9 ms·

It really is like watching an empire die. Hyperfocused on obscure artificially-inflated issues while basic utilities cease functioning.

rayiner 6y ago
Racial inequality is not an "artificially inflated issue." Studies show that, despite reduction in de jure racism over the past 70 years, Black-white income gaps are large (with Black incomes being 19 percentile points below white incomes in the income distribution), and also persistent. Meanwhile, the incomes of other groups (Latinos, Asians) have or are in the process of converging with those of whites. So there is a real, devilishly difficult problem here. But it's not going to be solved by telling people to "be less white." That's an insane non-solution to a real problem.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  The fact that inequality exists in no way indicates that there is a society-wide conspiracy of white supremacy. That other minorities have rising incomes should make it obvious that the issue is very complex.
  - walkedaway 6y ago
    Indeed, a simple reading of almost anything by Thomas Sowell, especially Discrimination and Disparities, would go a long way to educate everyone that discrimination is not a meaningful factor in why we have disparities between groups.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  There are fairly massive income gaps within white and black groups as well. Nigerian Americans have on average 10 % higher incomes than whites. EDIT: It is 5 per cent, not 10 per cent. I was mistaken. They have 10 % more than an average American household. Czech Americans have on average 20 % higher incomes than generic whites. Given that I am a Czech, are we silently running Czech supremacy in the U.S.?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Nigerian Americans are the most highly-educated demographic in the U.S., due at least in part to the filtering effect of immigration.
    - alea_iacta_est 6y ago
      So what, you're admitting it's not a race issue but an education issue?
      - sangnoir 6y ago
        That depends - are you willing to admit that the education issue is a race issue? Race, income and school quality are highly correlated in the US: poor neighborhood = poor education. The fact that immigrants (who were not poor in the old country - immigration is expensive) bypass low-quality education doesn't mean it's not a race issue, it just means they are not useful as a control group. Ruby Bridges, the first black person to integrate in the south is only 66 years old.
        azinman2 6y ago
        You’re also ignoring the impact of cultural values here. Education is particularly favored in Nigerian cultures, especially amongst immigrants.
        sangnoir 6y ago
        > You’re also ignoring the impact of cultural values here. You may also be ignoring the impact of immigration policy: there are a limited number of ways for Nigerians to (legally) get into the US - they no longer qualify for the DV program (unlike other immigrants who do not have a similar selection pressure). If you filter for educated Nigerians by leaving only F/M visa as a way to get into the country, you get mostly Nigerians who value education who qualified for the respective visa's (and their offspring) - there is nothing inherent to Nigerian culture there.
- Solar19 6y ago
  You're assuming racism is the cause of the gaps. Big assumption. Out of wedlock births alone will explain a gap of that size: more than 70% of black American children are born out of wedlock. That's a disastrous figure, an emergency really. There is no point wasting a moment's time on imagined racism when variables like that are looming so large. If that behavior doesn't change, there will be no closing of any gaps.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    I wonder would happen if single-parenting was controller for? Would outcomes come up to par with other races?
    - Solar19 6y ago
      It will be a chunk. It accounts for a lot of income variance in existing research, like Chetty's at Harvard. He and his colleagues seemed to bury the effect though in at least one of their papers on "inequality", which is frustrating since the effect size was the largest of all their predictors. They're ideologically biased, which is a huge problem in social "science" right now, and they don't want to talk about anything related to individuals' own behavior ot choices. They prefer to focus on blaming exogenous factors, society, etc. IQ score differences are huge, and I'm not sure that anyone knows why. We might not have the full picture there for another 50+ years. At this point it would very difficult to even research it given that leftists will try to destroy your career if you do (e.g. the SPLC will smear you as a "white supremacist" if you research or discover or report group differences that are unfavorable to a non-white group, as they have smeared Charles Murray). The black-white IQ differences are greater than one standard deviation, which was very confusing to discover in graduate school – I had no idea. Since IQ predicts income, there is little chance of income parity anytime soon, unless we can find a sort of loophole around that relationship. But we won't be finding any loopholes or workarounds if we're not allowed to research it, so... The out-of-wedlock birth rate and the IQ disparity are beefy predictors because they're so large in magnitude. Those two variables virtually guarantee a large income difference. There's really no way for a group to make as much money as another group if they're having 72% of their kids out-of-wedlock when the other group is at 20-25%, and also spotting the other group maybe 14+ points on mean IQ. Given those starting conditions, I wouldn't even worry about racism or talk about racism. I would focus on the things that I know are real and the I know are having a huge impact. There isn't any evidence of an equivalent effect of racism. That would be interesting to think about. For racism to be as punchy as out-of-wedlock births or IQ, we would need to see a situation like where basically black college graduates couldn't get jobs due to simple racial discrimination, at a really punchy rate. We don't see that. Systemic racism doesn't exist in the US by any definition I would think of based simply on the term. It seems to reduce to subjective construals through a leftist abstraction layer and symbolic/ideological framework. In other words, you need to be a leftist to see it, and if you don't see this invisible thing, you're a bad person. It's an arbitrary ideology at that point, and the timing is nothing short of predominant.
alea_iacta_est 6y ago
It's a great way to divide people though.

rayiner 6y ago

Racial inequality is not an "artificially inflated issue." Studies show that, despite reduction in de jure racism over the past 70 years, Black-white income gaps are large (with Black incomes being 19 percentile points below white incomes in the income distribution), and also persistent. Meanwhile, the incomes of other groups (Latinos, Asians) have or are in the process of converging with those of whites. So there is a real, devilishly difficult problem here. But it's not going to be solved by telling people to "be less white." That's an insane non-solution to a real problem.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
The fact that inequality exists in no way indicates that there is a society-wide conspiracy of white supremacy. That other minorities have rising incomes should make it obvious that the issue is very complex.
- walkedaway 6y ago
  Indeed, a simple reading of almost anything by Thomas Sowell, especially Discrimination and Disparities, would go a long way to educate everyone that discrimination is not a meaningful factor in why we have disparities between groups.
inglor_cz 6y ago
There are fairly massive income gaps within white and black groups as well. Nigerian Americans have on average 10 % higher incomes than whites. EDIT: It is 5 per cent, not 10 per cent. I was mistaken. They have 10 % more than an average American household. Czech Americans have on average 20 % higher incomes than generic whites. Given that I am a Czech, are we silently running Czech supremacy in the U.S.?
- rayiner 6y ago
  Nigerian Americans are the most highly-educated demographic in the U.S., due at least in part to the filtering effect of immigration.
  - alea_iacta_est 6y ago
    So what, you're admitting it's not a race issue but an education issue?
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      That depends - are you willing to admit that the education issue is a race issue? Race, income and school quality are highly correlated in the US: poor neighborhood = poor education. The fact that immigrants (who were not poor in the old country - immigration is expensive) bypass low-quality education doesn't mean it's not a race issue, it just means they are not useful as a control group. Ruby Bridges, the first black person to integrate in the south is only 66 years old.
      - azinman2 6y ago
        You’re also ignoring the impact of cultural values here. Education is particularly favored in Nigerian cultures, especially amongst immigrants.
        sangnoir 6y ago
        > You’re also ignoring the impact of cultural values here. You may also be ignoring the impact of immigration policy: there are a limited number of ways for Nigerians to (legally) get into the US - they no longer qualify for the DV program (unlike other immigrants who do not have a similar selection pressure). If you filter for educated Nigerians by leaving only F/M visa as a way to get into the country, you get mostly Nigerians who value education who qualified for the respective visa's (and their offspring) - there is nothing inherent to Nigerian culture there.
Solar19 6y ago
You're assuming racism is the cause of the gaps. Big assumption. Out of wedlock births alone will explain a gap of that size: more than 70% of black American children are born out of wedlock. That's a disastrous figure, an emergency really. There is no point wasting a moment's time on imagined racism when variables like that are looming so large. If that behavior doesn't change, there will be no closing of any gaps.
- DenisM 6y ago
  I wonder would happen if single-parenting was controller for? Would outcomes come up to par with other races?
  - Solar19 6y ago
    It will be a chunk. It accounts for a lot of income variance in existing research, like Chetty's at Harvard. He and his colleagues seemed to bury the effect though in at least one of their papers on "inequality", which is frustrating since the effect size was the largest of all their predictors. They're ideologically biased, which is a huge problem in social "science" right now, and they don't want to talk about anything related to individuals' own behavior ot choices. They prefer to focus on blaming exogenous factors, society, etc. IQ score differences are huge, and I'm not sure that anyone knows why. We might not have the full picture there for another 50+ years. At this point it would very difficult to even research it given that leftists will try to destroy your career if you do (e.g. the SPLC will smear you as a "white supremacist" if you research or discover or report group differences that are unfavorable to a non-white group, as they have smeared Charles Murray). The black-white IQ differences are greater than one standard deviation, which was very confusing to discover in graduate school – I had no idea. Since IQ predicts income, there is little chance of income parity anytime soon, unless we can find a sort of loophole around that relationship. But we won't be finding any loopholes or workarounds if we're not allowed to research it, so... The out-of-wedlock birth rate and the IQ disparity are beefy predictors because they're so large in magnitude. Those two variables virtually guarantee a large income difference. There's really no way for a group to make as much money as another group if they're having 72% of their kids out-of-wedlock when the other group is at 20-25%, and also spotting the other group maybe 14+ points on mean IQ. Given those starting conditions, I wouldn't even worry about racism or talk about racism. I would focus on the things that I know are real and the I know are having a huge impact. There isn't any evidence of an equivalent effect of racism. That would be interesting to think about. For racism to be as punchy as out-of-wedlock births or IQ, we would need to see a situation like where basically black college graduates couldn't get jobs due to simple racial discrimination, at a really punchy rate. We don't see that. Systemic racism doesn't exist in the US by any definition I would think of based simply on the term. It seems to reduce to subjective construals through a leftist abstraction layer and symbolic/ideological framework. In other words, you need to be a leftist to see it, and if you don't see this invisible thing, you're a bad person. It's an arbitrary ideology at that point, and the timing is nothing short of predominant.

alea_iacta_est 6y ago

It's a great way to divide people though.