The Jews have historically suffered incredible racism and religious persecution yet they number amongst them some of the most successful business people on Earth and do well in many other disciplines.
So why are they not considered to need AA?
And why have they done so well without AA?
Just to make my declaration of impartiality,I am not Jewish myself and as far as I know dont actually know any Jews.
Has their been an expectation of failure in the Jewish community or society? There are plenty of studies that show people tend to live up or down to the expectations we have of them. Those expectations in addition to the ability to pass for white (in many circumstances), intergenerational transfer, and their own cultural expectation of success is mostly responsible for the discrepancies between Jews and Blacks. Plus, let’s not forget that while there isn’t any official AA, Jews have engaged in nepotism and preferential treatment of their own kind in a way that has similar results. The insular nature of the religion functions as it’s own sort of AA.
I’m pretty sure you just answered your own question. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’re absolutely sure whether you know any blacks, women, or other groups that are targetted by AA.
I can point to entire neighborhoods of immigrants that have changed their first and last name because they thought it was causing discrimination.
And?
I didn’t say that changing their name wouldn’t have the potential to reduce discrimination somewhat. I asked if we should expect them to have to do so in order to be treated fairly. Should we?
As an aside, once Giuseppi changes his name to Joseph, he’s white. When Tamika changes her name to Tammy, she’s still black. It might improve her chances (but again, that’s the fault of the bigot, not Tamika), since she at least gets in the door, but it still doesn’t put her on even footing with her white counterparts.
OK, I agree. But you are talking about the societal disadvantages of poverty, not race. OR is your point that the poor are disproportianately black because of historical poverty created by slavery and segregation? Then what do you make of Asians that were also pretty poor (and many still are poor) when they stepped off the boats and airplanes in recent decades? Asians may not have achieved economic parity with white America but they have closed much of the gap (in large part due to the civil rights movement and affirmative action). The only explanations I can think of for Asian success in the face of similar (if not worse) socioeconomic status is either some sort of current day racism, there is something special about Asians (or Asian society) or there is some other problem inherent in blacks (or black society).
I have taught in inner city schools and in the suburbs as well. I could not perceive a difference among very young children but by the time they are in JHS, there is a noticable difference in comprehension, attention span, drive and the list goes on and on. I don’t know what causes this, but my feeling is that it is mostly environmental.
I don’t know if blacks would ever achieve economic parity but I am pretty sure that if the playing field were perfectly level there would be less disparity than there is today. My question is if this can be achieved with poverty based affirmative action or does the preference have to be race based?
You’re kinda shifting the arument a bit there.
In what way? I maintain, and have demonstrated, that racial discrimination against blacks is alive and well in this country. No shifting required.
Again, should we expect them to have to change their names so that they’ll have a chance to at least get in the door?
You’re getting there.
Well, before you go there, I suggest you look at all Asian immigrants, not just post-1965 immigrants. As you’ve no doubt noticed, the Immigration Act of 1965 made it exceedingly difficult for anyone but the most educated and affluent to emigrate to the US. No doubt, along with the well-educated Asians, you’ve seen the well-educated African and Indian immigrants as well. There is some socioeconomic diversity because there are allowances for family members to emigrate, but mostly the folks who end up here are among the best and brightest from their native lands.
But there are some exceptions. Look at refugee groups, like the Hmong and Cambodians. They have alarmingly high failure rates in schools and many of these people live in poverty. Even more successful groups like the Vietnamese have a regular distribution of high achieving successful students and those who are labeled as low track, or at risk. The Asian “model minority” stereotype is a huge myth - trust me, look at achievement data by race at any large urban school district and you will see plenty of Asian students at the bottom.
If one cherry-picks the better educated groups that mostly emigrated to the US voluntarily you will see the high success rates - and this is true of many voluntary vs. refugee immigrants regardless of race. Compare Jamaicans to Haitians - the former fare better because most Jamaicans came voluntarily under the Immigration Act of 1965. Many of the Haitians came as refugees.
There are tons of sociological studies by folks like Rumbaut and Portes that debunk the idea that there is something “special” about Asian culture. Because, of course, there is no “Asian” culture, just as it would be preposterous to say there is a monolithic “North American” culture (meaning the North American continent) - there are many different nations with different histories on our land mass, just as there are in Asia.
The early Asian immigrants to the US dealt with terrible discrimination and often were among the poorest in their native China and Japan - they were laborers. However, by living in self-sustaining communities over generations many of these families gained social and financial capital. It took time, and it should be noted that the ethnic enclaves - when unperturbed by riots and violence - often generated businesses that could be passed down to family members. Many African American enclaves, like those in Tulsa, OK, were destroyed by racists in the early 20th century.
Yeah. It takes a while to break a kid’s spirit, but many years of schooling where you receive explicit and implicit messages that there’s something wrong with you because of where you live, how much money you have, and what color you are - most people will live down or live up to expectations. I live near a fairly affluent community where the norm for kids is that they go to college after high school. The smart kids go to the great big name colleges we all know. But even the average, or less than average kids go to college. The parents have the intellectual and financial capital to make a college education a reality for their kids, even those who aren’t the brightest.
Again, the intergenerational nature of success comes into play. How do you best help your kid to be successful in school? It helps if you’ve been successful in school. If you know the advantages of extracurriculars like music and art, and you have the resources to provide these advantages, your kids are one step ahead. If you know about SAT prep courses, and your finances are in order so you can fill out a FAFSA easily, that’s another advantage. Of course not every White kid has this advantage, nor does every kid of color have this disadvantage. But the patterns are highly correlated to race.
I don’t know if blacks would ever achieve economic parity but I am pretty sure that if the playing field were perfectly level there would be less disparity than there is today. My question is if this can be achieved with poverty based affirmative action or does the preference have to be race based?
[/QUOTE]
You’re getting there.
Well, before you go there, I suggest you look at all Asian immigrants, not just post-1965 immigrants. As you’ve no doubt noticed, the Immigration Act of 1965 made it exceedingly difficult for anyone but the most educated and affluent to emigrate to the US. No doubt, along with the well-educated Asians, you’ve seen the well-educated African and Indian immigrants as well. There is some socioeconomic diversity because there are allowances for family members to emigrate, but mostly the folks who end up here are among the best and brightest from their native lands.
But there are some exceptions. Look at refugee groups, like the Hmong and Cambodians. They have alarmingly high failure rates in schools and many of these people live in poverty. Even more successful groups like the Vietnamese have a regular distribution of high achieving successful students and those who are labeled as low track, or at risk. The Asian “model minority” stereotype is a huge myth - trust me, look at achievement data by race at any large urban school district and you will see plenty of Asian students at the bottom.
If one cherry-picks the better educated groups that mostly emigrated to the US voluntarily you will see the high success rates - and this is true of many voluntary vs. refugee immigrants regardless of race. Compare Jamaicans to Haitians - the former fare better because most Jamaicans came voluntarily under the Immigration Act of 1965. Many of the Haitians came as refugees.
There are tons of sociological studies by folks like Rumbaut and Portes that debunk the idea that there is something “special” about Asian culture. Because, of course, there is no “Asian” culture, just as it would be preposterous to say there is a monolithic “North American” culture (meaning the North American continent) - there are many different nations with different histories on our land mass, just as there are in Asia.
The early Asian immigrants to the US dealt with terrible discrimination and often were among the poorest in their native China and Japan - they were laborers. However, by living in self-sustaining communities over generations many of these families gained social and financial capital. It took time, and it should be noted that the ethnic enclaves - when unperturbed by riots and violence - often generated businesses that could be passed down to family members. Many African American enclaves, like those in Tulsa, OK, were destroyed by racists in the early 20th century.
Yeah. It takes a while to break a kid’s spirit, but many years of schooling where you receive explicit and implicit messages that there’s something wrong with you because of where you live, how much money you have, and what color you are - most people will live down or live up to expectations. I live near a fairly affluent community where the norm for kids is that they go to college after high school. The smart kids go to the great big name colleges we all know. But even the average, or less than average kids go to college. The parents have the intellectual and financial capital to make a college education a reality for their kids, even those who aren’t the brightest.
Again, the intergenerational nature of success comes into play. How do you best help your kid to be successful in school? It helps if you’ve been successful in school. If you know the advantages of extracurriculars like music and art, and you have the resources to provide these advantages, your kids are one step ahead. If you know about SAT prep courses, and your finances are in order so you can fill out a FAFSA easily, that’s another advantage. Of course not every White kid has this advantage, nor does every kid of color have this disadvantage. But the patterns are highly correlated to race.
Sure there are individual factors that come into play, and there’s bad parenting and bad attitudes out there. But we tend to focus on those factors first and foremost without giving much attention to the more insidious, disturbing, entrenched factors at play like inherited privilege and inherited disadvantage, and how society and public policy reinforce these things.
Look at the expansion of the Black middle class in the 1970s and early 1980s. Direct results of affirmative action. Because of these policies, hardworking and intelligent Blacks were able to make up ground that might have taken several generations in a lifetime. Eradicating disparities in achievement, health, and income is good for all of us. If people are making decent money, they can pay taxes, buy homes, and do all the things that make the economic engines run. But the perception that Whites were somehow losing out (despite having a virtual stranglehold on all indicators of success, economic, educational, health, and so forth) led to the repeal of these policies. People would rather fund more prisons than support policies that might prevent people from being in situations where they’ll likely end up in prison.
There’s no reason why some disadvantaged Whites shouldn’t have had some form of federally supported affirmative action. But it’s disingenuous to not acknowledge that poverty and minority status is a double whammy that those experiences are the same.
Oops - disregard that first half-post (#69) - #70 is the correct version.
I thought the point that I was responding to was that the whole name thing was silly.
Can you provide a link that the Asian population in America represents some significant degree of cherrypicking?
I bet I pick out some common themes in Asian cultures (see Confucius).
cite please.
And yet most of your argument seems just as applicable to poor whites as to poor blacks. And does any of it still apply to middle class blacks? Shouldn’t we consider economic status in addition to race so that the middle class black kid doesn’t get into Stanford over the poor white kid?
For a complete discussion of the Immigration Act of 1965 and how the immigrants since have been highly educated, and so forth, see here.
For more about the model minority myth and how statistics provide an incomplete picture, see here.
What specifically about Confucius? This I can assure you: there is no culture out there that disavows education and bettering yourself for the good of your family and your people. The people at the tail of the distribution tend to know less about how to become educated, and have less access to the resources to educate themselves.
Well, what specifically in that paragraph would you like verification for? For evidence of increases in earnings, college attendance, and health care outcomes for African-Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, you’re probably going to need to access an academic database like JSTOR. Here’s one cite:
Smith, J. P. (1993). Affirmative Action and the Racial Wage Gap. The American Economic Review (83)2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, pp. 79-84.
I think you saw me state that I support affirmative action in some instances of intergenerational poverty among Whites. Look at Appalachia for an example of what I’m talking about.
Middle class Blacks are still subject to negative educational and economic outcomes, even with the benefit of greater educational opportunities, better neighborhoods, etc. Look at median income levels for college-educated African-Americans and college-educated Whites - there’s a $5K gap. (Cite.)
Psychologist Claude Steele has researched and proved the existence of stereotype threat, a phenomena where performance is depressed when members of a group are exposed to negative stereotypes about their ethnic/racial group or gender. He’s proved the effect with students of color, women, and even White athletes. In other words, even if you’re a high-achieving person from a group that has negative stereotypes about achievement, that knowledge and pressure of trying to overcome that perception actually depresses your performance.
Given your example regarding a poor Black kid getting a bump over a poor White kid, I’d tend to suspect that both kids you mentioned would be admitted. You’re presuming that race trumps SES all the time, and from my experience, that isn’t always true. I’ve worked selective college admissions before, so let me explain a few things. First, the pool of White students is typically quite large. The student of color pool is almost always smaller. A school like Stanford is looking for high-achieving students of all races, and they absolutely love low-income students. In fact, almost all of the most selective colleges now have 100% tuition and/or room and board paid for students with parent incomes under $60-$100K. High-achieving poor kids of all races are fairly rare in these admissions and they get considerable attention, believe me.