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I grew up in a basically 100% immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn which was basically like a science experiment: throw in a bunch of people, start them at zero i

I grew up in a basically 100% immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn which was basically like a science experiment: throw in a bunch of people, start them at zero in terms of money, connections, language, etc and see what happens. In retrospect the big dividing line is kids from cultures that value education and long term thinking and ones that don’t. In the former category, the Asian and Eastern European Jewish parents took their little income and understanding of the system to make sure their kids studied their assess off, saved for emergency and eventual investment, etc. consequentially many of those kids are now in the 1% or close. Kids from countries with less focus on education didn’t do this with regularity and their kids are by and large nowhere near the top today. Despite in the early 1990s being on an identical starting line. I mention this because high empathy leads us to assume that poverty locks people into bad choices. The Asian parent example shows the opposite - the poorer you are the more your choices really matter - you only have a few dollars and a few hours and how you spend them really matters. Obviously what I wrote also depends on the degree of opportunity that exists around you. The US is still a place where you can expect to alter your trajectory if you single-mindedly focus on it. The real challenge is how to give that focus to begin with. Eg immigrants from Asia etc came here with that value system and drive already and this achieved amazing outcomes. If you don’t have that culture and drive, how do you bootstrap it? I don’t have the answer.

pythonic_hell 3y ago
You make an interesting case, but are you controlling for education level or profession of the parents before they immigrated to the US? It wasn’t uncommon in the 80s-90s to meet an Eastern European, Asian or Jewish immigrant who came from a STEM background but for a variety of reasons couldn’t work in their field once they moved to the US so they worked as store clerks or taxi drivers. Perhaps the differences your talking about isn’t cultural but rather dependent on what economic and education class the immigrant parents came from. To add to this; See this article & paper > https://news.ku.edu/2020/06/18/study-shows-african-immigrants-do-well-despite-differences-among-them https://news.ku.edu/2020/06/18/study-shows-african-immigrant... > https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19376812.2020.1744455 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19376812.2020.17... > The paper contrasts Nigerian newcomers with those from Somalia, whose work ethic is similarly strong, but whose lack of education hurts their employment prospects here. > The authors wrote: “Overall, African-born immigrants aged 16 and over have a higher rate of employment (69.2%) relative to the foreign-born population (63.1%) and the general US population (59.9%).” The study also notes significant differences between Nigerian immigrants, who mostly come from that country’s south, and Somalis. For one thing, with its history of British colonization, many more Nigerians speak English upon arrival in the U.S. than do Somalis. That makes the Nigerians’ transition easier in almost every respect. “For the Nigerian-born immigrants, the proportion that possesses at least a bachelor's degree is 60.5%,” Chikanda said. “But when we look at the Somali-born population ... that's about 15%.”
- mlinhares 3y ago
  He's not, it's the magical thinking "pulling yourself by your own bootstraps" when reality is that my kid is going to have a better outcome than the average Latino immigrant because both of his parents is college level educated, speak multiple languages and live in a well off zipcode, even though both me and his mother were poor back in Brazil. It's sad to see people write off whole populations like this, "all the other immigrants that weren't european or asian", as if all africans and latinos are stupid and not that they didn't have any references of people that went to college or were educated and did well. Completely ignoring the environment these people came from. I definitely recommend the work of professor Raj Chetty on the subject: https://rajchetty.com/ https://rajchetty.com/ He talks a lot about how even growing up in a community with great role models (doesn't even have to be your own parents) affects the outcomes for kids because they get to KNOW there are other options. When I got to college I had no idea I could move to another country by being a programmer, then a friend moved to Australia and I was like WAIT, I CAN DO THAT AS WELL? Most of my plans back then were to move to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro to find a well paying job but that single friend that moved to another country completely opened over the world to me.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > He's not, it's the magical thinking "pulling yourself by your own bootstraps" when reality is that my kid is going to have a better outcome than the average Latino immigrant because both of his parents is college level educated, speak multiple languages and live in a well off zipcode, even though both me and his mother were poor back in Brazil. If you compare two kids whose parents are at the 25th percentile economically, one whose parents are native born Americans and the other whose parents are Guatemalan, the Guatemalan kid is actually going do better as a grown up. And a Chinese kid will do better than both of them.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
      > And a Chinese kid will do better than both of them. Speaking as someone who grew up in an area where Asian Americans were the majority, the average Chinese kid may ultimately fare better in terms of income, but may also have unresolved mental health issues steming from the crushing parental pressure in their childhood.
lapcat 3y ago
> In retrospect the big dividing line is kids from cultures that value education and long term thinking and ones that don’t. > The Asian parent example shows the opposite - the poorer you are the more your choices really matter - you only have a few dollars and a few hours and how you spend them really matters. It sounds like the most important "choice" a person can make is their choice of parents.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Correct. The second most important choice is to look around for families achieving good outcomes and try to emulate them.
  - sethammons 3y ago
    And if those don't exist, you can at least see a lot of bad examples and what not to do. I didn't have role models or examples of functional families to look up to. Lots of trial and error with the major guiding posts being "don't do what they did / don't be like them."
    - em-bee 3y ago
      when i was couchsurfing i had the opportunity to observe other families at parenting and i picked up a few ideas of what i felt was good and what i thought wasn't. in particular for aspects that i didn't experience at home myself. and later also paying attention to my own kids behavior and realizing when something i didn't like was actually them copying me which eventually led to a change in my own behavior. the biggest struggle i find is outside pressure by people telling you what you are doing wrong, but not showing you how to do it right. people that are judging but not helping. these people also often do not understand what it means not to have family support. they can't even conceive the idea of a sibling who doesn't care about you or a parent who is absent. and i feel that this is more often directed at poor people, as if they were responsible for being poor themselves.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  It's important. Not quite as important as you're making it, though. Parents (or whoever raises us) sets the "default settings" for our life. It's what we think "normal" is. But we aren't robots rolling off an assembly line. We can change those settings away from the default. This is one of the most important choices for young adults - what are you going to keep from your parents, and what are you going to change? But yes, given a culture with set of beliefs, the majority of the next generation is going to keep those default settings as their own.
yterdy 3y ago
I think this paints an inaccurate picture. I have many West Indian family friends who also grew up in Brooklyn during this period. Education was emphasized in those households. Finding success or not was largely a factor of who successfully avoided contact with the NYPD. Note that I don't say, "Avoided crime." It was simple contact with law enforcement that made the difference; people did fine on their own, but finding oneself in the crosshairs of an apparatchik often lead to derailment. So it goes through the American ages: an ancestor was forced to abandon a successful contracting business in South Carolina under threat from white supremacists. Family farms that couldn't receive Farm Bureau financing languished. Developers with visions of gentrification bought family brownstones for pennies on the dollar as Silent elders faced end-of-life costs and Boomers reeled from the Dotcom Bust. Both of my parents struggle under student debt loads from the 80s. It is likely that my grandfather was only able to access GI Bill benefits because he was nominally able to pass as white. One starts to wonder if systems and institutions are designed to exploit users who aren't made aware of particular loopholes; and yet, to not avail oneself of those "resources" is to be kneecapped by lack of access to advantages other Americans take for granted. It was once said that the purpose of racism is to distract. We agree that focus is necessary, but to say that "culture" and "drive" are the sole inputs in regards to the maintenance of that focus is to be incredibly naive. An immigrant family is partially forgiven for not having the requisite cultural memory of US history needed to understand this, at least.
- yterdy 3y ago
  For posterity: because it's not reflected in any way that passers-by would be able to see, I would note that this post has been going up and down in points all day. It is reflective of the tension surrounding GP's thesis. Americans tend to beg the question on the matter because accepting that we don't have a fair meritocracy, and that even a culture valuing education and economic and professional savvy does not guarantee affluence, is frightening. That best intentions and efforts can be derailed by the assumptions people make about you because of your identity. The NY Times published data that showed that black boys whose parents are in the top income quintile have an equal chance of ending up in each income quintile, while white boys in similar situations overwhelmingly stay in the top two quintiles. Black women remain among the lowest earning demographics despite having one of the highest rates of degree attainment. Twice the work for half the recognition, and I will say explicitly this time that the GP is wrong.
hotpotamus 3y ago
As someone who was the product of a culture like this and understands the value and importance of education in modern society, I will never have children because I cannot put a child through what I went through; it's a meaningless treadmill of work that never really delivered any understanding or joy; just teacher-pleasing busy work. I learned far more once I got into a job than I ever did in school.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  Valuing learning is not the same, maybe inversely related to, valuing achievement. One can value academic achievement in a way that minimizes learning, and one can value learning in a way that minimizes achievement. The children from such families probably follow similar but distinct life trajectories.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
checkyoursudo 3y ago
How do parents make sure their kids study their assess off? I value education highly, but my kid does not want to study. Hates it. It is painful. I cannot bring myself to force it to happen. Not sure that I could force it to happen anyway.
- 6510 3y ago
  An idea I had when I left school and was confronted with the reality that is the job market: We should put 11 year olds in factory conveyor belt work for a month. 12 year olds for 2 months, 13 year olds for 3 months, 14 year olds for 4 months. Quite boring to read isn't it? Then we tell them, see? You don't have to study at all! There is plenty of work for you! Ideally they should not be paid. It should be a service provided for free to the [ideally] already wealthy owner of the factory. Yes, you just spend 4 months making money for someone who already has a lot of money. It sounds lame but it is a nice thing to do compared to confronting kids with their new factory life sentence after they failed school.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Not sure that I could force it to happen anyway. Let them buy their own gadgets from their own paychecks. Let them work, or show them, some really tough physical labor jobs and the lifestyle those jobs enable.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Why do you want your child to "study their ass off"? I'd expect the answer is something along the lines that they'll be able to work their ass off for an employer later in life. Perhaps your child has caught onto this and is not interested. I never have been either.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I am around ~40 now. The Asian/Russian Jewish kids I grew up with whose parents made them "study their ass off" are now by-and-large folks with families, homes, interesting and challenging careers, etc. The kids who didn't... aren't. I want to give my kids a better shot at a better outcome in life. There's no guarantees but I want to maximize their chances and knowing how to learn and work is a key input to that. You mentioned in another post some pointless teacher-pleasing that you engaged in, I am not sure why you think that's the only or even a common path. Most of these kids I am talking about adopted their parents' "invest in yourself" mentality, and also by-and-large found their studies challenging and interesting. You seem to be taking your own worst-case and projecting it onto the world.

pythonic_hell 3y ago

You make an interesting case, but are you controlling for education level or profession of the parents before they immigrated to the US? It wasn’t uncommon in the 80s-90s to meet an Eastern European, Asian or Jewish immigrant who came from a STEM background but for a variety of reasons couldn’t work in their field once they moved to the US so they worked as store clerks or taxi drivers. Perhaps the differences your talking about isn’t cultural but rather dependent on what economic and education class the immigrant parents came from. To add to this; See this article & paper > https://news.ku.edu/2020/06/18/study-shows-african-immigrants-do-well-despite-differences-among-them https://news.ku.edu/2020/06/18/study-shows-african-immigrant... > https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19376812.2020.1744455 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19376812.2020.17... > The paper contrasts Nigerian newcomers with those from Somalia, whose work ethic is similarly strong, but whose lack of education hurts their employment prospects here. > The authors wrote: “Overall, African-born immigrants aged 16 and over have a higher rate of employment (69.2%) relative to the foreign-born population (63.1%) and the general US population (59.9%).” The study also notes significant differences between Nigerian immigrants, who mostly come from that country’s south, and Somalis. For one thing, with its history of British colonization, many more Nigerians speak English upon arrival in the U.S. than do Somalis. That makes the Nigerians’ transition easier in almost every respect. “For the Nigerian-born immigrants, the proportion that possesses at least a bachelor's degree is 60.5%,” Chikanda said. “But when we look at the Somali-born population ... that's about 15%.”

mlinhares 3y ago
He's not, it's the magical thinking "pulling yourself by your own bootstraps" when reality is that my kid is going to have a better outcome than the average Latino immigrant because both of his parents is college level educated, speak multiple languages and live in a well off zipcode, even though both me and his mother were poor back in Brazil. It's sad to see people write off whole populations like this, "all the other immigrants that weren't european or asian", as if all africans and latinos are stupid and not that they didn't have any references of people that went to college or were educated and did well. Completely ignoring the environment these people came from. I definitely recommend the work of professor Raj Chetty on the subject: https://rajchetty.com/ https://rajchetty.com/ He talks a lot about how even growing up in a community with great role models (doesn't even have to be your own parents) affects the outcomes for kids because they get to KNOW there are other options. When I got to college I had no idea I could move to another country by being a programmer, then a friend moved to Australia and I was like WAIT, I CAN DO THAT AS WELL? Most of my plans back then were to move to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro to find a well paying job but that single friend that moved to another country completely opened over the world to me.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > He's not, it's the magical thinking "pulling yourself by your own bootstraps" when reality is that my kid is going to have a better outcome than the average Latino immigrant because both of his parents is college level educated, speak multiple languages and live in a well off zipcode, even though both me and his mother were poor back in Brazil. If you compare two kids whose parents are at the 25th percentile economically, one whose parents are native born Americans and the other whose parents are Guatemalan, the Guatemalan kid is actually going do better as a grown up. And a Chinese kid will do better than both of them.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    > And a Chinese kid will do better than both of them. Speaking as someone who grew up in an area where Asian Americans were the majority, the average Chinese kid may ultimately fare better in terms of income, but may also have unresolved mental health issues steming from the crushing parental pressure in their childhood.

lapcat 3y ago

> In retrospect the big dividing line is kids from cultures that value education and long term thinking and ones that don’t. > The Asian parent example shows the opposite - the poorer you are the more your choices really matter - you only have a few dollars and a few hours and how you spend them really matters. It sounds like the most important "choice" a person can make is their choice of parents.

xyzelement 3y ago
Correct. The second most important choice is to look around for families achieving good outcomes and try to emulate them.
- sethammons 3y ago
  And if those don't exist, you can at least see a lot of bad examples and what not to do. I didn't have role models or examples of functional families to look up to. Lots of trial and error with the major guiding posts being "don't do what they did / don't be like them."
  - em-bee 3y ago
    when i was couchsurfing i had the opportunity to observe other families at parenting and i picked up a few ideas of what i felt was good and what i thought wasn't. in particular for aspects that i didn't experience at home myself. and later also paying attention to my own kids behavior and realizing when something i didn't like was actually them copying me which eventually led to a change in my own behavior. the biggest struggle i find is outside pressure by people telling you what you are doing wrong, but not showing you how to do it right. people that are judging but not helping. these people also often do not understand what it means not to have family support. they can't even conceive the idea of a sibling who doesn't care about you or a parent who is absent. and i feel that this is more often directed at poor people, as if they were responsible for being poor themselves.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
It's important. Not quite as important as you're making it, though. Parents (or whoever raises us) sets the "default settings" for our life. It's what we think "normal" is. But we aren't robots rolling off an assembly line. We can change those settings away from the default. This is one of the most important choices for young adults - what are you going to keep from your parents, and what are you going to change? But yes, given a culture with set of beliefs, the majority of the next generation is going to keep those default settings as their own.

yterdy 3y ago

I think this paints an inaccurate picture. I have many West Indian family friends who also grew up in Brooklyn during this period. Education was emphasized in those households. Finding success or not was largely a factor of who successfully avoided contact with the NYPD. Note that I don't say, "Avoided crime." It was simple contact with law enforcement that made the difference; people did fine on their own, but finding oneself in the crosshairs of an apparatchik often lead to derailment. So it goes through the American ages: an ancestor was forced to abandon a successful contracting business in South Carolina under threat from white supremacists. Family farms that couldn't receive Farm Bureau financing languished. Developers with visions of gentrification bought family brownstones for pennies on the dollar as Silent elders faced end-of-life costs and Boomers reeled from the Dotcom Bust. Both of my parents struggle under student debt loads from the 80s. It is likely that my grandfather was only able to access GI Bill benefits because he was nominally able to pass as white. One starts to wonder if systems and institutions are designed to exploit users who aren't made aware of particular loopholes; and yet, to not avail oneself of those "resources" is to be kneecapped by lack of access to advantages other Americans take for granted. It was once said that the purpose of racism is to distract. We agree that focus is necessary, but to say that "culture" and "drive" are the sole inputs in regards to the maintenance of that focus is to be incredibly naive. An immigrant family is partially forgiven for not having the requisite cultural memory of US history needed to understand this, at least.

yterdy 3y ago
For posterity: because it's not reflected in any way that passers-by would be able to see, I would note that this post has been going up and down in points all day. It is reflective of the tension surrounding GP's thesis. Americans tend to beg the question on the matter because accepting that we don't have a fair meritocracy, and that even a culture valuing education and economic and professional savvy does not guarantee affluence, is frightening. That best intentions and efforts can be derailed by the assumptions people make about you because of your identity. The NY Times published data that showed that black boys whose parents are in the top income quintile have an equal chance of ending up in each income quintile, while white boys in similar situations overwhelmingly stay in the top two quintiles. Black women remain among the lowest earning demographics despite having one of the highest rates of degree attainment. Twice the work for half the recognition, and I will say explicitly this time that the GP is wrong.

hotpotamus 3y ago

As someone who was the product of a culture like this and understands the value and importance of education in modern society, I will never have children because I cannot put a child through what I went through; it's a meaningless treadmill of work that never really delivered any understanding or joy; just teacher-pleasing busy work. I learned far more once I got into a job than I ever did in school.

2devnull 3y ago
Valuing learning is not the same, maybe inversely related to, valuing achievement. One can value academic achievement in a way that minimizes learning, and one can value learning in a way that minimizes achievement. The children from such families probably follow similar but distinct life trajectories.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

checkyoursudo 3y ago

How do parents make sure their kids study their assess off? I value education highly, but my kid does not want to study. Hates it. It is painful. I cannot bring myself to force it to happen. Not sure that I could force it to happen anyway.

6510 3y ago
An idea I had when I left school and was confronted with the reality that is the job market: We should put 11 year olds in factory conveyor belt work for a month. 12 year olds for 2 months, 13 year olds for 3 months, 14 year olds for 4 months. Quite boring to read isn't it? Then we tell them, see? You don't have to study at all! There is plenty of work for you! Ideally they should not be paid. It should be a service provided for free to the [ideally] already wealthy owner of the factory. Yes, you just spend 4 months making money for someone who already has a lot of money. It sounds lame but it is a nice thing to do compared to confronting kids with their new factory life sentence after they failed school.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Not sure that I could force it to happen anyway. Let them buy their own gadgets from their own paychecks. Let them work, or show them, some really tough physical labor jobs and the lifestyle those jobs enable.
hotpotamus 3y ago
Why do you want your child to "study their ass off"? I'd expect the answer is something along the lines that they'll be able to work their ass off for an employer later in life. Perhaps your child has caught onto this and is not interested. I never have been either.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I am around ~40 now. The Asian/Russian Jewish kids I grew up with whose parents made them "study their ass off" are now by-and-large folks with families, homes, interesting and challenging careers, etc. The kids who didn't... aren't. I want to give my kids a better shot at a better outcome in life. There's no guarantees but I want to maximize their chances and knowing how to learn and work is a key input to that. You mentioned in another post some pointless teacher-pleasing that you engaged in, I am not sure why you think that's the only or even a common path. Most of these kids I am talking about adopted their parents' "invest in yourself" mentality, and also by-and-large found their studies challenging and interesting. You seem to be taking your own worst-case and projecting it onto the world.