3 ms·

An issue I see with that line of thinking is that Turks in Germany are also a lot poorer than native Germans, get lower education and rely on welfare a lot more

An issue I see with that line of thinking is that Turks in Germany are also a lot poorer than native Germans, get lower education and rely on welfare a lot more, commit more crimes etc. Yet they immigrated barely 60 years ago and were immigrating as workers, not refugees. Turks have never been enslaved (quite the contrary, they've been slave-owners for much of their history), there were no racist laws against Turks, yet they still ended up in a very similar place. That suggests that there might be different reasons why groups are less successful, and might suggest that it's not racism. That the results in different African American groups are very different also makes the simple narrative of "it's because of racism" hard to follow, I think.

notahacker 6y ago
I don't think many Germans would argue that Turkish immigrants and their descendants have not been subject to significant degrees of racism and discrimination. It's particularly hard to claim with a straight face that the cultural similarities between between Turkish Germans and African Americans are much more obvious...
- luckylion 6y ago
  > I don't think many Germans would argue that Turkish immigrants and their descendants have not been subject to significant degrees of racism and discrimination. I'd like to see that argument, if you put it next to racism in the US. Racism towards Turks in Germany might be a slur on the school yard (which, I can assure you, was much more commonly used by Turkish kids), not slavery, Jim Crow and segregation. > It's particularly hard to claim with a straight face that the cultural similarities between between Turkish Germans and African Americans are much more obvious... That's not what I wrote. If racism isn't the great explanation, other explanations need to be looked at. You chose to neglect the fact that African Americans are not at all similar in the outcomes, even though they're all experiencing racism in the US, and were, by and large, always treated as a singular group.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    > I'd like to see that argument, if you put it next to racism in the US. Racism towards Turks in Germany might be a slur on the school yard (which, I can assure you, was much more commonly used by Turkish kids), not slavery, Jim Crow and segregation. Sure, I haven't pretended the two countries had exactly the same social and political environments. The respective outcomes for the different minorities aren't exactly the same either. I'm not even sure what your argument is now: you appeared to be questioning the existence of systematic racism in the US, and yet are now insisting it was extremely bad. If your claim is instead that systematic racism was extremely bad but actually had no discernible effect, that's pretty extraordinary. Though perhaps not as extraordinary as you choosing to support that with the claim that ---checks notes--- mid twentieth century Germany is a good counter example of a society where migrants didn't encounter any adult racists. Surely you're just trolling for Godwin's Law there. > If racism isn't the great explanation, other explanations need to be looked at. You chose to neglect the fact that African Americans are not at all similar in the outcomes, even though they're all experiencing racism in the US, and were, by and large, always treated as a singular group. I'm not sure the fact some African Americans do better than others in any way detracts from the argument that systematic racism is a thing which negatively affects the group. Not all outcomes of shootings are the same; this is not evidence bullets cause no harm. We can look at as many complementary explanations for ethnic minority underperformance as you like, and it's not going to remotely undermine the OP's claim that racism has an effect.
InitialLastName 6y ago
Is it possible that different parts of the world, with different ethnic and migratory histories, might have different dynamics that lead groups to wind up in impoverished situations? Once groups of people are in poverty, yes, I would expect the issues you mention: lower educational outcomes, increased welfare reliance, and increased crime rates. In the US, the combined demographic trend of Black, urban, and "in poverty" can be traced in substantial part to specific racist policies in the New Deal and post-WWII eras. There's more detail available, but: a) a substantial amount of government subsidy and policy in those periods was designed to encourage people (especially young families started post-war) to move out of cities, buy land, and raise families there (through low interest rates, development subsidies, etc). This allowed the people who benefited from those policies to start building generational wealth, and essentially created the single-family self-owned non-commercially-functional lot as the fundamental unit of the suburbs. b) The benefits of many of those policies were both openly and subtly denied to black people, all over the country. Many of the New Deal and post-WWII policies explicitly excluded black people from benefiting. Additionally, redlining (where banks had explicit policies that denied mortgages to black people) and deed covenants (where developers and communities explicitly disallowed sales to black families). This prevented those families from benefiting from the wealth injection I mentioned earlier, occurred all over the country, and was only banned in 1968. c) After that, poverty is a pretty easy steady state to maintain for specific groups. You just need long-term, focused policing strategies, constant downward pressure on educational and municipal funding, and policies that encourage urban real estate consolidation (and thus rentership). Where is the argument that this isn't an example of systematic racism denying black people many of the benefits available to the rest of modern American society? The argument isn't that this was applied to all African American people, the argument is that it was applied to enough to create a correlated gap.
- luckylion 6y ago
  It's totally possible that it has vastly different reasons, but I find the jump to and insistence on "this is it, this must be it, and it's just different elsewhere" to be a bit hastened. It doesn't explain the strong variety in outcome and doesn't seem to apply to other regions. American Exceptionalism is well and good, but it does sound a bit wanted rather than found.

notahacker 6y ago

I don't think many Germans would argue that Turkish immigrants and their descendants have not been subject to significant degrees of racism and discrimination. It's particularly hard to claim with a straight face that the cultural similarities between between Turkish Germans and African Americans are much more obvious...

luckylion 6y ago
> I don't think many Germans would argue that Turkish immigrants and their descendants have not been subject to significant degrees of racism and discrimination. I'd like to see that argument, if you put it next to racism in the US. Racism towards Turks in Germany might be a slur on the school yard (which, I can assure you, was much more commonly used by Turkish kids), not slavery, Jim Crow and segregation. > It's particularly hard to claim with a straight face that the cultural similarities between between Turkish Germans and African Americans are much more obvious... That's not what I wrote. If racism isn't the great explanation, other explanations need to be looked at. You chose to neglect the fact that African Americans are not at all similar in the outcomes, even though they're all experiencing racism in the US, and were, by and large, always treated as a singular group.
- notahacker 6y ago
  > I'd like to see that argument, if you put it next to racism in the US. Racism towards Turks in Germany might be a slur on the school yard (which, I can assure you, was much more commonly used by Turkish kids), not slavery, Jim Crow and segregation. Sure, I haven't pretended the two countries had exactly the same social and political environments. The respective outcomes for the different minorities aren't exactly the same either. I'm not even sure what your argument is now: you appeared to be questioning the existence of systematic racism in the US, and yet are now insisting it was extremely bad. If your claim is instead that systematic racism was extremely bad but actually had no discernible effect, that's pretty extraordinary. Though perhaps not as extraordinary as you choosing to support that with the claim that ---checks notes--- mid twentieth century Germany is a good counter example of a society where migrants didn't encounter any adult racists. Surely you're just trolling for Godwin's Law there. > If racism isn't the great explanation, other explanations need to be looked at. You chose to neglect the fact that African Americans are not at all similar in the outcomes, even though they're all experiencing racism in the US, and were, by and large, always treated as a singular group. I'm not sure the fact some African Americans do better than others in any way detracts from the argument that systematic racism is a thing which negatively affects the group. Not all outcomes of shootings are the same; this is not evidence bullets cause no harm. We can look at as many complementary explanations for ethnic minority underperformance as you like, and it's not going to remotely undermine the OP's claim that racism has an effect.

InitialLastName 6y ago

Is it possible that different parts of the world, with different ethnic and migratory histories, might have different dynamics that lead groups to wind up in impoverished situations? Once groups of people are in poverty, yes, I would expect the issues you mention: lower educational outcomes, increased welfare reliance, and increased crime rates. In the US, the combined demographic trend of Black, urban, and "in poverty" can be traced in substantial part to specific racist policies in the New Deal and post-WWII eras. There's more detail available, but: a) a substantial amount of government subsidy and policy in those periods was designed to encourage people (especially young families started post-war) to move out of cities, buy land, and raise families there (through low interest rates, development subsidies, etc). This allowed the people who benefited from those policies to start building generational wealth, and essentially created the single-family self-owned non-commercially-functional lot as the fundamental unit of the suburbs. b) The benefits of many of those policies were both openly and subtly denied to black people, all over the country. Many of the New Deal and post-WWII policies explicitly excluded black people from benefiting. Additionally, redlining (where banks had explicit policies that denied mortgages to black people) and deed covenants (where developers and communities explicitly disallowed sales to black families). This prevented those families from benefiting from the wealth injection I mentioned earlier, occurred all over the country, and was only banned in 1968. c) After that, poverty is a pretty easy steady state to maintain for specific groups. You just need long-term, focused policing strategies, constant downward pressure on educational and municipal funding, and policies that encourage urban real estate consolidation (and thus rentership). Where is the argument that this isn't an example of systematic racism denying black people many of the benefits available to the rest of modern American society? The argument isn't that this was applied to all African American people, the argument is that it was applied to enough to create a correlated gap.

luckylion 6y ago
It's totally possible that it has vastly different reasons, but I find the jump to and insistence on "this is it, this must be it, and it's just different elsewhere" to be a bit hastened. It doesn't explain the strong variety in outcome and doesn't seem to apply to other regions. American Exceptionalism is well and good, but it does sound a bit wanted rather than found.