Cite:
Warning PDF
The “wealthy, educated, well-connected, employed, and/or have wanted job skills.” claim doesn’t fit the facts about who does immigrate. Yet that group still tends to outperform most other source continents.
Please show where I said they were ALL arriving rich and educated? Since you can’t Feel free to retract your mischaracterization.
Well, they are certainly a religion as well. The two are not mutually exclusive. That said, I have already acknowledged that when I compared them to a selective, and self-selecting “club”.
Your list is for naturalized citizens (AFACT), not all immigrants or people coming here. More importantly, when you look at the break down for Nigeria, the country we are talking about. You see the following:
In 2011 I-94 admissions, when you exclude tourist and business travelers, were heavily skewed towards Students & Exchange visitors (7,531), and Diplomats
and Other Representatives (3,458), rather than Temporary Workers and Families (3,227). Of those workers, almost 50% were HB1 visas given to workers in specialty occupations.
Additionally, your list doesn’t refute my point. being brought over as a family member likely means your family has the resources to take care of additional people. Here is another cite to back my claims:
It goes on but I think you get will get the point.
Good miss-direction on the “all”
Not even a plurality fit your claims.
So you can hand wave away that they are more successful then other groups like “Jews” but it is not a pile of super humans from Africa. Less then 10% are admitted due to economic or employment preferences so how about you retract your false claims?
Not I somehow deleted the part about the non-immigrent visa’s being meaningless, they are not counted in the “success” levels. And the rest of your “cite” shows that is is more about education, how the family units value education and their life goals then it is about any potential genetic reason.
It’s not a misdirection, it’s highlighting the fact that you apparently can’t read so well.
Dude, your list doesn’t even address anything I have claimed. Is there a reason you think refugees and family members of citizens can’t be wealthy, educated, etc? You just found a chart, and decided to post it even though not at at all germane to the discussion. I get that you think since it says Africa on top, and Nigeria is in Africa, it must be relevant but it’s not.
I didn’t say they were admitted due to economic or employment preferences. Again, your reading comprehension problem rears its ugly head. Here is what I said that you seem to be getting in a huff about:
[QUOTE=Me]
People in those groups typically didn’t make it here unless they were more intelligent and/or creative than average in the first place. They also often don’t get to stay here unless they are wealthy, educated, well-connected, employed, and/or have wanted job skills. In all likelihood, they will raise smart successful kids that share their values and can take advantage of their parents accumulated wealth.
[/QUOTE]
Please show me how you parse that to mean what you are saying it does?
They are the usually the pool from which many eventual citizens are chosen. More importantly, that’s the only data they have that actually addresses the question.
When did I posit a genetic reason? Are you even reading what is being said here? The cite addressed the fact that many Africans come here ALREADY having been educated. Or at least more educated relative to their peers. In many of these counties, a good education is expensive, and it a likely indicator that you are not poor by their standards. More importantly, do you really think poor, uneducated Africans can, in general, afford to get to the US, apply for citizenship, demonstrate to the government they will not be on the dole, etc.? I just went this process. It’s not cheap or easy to understand. Many people retain a lawyer to fill out forms, and often need to be physically present in the US or your country during certain parts of the process. Being able to successfully demonstrate all that in addition to having the desire and wherewithal to do it is more than enough to weed out most of those with few resources, skills, or connections.
The OP misses an obvious choice: There is a dominant subculture in elite society which is substantially Jewish, and they promote their own out of group interest. Just like WASP’s, or aristocratic clans in any number of countries.
OK, you work on the obscure semi developed unsubstantiated theories on the lines of (Jews are more successful because they kick the low performers out)
Ague you point with yourself I am bored with you moving the goal post for me.
But you may want to consider that an H1-B conversion would be an employment consideration conversion as would the other types you indicated…still way below 10%
But go ahead and play with your fake numbers while expecting absolute truth for me…It is a good way to win a debate when the facts aren’t on your side.
I will stick with reality that parental expectations and involvement in education is one of the few causal forces that effect a persons educational attainment.
I already linked to a book written by two experts documenting the evidence for such a theory and backing it up with hard evidence. You have presented a table that doesn’t even show what you think it does. If you are incapable of reading the book, or understanding the theory as presented, the fault lies with you at this point.
Which, again, doesn’t disprove anything I have said. Are you able to understand basic facts and figures? I don’t get why it’s so hard for you to actually address what is being discussed rather than just flailing about, whining about irrelevant things.
You have presented ZERO relevant numbers. The fact that you cannot get that a table on Africa naturalization means nothing with regard to my statement is very telling. You have made it clear that you are hopelessly lost in this discussion so I don’t think anyone is missing out if you decide not to contribute more nonsense to this thread.
And if you had been following along, you would see that I too think those things are a factor.
In the time I have I’ll try to get to a few of the points made - there is currently a high cost to being “engaged in the jewish community” but not to having a Jewish identity which requires no engagement at all. There was no such substantial cost for most of the past hundreds of years. For most of the time period that produced these outliers Jews were either marginalized members of society or within one or two generations of having been so. Only a very few were part of the elite. Most middle class and upper middle class Jews in America trace their heritage to poverty within one to three generations, usually one or two. It was not until the WW2 and beyond era that American Jews began to emerge as solidly middle class.
Let’s just focus on the op. Again 0.2% of the world and 2% of the United States population identifies as Jewish yet orders of magitude more are present at vaious measures identified by the op. Let us accept that that number of self-identified Jews would be higher if some did not leave the pool of being so identified over the generations: converting to avoid discrimination, to help get ahead, becoming disaffected with the religion, seeing the light of another religion, marrying a non-Jewish partner and raising children without a Jewish identity, just drifting off due to the lack of membership in a synagogue, apathy, … whatever. Your hypothesis *both *requires that such losses selectively lose the least creative/intelligent/ambitious of the population and that the numbers so lost exceed the numbers who stay by an order of magnitude or so. Neither of which seem likely to be true.
Yes Arnold is American and I am sure would state he was if asked. He might state he was born in Austria but he would not state he is an Austrian. He might state that because he is not American by birth he is not elgible to run for President but that he is 100% American. What an odd position to take!
Let’s stick with the Nigerian American example. Who has been weeded out and who selected for? What are the features of the group that is in America and will those features be passed on to the next generation? Is it a group that has whatever genetic bits there are that predispose to success compared to their peers left behind (be it overall IQ, creativity, a willingness to take risks, a temperament imbued with tenacity, whatever)? Or the fact that this group shares some cultural values about the importance of education and hard work, etc.? Or both? Or do those who come to America and fail start to not call themselves Nigerian anymore? Or what? Your answer?
Okay. By what mechanism will the children of these Nigerian American be smart successful kids? (Their parents are often still poor during most of their childhood, during grad school and post docs, and early careers.) Why more so than the kids of others in the same socioeconomic groups?
So Jews in Europe from Ireland to Italy over the last hundreds of years, from those living in shtetls to those fewer raised in wealthy households, mostly only stayed Jews, by your way of thinking, if they were more intelligent or creative or wealthy or successful. (Mind you I can see the decision to remain Jewish in the face of discrimination as a sign of tenacity, but not really the smartest decision, but we’ll go with it for the sake of the discussion.) And they, and children of American Jews raised in poor neighborhoods in the 20s through the 40s, were more likely then to produce children who were intelligent or creative or wealthy or successful. How? Because of the genes of those who remained or because of the environment that intelligent/creative parents provided or because of some other cultural values they passed along or how?
Note that those who argue the genetics side for Jews make pretty much the same argument you’ve made - those who were not smart in Eastern European Jewish life did not get as much of chance to make new Jews as those who were smart. You focus on the loss of the less smart, they focus on the smart ones having larger families, but same net effect.
Now mind you I take the position that any such genetic influence are swamped by cultural ones and that that those cultural ones are becoming more common across all cultures. But I do find it interesting that your argument parallels theirs so much.
foolsguinea I was wondering when the “clannish” trope would come up! Hard to explain “10% of senators, about 25% of nobel prize winners and fields medal winners, 20% of the wealthiest 400 americans” based on helping out your own. Promoting your own can get a kid an interview but it does not make one elected to the Senate or win one a Nobel Prize. And be real, to the degree that Jews may “promote their own” they are hardly unique - as you note, so do WASPs, and a host of other people in power, of whom there are many more who are of not Jewish groups across the world. Why and how do you think Jews are so much more successful at this clannish promotion of their own than all these other groups?
Regarding the definition of being Jewish and the relative costs of it:
The elephant in the room here is anti-semitism. If we’re going to use a selectionist argument to say that being Jewish is costly, then the financial burden of practicing the religion or of maintaining a Jewish lifestyle is arguably negligible compared to the costs of enduring anti-semitic persecution, especially as you go further back in time, in which case this type of argument still works even if the Jew is question is secular.
Being Jewish could be thus explained in terms of the peacock’s feathers in sexual selection: Anti-semitism is such a burden that poor Jews, unremarkable Jews, etc. have a greater tendency to downplay their Judaism, eventually marrying into Christian families and becoming gentiles. Meanwhile Jews who happen to be prosperous, industrious, intelligent, etc. can figure out ways to succeed in spite of the persecution they suffer, and manage to pass down their traditions. The particular aspects of Jewish culture do not necessarily have to confer an advantage, although in my personal opinion, many of them do.
Furthermore, there’s a lag time factor to consider as well. For a peacock, a bad diet (and thus the inability to procure resources) becomes very rapidly apparent in the bird’s plumage. But how many generations does it take before a family starts to lose the ability to ‘keep up appearances’? Now that anti-semitism is much less of a problem than it was 200 years ago, will this mean that Jews will gradually become more mediocre?
There is selectivity in self identification. There are economic benefits to community participation, including employment, tuition costs, references, and personal contacts. This particular sub-culture definitely takes a community interest in the success of it’s members. Those who no longer participate will lose those benefits, and those who don’t recieve them are less likely to maintain their identity.
No, that book did nothing to establish a causal factor in the decline. It is something they offered it is far from accepted “fact”.
There are many potential causes, the main being that, being brutally savaged in their homeland by the Romans, they may have decided to leave their traditions for the same reasons the “pagan” tribes of Europe did, they wanted to live.
But until you can point to evidence that shows that eugenics works and that a persons success can be tied to genetics (outside of having features which limit ones socioeconomic mobility like skin color) it doesn’t matter.
To claim that they have a genetic advantage, gained from culling their ranks, requires some proof, this you have not offered.
I will take the fact that you are resorting to frothing at the mouth with personal attacks that you have nothing…40% of those are direct relations, show that there is a genetic component to education attainment and success.
Once again…personal attacks show you have nothing to your argument except for wishful thinking.
But lets go back to your original unsubstantiated false claim.
[QUOTE=brickbacon]
[/QUOTE]
Please show how in the modern world, that the orthodox church holds such a power that lets say Georgian Jews under Soviet rule could cull their heard by restricting access to education, yet as a part of US culture they end up quite educated and successful.
Plus if you think all Jews are Orthodox…well I just can’t help you there.
Your claims have not been proven, and shouting personal insults do nothing to prove they are true.
Everything points to a cultural explanation, a community that respects and values education, has a good social network and are willing to exploit both for the betterment of their children.
Don’t get me wrong…I can see the appeal to blame a form of eugenics, but the evidence is not there…how about that for one small step forward, please just show that genetics matters at in relation to the educational attainment of a child.
Yes, but those people disproportionately become less Jewish over time. By that I mean they identify less and less with Judaism until their offspring eventually become indistinguishable from gentiles.
Not true, at least if you want to go back to far enough. To quote the book:
So yes, there were lots of pressure over the past hundreds of years that still reverberates today. More importantly, many modern elements of Judaism has in effect replaced literacy as a factor that has thinned the ranks.
Which again is because the traits they valued and honed became valuable to society at large. Read about the story of Skadden and how they became a huge law firm. It’s one of many stories like that about how Jews being marginalized gained skills that fortuitously became valued later on. A lot of that is culture, a lot is just happenstance and luck to have an ostracized group welcomed to the most economically prosperous and successful country in the history of the world, and one that would soon be undergoing a movement of educational meritocracy.
Well, you could never prove such a thing, but it makes perfect sense. To analogize, the cost of getting into Harvard are fairly high in terms of study and man hours. Plenty of smart people are capable of succeeding art that school, they are just not interested in putting in the hard work to do it. Don’t you think that by it’s nature is gonna remove a lot of the untalented and unmotivated?
I would guess he considers himself an Austrian-American. Either way, would you think it’s fair to put him of a list of American Mr. Universe winners?
People who have the skills, resources, and wherewithal to get here are more likely to be successful than average.
Wealth, values, genes, and culture tend to be passed on to some extent from generation to generation.
They stayed Jewish because they didn’t mind baring the costs of maintaining a Jewish identity. Those cultural norms: education, literacy, etc. turned out to be very sought after in today’s society. They were not (as much) back then. Regardless, the costs of being Jewish leads to people with more innate intelligence and creativity and the like, sticking with it. If studying the Torah takes you an inordinate amount of time because you are stupid, you are more likely to give it up. Thus, you are left with a cohort that has facility with those things, and is likely smarter than average.
Right cause a well-researched book from two scholars who studied the issue at length hold not weight compare to the ramblings of some guy on the internet.
You don’t know what eugenics means, and you have not been following the discussion at all given that I do not hold genetics to be a relevant factor at all.
You may want to google “appeal to authority” And their book’s thesis is considered off the wall, not mainstream or accepted. This is why you can only provide one source.
But if you aren’t claiming a genetic reasons why didn’t the Protestant Reformation blow away any gains the Orthodox Jews had…
If you claim that this “culling of the ranks” is still happening today in those who are of the Jewish faith I want actual cites.
Can you offer anything but personal attacks and an appeal to the authority of one book?
So if I understand you correctly your point is trivial. You believe that Jews are over represented as defined in the op because they have some combination of genes, values, culture, and, let’s state broadly, resources, that tend to be passed on from generation to generation. That pretty much covers the whole spectrum of possible explanations.
Your belief is that such occuring was the result of self-fulfilling prophecy of requiring literacy and later of other costs of continued membership (be they financial or the price paid by discrimination against them or what have you), keeping many lower intelligence converts out and driving those who did not have those values or the capacity to meet those costs (be it the intelligence or the tenacity) to no longer identify to some extremely great degree. Others have speculated the increased fecundity of those who were successful in cognitive skill sets over hundreds of years more in European Jewish communities than in European Christian ones. Others play up the influence of percieving oneself to be an outsider and needing to prove one’s self, that insecurity drives hard work. Others play up the exposure to multiple culture’s ideas. So on.
In truth none are mutually exclusive hypotheses.
Do you understand the words you are using? Appeal to authority is not a means to dismiss the researched opinions of experts. I am not citing the book as the ultimate authority. I have presented their and my theses, and you have done nothing but say you disagree. That’s fine, but it holds absolutely no weight as you have demonstrated no understanding of the issue, nor the words you are using. Its’ quite pathetic actually.
Point out the flaws in their thinking or the discrepancies in their data.
Gains in terms of what? What exactly are you talking about?
I did already. I linked to rabbis, experts, and others talking about how the high cost of Judaism is creating an elitist Jewish community. Alternatively, you can look at the numbers. The number of Jews worldwide has declined in recent years. Some of that is natural attrition, but much is from people voluntarily leaving the flock. Here is another commentary by Rabbu Shmuley Boteach:
Is that enough for you, or do all those Rabbis and journalists not know what they are talking about?
Geez. How are is this. It’s not even as if it my inarticulateness as I basically quoted a synopsis of the book written by someone else and several others commenting on this.
More or less. There are some errors with your characterization, but I don’t feel like spending much more time outlining them.
Did I imply they were?
I did,
but here are a quick two
a) pagan’s also decliend in the roman empire during the same time.
b) the book’s claims ended at 1492…you have failed to provide any connection between then an now or to explain a better then average performance of Jews that didn’t have access to this expensive Jewish education.
Oh my…you do realize that Catholics and Methodists and Christians in general are losing members faster than the Jewish churches.
They are all polishing brass on the Titanic and ignoring the reality that as our knowledge and communication abilities increase we are becoming more secular.
Or are you making the claim that the cost of religious education Episcopal church is prohibitive?
Why is Judaism dropping at a slower rate?
Also…that bit about the genetics of your parents and success…can I assume you have decided that doesn’t exist?
The culling…you said that they could cull those they wanted to, not that people left because that couldn’t afford it…I am guessing you have decided to concede that claim was false too?
Which means nothing wrt to why the Jewish population declined.
The same mechanisms are at play. I think that was clear in my last post.
Who are you talking about, and where is the cite that shows that Jews without access to this “expensive Jewish education” are doing better than average?
Again, the same mechanisms are at play. There is a cost to being religious in today’s society. It affects Catholics, Methodists, and the like just as it does Jews.
No, I am saying that choices have costs. The Episcopal church imposes costs it’s members just as any other group does.
Because they have been dropping or stagnant in terms of numbers for a longer period of time, are starting from a lower number, and most of the least committed have already left.
Are you really calling in to question that the children don’t get most of their parents genetic attributes?
What are you talking about?