It is not common practice to put your comments in the quote box. Actually, I think it is expressly forbidden.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that appealing to MLK when talking about racial injustice to make the case against reparations and against a more nuanced understanding of racism is generally a bad look™.
Blaming racism is a much too simplistic (and I think this is a recurring mistake you’re making) way to describe this. These are extremely complex interactions. Desperate people tend to behave desperately. People with little or no other chance of joy and pleasure tend to take what fleeting chances of joy and pleasure that they can. People with little or no chance at a decent living within the rules are more likely to turn outside the rules to make their living. These are just human beings. If historical racism and white supremacist policies and practices, including some that still exist, mean that there are more such obstacles and circumstances for black people to have decent chances at these particular achievements, then these statistical disparities will result, and will have nothing to do with “black culture” or even any elements of black culture.
I’ve put this in several ways, and I’ll try again here, with a pretty reasonable historical hypothetical (that likely mirrors the experiences of a lot of black American families): A policy in the 60s and 70s – say redlining – meant that a hardworking black family had a much lower chance of maintaining and building wealth for the next generation. The primary earner of the next generation of that family, in the 80s, is stricken with an illness, but due to a lack of wealth and living in a neighborhood with substandard access to medical care (due to past racist practices and policies), does not recover well and becomes unable to work. Increased pressure is placed on the young men in this family to contribute to their income, and with no good prospects to earn money in the immediate term, at least one turns to illegitimate methods (i.e. crime) to earn money. Another young man in the family is killed by police in a suspicious incident, and is not the first person in this family to be mistreated by police (others have been unjustly arrested, beaten, groped, and worse, over the years), thus greatly increasing the very legitimate and reasonable distrust this family has for law enforcement and institutions like the courts and politicians. The school the kids in the family goes to is barely functional and sometimes even dangerous, due to past and present policies and practices, and thus the kids often skip class or “keep their heads down” to avoid becoming targets, meaning they participate less in class when they are there. They may even be more likely to join in the mocking of the best performing kids, just because they’re human and if this attitude (borne of this combination of past outside policies and practices, in this vicious and horrible cycle) becomes popular, then some kids will join the popular group. And the situation in general improves, at best, very slowly and in fits and starts, with many setbacks as a family sees another one of their kids brutalized or killed by police, arrested for something that white kids generally get away with, get a longer sentence than what white kids get for the same crime, etc.
In my understanding, all of these obstacles that this hypothetical family faced are far more common for black people than for white people in America. When one group of humans face more obstacles than a second group in a path to success, there will be a statistical disparity in various signs of success, even if they seem somewhat indirect, like truancy, unwed pregnancy, and similar. Based on what I’ve read, there are many circumstances in society, unrelated to culture, that can increase the chances of a teenage girl engaging in risky sexual behavior, and if black people face those circumstances more often than white people, then there will be more risky behavior among black teenagers than white teenagers.
Perhaps you disagree on this last point, and believe that there are no possible non-cultural circumstances that can increase the chances of truancy, or promiscuity, or criminality, higher rates of single motherhood, etc. If so, then we just plain disagree, and I’m not sure how to bridge that. To me, it seems obvious that if biased practices and policies result in more black men in jail, and fewer in the legitimate work force, then that means fewer will be available to be fathers. If biased practices and policies result in fewer stable households and stable role models, then more teenagers will engage in risky behavior. And so on. None of these circumstances are based on culture. They all have origins in biases in broader society.
This is pretty much the main point of contention in our disagreement. I’m snipping most of the rest of your post since they’re just restatements of this issue.
We disagree on AA, that’s clear. I think it’s actually a separate issue than the main discussion in this thread, so I probably won’t respond any more on this issue in this thread.
Ad hominem attacks?
Should I point you to the dozens of posts where people criticize me for not using the multiquote function?
Fact: Your post was clearly misformatted to the point that you can’t identify what part of the post was mine and what part of the post was yours without clicking back.
Fact: I ignored much of your comments in the post because I generally only read the stuff outside of quote as “new” material. Much of your post was within the quote box, which is actually a no-no on this board.
Fact: You complained about my not responding to this misformatted post.
Fact: I complained that I couldn’t see your comments because they were within the quote box but proceeded to address your concerns.
I addressed the fact that you are wrong about the Vietnamese population’s social mobility in the US.
Blacks have higher incidence of unwed birth even after correcting for income so its probably not just poverty and no one seems to have a good idea how racists are making black women give birth out of wedlock.
You fail to explain how a poor girl in Chinatown has better access to healthcare and contraceptives than the average black girl.
You used a victimization survey to make a statement about criminality. Its almost like you just picked up the first hit on a google search.
You make a poverty centered argument for the educational outcomes of black students. I invited you to compare what you see in libraries in Asian ghettoes to what you see in libraries in black ghettoes. Are they sending more educational dollars to poor Asian communities over poor black communities? Fighting for more money is not the same thing as valuing education.
Like I said, if you want to wait for the end of racism before you impose the burden for self determination on the black community then you are going to wait a loooooong time."
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’ve already explained how that inadvertent error happened. If you have a complaint anyway, I believe the correct procedure is to take it to the mod.
I fixed the formatting of quote tags in post #369. Let me know by PM if I got it wrong. Please drop the formatting hijack.
[/moderating]
The idea that black people have “little to no” chance of living a decent life in the US in 2018 is not true. The idea that black people are desperate is not true.
Yes, it does have to do with elements of black culture. The Vietnamese boat people, and Jews, and Chinese, and other groups started off with the same disadvantages. The elements of their cultures, like stable families and assigning high value to education, caused them to overcome those disadvantages. This “whiteness/blackness” thing of deciding what constitutes a race doesn’t seem to have crippled Asians.
What you are missing about “complex interactions” is that these are interactions that include culture. That’s a lot of what “the system” interacts with. “The system” interacts with groups whose culture pushes them to achieve in education and to create stable families, and it also interacts with groups who don’t value education and don’t form stable families very differently. Why is that? “The system” isn’t different. The groups. on the whole, behave differently. That’s what we mean by their culture.
“The system” wasn’t able to force poor Asian students in New York to drop out of school, act out, or impregnate each other without being married, but it was the same system that black students were under. Therefore there must be something different about the students. What else can it be besides their culture? There isn’t any other explanation besides genetics, and I don’t suppose you want to believe that that’s what it is.
Regards,
Shodan
Agreed. However, if due to wider biases in past and ongoing policies and practices, more black people in the US are desperate, or have little to no chance at a decent life, than white people, than statistical disparities could result that could have nothing to do with culture.
These other groups weren’t enslaved in America for centuries, didn’t have centuries of the system of whiteness/blackness defining their roles and place and perceptions about them in society, and much more. The history of how these groups were treated, and how they came to America, and what chances they had when they arrived/were brought, are entirely different.
This is a hypothesis. Perhaps one day we’ll have groups that society actually treats the same, and we could test this hypothesis. According to all the history and data I’ve read, black people in America have been treated entirely differently (much, much more brutally) from pretty much every group in America aside from Native Americans, and still are in many ways, and thus this unfair treatment by broader society must be eliminated before us outsiders could hope to delve into whether there are cultural issues entirely within black communities involved.
I disagree that “the system” treated these groups entirely the same. There are plenty of other explanations, and I’ve offered several, and explained my viewpoint in several different ways.
We know the point at which we disagree – we don’t need to keep harping on it. There’s no magical thinking here – you think that the widepsread societal mistreatment of black people has entirely ended, and I think it has only lessened, but still exists to a very significant extent. That’s all the difference that is needed to explain the difference in our viewpoints. I accept that you honestly believe that this broad brutal and unfair treatment has ended, and hopefully you accept that I honestly believe that it still exists to a significant extent. And if it does exist, then such ongoing societal mistreatment could explain statistical disparities even in things like teen pregnancies, for reasons that I’ve explained in posts above.
I’m not sure what your argument is. Are you saying that MLK would look athe rate of out of wedlock births and say “that’s racism”
And I think that is coddling. You are applying a fairly low standard of behavior. The poverty rate in NY is higher among Asians than blacks but the rate of teen pregnancy, unwed motherhood, and criminal activity among those poor Asians is much lower than poor blacks.
All these arguments work well when you live in a black and white world when you compare the group with every advantage against the group with every disadvantage. It works much less well when you are living in a world with other minorities that are also poor and subject to racism.
A you know I generally don’t have a problem with AA for the descendants of slaves and American Indians, at least not yet. Not really sure why the children of African/Caribbean immigrants and Latin American immigrants ought to benefit. It s being used as a panacea for racial disparity.
Its like you didn’t even see the rest of the post where I address how your arguments failed 9again)
According to these two cites, this may have been true at times in the past (that Asians had higher rates of poverty), but is false in the present:
Further, these various obstacles thrown up by biased policies and practices aren’t just about economics and finances. They involve the media (how various groups are depicted in the news, in books/TV/movies, etc.), law enforcement and the justice system, education systems, political issues like zoning, societal/governmental institutions, and much more. All of these things could result in obstacles that are more likely to be present for black Americans than other groups, meaning that it’s harder for African Americans, as a group, than other groups, to reach higher levels of achievement.
All these groups are treated differently from each other, by policies, practices, and institutions, by society-wide systems like whiteness/blackness, and by history. If there are policies and practices that continue to place obstacles in the way of black people, on average, but not other groups (or to a lesser extent than other groups), then even if immigrant groups start with less, they might have an easier time achieving greater success than black Americans on average, regardless of culture.
I sometimes feel that you aren’t that familiar with the asian experience in this country.
That’s not where we disagree.
You are doing what you seem to object to - saying these are complex interactions, but ruling out black culture as any part of the interplay. The logic seems only to be “black people are disproportionately poor and disproportionately criminals and most of their children are born out of wedlock and most black fathers abandon their families and black people don’t seem to put value on education, and it’s because of whiteness/blackness”. What about the factor that says “black people are disproportionately poor and disproportionately criminals because most of their children are born out of wedlock and most black fathers abandon their children and don’t value education”?
Asians and Jews and other groups overcame poverty and disadvantage and anti-Semitism and anti-Asian bias largely because of their culture. Why didn’t “whiteness/blackness”, or maybe “whiteness/yellowness” or “Gentile-ness/Jewishness” stop them? The answer being, of course, because the complex interaction of “the system” and their culture was different, because their culture was different. “The system” wasn’t.
OK, I’m white, so I can’t say anything about black culture. Fine - I can say something about white culture, or “the system”, and it’s this - “the system” seems to work for people who act in certain ways, whether they are white or yellow or green.
A hundred fifty years ago, somebody’s ancestors were slaves, and fifty years ago there were laws keeping you from voting. And your mother is seventeen years older than you, and you haven’t seen your father more than once a month for the last ten years, and your teachers were too afraid of the gangs to do much math.
Forty years ago, your grandfather fled Viet Nam so the Viet Cong wouldn’t kill him, and your father worked a low-level job to feed you and your mother shamed you every time you didn’t get an A. But we ain’t letting you into the elite school. Because whiteness.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m just stating historical facts, as I understand them.
I’m not ruling out culture – it’s a hypothesis, I just don’t accept the claim as is, and considering that there’s nothing outsiders can do to fix a supposed toxic culture, I don’t see the point of discussing it. Even more than that, in fact – outsiders discussing the inferiority of a culture never helps and can do nothing but hurt, in fact, that culture – since we can’t understand it as “insiders” do, we aren’t qualified to criticize it. All such criticism can do is divide and inflame. I don’t want to hurt black people, so I’m not going to criticize a culture I’m incapable of fully understanding. I don’t want you to hurt black people, so I’m going to try and dissuade you from criticizing a culture you’re incapable of fully understanding.
But there’s plenty we can talk about – all the ways that society, in policies, practices, and institutions, treats black people and other groups unfairly. There’s plenty we can do to improve that. Lots we can do to improve media depictions, and racist assertions and behavior, and unfair hiring practices, and much more. Up to and including considering the possibility of providing reparations for those policies and practices that have done great financial harm to living Americans, meaning that themselves and their descendants had both legitimate grievances against an unfair society (and thus a greater likelihood of believing that there was no chance of legitimate success in this unfair society) and a serious obstacle in the chances at their success.
I think centuries of enslavement, with accompanying mass rape and torture, evolving into an apartheid system with lynchings and legal 2nd-class citizenhood (at best) and no political representation, evolving into policies and practices like redlining, law enforcement practices like in the Ferguson report, the stereotype-laden media depictions of recent decades and today, and the complete lack of a reckoning and any attempt at justice for all these biases and mistreatments and brutalizations, are going to result in different challenges faced by that group than the circumstances and obstacles that other groups faced. This doesn’t diminish the challenges other groups face in any way at all.
Based on various pieces of data (cited in this thread and elsewhere), historical events/policies/practices, anecdotes from the many successful black people among my family and friends, and my own personal experiences in which I compare my own efforts and achievement to those of peers with different backgrounds, in most fields a black person has to work significantly harder, and make fewer mistakes, to achieve the same heights as a white person with the same natural talent.
And to sum it up in another way that I’ve done quite frequently, the idea that the two groups that America treated, overwhelmingly, most cruelly and brutally over the years – black people and native Americans – just so happen to have inferior and “toxic” cultures, while all the other groups do not, thus explaining why those two groups are at the bottom of so many statistical disprities, strikes me as too convenient for broader society to believe, not when there are still so many differences in how these groups are treated. The language you use significantly sidesteps the incredible mass brutality that black people in America faced. Not just enslavement, but mass rape and torture, and continuous dehumanization by broader society well into the 20th century. Many, probably even most, living black people over 50 were very seriously mistreated by American society in their lives, and thus are more likely to justly and reasonably pass on very legitimate grievances and anger to younger black Americans, many of whom continue to be mistreated by American society.
I don’t believe the present moment is special. I think the same forces are at work in America now that were 10, 50, and 100 years ago. Not in exactly the same ways, but they’re still present. The system didn’t, and doesn’t, treat all groups in the same way. Whiteness/blackness exists, and results in bias and disparities in how people are treated, in policies, practices, and by institutions. If there’s a problem within a culture (which I see no reason to believe at this time), then outsiders unable to fully understand that culture trying to critique it can only inflame and make it worse, and never make it better, and I want to make things better, not worse, for black people.
The depiction of asians in the media wasn’t really that flattering until very very recently. I would suggest that Asian caricatures are much more acceptable now than black caricatures in the media.
I don’t know that there was a difference in law enforcement’s attitudes towards blacks vs asians before 1950 or so.
Same with education.
Same with zoning.
If indeed asians are now “white” how did they make the transition because they were certainly black at one point
I’m pretty sure Asian Americans weren’t regularly lynched. But there were indeed mass injustices against Asians - most notably internment. But unlike the mass mistreatment of black people, there was an actual reckoning, with real recompense for those who were mistreated, for internment.
I’ve never made such a claim.
You almost got to the issue:
Why are so many black children born out of wedlock, abandoned by fathers, and devaluing education? Are you saying it’s a root cause of things that happen after that, and has no antecedent cause itself? It’s a first principle?
Not as frequently as blacks in the south.
How many asians do you think got compensated? Only the actual asians that were put into the concentration camps were given anything. If they were not alive nearly 50 years later, their survivors didn’t get anything.
Do you think black people who immigrated to the USA in 2010 deserve some recompense? We can talk about reparations. I have trouble seeing how a nigerian immigrants deserves reparations but please feel free to try and convince me otherwise.
There comes a point where holding onto the past does more harm than good.
OK so then were asians black or white when they were being lynched. The wikipedia article says they were categorized by some people as white (along with american indians).
Are they black or white now?