The best article I've read on race and economics in... well, ever

[Brock Beauchamp]

Truly outstanding stuff that takes a hammer to many of our preconceived notions and bludgeons us over the head.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html

[Craig Arko]

Will have to wait until I can get around the paywall to read this; but on your recommendation it will be read.

 

Here’s some additional reading on the subject of race (I have not read these):

 

https://www.bustle.com/p/10-books-about-race-to-read-instead-of-asking-a-person-of-color-to-explain-things-to-you-8548796

 

And here is another bludgeon.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/17/the-crisis-in-modern-masculinity

[gunnarthor]

I've listened to Jeff Robinson speak on race issues a couple times. He's fantastic. He's the ACLU's racial justice expert and has a heck of a compelling past. This video is long but he's a darn good speaker.  

[TheLeviathan]

Great read, thanks for sharing.

[nicksaviking]

Just speaking for myself, it's hard to be a good parent. I get home from work and just want to relax; I want time for myself. If cultural examples suggest being a good father isn't common I can see the trap that people fall into to do nothing.

[TheLeviathan]

Parenting is also much different (harder) because we are now largely two income households where both adults work too much.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Parenting is also much different (harder) because we are now largely two income households where both adults work too much.

Yep, thankfully my wife and I were able to avoid a dual-work household. She's invested in her career - much more so than me, anyway - so I haven't had a full-time job in over a year.

 

But so few can afford that kind of luxury in today's world. I think a few more could do it - we chose a cheaper house, we don't have cable, only had one car for a couple of years, etc - but still, it's a pretty high bar to clear nowadays.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

And here is another bludgeon.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/17/the-crisis-in-modern-masculinity

 

I think this author needs to rethink his or her own stereotypes. It speaks to people that so few of us even know, yet everyone seems to think is a majority. For all the consternation around racism and the presumptions it brings, I'm a bit perplexed how people cannot see their own hypocrisy in it. Not saying these folks don't exist, they certainly do... but I'm so tired of the hypocrisy in not seeing our own contributions to the problem.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Truly outstanding stuff that takes a hammer to many of our preconceived notions and bludgeons us over the head.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html

 

This was a very good read, and a sobering one I might add. I'd be very interested in how they quantified similar educations and what not. Did they use a broad scope of say (under grad degree, grad degree, etc.) or did they go narrow in to fields of choice? If they went narrow, this say a lot (and not in a good way) about corporate America and how it's exploiting income inequality. 

 

I liked that they reached into the breakdown of the family structure. It would be interesting to see the linkage in those that dropped a class or more, per se, and their family structure to those who maintained or improved. Like it or not, it seems that the lack of a strong family unit directly ties to poverty, and poverty seems to breed poverty. That's not really a racial thing, though blacks are without question affected by that far more than whites. I'm not sure our welfare state did them any favors either. 

 

The incarceration statistics were very interesting as well. Our legal system certainly doesn't help the poor that much, but blacks in the 1% have the same incarceration rate as whites whose families make 36k (per the study)... Those in the 1% certainly have access to legal resources. I'd be curious if the types of crimes they are convicted of are similar, or if that distribution is much different. Making a Murderer showed us just how many Americans don't understand the definition of reasonable doubt. That's probably not a good combination once you factor things like unconscious bias into the mix. After all, that plays into the "I think s/he did it" idea that seems to pervade the modern jury. Facts be damned. 

 

On the flip side, Asians are doing better than whites, and Hispanics aren't that far behind. This doesn't speak to racism. I think it speaks to something else. The black population is mimicking that of the Native Americans. I don't see much hope for either community. If it's racism, why are Asians unaffected? Why do Hispanics seem to be able to move up classes more often?

 

I think this really speaks to the idea that this a very complex problem. 

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Yep, thankfully my wife and I were able to avoid a dual-work household. She's invested in her career - much more so than me, anyway - so I haven't had a full-time job in over a year.

 

But so few can afford that kind of luxury in today's world. I think a few more could do it - we chose a cheaper house, we don't have cable, only had one car for a couple of years, etc - but still, it's a pretty high bar to clear nowadays.

 

 

This is the insidious side of inflation. Incomes aren't rising as fast as expenses. 50 years ago, dual income was something that wasn't needed. Today it is, just to get by. I remind my kids of the fact that their margin for error is much slimmer than my own. My wife and I would likely fall into that "upper middle class" ranking, and I'm looking at what my kids will have to do to get out on the right foot and realize that they will be forced to do the dual income thing, but even then, it won't take many missteps for them to find themselves in a world of hurt. 

 

On the poverty side of things, I cannot imagine how that would work. This isn't even about minimum wage. Wages aren't rising as fast as expenses because the real side effects to inflation are heavily hidden. Dual incomes don't even work well in those scenarios, and they won't as long as expenses continue to rise faster than incomes. 

[jimmer]

Yep, thankfully my wife and I were able to avoid a dual-work household. She's invested in her career - much more so than me, anyway - so I haven't had a full-time job in over a year.

 

But so few can afford that kind of luxury in today's world. I think a few more could do it - we chose a cheaper house, we don't have cable, only had one car for a couple of years, etc - but still, it's a pretty high bar to clear nowadays.

yeah, my wife works between 50 and 60 hours a week. In the 16 years we have been together, she has only worked full time for five of those years and a couple years she worked from home.

 

It's been helpful in the raising kids department, especially with all the deployments I had in the military.

[TheLeviathan]

Yep, thankfully my wife and I were able to avoid a dual-work household. She's invested in her career - much more so than me, anyway - so I haven't had a full-time job in over a year.

 

But so few can afford that kind of luxury in today's world. I think a few more could do it - we chose a cheaper house, we don't have cable, only had one car for a couple of years, etc - but still, it's a pretty high bar to clear nowadays.

We are dual income but two children is enough in this economy to force one person to stay home, which then causes strain on the single income.

 

So many families are strapped with this and that's the good scenario. For lower incomes, as many minority families are stuck, are basically forced into poverty to have a family.

 

Couple that with low wages,high student loans, and high medical costs and its no wonder our economy is one issue from collapse all the time. So many families are one bad event (medical, car wreck, unplanned family change, AC/furnace break, etc) from collapse themselves.

 

And for black kids, their outlook is bleak from the get go.

[jimmer]

 

yeah, my wife works between 50 and 60 hours a week. In the 16 years we have been together, she has only worked full time for five of those years and a couple years she worked from home.

It's been helpful in the raising kids department, especially with all the deployments I had in the military.

I totally wrote that wrong (and I'm guessing in context of the rest of my post some of you guessed that) I meant 50-60 hours a pay period (two week pay period) or 25-30 hours a week.

[Brock Beauchamp]

This was a very good read, and a sobering one I might add. I'd be very interested in how they quantified similar educations and what not. Did they use a broad scope of say (under grad degree, grad degree, etc.) or did they go narrow in to fields of choice? If they went narrow, this say a lot (and not in a good way) about corporate America and how it's exploiting income inequality.

 

I liked that they reached into the breakdown of the family structure. It would be interesting to see the linkage in those that dropped a class or more, per se, and their family structure to those who maintained or improved. Like it or not, it seems that the lack of a strong family unit directly ties to poverty, and poverty seems to breed poverty. That's not really a racial thing, though blacks are without question affected by that far more than whites. I'm not sure our welfare state did them any favors either.

 

The incarceration statistics were very interesting as well. Our legal system certainly doesn't help the poor that much, but blacks in the 1% have the same incarceration rate as whites whose families make 36k (per the study)... Those in the 1% certainly have access to legal resources. I'd be curious if the types of crimes they are convicted of are similar, or if that distribution is much different. Making a Murderer showed us just how many Americans don't understand the definition of reasonable doubt. That's probably not a good combination once you factor things like unconscious bias into the mix. After all, that plays into the "I think s/he did it" idea that seems to pervade the modern jury. Facts be damned.

 

On the flip side, Asians are doing better than whites, and Hispanics aren't that far behind. This doesn't speak to racism. I think it speaks to something else. The black population is mimicking that of the Native Americans. I don't see much hope for either community. If it's racism, why are Asians unaffected? Why do Hispanics seem to be able to move up classes more often?

 

I think this really speaks to the idea that this a very complex problem.

While I agree with some of what you’re saying, don’t fall into the trap of “Asians do okay so racism isn’t the driving component” because that makes the HUGE assumption that white society views all races the same.

 

Only one race was brought over on boats and sold. Only one race was literally walked to death so they could be shoved onto the most undesirable pieces of land in the nation.

 

There are certainly cultural aspects to various successes/failures but white society's dislike of other races is not a flat line.

[ashbury]

Only one race was brought over on boats and sold. ...

Tacoma riot of 1885

 

Chinese massacre of 1871

 

The Trout Creek Outrage of 1876

 

Things were pretty ugly for Asian people in our Old West.

 

Not equivalent to slavery in the South, perhaps, but cut from the same post-Civil War cloth as Jim Crow.

 

And then there were the camps in California during WWII...

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Tacoma riot of 1885

 

Chinese massacre of 1871

 

The Trout Creek Outrage of 1876

 

Things were pretty ugly for Asian people in our Old West.

 

Not equivalent to slavery in the South, perhaps, but cut from the same post-Civil War cloth as Jim Crow.

 

And then there were the camps in California during WWII...

I never said white society wasn't ugly toward other races but they only erased the identity of and permanently relocated two races: Africans and Native Americans. Unsurprisingly, those two races are the worst off in modern America. Their cultural dissection was very intentional and systematic; very different than the examples of mob violence or typical "immigrant hate" you listed above. Jim Crow wasn't only mob violence, it was a set of laws targeted to continue the oppression of a set of people and they lasted damned near a century.

 

The Japanese camps were certainly a blight on our history and a terrible act but it was temporary and lasted only half a decade; we were at war with their ancestral home and as a nation we regretted the decision almost immediately. There's no comparison to be found in what we did to other races.

 

If we handled the Japanese the same way we did the Native Americans, for example, we would have marched the Japanese 1,000 miles to the camps, starved half of them on the way, also rounded up the Chinese who didn't do a damned thing and were on our side in the war, and maybe handed out smallpox blankets to the Koreans just to see what would happen.

[nicksaviking]

 

Tacoma riot of 1885

 

Chinese massacre of 1871

 

The Trout Creek Outrage of 1876

 

Things were pretty ugly for Asian people in our Old West.

 

Not equivalent to slavery in the South, perhaps, but cut from the same post-Civil War cloth as Jim Crow.

 

And then there were the camps in California during WWII...

 

Yeah, Asians had it rough for a long time, many still do surely.

 

No one needs to get into stereotypes here but I would bet that if Americans were polled today (unethically) asking them to rank the multitude of races or ethnicities from most liked to least liked the results would match up with the overall economic and societal success of those same races.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Yeah, Asians had it rough for a long time, many still do surely.

 

No one needs to get into stereotypes here but I would bet that if Americans were polled today (unethically) asking them to rank the multitude of races or ethnicities from most liked to least liked the results would match up with the overall economic and societal success of those same races.

Yeah, exactly. When it comes to Native Americans or black people, you won't hear white people describe them as "hard-working", "good at math", "quiet", or other positive/neutral traits. Almost universally, the stereotypes would be far more negative.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

While I agree with some of what you’re saying, don’t fall into the trap of “Asians do okay so racism isn’t the driving component” because that makes the HUGE assumption that white society views all races the same.

Only one race was brought over on boats and sold. Only one race was literally walked to death so they could be shoved onto the most undesirable pieces of land in the nation.

There are certainly cultural aspects to various successes/failures but white society's dislike of other races is not a flat line.

 

I agree with you that there's more to it. I am just pointing out that I don't think the problems here are as simple as whites hating blacks.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I agree with you that there's more to it. I am just pointing out that I don't think the problems here are as simple as whites hating blacks.

No, the father section of the article clearly shows that there are issues that extend past pure racism (though, IMO, most of the issues have clearly racist roots and/or influences, such as the imprisonment rate being a contributor to the lack of neighborhood fathers).

 

The entire thing is a spider web but I think "Racism" is the center of that web. That doesn't mean racism is entire reason for the rest of the web, but it's influencing everything in one way or another.

[nicksaviking]

 

I agree with you that there's more to it. I am just pointing out that I don't think the problems here are as simple as whites hating blacks.

 

Maybe not directly or even intentionally, but as I said in my opinion above, I'll bet a ranking of races (terrible idea) would match up with the races overall success. That would't be a coincidence.

 

I couldn't say which direction that correlation is running, but typically the only people with power enough to make the needed prejudicial changes are those in charge and white people happen to be in charge.

[ashbury]

While I agree with some of what you’re saying, don’t fall into the trap of “Asians do okay so racism isn’t the driving component” because that makes the HUGE assumption that white society views all races the same.

 

Only one race was brought over on boats and sold. Only one race was literally walked to death so they could be shoved onto the most undesirable pieces of land in the nation.

 

There are certainly cultural aspects to various successes/failures but white society's dislike of other races is not a flat line.

Glutton for punishment that I am, I'll take another crack at what I was trying to get at.

 

While the methods used were perhaps a bit more sly, Chinese laborers (and smatterings of other Asians) were certainly brought over on boats under false pretenses, and once the laborers were here they had little choice but to do what they were told, or die. The law as enforced in California gave them no protection, and the difference to being a slave was pretty much nil.

 

Labor camps involved forced marches that, while purposely not fatal, served to keep weary malcontents in line. There's a fun hiking trail near where I used to live at Tahoe, called the Chinese Downhill^*, which is a good workout for someone like me who gets to take a nap after doing it. But was a 1000 foot elevation gain for those laborers to go home each night to sleep after their hard day of work building flumes for the nearby silver mines, since they weren't permitted to camp anywhere near the white population - in addition to the effort, weather conditions get rapidly worse every 1000 feet up.

 

I'm not Chinese, but I speculate your "only one race" paragraph might grate, if read by an activist person of Chinese descent.

 

The article links I previously provided were to offer evidence that those in power weren't just kidding around, if those Asian immigrants started getting too noisy about asserting their theoretical rights.

 

No, this wasn't literal slavery enshrined in a Constitution, nor a Trail of Tears for a conquered indigenous population - different era for one thing. But I think you are falling into a converse trap of looking at the current status of Asians here and believing there is nothing to learn from, nor to compare/contrast. Chinese men wound up dead under suspicious circumstances on the West Coast much as black men in the South did at about the same time. Fires broke out as manifest warnings to local populaces, in both locales. These things stopped happening after a while for Asians, and (as we know) continue today for Blacks.

 

I can think of a few reasons why the enmity toward Asians mostly faded in ways that haven't happened for African-Americans and Native Americans, but I think it's a mistake to simply dismiss the difference out of hand.

 

^{* _{The spoilsport USFS gave the trail a more PC name of Tyrolean Downhill, in honor of the destination neighborhood, when the trail was adopted for official maintenance, thereby obscuring what I think is an historically important story.}}

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Glutton for punishment that I am, I'll take another crack at what I was trying to get at.

 

While the methods used were perhaps a bit more sly, Chinese laborers (and smatterings of other Asians) were certainly brought over on boats under false pretenses, and once the laborers were here they had little choice but to do what they were told, or die. The law as enforced in California gave them no protection, and the difference to being a slave was pretty much nil.

 

Labor camps involved forced marches that, while purposely not fatal, served to keep weary malcontents in line. There's a fun hiking trail near where I used to live at Tahoe, called the Chinese Downhill^*, which is a good workout for someone like me who gets to take a nap after doing it. But was a 1000 foot elevation gain for those laborers to go home each night to sleep after their hard day of work building flumes for the nearby silver mines, since they weren't permitted to camp anywhere near the white population - in addition to the effort, weather conditions get rapidly worse every 1000 feet up.

 

I'm not Chinese, but I speculate your "only one race" paragraph might grate, if read by an activist person of Chinese descent.

 

The article links I previously provided were to offer evidence that those in power weren't just kidding around, if those Asian immigrants started getting too noisy about asserting their theoretical rights.

 

No, this wasn't literal slavery enshrined in a Constitution, nor a Trail of Tears for a conquered indigenous population - different era for one thing. But I think you are falling into a converse trap of looking at the current status of Asians here and believing there is nothing to learn from, nor to compare/contrast. Chinese men wound up dead under suspicious circumstances on the West Coast much as black men in the South did at about the same time. Fires broke out as manifest warnings to local populaces, in both locales. These things stopped happening after a while for Asians, and (as we know) continue today for Blacks.

 

I can think of a few reasons why the enmity toward Asians mostly faded in ways that haven't happened for African-Americans and Native Americans, but I think it's a mistake to simply dismiss the difference out of hand.

 

^{* _{The spoilsport USFS gave the trail a more PC name of Tyrolean Downhill, in honor of the destination neighborhood, when the trail was adopted for official maintenance, thereby obscuring what I think is an historically important story.}}

Fair enough. I'm not trying to diminish what was done to Asians, particularly the Chinese, I'm only pointing out that (as you said) the eras were different (black people were brought over much earlier, in larger numbers, and there was were many more laws systemically put in place to keep them as an underclass, if not outright slaves) and that, maybe in part to the differences in eras, that mistreatment of Asians largely dissipated in time while the oppression of the black community was still enshrined in actual law just 55 years ago. My own father was in his mid-20s when the final blow was struck against Jim Crow.

 

It's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around that last statement, actually. Wow. What a depressing thing to say.

[PseudoSABR]

I think the distinction is not so much a matter of type or kind, but one of scale. 

 

Nearly all of the African Americans and Native Americans living today descended from those atrocities.  I'm not sure the same is true of Asian Americans living today. 

[ashbury]

I think the distinction is not so much a matter of type or kind, but one of scale. 

 

Nearly all of the African Americans and Native Americans living today descended from those atrocities.  I'm not sure the same is true of Asian Americans living today. 

That is a good observation.

 

However when it's stated in the article that racism is the cause, I've been assuming that present-day racism is meant. Slavery is sometimes referred to as America's Original Sin, but to really think that it's something uncorrectable through future actions is pretty pessimistic.

[PseudoSABR]

 

That is a good observation.

 

However when it's stated in the article that racism is the cause, I've been assuming that present-day racism is meant. Slavery is sometimes referred to as America's Original Sin, but to really think that it's something uncorrectable through future actions is pretty pessimistic.

Uncorrectable as matter of physics? Or uncorrectable as a matter of American political will? If the former, sure, it's conceivably correctable.  If the latter, Oi.  

 

The sin, in my mind (or rather in my mind at this moment), is the reverence we (continue to) give to the concept of the economy as wealth production (as opposed to service production), and thereby the sway we give to wealth-holders. 

 

Even, if we cared to take on the task of reparations, what does it look like, how does it begin?  Cutting a check would wash our hands of it, and hardly solve the problem. (i.e. an augmented welfare, that wouldn't build sustainable much less inheritable/pass-onable skills).  There's real geographic and community boundaries. We may not be able to terraform the reservation or gentrify urban centers; and more, we cannot better-shape how such people may see themselves, and buy-in to the supposed limits of their successes.  

 

An exceedingly difficult problem.  It's shame we don't have academic programs devoted to it, instead of whatever drivel they've been hanging tenure on.  

 

(Forgive me, it's late, and I have opinions.)

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

We may not be able to terraform the reservation or gentrify urban centers; and more, we cannot better-shape how such people may see themselves, and buy-in to the supposed limits of their successes.  

And therein lies the crux.

 

How do you rebuild an entire culture's self-worth when you've spent centuries dismantling it piece by piece?

[Squirrel]

And therein lies the crux.

 

How do you rebuild an entire culture's self-worth when you've spent centuries dismantling it piece by piece?

Especially since the cultural self-worth of one has been built on the destruction of the cultural self-worth of the other. And that it continues today, obviously so.

[TheLeviathan]

 

And therein lies the crux.

 

How do you rebuild an entire culture's self-worth when you've spent centuries dismantling it piece by piece?

 

The hardest step will be the first: genuine recognition of the problem.

 

I mean, we're still actively screwing over Native Americans in courts to this very day.  We like to pretend the sins of the past have stayed there and turn a blind eye to how they still persist.

[biggentleben]

The crap of the issue - I have 5 foster children currently, all working toward adoption, all with varying degrees of Native blood coursing through their veins. My wife and I are about as white as white can get in our personal backgrounds and heritage, but certainly want to ensure their culture is taught to them and experienced.

 

However, when we reached out to their tribes of registry, the response has been a very mixed bag. One tribe was incredibly excited to work with us to welcome us for various things - meetings with elders, special holidays, education programs in home, etc. Other tribes treated the inquiry as if I was attempting to "steal" their children from them. Now, I've found out since that in the case of one particular tribe, I was not routed to the best person to talk with, but still, it's telling to me that in genuine desire to allow our children to understand, experience, and live out their cultural heritage, we're being blocked due to underlying mistrust of the entire "white" race.