there SHOULD be more white millionares than black ones!

The BBQ Pit
1

this is something that has bothered me forever, and its not racism, its math… I am not saying racism doesn’t exist or anything like that, but gah! this is something that drives me crazy!

it seems like some people don’t understand what minority means.

on a local message board people were talking about raceism and white privilage and such, and someone brought out a statistic along the lines of “there are 10,000 millionares in this state (Maine) that are white and none that are black” (it wasn’t that exactly… but something along that line). and everyone got all flustered about how horrible it is and how wrong that is.

I read it, and thought that sounded almost perfectly fair… not exactly fair, but really darn close. I always hear arguements and statistics like that and always have to sort of roll my eyes… they sound so good intuitively… but a moment of thought shows they aren’t exactly what they seem…

okay okay, everyone reading so far is surely about the rip me apart for being a racist troll… but hear me out…

there are a million people in maine (roughly) 98% are white .7% are black. 10,000 millionares is more or less 1% of the white people… assumeing absolute fairness so that black people have the same precent… one could expect 70 black millionares.

this means that something is not exactly equal, but for gods sakes fairness doesn’t dictate that there should be 10,000 white millionares and 10,000 black millionares!!! it dicates there should be 10,000 white and 70 black(in maine, useing 1%)!

and yes, raceism exists… but for the love of god I hate when people can’t fathom that even with absolute fairness and no racial preferance that there will be MORE white people that are CEOs and millionares and whatever else just because whites happen to exist in higher numbers.

I am totally in favor of there being 10,000 white millionares in maine and 70 black millionares… but I am NOT in favor of there being 10,000 white millionares and 10,000 black millionares! that would not be fairness!!! that would mean that black people have a higher than 100% chance of being millionares! black millionares would need to be bused in! every single black human in maine would be a millionare with a 3000 millionare deficiet!!!

that is my rant for the day, surely someone will missread it anyway… I’m forever branded a raceist on the other board since suggesting that there should be less black millionares than white millionares sounds like supreme sacrilage…

2

According to my calculations, there is, overall, a 1% chance of being a millionaire in Maine (10,000 / 1,000,000). If 0.7% of Maine residents at black, that means there are 7,000 black residents (1,000,000 x .007). So, there ought to be 70 black millionaires in Maine (0.001 x 7,000). But there aren’t. Make of this what you will.

3

Holy Social Constructs, Batman.

The thing is … Maine is not only a predominately white state, it has been a predominately white state for hundreds of years. A vast majority of black residents here are African imigrants. There just aren’t that many opportunities for immigrants of any color, but especially those that are poor to begin with, to become millionaires.

I’d say that any black millionaires in Maine, were millionaires first and then moved here. In fact, most millionaires in Maine, regardless of color were millionaires first and then moved here.

(Oh, I live in Maine, in case that wasn’t clear)

It’s not like there is that much to do in this bass-ackward state to actually earn a million dollars.

4

The problem is, you see this logic everywhere. There’s Title IX, for example. Now, I know Title IX is everyone’s favorite whipping, uh, title, but it is still an example. The idea is that the way to execute it is a quota system. Have a student body that’s 54% female? Have to make it so the proportions of the athletes is 54:46, even if that many women don’t want to play in the first place. So, if you don’t have enough interest to make that proportion to begin with, what do you do? Cut men’s programs to make this artifical proportion.

Now, the underlying problem is the fact that these people don’t have an ounce of logic or understanding of statistics. No good way to fix that than either educating them or, more easily and quickly, ignoring them.

5

(scratches head…)

Didn’t he cover that pretty thoroughly in his OP? Or am I being WHOOSED here?

6

I agree with Jack, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to become wealthy in Maine, or even to earn a very good wage in Maine. (Half of Massachusetts would be there now if there was. ;)) But it serves as a great getaway spot for rich people. I did read somewhere that there is a growing Somalian population there and I have no idea how that came about…those people probably arrived with very little to start with. I don’t know. ME just doesn’t seem like a fair example.

7

Then again, I could just ignore you, seeing as I have no idea what you’re talking about.

8

… addressed to asterion.

You guys want to slow down with the posting, huh? And give my jokes a chance? Huh? Huh?

9

I agree. I hate when this logic is applied to say, Title IX, or when people bitch about there not being enough black head coaches in sports. I think the NFL in particular is going totally overboard with rules like “teams must interview at least one minority candidate”. Why? So they can both shoot the shit about a job the guy doesn’t want to take and the team doesn’t want to offer? If the Lions want Coach Mooch or the Cowboys want Bill Parcells, why should they have to pretend they might want to hire a black guy?

Until a qualified candidate comes forward with hard evidence that the only reason they werent hired for an NFL head coaching job is because they were back, I say STFU.

10

your calculations, huh? good job there…

11

do the math again, q.e.d.

12

sure it does, I’m not talking about the whos rich for what reason, I’m just talking about minority and majority. there still could be all sorts of reasons why there are 70 black millionares… raceism… or any other sort of thing. but my rant is that people when they talk about raceism don’t talk about the 70 missing black millionares, they talk about the 10,000 missing black millionares… which would be higher than the black population in maine TOTAL.

not every state is as white as maine, but as far as I know every state has more white people than any other race and in most places its a large differance. this means that even in a color blind perfect world that there will be far far more white successful people in any way than there are black or minority ones. if you picked all the presidents totally at random out of the population… 50 white ones in a row wouldn’t be statisticly strange…

its just stuff like that… raceism exists… sometimes being a minority robs you of advantages… its just… some people don’t think about the fact that “minority” means there are fewer of you…

13

Sadly, you folks have missed the seminal issue in your analyses thusfar. The problem extant is one of opportunity outside of Maine for persons of color to become millionaires. As was observed by Jack Batty and Tee, those holding large sums of money came by them elswhere and relocated.

Therefore, the places in which the aforesaid persons amassed their fortunes need to make reparations along appropriate percentiles such that the suppressed class of non-millionaire blacks may achieve parity. This must not, however, be viewed as exculpatory for Maine, in that the state must share in the ultimate responsibility for insuring equality along all lines, and cannot allow matters of statistical inference to impede redress of causal agents.

:smack:

14

Before it even goes there, there isn’t a valid argument to support the claim that black people aren’t given the same oppurtunities or that what is taugh in history classes is dictated by white history, etc. etc. I have heard the argument (and I am just trying to head this off at the pass) that it is nearly impossible for a black person to succeed in this country because our culture is far leaning toward the white man.

But there’s something I’d like to know. how is it that boatloads of asian immigrants come to this country wih no prior exposure to our language and no knowledge of how our system works, but in less than ten years they speak the language fluently, have prosperous businesses, and their children are kicking all of our asses on college entrance exams? I think it has something to do with citizens by birth expecting a free ride because they were born here. This applies to whites and blacks. I have heard that the problem is that the social safety net of society has too many holes in it. I disagree, I feel like too many people are using that safety net as a hammock.

It is my opinion that anyone that wants to be a millionaire bad enough, can make it happen, and in this day and age no matter the color of your skin. End hijack…

15

oh no, I got what you meant. Mine was directed toward Q.E.D. But I might have been whooshed, or “whoosed” as they say in Colorado. :wink:

I think a simple “Registry of the Very Well-to-Do” is in order, maybe some will voluntarily relocate to underrepresented states.

16

Not to slow down this thread, but can someone explain to me where the “bad math” is at? I do not see any yet there are 2 references to his bad calculations.

17

I was unaware that there were “boatloads” of such immigrants who showed such a remarkable degree of success. I’m sure there are some remarkable cases out there, but boatloads?

Cite?

18

The problem’s not with the calculation, it’s with the number he listed. You express 1% as a decimal with “0.01”, not “0.001”.

19

Oops, so I did. It’s keybounce, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

20

I’m a bit rushed and didn’t read more than the first few posts, but I think there is one very logical reason why there aren’t as many black millionaires proportionally as white ones.

Blacks, in general, lack the mental faculties needed to be successful in business.

Just kidding. I think the real reason is that a great number of people who are millionaires got there because of several generations of ancestors building up and holding on to wealth. Say you start out dirt poor, manage to survive childhood, work hard, and though there are rags-to-riches stories, most likely the best you’ll hope for is to make a decent living, and maybe move into a nicer neighborhood. Your children grow up having it better than you did, maybe you had a little money to help them go to college and get them used to having food on the table every night and a roof that doesn’t leak, and they have a better chance of achieving more in their life. Out of your middle-class kids, maybe one of them gets to be pretty well-off, maybe start a successful business, send his kids to ivy league schools, and pretty much makes sure they aren’t going to be poor.

It’s possible to jump ahead in this progression, or backwards, and what people make of the life they are given depends mostly on the person and not their background, but I personally see this as a general trend in the population. This is how societies become more affluent over time in a situation where there is no vast influx of new wealth entering the system (this may change if the USA moves more towards imperialism as I’m hoping). The reason why this would reduce the number of black millionaires is pretty obvious. Most blacks in the USA were kept at the bottom of that climb to affluence up until a little less than a hundred and fifty years ago, and through most of the last century there were governmental controls that hindered the financial development of blacks, that slowed it down (there have been black millionaires since not long after slavery was abolished, but I’m looking at the general trend, not exceptions).

You have a large portion of whites in this country who come from a long line of rich people, that goes back hundreds of years. You have an even larger portion who, while not exactly rich, have a stable financial background due to may generations of accumulation of wealth, a large group of people who are in a position where it’s more likely for them to become wealthy than if they were poor. Most blacks in the USA are largely descended from slaves, and they haven’t had as much time to climb up from those beginnings.

I don’t know how long it will take for blacks to catch up. Technically, if everything else was equal they might not ever - there might always be a .1% income gap a hundred years from now, though I guess affirmative action is trying to speed that up.