What are the differences between black and white America?

[Shodan]

@John Mace

BTW, Shodan, can we have an original source cite on that 10x difference?

Not until you come up with a better cite for anything you have claimed to date in the thread.

@you with the face

I honestly don’t know what more you want me to spell out for you. I think I’ve made myself really clear, so I can’t quite sympathize with your failure to understand.

What is it exactly that you’re not groking?

I understand what you are claiming completely. You just haven’t demonstrated any of it. You keep repeating that it is a culture of poverty that is responsible for black OOW births. I keep repeating that it does not explain the variance.

Then you say it again.

Nobody is reading anything I posted. Oh well.

Regards,
Shodan

[you_with_the_face]

@Shodan

I understand what you are claiming completely. You just haven’t demonstrated any of it. You keep repeating that it is a culture of poverty that is responsible for black OOW births.

I just diagnosed your problem: You haven’t understood one word that I’ve written.

Read threeorange’s post. Then read it again, after reading it one more time. Then shut down your browser, reo-open it, go to the SDMB GD page, click on this thread, and then read that post again. Everything that John Mace and I have been saying was rather neatly summarized in that post.

Hopefully after you follow this procedure the rays of understanding will start pouring through.

[John_Mace]

@Shodan

Not until you come up with a better cite for anything you have claimed to date in the thread.

Well, that’s a bullshit answer if ever I’ve seen one. The stuff I’ve been saying is well cited (CNN), and you are the one who started this little side discussion with a not-very-well-cited statistic. I’ll take that as an admission that you don’t have a good one. No point in continuing the discussion in that case.

[monstro]

@John Mace

But, I would add that anyone who advocates that there is such a thing as “Black Culture” and “White Culture” is opening himself up to the charge that the culture is the source of certain ills. We generally don’t have problems talking about culture being the source of certain positive aspects (Asians and education, for example).

This is true, but of course when you start thinking, you start seeing the advantage that is automatically granted to the majority.

Minority groups are evaluated in reference to the majority. Whites are used as the standard for normal. If a group is disproportionately represented in a category, this is considered note-worthy. Black people have umpty-ump more out-of-wedlock pregnancies than whites, ergo blacks are deviant. Asians score higher on standardized exams than whites; ergo Asians are exceptional.

Never is it that whites are exceptional or deviant. If white youth, for instance, are shown to drink alcohol more heavily than black youth, white people or their culture is not scrunitized, nor is ever alcoholism presented as a “white” problem. But let the situation be reversed and suddenly it’s yet another grim statistic about black people to add to the pile.

If all the minority groups can be lumped into cultural groupings–and their individual failings and successes can be linked to specific aspects of their culture–then isn’t it only fair that we do the same for the dominant group? And if we agree this is fair, then how can we reconcile the fact that members of the dominant group often do not believe they share a distinct culture?

[tomndebb]

@monstro

If all the minority groups can be lumped into cultural groupings–and their individual failings and successes can be linked to specific aspects of their culture–then isn’t it only fair that we do the same for the dominant group? And if we agree this is fair, then how can we reconcile the fact that members of the dominant group often do not believe they share a distinct culture?

You have several separate IFs preceding your THEN. I’m not sure that I agree with your first IFs - THEN, so I am not at all sure that I am going to go along with your second series, particularly since I suspct that there is a change of terms mid-discussion. I tend to go with a lot more SES than culture regarding a lot of those issues, so I am not sure that I wind up with “culture” at the end–particularly when the cultural argument might be switched in at the last minute to explain SES issues in terms of culture.

I am not claiming that culture has no bearing on any of these issues. The rates of literacy among Jewish populations and Chinese populations have a very strong cultural component. Is literacy a value of “white” culture? Not that I can see, although there are different groups within white culture that value literacy and a significant effort by social leaders over the preceding 110 years, or so, has caused it to be a value the is reinforced by many separate aspects of society.

Lacking a need or desire to blame tragedies and disruptions of some minority groups on their culture, I do not find any need to arbitrarily assign the white (shrinking) majority as having some monolithic (or even identifiable) culture.

[John_Mace]

@monstro

This is true, but of course when you start thinking, you start seeing the advantage that is automatically granted to the majority.

Minority groups are evaluated in reference to the majority. Whites are used as the standard for normal. If a group is disproportionately represented in a category, this is considered note-worthy. Black people have umpty-ump more out-of-wedlock pregnancies than whites, ergo blacks are deviant. Asians score higher on standardized exams than whites; ergo Asians are exceptional.

Good point.

Never is it that whites are exceptional or deviant. If white youth, for instance, are shown to drink alcohol more heavily than black youth, white people or their culture is not scrunitized, nor is ever alcoholism presented as a “white” problem. But let the situation be reversed and suddenly it’s yet another grim statistic about black people to add to the pile.

Clearly there is something wrong with Black culture in that Black youths do not drink enough.

If all the minority groups can be lumped into cultural groupings–and their individual failings and successes can be linked to specific aspects of their culture–then isn’t it only fair that we do the same for the dominant group? And if we agree this is fair, then how can we reconcile the fact that members of the dominant group often do not believe they share a distinct culture?

Well, like I said earlier, I think that saying there is a “Black Culture” and a “White Culture” is an oversimplification. And if you start with an oversimplified premise, it’s not surprising that you come to an oversimplified conclusion. We have a mish-mash of cultures in this country, with many commonalities and many differences. And given that Whites have been the dominant group for hundreds of years, it makes just as much sense, if not more, to blame that group for society’s ills as it does blame any other group.

Frankly, though, I don’t see all that much value in assigning blame, but rather to look for solutions to real problems. In this particular case, I think it would be foolish to ignore the fact that out-of-wedlock motherhood is more often than not a one way ticket to poverty-- no matter if you’re Black, White, or Whatever-- and that it is a real problem. If the percentages were identical for Blacks and Whites, it would still be a problem. I won’t claim to know what to do about it, though.