He doesn’t need offer anything because it is wildly scientifically illiterate to draw any conclusion on the matter from one datum. It’s as bad as the people who think that whether they got the flu or not tells us something useful about vaccine efficacy.
For people interested in (and capable of understanding) actual controlled studies, I previously posted a link to a collection of papers. Many show “[clear] evidence of ongoing US racism.” The Horton’s experience does not. Note that does not mean that they didn’t experience racism.
You are correct, and I apologize for getting sidetracked on this one particular incident.
There is a plethora of statistical data that has been posted in this thread that is overwhelming evidence of racial bias that has been ignored in favor of nit picking this anecdote that, IMHO, was an example of, but not proof of, racial bias.
This is a story that makes sense but it is likely untrue. In 1830 Georgia gave away the land taken from the Cherokees via lottery. The average value of the farms given away was equivalent to $60,000. At a time when almost everyone was a farmer, a free farm allowed the winner to grow more crops, eat better, and expand their businesses. However, children of the farm winners had no better outcomes in wealth, income, or literacy. Grandchildren of farm winners were no more likely to go to school or be literate.
Indian Americans are the highest earning ethnic group in America with a household income twice the US average. They have not been building wealth for long periods, but most of them are relatively recent immigrants.
That’s actually an interesting paper. Thanks for sharing.
But I think you shouldn’t gloss over the differences between this and the Homestead Act. From your link:
Once the lottery was completed, winners could immediately sell their winning draw. Unlike land distributions in many Midwestern states, there was no requirement that the recipient spend any time on the land or make any improvements whatsoever. The only requirement imposed was that winners register their claim and pay an $18 registration fee to the state.10 The land could not be immediately occupied, however, as the Cherokee Nation was engaged in legal action to fight their eviction, and the final ruling in favor of the state did not come until 1838.11 As a result, some lottery winners may have exercised their option of immediately “flipping” their property.
Under the Homestead Act, claimants were required to homestead and improve their plot. In contrast, the Georgia Land Lottery essentially gave a lot of poor folks money to spend however they wanted. We know poor folks tend to burn whatever money they are given because that’s what folks who live under scarcity do. The value of each Cherokee plot was valued at about $70,000 in today’s money. That’s a lot of money for sure. But I can see how it could be easily blown on hookers, whiskey, and a couple of bad poker hands.
If you give someone a plot of land to homestead for five years, you’re forcing them to invest on themselves. They will build themselves a house, which means they don’t have to “waste” money on rent. They only have to grow enough crops to sustain themselves, so they don’t have to work for someone else and be at their exploitative whims. Which means they can spend more time investing on themselves, improving their land, growing more crops, educating themselves, contracting out their labor on their terms, etc… They can build other houses on their land and rent them out. So you are enabling someone to create a community. Communities accumulate wealth and assets. The founders of a community become managers of its resources. They become the pillars, and their children reap the benefits of this. The opportunities flow to them before they flow to the children of the renters. This is nothing like giving a bunch of people cash money to spend however they want.
It hasn’t been easy — the racist stereotypes are far from gone. In 2017, President Donald Trump reportedly said in an Oval Office discussion that Nigerians would never go back to “their huts” once they saw America. But overt racism hasn’t stopped Nigerian-Americans from creating jobs, treating patients, teaching students and contributing to local communities in their new home, all while confidently emerging as one of the country’s most succesful immigrant communities, with a median household income of $62,351, compared to $57,617 nationally, as of 2015.
While we need to be cautious about comparing immigrants to homegrown Americans due to the reason @thorny_locust mentioned*, the above article should give the racism skeptics some pause. Most black Americans are genetically tied to folks from Nigeria and thereabout. We’re cousins! So did we black Americans just happen to inherit a the lazy, stupid gene from ancestors not fast enough to escape the slave catcher? Or could it be all the stuff that happened to our ancestors after Plymouth rock landed on them was kinda sorta important? Nigerian Americans remind us that we could have been a “model minority” if history hadn’t been so cruel.
*In addition to having some financial resources, immigrants are almost always going to be strivers. It takes a lot of courage and grit to come to a foreign country, away from family and friends, and build something. So immigrants tend to have psychological profile that isn’t representative of the native-born. The native-born are here because they don’t have any other place to be. Immigrants come here because they want something better. That alone makes them remarkable.
If you are saying that people need skin in the game in order to strive to be more successful, I agree whole-heartedly. Which is why the current method of throwing money at socioeconomic problems are all destined to fall flat.
Are there any researchers out there who have looked at people who have done what it is you are espousing they would do, broken down by race maybe?
That is neither the current method, nor the proposed method for improvement.
Unless you consider paying for education and healthcare and basic necessities and services to be “throwing money”, in which case, well, we apparently can’t solve any problems, ever.
Is having a firefighting force “throwing money” at the problem of house fires?
I’m not aware of these failed “throwing money at socioeconomic problems” solutions you’re talking about. Any successful program will require a big outlay of money–even the programs that explicitly help people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Small business/home mortgage loan, scholarships, mentoring, and job training programs all require someone to “throw some money”.
Giving cash assistance to people, especially when they are directed at women, actually can alievate poverty. Women are less likely to blow money on stupid stuff than men are. Money placed in women’s hands is more likely to go to their families and to self-investment. If the winnings from the Georgia Land Lottery had gone to female-headed households, it is possible the outcomes would have been different:
As an Indian American who didn’t grow up in a “relatively wealthy family”, I find this utterly wrong.
May I ask for a cite ?
In my experience, American companies get Europeans to come to the US more, especially if they have acquired the European compnay,
It’s extremely difficult to lay off people in Europe compared to the US, so Multinational companies just lay-off the US people and get Europeans to come here or move the jobs to Europe.
Every merger deal between a US - European company comes with EU government stipulation that they can’t lay-off Europeans. There’s no such thing in the US.
There have been actions and proposals of throwing money at some problems in our recent past but that really is unimportant to the larger solution of having skin in the game, IMO.
I can also certainly believe that women, in general, are a better resource to use when holding onto or deciding where to spend money. (Except in my household, where it would all go to shoes)
A friend of mine whose parents came here from India when he was a child tells of his father who arrived in the United States with barely a penny to his name. Not many pennies, but he did have a PhD and a job.
That job most likely was a Research Scholar at a University. Those jobs are usually “exempt” by the US department of labor.
Visit any college or University - you will find few white people pursuing advanced degrees. This is because, a college graduate (bachelors) can make 3-4 times the money than she can make in advanced degrees / research.
I have visited European Research Institutions and the diversity is poor. Part of the reason, the US is the leader in the tech industry is because of the diversity of immigrant ideas.
This is very field-specific. When I was in grad school (the early 2000s), the majority of my fellow doctoral biology students were Chinese, with the Indian students coming in second. But in my specific program (ecology), it was overwhelmingly white. Molecular/cellular physiology/microbiology research assistants were stocked by international students. My guess is that most white bio undergrads want to go into medicine, and if that doesn’t work out, they enter the job force because at that point they are ready to switch gears and be an adult. The ones who do tends towards grad school have the freedom to study whatever they want, leaving the more niche-ier areas of study that aren’t so sexy or fun. International students looking for opportunities thus seek those niche-ier areas, especially those that are staffed by fellow country folk.
