our population, then we can construct programs that will actually affect the under-representation that is at issue, either test scores or wealth/income or any other statistic you find alarming.
AA has done nothing to close the gap between blacks and whites in terms of education or wealth. It hasn’t given them instruction on how to succeed in the cultural milieu that exists in this country. It hasn’t pushed for their culture to be assimilated (or, potentially, merged/melded) into the dominant culture, driving things like test scores up. Not to mention, you still ignore the data we have that says that blacks raised in a white household have the test scores gap disappear.
Thus, we either need to stop the political charade that we are actually doing something by using AA and commit to an approach that would “help” them in these areas we consider lacking or we need to realize that we are dealing with people that don’t ascribe to the targets, values, and ideals that the dominant culture does. In either case, we should simply give them the same available foundations to succeed as those that are entrenched in the dominant culture, as I previously outlined. They must then chose to take advantage of it. It won’t happen overnight (because: culture) but we can’t force anyone to change. If anything, the trillion dollars we spent on two wars trying to change the middle east should have taught us that.
to me it seems as it several of you associate education with success; you see education as an essential part of the path to success. Which makes sense, given your own backgrounds.
But what are the educational qualifications of Beyoncé, Snoop Dogg or Jay-Z? They’re enormously successful and evidently qualified, but they’re not college educated. How many professional black athletes are household names in the US right now? How many Latinos in baseball? I looked at my family and neighbors when it came time to pick school tracks, and from conversations with other people I know many did as well; those whose response to a survey of close relations came down to “hell no!” chose a path based on a different role model who happened to be handy. For some of them it was a teacher, for someone a person they encountered in a magazine or a TV program and whom they did not expect or could not ever meet in person but with whom they identified: I personally know several dozen female chemists who would tell you Marie Curie was an enormous influence for them (for us), but I never met a male chemist who mentioned her as one of his role models.
The amount of diversity at different levels and in different professions influences the amount of identifiable role models for children seeking their path - it’s a “lead horses to water” kind of thing, though, it can’t and shouldn’t be imposed from outside.
How do you believe black Americans define success, and how does it differ from the way white Americans define sucess?
Can someone explain what these values might be?
He’s saying you are implying they’re lazy or stupid, and he’s essentially right.
Black people aren’t financially on par with white people. It’s not even close and never has been. White families have much higher median income and black families are far more likely to live in poverty. The Census Bureau says median income for white families was around $52,000 in 2009, and for black families it was about $32,600. Median income for all households was just under $50,000. Black families were about three times as likely to live in poverty compared to white families (Latinos had it almost as bad).
Affirmative action isn’t “just giving people money.” You might be thinking of, say, welfare, which doesn’t lift a lot of people out of poverty primarily because it’s not a lot of money.
I think this is why Chief Pedant is saying you are suggesting black people just lack the wherewithal to succeed. They live in this culture, but you think they have no idea how to succeed in America?
Have you listened to any music in the last 20 years? (Or 60?) The idea that black culture isn’t assimilated into broader American culture is just nuts.
There is no proof that “targets, values and ideals” are the problem, though, and you’re saying the reason black Americans face so many problems is that they don’t know… something or other. You’re also confusing things by calling everything Affirmative Action.
These are outliers so rare that they don’t affect the issue. People from around the world compete for those jobs and there are a few dozen super-rich pop stars at most, around 450 active players in the NBA, and maybe 1,300 on major league rosters - and most of them have short careers and don’t become particularly wealthy. In fact a fair number of them end up broke even if they did make a lot of money. Your odds of going to school and finding a steady job are way better than your odds of making it as a professional athlete or musician.
It doesn’t matter what my beliefs are. I will tell you what my understanding is, with the caveat that this is not my area of study and my data is primarily anecdotal. In other words, your question has a better answer than I can give.
There is a lot of overlap between the two groups. It’s only the mix that’s different, i.e. how each different aspect of success is weighed.
In general, Black Americans place a higher priority on spending time in the presence of extended family than middle-class WASPs do.
In general, Black Americans place a high priority on church. I would not be surprised to hear that membership in good standing in a church was important.
I would also not be shocked to hear that staying out of jail or completing high school were considered successes, as opposed to default expectations, but I don’t know.
These are pretty general, though, and not limited to black people. I could say the same things about my own Italian-American family, at least for a generation ago.
My own upbringing and values are far enough from the mainstream that I really don’t feel comfortable speaking for either group. Maybe someone who is actually black will chime in and answer your question.
I don’t. I do have a pretty good understanding of how culture works in general, though, and I do study minority cultures in the UK and France, so I am extrapolating from parallel situations, augmented by my experience in the US. So I’m reasonably confident, but prepared to be corrected.
I think, though, that it would take a higher standard of evidence than I can provide to convince you.
Yes, it would. I think you’d agree it’s reasonable that people offering this suggestion have the burden of proof. The problem is that this view of black culture is so widespread that not only is the theory assumed to be reasonable, the explanation is assumed to be correct.
I don’t agree about the burden of proof. I would say that the idea that culture is determinative to the exclusion of all other factors is an extraordinary claim. Claiming that culture is an important factor among others, which is my claim, seems eminently reasonable. But as I said, I am not qualified to defend the claim, so if you choose not to accept it, we can agree to disagree.