'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.' Discussing Race, Gender and Mobility

[SummerMadness]

'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.' Discussing Race, Gender and Mobility

We wrote last week about a sweeping new study of income inequality in the United States, and how it varies by race and gender. The data, including virtually all Americans now in their late 30s, showed how different the prospects of black boys are from those of white boys. Even when black and white boys grow up near each other, in households with similar incomes, black boys fare worse than white boys in 99 percent of America.

We heard from hundreds of readers, who wanted to know more about a variety of topics: how black girls and women fared; how people of other racial backgrounds compared; details of how the study was done and how its conclusions were drawn. Readers asked what caused inequality, and what they could do to address it in their own lives and in society.

Why is racism the only explanation for this phenomenon? Perhaps something happens to black boys while they are growing up that makes them less capable of succeeding in the U.S. economy. For instance, maybe cultural forces cause black boys — but not black girls — to focus on activities that leave them with poorer time management skills than those that boys of other races are developing. So, why do the authors take the easy way out and blame amorphous racism instead of exploring more subtle explanations that do not make the situation seem hopeless?

Actually, the easy way out is to say there must be something wrong with these black boys. It is the easy way out that Americans have historically taken in trying to explain racial disparities in our society since the founding of the United States. Either there is something wrong with our policies, or there is something wrong with black boys (or black people). Either the United States is riddled with racist policies or inferior black boys. We have all sorts of evidence of racist policies. Where is the evidence that black boys as a group have "poorer time management skills" than white boys as a group? Personal observations of individual behavior is not evidence of group behavior. Racist ideas of black inferiority is the easy way out.
— Ibram X. Kendi, History and international relations professor, American University, and director,

It's hard to conclude from this study that the problem here is "culture" for two reasons: Girls don't appear to face the same racial disparities in income as boys, and boys face these disparities whether they're raised poor or rich, by two parents or one. If culture were the primary driver here, you'd have to argue that boys and girls raised in the same family are exposed to fundamentally different cultures. You'd have to argue that rich black boys raised by married, college-educated parents in wealthy neighborhoods experience the same culture as poor black boys raised by single mothers in poor neighborhoods.
— Emily Badger, Reporter, The Upshot

 

[Willie T]

I think it is largely Culture.

My wife supervised about 50 tutors (both Black & White) who almost all reported that most of their Black pupils were afraid to appear to be trying at school and, even more damming, to actually have their peers see them get decent grades.

 

[Dave-W]

My wife supervised about 50 tutors (both Black & White) who almost all reported that most of their Black pupils were afraid to appear to be trying at school and, even more damming, to actually have their peers see them get decent grades.

Of what I have seen, that affects black boys a LOT more than black girls.

I noted a similar thing in lower class white boys back when I was in high school.

 

[Landon Caeli]

I was that way when I was growing up. I still am that way.

 

[Aldebaran]

'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.' Discussing Race, Gender and Mobility

For the people who refuse to look beyond skin color, racism is all they will ever see. It's their way of turning their own insecurities into something they can accuse other people of.

 

[SummerMadness]

I think it is largely Culture.

My wife supervised about 50 tutors (both Black & White) who almost all reported that most of their Black pupils were afraid to appear to be trying at school and, even more damming, to actually have their peers see them get decent grades.

It's not culture. If you take black people from different economic levels and family structures, a gap persists. There is also the factor that it affects one gender more than the other, so the argument just does not hold.

 

[Landon Caeli]

It's not culture. If you take black people from different economic levels and family structures, a gap persists. There is also the factor that it affects one gender more than the other, so the argument just does not hold.

It is culture. I grew up near Gary Indiana and that was the attitude of the people in general. It wasn't until I left that area, and went through a culture shock, that I realized I was permanently damaged by it. Now I reject that culture in it's entirety.

 

[Rion]

An exciting piece from "About: Blank"

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

It's not culture. If you take black people from different economic levels and family structures, a gap persists. There is also the factor that it affects one gender more than the other, so the argument just does not hold.

I think it's both. It's clear that black people are discriminated against (highlighted by the study), but on the other hand Asians earned more than whites in the study, and are also discriminated against, though not to the same level as black people.

And "culture" is much narrower than most people believe - there are sub-cultures within large groups and they also have an impact on outcomes of all sorts. SO it's possible to have "male" and "female" cultures (and sub cultures) within a racial group.

 

[TerranceL]

Why is racism the only explanation for this phenomenon?

When all you've got is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

 

[SummerMadness]

I think it's both. It's clear that black people are discriminated against (highlighted by the study), but on the other hand Asians earned more than whites in the study, and are also discriminated against, though not to the same level as black people.

And "culture" is much narrower than most people believe - there are sub-cultures within large groups and they also have an impact on outcomes of all sorts. SO it's possible to have "male" and "female" cultures (and sub cultures) within a racial group.

The problem is you need to define this culture that is gender specific and affects all people of African descent, regardless of their national origin, specific to the United States. Somehow there is a "black male culture" that someone who is Antiguan, Panamanian, Nigerian and American affect them negatively. This culture, which has yet to be defined or even studied, is nothing more than hand waving to ignore racism. This is not to say culture cannot affect outcomes, but when you an vague argument of "culture" (the new term when someone wants to pretend they don't mean race) along with arguments that fail to explain the phenomena, it is a weak argument at best. Meanwhile we have a lot of data and studies that show the continued existence of racial bias, both statistically and explicitly (e.g., police officers exchanging racist messages). We're told to treat the two arguments as if they are equal, when they clearly are not.

 

[Ana the Ist]

'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.' Discussing Race, Gender and Mobility


Why is racism the only explanation for this phenomenon? Perhaps something happens to black boys while they are growing up that makes them less capable of succeeding in the U.S. economy. For instance, maybe cultural forces cause black boys — but not black girls — to focus on activities that leave them with poorer time management skills than those that boys of other races are developing. So, why do the authors take the easy way out and blame amorphous racism instead of exploring more subtle explanations that do not make the situation seem hopeless?

Actually, the easy way out is to say there must be something wrong with these black boys. It is the easy way out that Americans have historically taken in trying to explain racial disparities in our society since the founding of the United States. Either there is something wrong with our policies, or there is something wrong with black boys (or black people). Either the United States is riddled with racist policies or inferior black boys. We have all sorts of evidence of racist policies. Where is the evidence that black boys as a group have "poorer time management skills" than white boys as a group? Personal observations of individual behavior is not evidence of group behavior. Racist ideas of black inferiority is the easy way out.
— Ibram X. Kendi, History and international relations professor, American University, and director,

Actually, declaring "racism" is the easy way out...since it requires the group with the problem to do no serious analysis of themselves, and how they might be contributing to the problem...and instead they blame everyone else.

As for racist policies...what are they? I've seen policies that tell schools to give lower income black boys extra credit when applying to colleges. I've seen employers like Google tell recruiters not to hire white applicants, but to push forward black, female, and latino applicants.

I've yet to see a company or government policy in this day and age that explicitly discriminates against blacks.

It's hard to conclude from this study that the problem here is "culture" for two reasons: Girls don't appear to face the same racial disparities in income as boys, and boys face these disparities whether they're raised poor or rich, by two parents or one. If culture were the primary driver here, you'd have to argue that boys and girls raised in the same family are exposed to fundamentally different cultures. You'd have to argue that rich black boys raised by married, college-educated parents in wealthy neighborhoods experience the same culture as poor black boys raised by single mothers in poor neighborhoods.
— Emily Badger, Reporter, The Upshot

What's wrong with saying that? It's certainly no less reasonable than saying that racism affects black boys...but somehow it doesn't affect black girls.

The left has been claiming for years that different cultural and social pressures affect boys and girls differently. They call the negative effects of this "toxic masculinity. Ideas that boys resort to violence to solve their problems more often, they don't respond emotionally the same way as girls, they don't ask for help because it's a sign of weakness...

Is it so hard to believe that maybe there's racial differences to toxic masculinity as well? Maybe certain toxic traits show up more often in blacks than they do Asians? Maybe those traits are more pronounced in blacks than they are whites?

It's astounding to me that those are unrealistic to people, but the idea that every teacher, doctor, nurse, cop, judge, politician, uber driver, and every other group that's been accused over the years must be secretly racist against blacks...but that racism disappears when a black person has a vagina. The same goes for these supposedly racist policies....they stop being racist when they're applied to a black woman.

The one upside to this article is that the NYT still has readers with brains...who saw the resuts of this study and realized the conclusions about racism must be wrong and there are plenty of other explanations. Of course, the people who've been pushing this racism narrative for so many years aren't going to admit they're wrong this whole time...so all they can say is that racism must be more complex than they previously realized.

 

[Landon Caeli]

The problem is you need to define this culture that is gender specific and affects all people of African descent, regardless of their national origin, specific to the United States. Somehow there is a "black male culture" that someone who is Antiguan, Panamanian, Nigerian and American affect them negatively. This culture, which has yet to be defined or even studied, is nothing more than hand waving to ignore racism. This is not to say culture cannot affect outcomes, but when you an vague argument of "culture" (the new term when someone wants to pretend they don't mean race) along with arguments that fail to explain the phenomena, it is a weak argument at best. Meanwhile we have a lot of data and studies that show the continued existence of racial bias, both statistically and explicitly (e.g., police officers exchanging racist messages). We're told to treat the two arguments as if they are equal, when they clearly are not.

While I disagree with the term "Cultural Imaginary" (I think it's real), it is rather difficult to put a finger on the concept in material ways.

Cultural imaginary - Wikiversity

"Benedict Anderson sees the nation as an ‘imagined community’; it is imagined because most members of said community will never meet or hear from other members of this community, yet each has in their minds the image of their communion [2]. It is this notion of the nation as a community that gives culture, and the production of culture, it’s meaning amongst people with a sense of collectiveness."

...Just something to think about regardless of anyone's position.

 

[Landon Caeli]

Somehow there is a "black male culture" that someone who is Antiguan, Panamanian, Nigerian and American affect them negatively. This culture, which has yet to be defined or even studied, is nothing more than hand waving to ignore racism.

Referring to Alicia Camacho from the Wikiversity link; another paradigm worth exploring:

"She sees culture as “[not] merely a detached set of ideas but rather the means by which [people] work through their connections… and create a sense of relatedness to a particular time, place, and condition” [5]. Because of the loss of sense of belonging, the cultural imaginary is one that helps define identity and meaning in a setting of neither belonging “here nor there”.

 

[Tom 1]

'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.' Discussing Race, Gender and Mobility


Why is racism the only explanation for this phenomenon? Perhaps something happens to black boys while they are growing up that makes them less capable of succeeding in the U.S. economy. For instance, maybe cultural forces cause black boys — but not black girls — to focus on activities that leave them with poorer time management skills than those that boys of other races are developing. So, why do the authors take the easy way out and blame amorphous racism instead of exploring more subtle explanations that do not make the situation seem hopeless?

Actually, the easy way out is to say there must be something wrong with these black boys. It is the easy way out that Americans have historically taken in trying to explain racial disparities in our society since the founding of the United States. Either there is something wrong with our policies, or there is something wrong with black boys (or black people). Either the United States is riddled with racist policies or inferior black boys. We have all sorts of evidence of racist policies. Where is the evidence that black boys as a group have "poorer time management skills" than white boys as a group? Personal observations of individual behavior is not evidence of group behavior. Racist ideas of black inferiority is the easy way out.
— Ibram X. Kendi, History and international relations professor, American University, and director,

It's hard to conclude from this study that the problem here is "culture" for two reasons: Girls don't appear to face the same racial disparities in income as boys, and boys face these disparities whether they're raised poor or rich, by two parents or one. If culture were the primary driver here, you'd have to argue that boys and girls raised in the same family are exposed to fundamentally different cultures. You'd have to argue that rich black boys raised by married, college-educated parents in wealthy neighborhoods experience the same culture as poor black boys raised by single mothers in poor neighborhoods.
— Emily Badger, Reporter, The Upshot

Where/when I went to school things like being good in a fight were more valued by the majority than academic success - that was an element of culture that affected most boys but very few girls.

 

[SummerMadness]

Referring to Alicia Camacho from the Wikiversity link; another paradigm worth exploring:

"She sees culture as “[not] merely a detached set of ideas but rather the means by which [people] work through their connections… and create a sense of relatedness to a particular time, place, and condition” [5]. Because of the loss of sense of belonging, the cultural imaginary is one that helps define identity and meaning in a setting of neither belonging “here nor there”.

Again, this is handwaving and arguing that people of different cultural/ethnic identities share a single culture because they are black. The main problem is the assumption that black means all American; however, much like you see differences in Norh American, Eastern European, Australian, etc., there is a distinction between different groups in the African diaspora.

There is also the fact that the study saw a distinction between Asians born in America and Asians born outside the United States, it's not a "black male culture", but there is a cultural phenomena in the United Stares that affects black males.

 

[Monad_Wisdom]

Its interesting people have stated culture, I just wanted to add the following.

A close friend works in social care and it involves visiting schools all over here in the UK and visits many schools weekly, she says there is most certainly an issue in general with a sizeable majority of young black males in the area of behaviour in particular. This is more noteable at comprehensive secondary level (kind of like lower tier high school) than at Grammar school level (higher tier High School). However, the girls at comprehensive secondary level are not like this. Also, the girls at Grammar school level are extremely polite, articulate and want to learn.

She puts it down to perhaps an overt macho culture of sorts, extremely prevelant in the lives of young black males be that a combination from relatives, popular black music and general environmental and external influences where succeeding in anything other than showing strong masculinity is considered a weakness. Its hard to say if economic factors play a part, as she knows of many wealthy families where the boys have engaged in dysfucntional level which have resulted in imprisonment or unfortunately for some, being victim of gang violence even when they lived in rich areas with zero gang activity.

Its a shock to me as I considered black families to have a greater degree of exposure to faith than many other ethnicities and so would have thought the boys would be grounded in faith.

She said that every ethnicity has its issue demographic, some lower class white children can be problematic if from dysfunctional families, if she goes in to Asian Muslim majority schools the boys will not listen to a female teacher at all and have general zero respect for women. However, she says the saddest part for young black males is that they are the ones more likely to fall victim to stabbings and/or gun crime which is awful for the young life lost and for the families, perhaps in a way equally as sad is it is far more often than not by other young black males.

My wife works in education and she says simply there are children that want to learn and many that dont see its worth, she puts it down to economic conditions and environmental influences. However, she is great her job and says that she will adapt to her class and actually all the kids do end up getting involved and seem excited, so may be teaching methods should also be questioned at times and how children and teenagers are engaged in the classroom which could have an affect on their lives outside the classroom. However, there are issues in society in general that do affect many children, especially from poorer communities, how do these issues get resolved?

Whatever the issue and resolution, I can only pray that all lives see the light in the end.

 

[SummerMadness]

I'll take into consideration the words of Malcolm Gladwell that echos something we often see in Caribbean/African immigrant communities, they make more money than African Americans.

Black Like Them

I grew up in Canada, in a little farming town an hour and a half outside of Toronto. My father teaches mathematics at a nearby university, and my mother is a therapist. For many years, she was the only black person in town, but I cannot remember wondering or worrying, or even thinking, about this fact. Back then, color meant only good things. It meant my cousins in Jamaica. It meant the graduate students from Africa and India my father would bring home from the university...

But things changed when I left for Toronto to attend college. This was during the early nineteen-eighties, when West Indians were immigrating to Canada in droves, and Toronto had become second only to New York as the Jamaican expatriates' capital in North America. At school, in the dining hall, I was served by Jamaicans. The infamous Jane-Finch projects, in northern Toronto, were considered the Jamaican projects. The drug trade then taking off was said to be the Jamaican drug trade. In the popular imagination, Jamaicans were--and are--welfare queens and gun-toting gangsters and dissolute youths. In Ontario, blacks accused of crimes are released by the police eighteen per cent of the time; whites are released twenty-nine per cent of the time. In drug-trafficking and importing cases, blacks are twenty-seven times as likely as whites to be jailed before their trial takes place, and twenty times as likely to be imprisoned on drug-possession charges.

After I had moved to the United States, I puzzled over this seeming contradiction--how West Indians celebrated in New York for their industry and drive could represent, just five hundred miles northwest, crime and dissipation. Didn't Torontonians see what was special and different in West Indian culture? But that was a naïve question. The West Indians were the first significant brush with blackness that white, smug, comfortable Torontonians had ever had. They had no bad blacks to contrast with the newcomers, no African-Americans to serve as a safety valve for their prejudices, no way to perform America's crude racial triage.

Not long ago, I sat in a coffee shop with someone I knew vaguely from college, who, like me, had moved to New York from Toronto. He began to speak of the threat that he felt Toronto now faced. It was the Jamaicans, he said. They were a bad seed. He was, of course, oblivious of my background. I said nothing, though, and he launched into a long explanation of how, in slave times, Jamaica was the island where all the most troublesome and obstreperous slaves were sent, and how that accounted for their particularly nasty disposition today.

I have told that story many times since, usually as a joke, because it was funny in an appalling way--particularly when I informed him much, much later that my mother was Jamaican. I tell the story that way because otherwise it is too painful. There must be people in Toronto just like Rosie and Noel, with the same attitudes and aspirations, who want to live in a neighborhood as nice as Argyle Avenue, who want to build a new garage and renovate their basement and set up their own business downstairs. But it is not completely up to them, is it? What has happened to Jamaicans in Toronto is proof that what has happened to Jamaicans here is not the end of racism, or even the beginning of the end of racism, but an accident of history and geography. In America, there is someone else to despise. In Canada, there is not. In the new racism, as in the old, somebody always has to [occupy the lowest rung of the racial hierarchy]

And if we look at the people considered the lowest rung of the racial hierarchy in other countries, you see many of the same problems and stereotypes of those groups seen in the United States.

But despite being more educated:
African immigrants are more educated than most — including people born in U.S.

...the influx includes many immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who are highly skilled professionals.

Batalova's research found that of the 1.4 million who are 25 and older, 41% have a bachelor's degree, compared with 30% of all immigrants and 32% of the U.S.-born population. Of the 19,000 U.S. immigrants from Norway — a country Trump reportedly told lawmakers is a good source of immigrants — 38% have college educations.

The New American Economy study found that 1 in 3 of these undergraduate degrees were focused on science, technology, engineering and math — "training heavily in demand by today's employers."

That report also found that African immigrants were significantly more likely to have graduate degrees. A total of 16% had a master's degree, medical degree, law degree or a doctorate, compared with 11% of the U.S.-born population, Lim said.

African immigrants were more than twice as likely than the U.S. population overall to work in healthcare, Lim said. There are more than 32,500 nursing, psychiatric or home health aides, more than 46,000 registered nurses and more than 15,700 doctors and surgeons.

And often having high proficiency English (i.e., it is not because of a language barrier):
Key facts about black immigrants in the U.S.

When compared with other immigrant groups, blacks are more likely to be U.S. citizens or to be proficient English speakers.

Roughly six-in-ten foreign-born blacks (58%) are U.S. citizens, compared with 49% of immigrants overall. And given that many black immigrants are from English-speaking nations, black immigrants ages 5 and older are also more likely than the overall immigrant population to be proficient English speakers (74% vs. 51%).

They still end up with lower salaries:
African Immigrants: Immigrating into A Racial Wealth Divide

African immigrants are most often some of the most highly educated from their native countries and have higher educational attainment levels than most native-born Americans. Over 40% of African immigrants have completed four or more years of college. For such a highly educated and predominately English-speaking community, one would expect economic results far stronger than have been documented thus far. In 2007, African immigrants’ median income, based on 2007 data, was a mere $44,000 compared to a national median income of $50,740. To put this in perspective, according to the American Community Survey, from 2010-2014 only 20% of White Americans had a bachelor’s degree but had a median salary of almost $60,000. The 2009 American Community Survey also shows, that a greater share of African immigrants lived in a household with an annual income below the federal poverty line at 18.5% than the native- born Americans (13.6%) and immigrants overall at 17.3% despite their higher educational levels. Much more work must be done to examine in depth how African immigrants fit into the American racial wealth divide, but for now it is important to note that even African’s immigrating from another continent do not escape the long history and contemporary reality of Black Americans having a lower socio-economic status.

It's not simply "culture."

 

[Monad_Wisdom]

I'll take into consideration the words of Malcolm Gladwell that echos something we often see in Caribbean/African immigrant communities, they make more money than African Americans.

Black Like Them


And if we look at the people considered the lowest rung of the racial hierarchy in other countries, you see many of the same problems and stereotypes of those groups seen in the United States.

But despite being more educated:
African immigrants are more educated than most — including people born in U.S.


And often having high proficiency English (i.e., it is not because of a language barrier):
Key facts about black immigrants in the U.S.


They still end up with lower salaries:
African Immigrants: Immigrating into A Racial Wealth Divide


It's not simply "culture."

The last part needs widening, what are the African immigrants studying during the four years in college? Do they have the same kind of bachelors degrees as the whites? Are they going for the high level jobs or do whites study subjects that can lead in to high paying jobs? Stats can be deceiving.

However, I do agree with the rest of your post but I think society has been engineered that there will always be a divide of some kind. While we live in a world of millionaires and billionaires, what else can we expect?

Although the main focus is on racial divide, I believe in America there are 17 million whites in poverty, 11 million blacks and 7 million latinos when it is broken down. Sure we can go on percentages, but the reality is there are many people across different races suffering in poverty. Pray for all those across the world struggling in a world filled with millionaires and billionaires.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Again, this is handwaving and arguing that people of different cultural/ethnic identities share a single culture because they are black. The main problem is the assumption that black means all American; however, much like you see differences in Norh American, Eastern European, Australian, etc., there is a distinction between different groups in the African diaspora.

There is also the fact that the study saw a distinction between Asians born in America and Asians born outside the United States, it's not a "black male culture", but there is a cultural phenomena in the United Stares that affects black males.

[urlhttps://www.christianforums.com/threads/city-to-pay-muslim-woman-85g-after-nypd-took-her-hijab.8056063/]Remember who you're arguing with[/url]. (not worth it)

Its interesting people have stated culture, I just wanted to add the following.

A close friend works in social care and it involves visiting schools all over here in the UK and visits many schools weekly, she says there is most certainly an issue in general with a sizeable majority of young black males in the area of behaviour in particular. This is more noteable at comprehensive secondary level (kind of like lower tier high school) than at Grammar school level (higher tier High School). However, the girls at comprehensive secondary level are not like this. Also, the girls at Grammar school level are extremely polite, articulate and want to learn.

She puts it down to perhaps an overt macho culture of sorts, extremely prevelant in the lives of young black males be that a combination from relatives, popular black music and general environmental and external influences where succeeding in anything other than showing strong masculinity is considered a weakness. Its hard to say if economic factors play a part, as she knows of many wealthy families where the boys have engaged in dysfucntional level which have resulted in imprisonment or unfortunately for some, being victim of gang violence even when they lived in rich areas with zero gang activity.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this is true, it would suggest an even greater need for affirmative action-like policies that would bump up the numbers of AA men working in non-macho jobs, so as to provide a visible example for those boys.