Author Topic: The Racial Wealth Gap:Mustachians of Color, feel free to share your experiences!  (Read 64244 times)

Gin1984

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Quote from: starguru on Today at 10:03:31 AM
I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture.
What is the benefit to society to do so?

Society created the culture to begin with, from the importation of slaves, the denial of restitution, and half a century of formal, legal racism.
You keep one group poor and uneducated, that group forms a separate subculture. 

And society pays the cost - both in terms of welfare, and by being the victims of crime.

As long as society continues to marginalize poor urban Black youth, the cycle is going to continue.

Am I understanding this correctly?  That the benefit to accepting ghetto culture would result in a decrease in crime and an increase in integration into the "mainstream" society?

Gerard

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I want to jump in on language for a minute here (because that's what I do for a living). I'm worried when I see people assume that dialect differences reflect some kind of moral or intellectual deficit. We're gonna shit on people for "not talking proper" or sounding ghetto/hillbilly because they talk like the people who love them and who brought them up? When they have the same vowel systems as, say, Bill Clinton or Martin Luther King? When we ourselves are too lazy or arrogant to learn anything about the dialects of a quarter or more of the people in the country?

The dialect that we now call "proper" only got that reputation about a century ago, when American cultural and educational elites decided that our point of reference should be the Midwest rather than the South (too Black) or New York (too Jewish). Thomas Bonfiglio and Rosina Lippi-Green are good reads on this topic. Lots of researchers (Purnell, Baugh, Anderson) have shown that having a Black or Latino accent leads to worse job offers, lower assumed ability, and denial of housing, even when everything else is equal.

I'm gonna steal a short summary of some other points from a sociolinguistics book:
'This is a recurring theme in standard language ideology (or, more accurately, in anti-non-standard ideology): the idea that people could speak differently if they just tried a little harder. Much research that we’ve looked at in previous chapters suggests that this is just not true, at least when it comes to accent changes in adults. Imagine what would happen if you moved to another dialect area right now, and were suddenly expected to sound like everyone around you, or else be considered uneducated. Your odds of success would be low. Imagine, for example, living in Philadelphia, like the people studied by Payne (1980), who couldn’t figure out the local “short A” vowel system even if they were born there, unless their parents were born there too! Yet, on the other hand, we’ve also looked at research that suggests that people do a lot of active identity work with language, that they use language choices to build their sense of gender, or local-ness, or ethnicity. [...] what the standard language ideology does is to impose a massively steeper burden on speakers of some varieties than on others. When people say that speakers of a non-standard variety “could change if they wanted to,” they are in effect saying, “…even though it would require a massive effort, erasure of their identity, and rejection of their home language and community norms, and it would still not be completely successful.”  '

I probably have a point here... um... language is central to who people are and is deeply ingrained. Some superficial aspects may reflect attitudes or conscious choices, but most of it is where we come from and who we are. When some people get to go to school or a job interview and talk the way they do at home, while others are told their home language is wrong, ghetto, improper, hillbilly, or stupid, then that second group has an additional burden placed on them that makes it harder for them to show how much they actually know.

It's true that "that's just the way it is", but it doesn't mean it's right, or that it reflects well on us to perpetuate it.

(Man, this is my second rant of the evening... must be something in the water...)

Bakari

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Those last two posts kind of answer each other's questions...

Yes, discriminating against people for how they talk and dress will perpetuate those people being poor and feeling/acting like outsiders, which includes crime.

If a person doesn't speak "proper" English, or dress the way you do, that does not automatically mean that they are less educated, less hard working, less skilled, less able to do whatever job.  It may correlate with one or more of those traits statistically, but assuming they do for any specific individual is pretty much the literal definition of "stereotyping", the primary component of "prejudice"

And Gerard, as Gin pointed out for us, not discriminating on the basis of things like dialect, dress, and music preference is so inconceivable that it just doesn't even make any sense!

Gerard

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I believe the relevant saying is "Don't shit on me and then hate me for stinking." :-)

Bakari

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The maladaptive responses to racial violence that I talk about are the cultural problems that Bakari discusses. Hostility to white people and intense interest in conforming with one's "group" mainfest themselves in ebonics and negative attitudes towards authority figures.

On the topic of discrimination, I partially agree with Bakari that most (visible) discrimination is "cultural" discrimination rather than racial discrimination, at least in the Northeast and West of the United States. In the South and Southern Midwest, I would say that true racial discrimination is still quite common, though obviously not as severe as it was decades ago.


kept forgetting to note: I totally believe it may be very different in the South.  Everything I've written is from my perspective and experience living in CA and a short time in NJ/NY

Bakari

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(Man, this is my second rant of the evening... must be something in the water...)
Mine too... I somehow got into a debate elsewhere online over whether when two people are equally drunk and have sex, that automatically constitutes the man raping the woman, because she was too drunk to consent...

former player

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'This is a recurring theme in standard language ideology (or, more accurately, in anti-non-standard ideology): the idea that people could speak differently if they just tried a little harder. Much research that we’ve looked at in previous chapters suggests that this is just not true, at least when it comes to accent changes in adults. Imagine what would happen if you moved to another dialect area right now, and were suddenly expected to sound like everyone around you, or else be considered uneducated. ...  When people say that speakers of a non-standard variety “could change if they wanted to,” they are in effect saying, “…even though it would require a massive effort, erasure of their identity, and rejection of their home language and community norms, and it would still not be completely successful.”

Agreed.  I'm not an educator, but my parents were, including one who taught English as a new language to immigrant children. With limited extra teaching hours (and an immersive experience at school) those children were all fluent within the year.  I think it is entirely possible for schools to say to kids "The language you hear at home is part of your identity and as valuable as all other languages.  We have no wish to change that, but we are going to teach you another language, which we call standard English, to use at school and which will give you economic power in society.  In other words, we will teach you the language of the enemy so that you can infiltrate the enemy and take their economic wealth in ways they can't harass you and put you in prison for."

Gin1984

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(Man, this is my second rant of the evening... must be something in the water...)
Mine too... I somehow got into a debate elsewhere online over whether when two people are equally drunk and have sex, that automatically constitutes the man raping the woman, because she was too drunk to consent...
But that is illogical, it would be either both are raping each other or the one who is "unable to consent by reason of intoxication" is the one being raped.  Gender matters in the averages because the affect of alcohol is greater on the smaller person and on average females are smaller than male but you can get man intoxicated to the point he can't consent without over drinking yourself.  What I don't get here is that this idea has had a long history in contract law.  If you are intoxicated past a certain point, you can't consent (can't sign away your assets etc) but when this moved into sexual assault no one bother to explain it to people.  It is not always man rapist, women victim.  Granted, based on Dr Lisak's work on rapists, many do use alcohol to remove their victim's ability to consent and themselves have do have drink.  But it is pretty easy to qualify that. A person who is under the legal limit for driving has sex with someone at .1, .2, there is a difference in their abilities to consent.  Why is that a hard consent for people?  It is not a drink that is a problem, it is when the person abilities to consent are compromised that cause the problem.   

RetiredAt63

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Staying out of the race issue (Canadian history, different perspectives) but looking at poverty and language.

My ancestry: Irish/Scots - the immigrants to Canada had massively different images - Scots were hard-working, savers, educated, Irish were shiftless drinkers. Ouch.  Yet for my Irish great-grandparents, he was a farm labourer, she was a house-keeper (according to census) and Catholic in a Protestant neighbourhood (don't laugh, those in the US, historically in a lot of Canada Catholic/Protestant was the big divide).  So they both worked for others.  Their son was a building contractor, went to the Toronto School of Architecture for a year (that is now part of University of Toronto), ended up one of the most respected men in his town as judged by the men who carried his coffin at his funeral.  So they were able to "make it" when they had ethnic origin against them.  I have no idea of their language skills, but they probably spoke Erse and maybe English?  My Scottish great-grandfather was bilingual, I know, he spoke Scottish Gaelic and English - can you imagine the broad Scots accent he must have had? 

One of the great benefits of the CBC (radio only back then) was that it tended to give Canadians a consistent language to model themselves on, although of course we have regional differences - I have well-educated neighbours here who say "youse" instead of "you" and that is acceptable.  Growing up in Montreal I spoke Quebec English, and had to modify my vocabulary when I left Quebec, or no-one could understand me - my accent was there, but OK (people said I sounded "British", of all the odd possibilities), it was the vocabulary that was odd.

After years of teaching CEGEP (one year my school had students from 47 different ethnic backgrounds, so we were definitely diverse) and University, my observations on students and language is that the ones who want to do well work hard at improving their formal English. Those who think they are fine as they are (which is usually not as good as the ones who are working at their language skills) don't bother, and it shows.  At least in Science I could point out that there is an accepted way of writing to get your point across and be taken seriously.  It was not denigrating the casual speech of the students, it was presenting a new vocabulary and a style to go with it.

Gerard

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I don't think the last few commenters are actually all that far apart (the language ones, not the liquor subthread). People do need to have standard language, at least in writing, to fit into their genre/profession. It's unfair that what we call "standard" is actually the dialect of one privileged class/ethnicity, but we're probably stuck with that. The trick is to help people navigate the system without telling them it's because their current language sucks.

Those of us who were the first generation in our families to go to university remember feeling alienated enough at times... or worse yet, not knowing when we were dressing/talking/acting "wrong". I don't think we're saying class and race inequality will disappear when people stop hating on pants. Or accents. We're just pointing out the covert ways that the playing field is kept non-level.

Jamesqf

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I want to jump in on language for a minute here (because that's what I do for a living). I'm worried when I see people assume that dialect differences reflect some kind of moral or intellectual deficit. We're gonna shit on people for "not talking proper" or sounding ghetto/hillbilly because they talk like the people who love them and who brought them up?

I think you're a bit off track here.  It's not vowel systems and accents that are the problem, it's vocabulary and grammar.  The intellectual deficit is when that's the only way people can, or are willing to, talk.  Most people are perfectly capable of changing their speech depending on context: I speak quite differently (and use a much different vocabulary and somewhat different grammar) when I'm presenting a paper at a scientific conference than I do when I'm just hanging out with friends.  I can also do pretty good Shakespearean English, given the opportunity.

Gerard

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I think you're a bit off track here.  It's not vowel systems and accents that are the problem, it's vocabulary and grammar.  The intellectual deficit is when that's the only way people can, or are willing to, talk. 

Depends what you mean by grammar. From a linguist-y perspective, it's actually really hard for people to switch grammar (morphology, syntax), unless they've spent a lot of time doing it and are essentially bi-dialectal. Most speakers of Standard English have a really hard time correctly using habitual be (as in "he be tired" vs. "he is tired"), for example, or switching between American and British rules for the present perfect. Vocabulary is more gradient, but most Americans who move to England often use American vocab items unless they're really focussing or have been there for a long time. Does that make them intellectually deficient?

I think we're talking past each other, still, though. My main point is that we impose a double cognitive and sociolinguistic burden on some people and not on others. We often don't notice or acknowledge that that's unfair because we compare it to style shifting or the time we remembered not to say "motherfucker" in front of the pope.

sugarwater

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Interesting discussion.

When I see people say the root is education, I feel like that is a total oversimplification.
I personally feel their is no one source, but so many different things. I do feel like some things are bigger contributors  then most. Like lack of knowledge (which is different from education), and breaking negative cycles that have been prevalent in the black community for a really long time.

I'm actually one of five kids by my parents, I was raised by a single mother, while my dad was a drug addict. I've seen more domestic violence then I think anyone needs to see in their life. My mom has dated alcoholics and women beaters. I've lived in many different places from project housing to two bedroom apartments with seven people. I never actually had a place where I felt safe growing up.  My sisters are unsurprisingly are all messed up, with felonies, and are homeless, with evictions, and kids that they need the state to help take care of. Why am I different? Truthfully, the best answer I can give you is my natural INTJ personality. I always need to know more and why. When I was young I would get on forums and to become aware of and absorb knowledge and social issues.  I eventually tested into a great college prep school. Got a scholarship and got into college. I'm graduating next year.

But I truly believe in the psychology of the cycle. As much as I hate to say "slavery!" I feel like that past has left black america with such a shitty foundation, that the people are just not able to get it together.

Gin1984

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Interesting discussion.

When I see people say the root is education, I feel like that is a total oversimplification.
I personally feel their is no one source, but so many different things. I do feel like some things are bigger contributors  then most. Like lack of knowledge (which is different from education), and breaking negative cycles that have been prevalent in the black community for a really long time.

I'm actually one of five kids by my parents, I was raised by a single mother, while my dad was a drug addict. I've seen more domestic violence then I think anyone needs to see in their life. My mom has dated alcoholics and women beaters. I've lived in many different places from project housing to two bedroom apartments with seven people. I never actually had a place where I felt safe growing up.  My sisters are unsurprisingly are all messed up, with felonies, and are homeless, with evictions, and kids that they need the state to help take care of. Why am I different? Truthfully, the best answer I can give you is my natural INTJ personality. I always need to know more and why. When I was young I would get on forums and to become aware of and absorb knowledge and social issues.  I eventually tested into a great college prep school. Got a scholarship and got into college. I'm graduating next year.

But I truly believe in the psychology of the cycle. As much as I hate to say "slavery!" I feel like that past has left black america with such a shitty foundation, that the people are just not able to get it together.
But then what is the solution?  Remove children from this situation?  That smacks of the Native peoples being removed from their families and culture.

Bakari

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there isn't any easy solution

Gerard

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There's a simple solution, but it's not easy: work three times as hard as everyone else, put up with three times as much shit as everyone else, be willing to cut off more people than you would like to, and still not get quite as far. Kinda like what Sugarwater describes (which makes her soooooo much more badass than our typical "I got rid of cable!" accomplishments that she should stop and take a bow).

Because that's the paradox that makes all of us who disagree with each other "right" to some extent: in the aggregate, the social and historical and economic barriers are very real, and very big. But at the individual level, we all still need to take control of our own lives to whatever extent that's possible, and do the best we can with what we've got. No matter how unfair or unequal the burden is. Because changing society is going to take us a lot longer.

Gin1984

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There's a simple solution, but it's not easy: work three times as hard as everyone else, put up with three times as much shit as everyone else, be willing to cut off more people than you would like to, and still not get quite as far. Kinda like what Sugarwater describes (which makes her soooooo much more badass than our typical "I got rid of cable!" accomplishments that she should stop and take a bow).

Because that's the paradox that makes all of us who disagree with each other "right" to some extent: in the aggregate, the social and historical and economic barriers are very real, and very big. But at the individual level, we all still need to take control of our own lives to whatever extent that's possible, and do the best we can with what we've got. No matter how unfair or unequal the burden is. Because changing society is going to take us a lot longer.
But that does not answer my question.  I am not saying what can those within that community do, but what can those outside the community do.  Basically what can majority do?

Jamesqf

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But I truly believe in the psychology of the cycle. As much as I hate to say "slavery!" I feel like that past has left black america with such a shitty foundation, that the people are just not able to get it together.

I think blaming current conditions on slavery is at best an incomplete explanation.  Too often, people forget that slavery was not something that was exclusive to the US.  Indeed, until the Industrial Revolution made it possible to replace human labor with machines, slavery (and/or serfdom) was pretty much the norm everywhere.  (I also think it could be argued that the status of most people under Communism wasn't all that different.)  Yet AFAIK there aren't descendants-of-slaves subcultures in other societies, in the same way that American black culture seems to define itself.

On the other hand, we do see non-black subcultures - "po' white trash" in parts of the US, the dole-collecting subculture in Britain, &c - that have simiilar problems without having roots in past slavery.

iris lily

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There's a simple solution, but it's not easy: work three times as hard as everyone else, put up with three times as much shit as everyone else, be willing to cut off more people than you would like to, and still not get quite as far....

What is amazing to me is that people actually DO this every day in this country. New immigrants are famous for coming here with their in-country high education credentials and then working as janitors and hotel maids in the U.S. while driving a taxi--for decades, slogging it out-- in order to give that next generation the leg up. Of if they weren't the highly educated in their country, they know about hard, constant work and same deal. Their sacrifice is inspiring.

But in ghetto culture there isn't that vision because (I assume) no one really believe you can get out through "hard work." That's just The Man's phrase. That's why that trend of the 90's was all about encouraging ghetto kids to have The Vision of what they want in their lives. And sure, that's fine, as a visually motivated person I totally grock the idea that you've got to "see" the goal before you can figure out how to achieve it. But seems to be too much visioning and not enough elbow grease devoted to achieving the dream that I observe around here in my urban environment.

electriceagle

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There's a simple solution, but it's not easy: work three times as hard as everyone else, put up with three times as much shit as everyone else, be willing to cut off more people than you would like to, and still not get quite as far. Kinda like what Sugarwater describes (which makes her soooooo much more badass than our typical "I got rid of cable!" accomplishments that she should stop and take a bow).

Because that's the paradox that makes all of us who disagree with each other "right" to some extent: in the aggregate, the social and historical and economic barriers are very real, and very big. But at the individual level, we all still need to take control of our own lives to whatever extent that's possible, and do the best we can with what we've got. No matter how unfair or unequal the burden is. Because changing society is going to take us a lot longer.
But that does not answer my question.  I am not saying what can those within that community do, but what can those outside the community do.  Basically what can majority do?

First and foremost: deconcentrate poverty. When all of the poor people live in one place, both the internal sources of harm (oversimplifying: behavior) and the external sources of harm (oversimplifying: resources) compound and reinforce each other.

When your city proposes to put a housing project, homeless shelter, etc in a poor area, ask "why there? won't that project just reinforce poverty?"

While deconcentrating poverty won't solve every problem, it helps to ensure that folks who want to take a better path won't have to give up social relationships with their friends and neighbors in order to do so. Deconcentrating poverty also helps to level the playing field so that folks who want to get out of poverty only have to work 1.5x as hard as everyone else rather than 3x as hard.

re: iris lily
The argument that new immigrants climb the ladder very quickly suffers from selection bias. The process of moving from one country to another selects for individuals who are smarter and harder working. We never see the failures because they are still in their home countries.

ChrisLansing

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The argument that new immigrants climb the ladder very quickly suffers from selection bias.

In addition, new immigrants sometimes outperform American born whites, which might require us to ask ourselves why we are either lazy or maladapted.  :-)

marty998

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First and foremost: deconcentrate poverty. When all of the poor people live in one place, both the internal sources of harm (oversimplifying: behavior) and the external sources of harm (oversimplifying: resources) compound and reinforce each other.

When your city proposes to put a housing project, homeless shelter, etc in a poor area, ask "why there? won't that project just reinforce poverty?"


There's an entire suburb in outer South Western Sydney called Claymore which was constructed as all Housing Commission. Needless to say it has became a disaster.

Businesses couldn't survive there because all people were on benefits and had nothing to spend. Since there were  no businesses there were no jobs in the area either. Young kids roam the streets at night vandalising everything, because there's nothing to do. It's a no go zone for the general population.

I have no doubt Claymore was built with the best of intentions. I agree with you electriceagle, but how do you assuage voters who think that housing these people next door will affect Property prices? (a very Sydney worry!)

*Sorry, a little edit...Claymore is a white area.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2014, 04:26:31 PM by marty998 »

electriceagle

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First and foremost: deconcentrate poverty. When all of the poor people live in one place, both the internal sources of harm (oversimplifying: behavior) and the external sources of harm (oversimplifying: resources) compound and reinforce each other.

When your city proposes to put a housing project, homeless shelter, etc in a poor area, ask "why there? won't that project just reinforce poverty?"


There's an entire suburb in outer South Western Sydney called Claymore which was constructed as all Housing Commission. Needless to say it has became a disaster.

Businesses couldn't survive there because all people were on benefits and had nothing to spend. Since there were  no businesses there were no jobs in the area either. Young kids roam the streets at night vandalising everything, because there's nothing to do. It's a no go zone for the general population.

I have no doubt Claymore was built with the best of intentions. I agree with you electriceagle, but how do you assuage voters who think that housing these people next door will affect Property prices? (a very Sydney worry!)

*Sorry, a little edit...Claymore is a white area.

Yes, lack of income to support businesses is a big part of the reason that poor neighborhoods stay poor.

I think that part of the solution is scattered site housing, i.e.  a bunch of 5-unit buildings spread out across different neighborhoods instead of a 500-unit tower. (Most of the projects here in the US are built vertically.) Some voters will complain, but most neighborhoods can accomidate a 5-unit building without a drop in property prices while no neighborhood can accomidate a 500-unit tower without harm.

iris lily

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First and foremost: deconcentrate poverty. When all of the poor people live in one place, both the internal sources of harm (oversimplifying: behavior) and the external sources of harm (oversimplifying: resources) compound and reinforce each other.

Thus we have Section 8 housing, scattered throughout the community. The Section 8 unit is often the most troublesome property on the block.

Look, I'm not saying it's a bad idea from the social policy POV of addressing social problems,  I'm saying it's a PITA to live near a Nanny G experiment like this. Fortunately my neighborhood gentrified to the point where Section 8 is no longer viable here. The house across the street from me sold for $565,000. When I first moved in decades ago several houses were boarded up on my block and riff raff regularly tore down the boards in order to sleep inside. Now there are some neighbors you don't want. But I digress as I often do with the Feds and their damnable housing policy.


Quote
re: iris lily
The argument that new immigrants climb the ladder very quickly suffers from selection bias. The process of moving from one country to another selects for individuals who are smarter and harder working. We never see the failures because they are still in their home countries.

haha! I remember my friend from college, years and years ago, moved to a country that shall remain nameless :) a country we both loved. She was politically conservative. She made the observation about the people there that "anyone with get-up-and-go got up and left a long time ago."

That always stuck with me. Yes, the risk takers go forward. Honestly, it's likely I would not be a risk taker in another country. I've thought about that.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2014, 04:46:05 PM by iris lily »

Jamesqf

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In addition, new immigrants sometimes outperform American born whites, which might require us to ask ourselves why we are either lazy or maladapted.  :-)

'Cause "we" already have enough?

But the real problem here is in putting all white folks in a single category, and calling it "we" - or "them", if you happen not to be white.  Sure, some white people get handed a middle-to-upper class life by their parents -and maybe those are the ones you notice - but that's not all of them, by any means.  So we get back to the fundamental question of why some people, be they blacks, immigrants, or po' white trash, who are born into a culture of poverty manage to escape it, while others in the same situation don't.

ChrisLansing

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Jamesqf

You are taking my last comment a wee bit too seriously.   

Letj

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"The argument that new immigrants climb the ladder very quickly suffers from selection bias. The process of moving from one country to another selects for individuals who are smarter and harder working. We never see the failures because they are still in their home countries"

Very true; in fact, countries encourage the skilled and educated to immigrate by making it much easier to gain entry for these immigrants. I chuckle when I see Americans admire the smart Asians as if all Asians are smart. To see extreme poverty one just has to go to India and China where well over 80% of the population live in extreme third world poverty (no running water, going to the bathroom outdoors, no indoor heating, etc). American poor by comparison are quite wealthy. However, the image of China Americans see is one of a rising super power. 

Constance Noring

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But I truly believe in the psychology of the cycle. As much as I hate to say "slavery!" I feel like that past has left black america with such a shitty foundation, that the people are just not able to get it together.

I think blaming current conditions on slavery is at best an incomplete explanation.  Too often, people forget that slavery was not something that was exclusive to the US.  Indeed, until the Industrial Revolution made it possible to replace human labor with machines, slavery (and/or serfdom) was pretty much the norm everywhere.  (I also think it could be argued that the status of most people under Communism wasn't all that different.)  Yet AFAIK there aren't descendants-of-slaves subcultures in other societies, in the same way that American black culture seems to define itself.

On the other hand, we do see non-black subcultures - "po' white trash" in parts of the US, the dole-collecting subculture in Britain, &c - that have simiilar problems without having roots in past slavery.

The difference between wage slavery and chattel slavery comes down to the legal status of the person being held in that state. The Gilded Age robber barons certainly did everything in their power to prevent workers from exercising their legal rights, or obtaining better ones, and many company town style industries would bind their workers to contracts that were basically indentured servitude.

But they were never property. African-American slaves were property. They were bought, sold, mortgaged, speculated on, purchased with credit, put up as collateral, and traded for the forgiveness of debts, for over 200 years. And that status was guaranteed by an intricate web of laws at the national, state, and local levels. These laws were designed to make sure that people of African descent were held as a laboring underclass in perpetuity.

The systemic denial of economic opportunity that faced black Americans in the 20th century was a reaction to the loss of the easy, clear-cut delineation of status that slavery provided. Without slavery to remind blacks that they were lesser, new systems had to be put in place to punish those who tried to venture outside their social strata. Jim Crow is still within living memory, redlining and block busting are still within living memory, and just because many (not all) of those post-slavery legal mechanisms have been torn down doesn't mean the attitudes behind them simply vanished in a puff of logic.

It's not, and it can never be, just about poverty in this nation. I get your focus on the treatment of low-income whites, James, because I've seen it myself. My grandfather was a (white) sharecropper's son - I'm only a few generations from po' white trash myself. But at the end of the day, when all is and was said and done, the operative word there is white. And the wealthy white elites of not just the South, but anywhere, could count on racial solidarity, so long as they made sure that being black was always worse than being white.

It's only been fifty years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and we humans are notoriously slow on the uptake. Our national culture is steeped in centuries of white supremacy, and we have to recognize that. We have to be intellectually honest enough to call it what it is, and wise enough to realize that just because crosses aren't burnt on front lawns anymore doesn't mean it's just gone away.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2014, 08:44:43 PM by Constance Noring »

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The difference between wage slavery and chattel slavery comes down to the legal status of the person being held in that state. The Gilded Age robber barons certainly did everything in their power to prevent workers from exercising their legal rights, or obtaining better ones, and many company town style industries would bind their workers to contracts that were basically indentured servitude.

But they were never property.

I'm sorry, but I'm not talking about so-called wage slavery, I am talking about literal people-as-property slavery.  (And serfdom, where the serfs belonged to the land, and hence to whoever owned the land.)  As I said, too many people (and you seem to be one) think it was unique to the US, though in fact it was the norm.  Wikipedia has a timeline of abolition in various countries, easily found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline  As you can see, most western countries didn't abolish slavery, at least in their colonial empires, until the 19th century.  It continued into the 20th century in parts of the non-western world, and still continues (de facto, if not de jure[/u]in some places.

goatmom

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Totally off the original topic, but yes the Irish were sold as slaves in America.

galaxie

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I found that fact sad but very useful as a guide of what I needed to get there and reminded me of the gamer article about white males being the lowest difficulty level.
I had to read this sentence twice to understand the reference, but it's a great analogy:  White males -- especially those of European descent with easily pronounceable names, no strong vocal accent, and middle-to-upper class families -- have historically had it easier.

However, I think today white women may have surpassed them in "lowest difficulty level".  Women are allowed more choices in life: 

- Gender stereotypes still exist, but pop culture is actually going so far as to purposefully reverse gender roles fairly often.  As the mother of girls, I've been aware of numerous "Girl Power" type organizations (where as if these organizations were meant for boys, they'd be politically incorrect).  I have never once thought my girls were being discriminated against because of their gender. 
- In school girls are more often rewarded socially for making good grades, whereas among boys there's still something of a stigma for "caring too much" about academics.  This tends to be pronounced among lower-class kids . . . and, since the topic here was originally race, it's worst among black males.  Lower-class black boys tend to see studying hard /taking advanced classes as "trying to be white" or failing to meet their social group's mores. 
- Work, don't work -- society's okay with you taking off a decade to raise your children.  Sure, you'll make less money and have less time to work your way up the ladder, but it's not seen in the same light as a man how has "holes" in his career. 
- Gender bias seems to work in favor of women these days:  People don't even raise an eyebrow at a female engineer or architect, but a male nurse?  He still gets a look or two. 

Yeah, I honestly think a white woman today has it easiest in society.

Nope.
In the workplace:
Women have to work harder to be taken seriously as respectable and professional.  There's an invisible line between "ambitious" and "bitchy," and the penalty for crossing it is massive.  Women are expected to look "put-together," but a woman who is too stylish, too pretty, or too young isn't respected as competent.  (I was mistaken for a student twice in the same conversation last week.  I'm a 32-year-old engineer with a Ph.D. who doesn't work at a university, and the conversation was at my workplace.)  Negotiating for higher pay is the way to close the income gap, but doing that will get you labeled bitchy.  And on and on and on.  The burden of proof is higher to establish that you're not a lightweight.

Outside the workplace:
The old quote is "Men are afraid women will laugh at them.  Women are afraid men will kill them."

RetiredAt63

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Also for many there was little difference between being indentured and being enslaved.  Canada as well as the US has a history of indentured servants - these were Europeans who (not always voluntarily) were committed to working for a set period to pay their passage.   Since they had an end date, there was incentive for "employers" to work them harder than they worked slaves, since they were not "valued property" and they wanted to "get their money's worth" of work from them. British children (paupers, under the various poor acts) were sent to Canada (mostly to work on farms) and treated very badly.  Quebec (when a French colony) had about 10,000 immigrants, of whom 4000 were indentured servants and another 1000 were Filles du Roi, so this was not just the English. 

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I've really been enjoying this conversation. As a middle-class, educated, half-Chinese half-white individual who has experienced very little racism, I don't have much first-hand anecdote to bring to the table, but I'm really happy this dialogue is here and is staying civil.

That reparations article was heartbreaking and angering.

Maybe more thoughts later once I've had a chance to put them together.

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The difference between wage slavery and chattel slavery comes down to the legal status of the person being held in that state. The Gilded Age robber barons certainly did everything in their power to prevent workers from exercising their legal rights, or obtaining better ones, and many company town style industries would bind their workers to contracts that were basically indentured servitude.

But they were never property.

I'm sorry, but I'm not talking about so-called wage slavery, I am talking about literal people-as-property slavery.  (And serfdom, where the serfs belonged to the land, and hence to whoever owned the land.)  As I said, too many people (and you seem to be one) think it was unique to the US, though in fact it was the norm.  Wikipedia has a timeline of abolition in various countries, easily found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline  As you can see, most western countries didn't abolish slavery, at least in their colonial empires, until the 19th century.  It continued into the 20th century in parts of the non-western world, and still continues (de facto, if not de jure[/u]in some places.

James, leave the goalposts alone. They're fine where they are.

The reason I did not discuss slavery as it existed and continues to exist elsewhere in the world is because it has only tangential bearing on the Particular Institution that was American racial slavery. And it is the North American conception of slavery, with its (unique) use of racial/ethnic signifiers to determine one's status as free or unfree. For much of America's colonial history, and right up to the passage of the 13th Amendment, in slaveholding areas, 'Negro' and 'slave' were synonymous. Free blacks did exist in the slaveholding areas, but they had to spend their lives providing proof of their legal status, because they were an anomaly. In the eyes of the law, and of white America, the default status of African-descended individuals was enslaved. THAT is what sets the slave system of the United States apart from other forms of indenture and forced labor that have been practiced here. An Irishman might have been held as a coerced laborer, but a black man was assumed to be.

Frankly, if I may be allowed to ascend my soapbox for a moment, it irritates me that so often when discussions of black slavery come up, the inclination of many is to immediately point out that "well, whites had it bad too, because of indentured servitude and anti-Irish prejudice, and and and-". And yeah, a lot of whites did have it bad. But it's not the same. It's not. Sorry. It's not, and it never will be. To quote myself from my previous post, now with extra emphasis:

Quote
But they were never property. African-American slaves were property. They were bought, sold, mortgaged, speculated on, purchased with credit, put up as collateral, and traded for the forgiveness of debts, for over 200 years. And that status was guaranteed by an intricate web of laws at the national, state, and local levels. These laws were designed to make sure that people of African descent were held as a laboring underclass in perpetuity.

American slavery assumed the total loss of bodily autonomy on the part of the enslaved. Their labor was not their own, their talents were not their own, their sexuality was not their own. And this was the assumed default status of everyone of African descent in the parts of the United States that allowed slavery. And by the 1850s, thanks to the Fugitive Slave Law and the Dred Scott decision, it would be the assumed default status of all blacks, everywhere.

In the annals of American labor history, some whites have been held in extraordinarily abusive situations. It is not the same, and it is dishonest to claim an equivalency where one did and does not exist.
« Last Edit: June 09, 2014, 09:44:07 AM by Constance Noring »

Jamesqf

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And it is the North American conception of slavery, with its (unique) use of racial/ethnic signifiers to determine one's status as free or unfree.

NOT unique, or even all that unusual.  (Knowledge of history, again.)  True, sometimes the  racial/ethnic signifiers were not the caucasian/negro ones of the western hemisphere, but they existed, even when they're almost invisible to our eyes, trained as they are in this culture.  (Ever wonder how the Northern Irish tell Catholics and Protestants apart?  Or Serbs and Bosnians, Hutu and Tutsi, Sinhalese and Tamils...)  Claiming that the US experience was somehow unique seems pointless, unless you can actually identify some factor that makes it unique.  And AFAIK, the only thing unique about the US experience is that the country fought a major civil war to (at least in part) abolish it.

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American slavery assumed the total loss of bodily autonomy on the part of the enslaved.

So did/does all other slavery.  Indeed, isn't that the definition of slavery?  You might also compare US customs WRT bodily autonomy with those of the Islamic world.
« Last Edit: June 09, 2014, 10:54:28 AM by Jamesqf »

Constance Noring

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James, you know what I said about the goal posts? Let's extend that to those cherries you're picking, too.

I'm beginning to get the feeling that you're not really reading my posts, you're just skimming over them looking for tidbits you can take specific issue with and ignoring the overall thrust of my arguments. Here's the thing: Yes, slavery is global, and it is ancient. It has existed in various forms in basically every human society all over this planet of ours for thousands of years, and it still exists today. But you know why I'm not talking about all those other forms of slavery, and all those other societies and places? Because they are not germane to the discussion at hand in this thread. The racial wealth gap, as it exists in the first world and most specifically in the United States, is born from attitudes and practices born of centuries of race-based slavery in North America. Full stop. The prejudices of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, of Serbs and Bosnians, Hutu and Tutsi, Sinhalese and Tamils have nothing to do with the situation that faces non-whites in the United States (nor, incidentally, do any of those groups have a history of enslaving each other en masse).

Why try to deflect, obfuscate and minimize the very real and still very present legacy of slavery in America by throwing up every other example of slavery under the sun and saying "See? It wasn't just us!" No, it wasn't just us, but that's not the point. All of this other stuff you keep bringing up about the prejudices and practices of other nations and societies aren't the point. The point is that the American iteration of slavery created a social underclass based solely on racial background, and when it was no longer legal to hold this group as slaves, laws, social customs, and economic practices were developed to continue to keep them in the position of underclass, and punish them for trying to escape it.

And we have to own up to that.

The United States Capitol was built by slave labor. So was the White House. We have to be willing to face that. We have to accept it, acknowledge it, and make it a part of our national conception of ourselves. We have to be willing to embrace the American Paradox, or otherwise, we'll always just be lying to ourselves.

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One more white dude here.

My view is (perhaps overly) simple: Now that there is equality before the law, and equal opportunity is the law, it only takes one good generation to beat the poverty cycle for good. While it's not fair that the starting point is so much lower, advancing from that position is absolutely possible (and happens each day). It's not fair, like I said, but at this point is all falls upon the each individual to better themselves and their children by rejecting social norms and taking advantage of every available resource (such as the oft mentioned education).

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I'm beginning to get the feeling that you're not really reading my posts...

Just as I get the feeling that you're not really thinking about mine, because you've already made up your mind what the problem is, and that the solution is to do pretty much what has been done for the last half-century or so.  That hasn't worked, so the solution must be to do it harder :-)

I'll gladly admit that I don't know any solutions.  I just think it's possible that we might learn something useful from the experiences of others.

CNM

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Glad to see someone else mentioned the Ta Nehisi Coates article! It's not only about the attitude of one particular group--it's about the systematic biases that have prevented African-American wealth accumulation via property and that simultaneously gutted black neighborhoods of tax dollars to have good schools and support. This issue to my mind isn't so much one of individual attitude as it is about the fallout of racist policy making at a systemic level.

There was another interesting article about education and income background from the NYTimes recently, about how able lower-income students drop out not for a lack of intelligence or not valuing education but from feeling overwhelmed, out of place and as if they don't belong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html

There are a lot of invisible barriers that have created the situation and which are much bigger than any one person's approach to money.

Yes, that Coates article in the Atlantic was fascinating and really eye-opening as to the extent, pervasiveness, and duration of racist policy in the US.



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@Constance Noring

I apologize in advance, this got  long.

Many of the posters on this thread are not United States citizens.  We are coming from other countries with other histories, many of which are just as bad, although in different ways.  This forum is international, please do not be the "Ugly American abroad" and take a narrow viewpoint.

In general, let's also remember that this period in history is very socially conscious, most periods thought nothing of slavery - the Angles  (you know, part of Anglo-Saxon) got their name because someone in Rome thought that slaves from there (blond, blue-eyed) looked "angelic".  Women especially got carted off as booty after every war - and one of their main jobs in slavery was the production of textiles.

In Canada we get to watch it all from "next door". "Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged A Nation" by John Boyko explores the American Civil War and how it encouraged Canadian Confederation.  You might find it interesting because it presents a contemporary society that treated escaped slaves very differently.  They went on to become respected and productive Canadian citizens.  More recently we have had many immigrants from the Caribbean (many from Haiti, because they can easily go to Quebec).  Many (most?) of them are the descendants of former slaves in areas where black=slave was also the norm historically.  One of them became a Governor-General of Canada (the GG is the vice-regal representative of the Queen, so this is a major position).   Michaëlle Jean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C3%ABlle_Jean) came to Canada in 1968 (born 1957) as a refugee from Haiti.  Growing up in Little Burgundy in Montreal she was not in a "good neighbourhood".  But look at her achievements.

So the point of the discussion is - various groups have had very problematic histories - some have managed to pull themselves up and some have not, in any group.  Any group will have its achievers and ne'er-do-wells.  What does this mean for "People-of-colour" in the US?  Beats me.  Do those who do well move into a more blended society and the focus is only on those who do not do well and stay put in a ghetto?

Personally, I also look at the US when it puts "Hispanics" into a category and wonder about that - that is anyone from Spain, Portugal, South America, and a lot of the Caribbean - wow.  What happened to the "melting pot"?

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Quote
Any group will have its achievers and ne'er-do-wells.

I can't speak to the way Canada or any other country perceives 'blackness' or 'whiteness' or what barriers that may or may not erect; but what bedevils American race relations and what has created a racial underclass/separate society is not about 'achievers' versus 'ne'er do wells'. Are all the black men in prison a sign that the black community is more full of ne'er do wells or is it proof that the system is gamed? Pretty obviously the latter! It is so much bigger than any one person or community's gumption or drive. I hate that we get distracted as a society from that big picture.

As Constance says:

Quote
The United States Capitol was built by slave labor. So was the White House. We have to be willing to face that. We have to accept it, acknowledge it, and make it a part of our national conception of ourselves. We have to be willing to embrace the American Paradox, or otherwise, we'll always just be lying to ourselves.

This is not to deny white poverty by the way. But I don't think white poverty is comparable. On the individual level, yes, everyone *can* surpass their background and the hand they are dealt with it and we must be responsible for ourselves at some point and seize what opportunity we can fight for. But it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. And I agree that the fact that other societies also had slavery is not really germane (though having a conversation about how race and class and prejudice play out elsewhere is definitely interesting).

RetiredAt63

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Obviously I do not have that particular visceral feeling - I have them, just on other topics.
And there are lots of other issues that should be in the American concept, maybe starting with all those political refugees of conscience you created back in 1776.  Sorry, getting off topic.
 We have to accept it, acknowledge it, and make it a part of our national conception of ourselves. We have to be willing to embrace the American Paradox, or otherwise, we'll always just be lying to ourselves.

I think the advantage of adding different historical perspectives to the discussion is that is broadens the view - "this" (whatever "this" is) is not working, what has happened differently in other societies so outcome were different?  And I also think back to when I was young and idealistic (now I am old and still idealistic) and things seemed to be moving well for blacks in the US, there was such a ground swell of change. And for you youngsters, a lot of the feminist movement came out of the civil rights movement, when young white women realized how disrespected (and used) they were by their young white male co-activists.

Sigh - in Canada a disproportionate number in prison are Aboriginal, which is another historical background issue - so please don't think we take the US issues lightly. 

Are all the black men in prison a sign that the black community is more full of ne'er do wells or is it proof that the system is gamed? Pretty obviously the latter! It is so much bigger than any one person or community's gumption or drive. I hate that we get distracted as a society from that big picture.

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And I also think back to when I was young and idealistic (now I am old and still idealistic) and things seemed to be moving well for blacks in the US, there was such a ground swell of change.

I'll probably take a lot of flak for this, but looking back, it seems that the real progress was in the late '60s to mid-'80s (very roughly speaking), when the general focus was more into integration into mainstream society.  After that, it seemed that 'black culture' was trying to impose its own form of segregation.

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Thank you for this incredibly insightful post.

I think it's cool that this discussion has remained civil so far, and it would be super if people didn't start instigating. I really don't like having to put on the moderator hat. ok? ok.

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And I also think back to when I was young and idealistic (now I am old and still idealistic) and things seemed to be moving well for blacks in the US, there was such a ground swell of change.

I'll probably take a lot of flak for this, but looking back, it seems that the real progress was in the late '60s to mid-'80s (very roughly speaking), when the general focus was more into integration into mainstream society.  After that, it seemed that 'black culture' was trying to impose its own form of segregation.

No flak from me. I have noted the irony of how "separate but equal" was so very wrong in the South for so many decades but all these years later I see many signs of voluntary segregation. I fully get that people want to be where they feel comfortable, I simply wonder if we will see a point in our lifetimes where it won't be that way. I suspect not.

thepokercab

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And I also think back to when I was young and idealistic (now I am old and still idealistic) and things seemed to be moving well for blacks in the US, there was such a ground swell of change.

I'll probably take a lot of flak for this, but looking back, it seems that the real progress was in the late '60s to mid-'80s (very roughly speaking), when the general focus was more into integration into mainstream society.  After that, it seemed that 'black culture' was trying to impose its own form of segregation.

No flak from me. I have noted the irony of how "separate but equal" was so very wrong in the South for so many decades but all these years later I see many signs of voluntary segregation. I fully get that people want to be where they feel comfortable, I simply wonder if we will see a point in our lifetimes where it won't be that way. I suspect not.

I don't really get this perspective.  Who is the arbiter as to what "mainstream society" is and furthermore who gets to pass judgment as to whether someone is properly 'integrating'?  Does every person need to have a dream of a white picket fence in the suburbs?  Finally, its implied here that the burden is on black people or "black culture" to become mainstream. 

Guess, i'm just curious as to this mainstream concept. Seems to me we have a whole forum full of people here who find a lot of what the "mainstream" wants people to do worthy of constant face punches.  So raging against the machine is only cool if you fit certain criteria..

Constance Noring

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I'm beginning to get the feeling that you're not really reading my posts...

Just as I get the feeling that you're not really thinking about mine, because you've already made up your mind what the problem is, and that the solution is to do pretty much what has been done for the last half-century or so.  That hasn't worked, so the solution must be to do it harder :-)

It's not so much that I've made up my mind about what the problem is - it's that this is what the evidence shows the problem to be.

We humans are desperately short-sighted, and we love instant gratification. We build institutions over centuries, and when they crumble, we expect their replacement to spring into being fully formed overnight.

Quote
I'll gladly admit that I don't know any solutions.  I just think it's possible that we might learn something useful from the experiences of others.

On this point we can agree. My only solution is to be honest about history, and there is a great deal to be learned from the experience of those who have been kept at the fringes of the American mainstream.

@Constance Noring

I apologize in advance, this got  long.

Many of the posters on this thread are not United States citizens.  We are coming from other countries with other histories, many of which are just as bad, although in different ways.  This forum is international, please do not be the "Ugly American abroad" and take a narrow viewpoint.

A harsh term, my northern friend. I do hope you can understand that my insistence on keeping my posts focused on the effects of slavery in the United States is not to marginalize the rest of the continent. My intent was, and remains, to discuss how slavery here in the US (and the subsequent treatment of ex-slaves and their descendants) has had a profound impact on the experience of black Americans, the fruits of which can be seen in the study posted in the OP. It's not that the rest of North America doesn't matter, it's simply that the majority of the conversation has revolved around the United States. (I'll also note that thus far, all of the posters in this thread who have identified as black have been from the United States)

Quote
In general, let's also remember that this period in history is very socially conscious, most periods thought nothing of slavery - the Angles  (you know, part of Anglo-Saxon) got their name because someone in Rome thought that slaves from there (blond, blue-eyed) looked "angelic".  Women especially got carted off as booty after every war - and one of their main jobs in slavery was the production of textiles.

As I've repeatedly acknowledged in my previous posts, slavery is an unfortunately universal idea. But what's the point of trotting out that fact in the midst of a discussion of particular nature of, and impacts of, slavery in the history of the United States, unless it's intended to be a focus-puller? Yes, slavery has existed since the first caveman realized he could force someone else to do his work for him, and it continues to exist to this day, but as I said before, what does that have to do with the racial wealth gap in the United States?

Quote
In Canada we get to watch it all from "next door". "Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged A Nation" by John Boyko explores the American Civil War and how it encouraged Canadian Confederation.  You might find it interesting because it presents a contemporary society that treated escaped slaves very differently.  They went on to become respected and productive Canadian citizens.  More recently we have had many immigrants from the Caribbean (many from Haiti, because they can easily go to Quebec).  Many (most?) of them are the descendants of former slaves in areas where black=slave was also the norm historically.  One of them became a Governor-General of Canada (the GG is the vice-regal representative of the Queen, so this is a major position).   Michaëlle Jean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C3%ABlle_Jean) came to Canada in 1968 (born 1957) as a refugee from Haiti.  Growing up in Little Burgundy in Montreal she was not in a "good neighbourhood".  But look at her achievements.

Well, let's talk about Canada. Slavery was legal in Canada until 1833, when the British government officially abolished it, but the African slave trade never gained much traction in Canada for the same reason it didn't in the northern United States - climate. The growing season was too short and too cool to make large-scale, labor intensive cash crop agriculture economically feasible the way it was in South and the Caribbean. Without the need for a large, controllable work force, most people found they preferred to white servants instead of buying black slaves, and the desire for legal slavery had mostly petered out north of about Pennsylvania by the turn of the 19th century.

As such, people of African descent make up a much, MUCH smaller percentage of Canada's modern population than the United States' - something like approximately 3% to America's 13% - and the largest segment of that group can trace their family roots to ancestors who fled slavery in the United States. (The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 wound up not only convincing runaways to keep on running, but also prompted some immigration on the part of free Northern blacks who didn't want to risk being 'accidentally' kidnapped and sent south.) The difference in those demographics plays a huge part in the success of the black Canadian community, but ultimately, the absence of the social expectations that went with race-based slavery meant that black Canadians were not forced, by law and custom, to occupy a lower rung of the ladder.

I was able to find one study dealing with a wealth gap in the Canadian economy, though it only focuses on Ontario. One point of interest I took away from it is that while there does appear to be a generalized wealth gap between whites and blacks in Ontario, it's roughly the same gap that exists between white Canadians and other minority groups.

(There is, of course, the issue of the appalling poverty faced by Canadian First Nations groups, but the US has not a single stone to throw on that score, seeing as we did the exact same thing, and worse. Yet another American Paradox we have trouble swallowing)

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So the point of the discussion is - various groups have had very problematic histories - some have managed to pull themselves up and some have not, in any group.  Any group will have its achievers and ne'er-do-wells.  What does this mean for "People-of-colour" in the US?  Beats me.  Do those who do well move into a more blended society and the focus is only on those who do not do well and stay put in a ghetto?

norabird addressed this point very well.

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Personally, I also look at the US when it puts "Hispanics" into a category and wonder about that - that is anyone from Spain, Portugal, South America, and a lot of the Caribbean - wow.  What happened to the "melting pot"?

A couple points here:

For one, the visibly African ancestry of many from the Caribbean means they find themselves coming squarely under the heading of "black folks" in the United States, thanks to our old friend the one drop rule. And for the other, well - It's kind of like the situation faced by a lot of southern European immigrants to the US back at the turn of the 20th century. Whiteness was more than just skin color, it was social and cultural. And if you had a good enough grasp of English and were willing to set aside 'ethnic' signifiers, you could find the door to the White Club opening, if not to you, then to your children. So it is for many people of Hispanic/Latino/Iberian extraction. However, the fact that many folks from Mexico (and Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and points south) have a high degree of non-European ancestry. This means that they can adopt all the 'white' behaviors they want and still never have the right look to make attaining "whiteness" a simple matter for themselves or their children so long as whiteness is the cultural default. (A problem shared by South Asians, the various ethnicities of the Middle East, and many of our own Native Nations.)

Tribalism and racial bias are the ugly little demons sitting on the shoulder of human nature. We know they're there, and there is not one group of humans in the world that is incapable of expressing them. We have all of human history to look to for the proof of this. The variations lie in the mechanisms by which these divisions and biases manifest themselves within each culture. The root cause of racial bias and the end result of a racial wealth gap within American society may be the same between, for example, African-Americans and Latinos, but each group arrived at those points within our shared culture and heritage through very different circumstances. If we are actually serious about addressing the root causes of these inequalities, we need to also address and honestly discuss the circumstances and histories directly relevant to the people impacted by these inequalities. These are unique to each group.

Right now, even despite the international flavor of this community, the major talking points of this thread are related to the racial wealth gap that impacts African-Americans in the United States. This means we have to talk honestly about how that gap was established in the first place, and that means acknowledging the impact of treating an entire race of people like livestock from the cradle to the grave for approximately 200 years. It took us another 100 years just to get us from the 13th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act, a century of violence, fraud, marginalization, and rage. It will likely take us another 50 years before a majority of the population in this country is willing to admit and openly discuss in an honest and adult manner the impact and legacy that the sins of our forefathers had upon us as a nation. This isn't about white guilt. It's about owning up to our history and learning from it.

It's been frequently mentioned in this thread that education is the first and best starting place for addressing  inequality. Maybe more African-Americans need to learn how to manage their money. And maybe everybody needs to learn more history.

Constance Noring

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And I also think back to when I was young and idealistic (now I am old and still idealistic) and things seemed to be moving well for blacks in the US, there was such a ground swell of change.

I'll probably take a lot of flak for this, but looking back, it seems that the real progress was in the late '60s to mid-'80s (very roughly speaking), when the general focus was more into integration into mainstream society.  After that, it seemed that 'black culture' was trying to impose its own form of segregation.

No flak from me. I have noted the irony of how "separate but equal" was so very wrong in the South for so many decades but all these years later I see many signs of voluntary segregation. I fully get that people want to be where they feel comfortable, I simply wonder if we will see a point in our lifetimes where it won't be that way. I suspect not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson

Separate but equal was wrong because it was intended to prevent social mobility and economic freedom for African-Americans. Surely you can see how forcible, legal marginalization of an entire group of people is not the same as voluntary segregation.

(Though I would argue that much of the "voluntary" nature of the separations in our current day and age has just as much to do with lack of opportunity as self-selecting your neighbors.)