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> Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white Or it shows that there is something about the statistically average black

> Really the data shows that discrimination is more anti-black than it is pro-white Or it shows that there is something about the statistically average black person that makes them less successful than the statistically average asian person. I don't claim to know what the difference is, but this is a fairly obvious inference to make. I'd actually say this is, a priori, a lot more likely than "everyone coincidentally discriminates against these particular racial groups but not any of these other ones". My suspicion (not based on any hard evidence) is that much of this difference is accounted for by the vast and obvious cultural differences between the average asian person in the US and the average black person in the US. Most Asian (South or East) immigrant cultures in the US aggressively push for educational and professional success. Black culture in the US doesn't.

pessimizer 10y ago
> I'd actually say this is, a priori, a lot more likely than "everyone coincidentally discriminates against these particular racial groups but not any of these other ones". How would you change that prior if you were informed one of those groups had been enslaved on the basis of race for a couple of centuries, ruthlessly oppressed for another century, then blamed for most of the problems in the country for the lion's share of the next one, becoming the primary subject of every leadership discussion? > Most Asian (South or East) immigrant cultures in the US aggressively push for educational and professional success. Black culture in the US doesn't. Educational attainment is more difficult to translate into professional success for blacks in the US; black college graduates have twice the unemployment rate as white college graduates[1]. With the rising costs of education and the yawning gap between white wealth and black wealth, the value proposition is only becoming worse. In my experience black people think that their best chance of success lies in sales and/or entrepreneurship. The only other choice is being the best of the best. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/when-a-degree-is-no-guarantee/371613/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/when-a-...
- home_boi 10y ago
  It doesn't seem like that study normalizes for quality of college degree. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the average "ranking" (used as a proxy for quality) of the alma matter of black people is worse than that of other races.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  > How would you change that prior if you were informed one of those groups had been enslaved on the basis of race for a couple of centuries, ruthlessly oppressed for another century, then blamed for most of the problems in the country for the lion's share of the next one, becoming the primary subject of every leadership discussion? If you update that prior with what history actually shows, this is less the case than you'd imagine. From the paper underlying this post's article: > Foreign-born Asians were barred from naturalization by the Naturalization Act of 1790. This Act excluded Asians from citizenship and voting except by birth, and created the important new legal category of “aliens ineligible for citizenship”…Asians experienced mob violence including lynchings and over 200 “roundups” from 1849-1906 (Pfaelzer, 2008), and hostility from anti-Asian clubs much like the Ku Klux Klan (e.g., the Asiatic Exclusion League, Chinese Exclusion League, Workingmen’s Party of CA), to an extent that does not appear to have any counterpart for blacks in CA history. Both Asians and blacks in CA could not testify against a white witness in court from 1853-73 (People v. Hall, 1853, see McClain, 1984), limiting Asians’ legal defense against white aggression. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” in 1907 barred further immigration of all “laborers” from China and Japan. > …Asians have also faced intense economic discrimination. Many cities and states levied discriminatory taxes and fees on Asians (1852 Foreign Miner’s Tax, 1852 Commutation Tax, 1860 Fishing License, 1862 Police Tax, 1870 “queue” ordinance, 1870 sidewalk ordinance, and many others). Many professional schools and associations in CA excluded Asians (e.g., State Bar of CA), as did most labor unions (e.g., Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor), and many employers declined to hire Asians well into the 20th century (e.g., Mears, 1928, p. 194-204). From 1913-23, virtually all western states passed increasingly strict Alien Land Acts that prohibited foreign-born Asians from owning land or leasing land for extended periods. Asians also faced laws against marriage to whites (1905 amendment to Section 60 of the CA Civil Code) and U.S. citizens (Expatriation Act 1907, Cable Act 1922). From 1942-46, the US forcibly relocated over 100,000 mainland Japanese Americans (unlike other Axis nationalities, e.g. German or Italian Americans) to military detention camps, in practice destroying a large share of Japanese American wealth. In contrast, blacks in CA were eligible for citizenship and suffrage, were officially (though often not de facto) included in CA professional associations and labor unions that excluded Asians, were not covered by the Alien Land Acts, and were not confined or expropriated during WWII. That isn't to say that Asian-Americans had it "worse" wrt discrimination (though as the quote above shows, they did in some significant ways); the histories of the two groups in the US is far from apples to apples. But the assumption that discrimination was historically categorically different is not really that well-supported.
zepto 10y ago
You yourself are asserting stereotypes about Asian culture and Black culture. Racism is what happens when people are surrounded by a society that asserts such stereotypes.
- garanduss 10y ago
  The concept of culture is in many ways a stereotype of personal and group behavior, so your argument doesn't make much sense to me.
  - zepto 10y ago
    There is no definition of culture which matches what you have just said. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture What you are therefore saying is that you as an individual can't think about culture in a way that isn't stereotyping of personal and group behavior. Despite this not actually being what culture means, you are not alone in thinking this way.
wahern 10y ago
Black culture is Southern white culture. I don't mean to diminish the many unique aspects of black culture (some historic, some modern), but any New Englander who sat at the dinner table of a working-class black family in a major Northern city, and then at a dinner table of a working-class white family in the rural Deep South, would have an eerily similar cultural experience. Presuming, of course, either family still regularly sat down for dinner together, or even lived as a family unit. It's only to be expected then that not only do Asians lead blacks in educational attainment, they lead whites, too. And while I don't have the data, I wouldn't be surprised if this difference was greater relative to rural whites, and greater still relative to rural Southern whites. If you don't understand that--as long as you remain convinced that Black culture is substantially distinct and uniquely (if at all) inferior--then it's easy to dismiss racism. But once you begin to see that, not only does the reality and the pervasiveness of systemic racism in this country become clear (especially the institutional racism of the Deep South), but the notion of a singular white culture disintegrates, and the concept of Americana fragments. All of a sudden the world is way more complex; even the relevant questions, let alone answers, become difficult to identify. That's no fun so I'm not surprised people remain willfully blind to it.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  >Black culture is Southern white culture. I don't mean to diminish the many unique aspects of black culture As a white kid that grew up eating fried chicken, cornbread, and watermelon, I agree with general thrust of this comment. I didn't even know this was "soul food" until I went college. Economically and culturally, there's very little different between whites and blacks in the south, until of course race comes up. Cultural anti-black racism is a very real thing, both in the south and throughout the nation. The simple reason, is because no one wants to be the bottom of the sociological ladder, and well, at least I look superfically like the society's elite.
user837387 10y ago
>>Or it shows that there is something about the statistically average black person that makes them less successful than the statistically average asian person. Being enslaved for hundreds of years and after the emancipation being denied full rights I think has something to do with that. They were purposely held back as much as possible by white people. Not sure why you cannot see this.

pessimizer 10y ago

> I'd actually say this is, a priori, a lot more likely than "everyone coincidentally discriminates against these particular racial groups but not any of these other ones". How would you change that prior if you were informed one of those groups had been enslaved on the basis of race for a couple of centuries, ruthlessly oppressed for another century, then blamed for most of the problems in the country for the lion's share of the next one, becoming the primary subject of every leadership discussion? > Most Asian (South or East) immigrant cultures in the US aggressively push for educational and professional success. Black culture in the US doesn't. Educational attainment is more difficult to translate into professional success for blacks in the US; black college graduates have twice the unemployment rate as white college graduates[1]. With the rising costs of education and the yawning gap between white wealth and black wealth, the value proposition is only becoming worse. In my experience black people think that their best chance of success lies in sales and/or entrepreneurship. The only other choice is being the best of the best. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/when-a-degree-is-no-guarantee/371613/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/when-a-...

home_boi 10y ago
It doesn't seem like that study normalizes for quality of college degree. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the average "ranking" (used as a proxy for quality) of the alma matter of black people is worse than that of other races.
wutbrodo 10y ago
> How would you change that prior if you were informed one of those groups had been enslaved on the basis of race for a couple of centuries, ruthlessly oppressed for another century, then blamed for most of the problems in the country for the lion's share of the next one, becoming the primary subject of every leadership discussion? If you update that prior with what history actually shows, this is less the case than you'd imagine. From the paper underlying this post's article: > Foreign-born Asians were barred from naturalization by the Naturalization Act of 1790. This Act excluded Asians from citizenship and voting except by birth, and created the important new legal category of “aliens ineligible for citizenship”…Asians experienced mob violence including lynchings and over 200 “roundups” from 1849-1906 (Pfaelzer, 2008), and hostility from anti-Asian clubs much like the Ku Klux Klan (e.g., the Asiatic Exclusion League, Chinese Exclusion League, Workingmen’s Party of CA), to an extent that does not appear to have any counterpart for blacks in CA history. Both Asians and blacks in CA could not testify against a white witness in court from 1853-73 (People v. Hall, 1853, see McClain, 1984), limiting Asians’ legal defense against white aggression. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” in 1907 barred further immigration of all “laborers” from China and Japan. > …Asians have also faced intense economic discrimination. Many cities and states levied discriminatory taxes and fees on Asians (1852 Foreign Miner’s Tax, 1852 Commutation Tax, 1860 Fishing License, 1862 Police Tax, 1870 “queue” ordinance, 1870 sidewalk ordinance, and many others). Many professional schools and associations in CA excluded Asians (e.g., State Bar of CA), as did most labor unions (e.g., Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor), and many employers declined to hire Asians well into the 20th century (e.g., Mears, 1928, p. 194-204). From 1913-23, virtually all western states passed increasingly strict Alien Land Acts that prohibited foreign-born Asians from owning land or leasing land for extended periods. Asians also faced laws against marriage to whites (1905 amendment to Section 60 of the CA Civil Code) and U.S. citizens (Expatriation Act 1907, Cable Act 1922). From 1942-46, the US forcibly relocated over 100,000 mainland Japanese Americans (unlike other Axis nationalities, e.g. German or Italian Americans) to military detention camps, in practice destroying a large share of Japanese American wealth. In contrast, blacks in CA were eligible for citizenship and suffrage, were officially (though often not de facto) included in CA professional associations and labor unions that excluded Asians, were not covered by the Alien Land Acts, and were not confined or expropriated during WWII. That isn't to say that Asian-Americans had it "worse" wrt discrimination (though as the quote above shows, they did in some significant ways); the histories of the two groups in the US is far from apples to apples. But the assumption that discrimination was historically categorically different is not really that well-supported.

zepto 10y ago

You yourself are asserting stereotypes about Asian culture and Black culture. Racism is what happens when people are surrounded by a society that asserts such stereotypes.

garanduss 10y ago
The concept of culture is in many ways a stereotype of personal and group behavior, so your argument doesn't make much sense to me.
- zepto 10y ago
  There is no definition of culture which matches what you have just said. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture What you are therefore saying is that you as an individual can't think about culture in a way that isn't stereotyping of personal and group behavior. Despite this not actually being what culture means, you are not alone in thinking this way.

wahern 10y ago

Black culture is Southern white culture. I don't mean to diminish the many unique aspects of black culture (some historic, some modern), but any New Englander who sat at the dinner table of a working-class black family in a major Northern city, and then at a dinner table of a working-class white family in the rural Deep South, would have an eerily similar cultural experience. Presuming, of course, either family still regularly sat down for dinner together, or even lived as a family unit. It's only to be expected then that not only do Asians lead blacks in educational attainment, they lead whites, too. And while I don't have the data, I wouldn't be surprised if this difference was greater relative to rural whites, and greater still relative to rural Southern whites. If you don't understand that--as long as you remain convinced that Black culture is substantially distinct and uniquely (if at all) inferior--then it's easy to dismiss racism. But once you begin to see that, not only does the reality and the pervasiveness of systemic racism in this country become clear (especially the institutional racism of the Deep South), but the notion of a singular white culture disintegrates, and the concept of Americana fragments. All of a sudden the world is way more complex; even the relevant questions, let alone answers, become difficult to identify. That's no fun so I'm not surprised people remain willfully blind to it.

jonathankoren 10y ago
>Black culture is Southern white culture. I don't mean to diminish the many unique aspects of black culture As a white kid that grew up eating fried chicken, cornbread, and watermelon, I agree with general thrust of this comment. I didn't even know this was "soul food" until I went college. Economically and culturally, there's very little different between whites and blacks in the south, until of course race comes up. Cultural anti-black racism is a very real thing, both in the south and throughout the nation. The simple reason, is because no one wants to be the bottom of the sociological ladder, and well, at least I look superfically like the society's elite.

user837387 10y ago

>>Or it shows that there is something about the statistically average black person that makes them less successful than the statistically average asian person. Being enslaved for hundreds of years and after the emancipation being denied full rights I think has something to do with that. They were purposely held back as much as possible by white people. Not sure why you cannot see this.