3 ms·

What do you mean? Controlling for the fact that children of African immigrants do very well should eliminate systemic racism, as they have been exposed to that

What do you mean? Controlling for the fact that children of African immigrants do very well should eliminate systemic racism, as they have been exposed to that their whole life, and would be exposed to all the "systemic racism" their African-American cohort members would have been exposed to as well.

Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
Not necessarily. It's possible, for example, that schools may have higher expectations and better supports for immigrant children. Immigrants may have economic or family educational advantages (they were the ones privileged enough to emigrate); they may reside in ethnic enclaves or white-majority neighborhoods that do not draw police suspicion and predatory economic practices; or, like the known hiring bias toward white-sounding names, human resources people may have an unconscious bias in favor of African-sounding names over recognizably African-American ones.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  You realize that you bring up _nothing_ that is a factor of race, correct? All the points you raise are valid, but have to do with culture rather than ethnicity. Nothing you said discriminates against people with an ethnicity from Africa than an ethnicity from Northern Europe.
  - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
    They are all aspects of institutional racism in the US; they discriminate against African-Americans, while African immigrant are somewhat shielded from their effects. So, if your argument is that what we term racism should better be called culturism or something, ok I guess so. Still is a real problem.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      See my comment to a thread above. Basically, according to tech hiring data, they _don't_ break things down by culture, just by race. That's why it's such an important distinction. Is hiring 20 highly achieving black african immigrants who grew up in white enclaves just as desirable as hiring 20 low achieving black people who spent generations here being discriminated against? According to these statistics, both are equally good and desirable.
      - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
        Maybe we are going in circles. I perceived your original comment to place the blame on African-American culture (nonsense about "broken families" e.g.). Yes, hiring Africans into predominantly European-American companies produces one sort of diversity there, and it's a good one, but hiring African-Americans and Latino-Americans produces a different (also desirable) diversity, which does arguably more good in our traditionally less-privileged communities by getting more parents employed in good jobs and seeing real opportunities ahead for the kids in school to strive for. Even in this comment I'd debate the term "low-achieving." There are many high-achieving African-Americans, and the automatic association of race/culture with low achievement is a problem.
        jimmywanger 10y ago
        I think we're mostly agreeing. The point I'm trying to make is that cultural diversity is arguably more important than racial diversity, but we're only measuring racial diversity where the ethnic background of the person is the only thing that matter. For example, if a white couple were to adopt a black kid, and you hired that kid, that would boost "diversity numbers". What would be much more interesting to me would be to see what proportion of employees' parents had college degrees, were they the first ones in their families to get college degrees, the amount of money that their parents made when they were growing up, if their parents spoke the language as a native speaker, if they grew up in a traditional two parent family. That would be far more compelling and would result in more diversity. For instance, there are plenty of fourth generation chinese immigrants to the US living in Chinatown that still don't speak English. If they tried to get help for coding or academics, they kind of out of luck because of the color of their skin. Similarly for white kids who grew up in a dying town in the rust belt, or an indian kid who's parents manage a hotel in the rural south. Because of their race, not because of their disadvantages, they're cut off from help. And btw, there is not much nonsense about broken families. It can be debatable whether or not single parent households are good or not but black (including African immigrants, as they don't split them out) families are a lot more likely to be single parent. http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/869,36,868,867,133/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-...
ubernostrum 10y ago
Recent immigrants and their children will speak differently, dress differently, act differently and probably live in different places than multi-generation American black families. This creates a difference wherein the immigrant is perceived as not displaying the "bad" aspects of "black culture" (i.e., the immigrant's English is unlikely to be AAVE, which is a gigantic leg up right off the bat in terms of how they'll be perceived by white peers, and may even be considered pleasing; the immigrant will probably dress more "white", etc. etc.). Which gets right back to... you guessed it, systemic racism labeling "black culture" as an inherently bad or inferior thing.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  We're talking about "system racism" and "culture", which was my point in its entirety. Racism deals with race - the genetic identity you have. Everything you're talking about deals with culture. Systemic culturism might be a thing, but you have not dealt with systemic racism.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    The problem being discussed is prejudice. Whether that prejudice comes from some nebulous idea of "race" or "culture" or something else is besides the point.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      No, that's precisely the point. The hiring data from high tech companies is not broken down by culture, but by race. They're saying that racial equality is the important bit, and if black people aren't equally represented then there's prejudice. According to that logic, it doesn't matter what culture the person has, as long as they have African ancestry. It doesn't matter if they're part of a high achieving immigrant community, or a low achieving black american community. THAT's the part that makes no sense to me.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    As nice as etymologically transparent definitions are, that's not what racism means. (It includes the culture component.)

Jill_the_Pill 10y ago

Not necessarily. It's possible, for example, that schools may have higher expectations and better supports for immigrant children. Immigrants may have economic or family educational advantages (they were the ones privileged enough to emigrate); they may reside in ethnic enclaves or white-majority neighborhoods that do not draw police suspicion and predatory economic practices; or, like the known hiring bias toward white-sounding names, human resources people may have an unconscious bias in favor of African-sounding names over recognizably African-American ones.

jimmywanger 10y ago
You realize that you bring up _nothing_ that is a factor of race, correct? All the points you raise are valid, but have to do with culture rather than ethnicity. Nothing you said discriminates against people with an ethnicity from Africa than an ethnicity from Northern Europe.
- Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
  They are all aspects of institutional racism in the US; they discriminate against African-Americans, while African immigrant are somewhat shielded from their effects. So, if your argument is that what we term racism should better be called culturism or something, ok I guess so. Still is a real problem.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    See my comment to a thread above. Basically, according to tech hiring data, they _don't_ break things down by culture, just by race. That's why it's such an important distinction. Is hiring 20 highly achieving black african immigrants who grew up in white enclaves just as desirable as hiring 20 low achieving black people who spent generations here being discriminated against? According to these statistics, both are equally good and desirable.
    - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
      Maybe we are going in circles. I perceived your original comment to place the blame on African-American culture (nonsense about "broken families" e.g.). Yes, hiring Africans into predominantly European-American companies produces one sort of diversity there, and it's a good one, but hiring African-Americans and Latino-Americans produces a different (also desirable) diversity, which does arguably more good in our traditionally less-privileged communities by getting more parents employed in good jobs and seeing real opportunities ahead for the kids in school to strive for. Even in this comment I'd debate the term "low-achieving." There are many high-achieving African-Americans, and the automatic association of race/culture with low achievement is a problem.
      - jimmywanger 10y ago
        I think we're mostly agreeing. The point I'm trying to make is that cultural diversity is arguably more important than racial diversity, but we're only measuring racial diversity where the ethnic background of the person is the only thing that matter. For example, if a white couple were to adopt a black kid, and you hired that kid, that would boost "diversity numbers". What would be much more interesting to me would be to see what proportion of employees' parents had college degrees, were they the first ones in their families to get college degrees, the amount of money that their parents made when they were growing up, if their parents spoke the language as a native speaker, if they grew up in a traditional two parent family. That would be far more compelling and would result in more diversity. For instance, there are plenty of fourth generation chinese immigrants to the US living in Chinatown that still don't speak English. If they tried to get help for coding or academics, they kind of out of luck because of the color of their skin. Similarly for white kids who grew up in a dying town in the rust belt, or an indian kid who's parents manage a hotel in the rural south. Because of their race, not because of their disadvantages, they're cut off from help. And btw, there is not much nonsense about broken families. It can be debatable whether or not single parent households are good or not but black (including African immigrants, as they don't split them out) families are a lot more likely to be single parent. http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-single-parent-families-by#detailed/1/any/false/869,36,868,867,133/10,11,9,12,1,185,13/432,431 http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-...

ubernostrum 10y ago

Recent immigrants and their children will speak differently, dress differently, act differently and probably live in different places than multi-generation American black families. This creates a difference wherein the immigrant is perceived as not displaying the "bad" aspects of "black culture" (i.e., the immigrant's English is unlikely to be AAVE, which is a gigantic leg up right off the bat in terms of how they'll be perceived by white peers, and may even be considered pleasing; the immigrant will probably dress more "white", etc. etc.). Which gets right back to... you guessed it, systemic racism labeling "black culture" as an inherently bad or inferior thing.

jimmywanger 10y ago
We're talking about "system racism" and "culture", which was my point in its entirety. Racism deals with race - the genetic identity you have. Everything you're talking about deals with culture. Systemic culturism might be a thing, but you have not dealt with systemic racism.
- tptacek 10y ago
  The problem being discussed is prejudice. Whether that prejudice comes from some nebulous idea of "race" or "culture" or something else is besides the point.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    No, that's precisely the point. The hiring data from high tech companies is not broken down by culture, but by race. They're saying that racial equality is the important bit, and if black people aren't equally represented then there's prejudice. According to that logic, it doesn't matter what culture the person has, as long as they have African ancestry. It doesn't matter if they're part of a high achieving immigrant community, or a low achieving black american community. THAT's the part that makes no sense to me.
- kmicklas 10y ago
  As nice as etymologically transparent definitions are, that's not what racism means. (It includes the culture component.)