The Racial Wealth Gap:Mustachians of Color, feel free to share your experiences!

[fitzgeralday]

Hmmm....I would argue that, as a society, we're already allowing people to feel the discomfort associated with poverty, hence the higher rates of a host of negative life outcomes that disproportionately impact those of lower income.  I also take issue with the assumption that someone's current status somehow implies that they aren't "trying" to succeed.  Perhaps the mere fact that, for some, they're able to wake up everyday to work hard at a minimum wage earning job simply so that they could provide for their families is the definition of success.  Maybe in their lifetime they may not accomplish full mustachaniasm as we know it, but I would not go so far as to label anyone who fits that category as not striving to succeed (or lazy)...not by a longshot.  If anything, the same could be said about a group of individuals who have the  luxury of spending copious amounts of time talking about money on the internet... 

IMHO, the best way to end the cycle is to let people be uncomfortable in poverty.  Letting people go hungry for a few days teaches them a lesson that can't be learned by handing them a prepaid card that they can use to buy junk food.

Should we stack them up like college kids in dorms rather than giving them a section 8 voucher for a house that many in the working class can't afford?  Should we make them perform some sort of labor for their benefits?

When being on the dole is more work than having a job, how many would start striving to succeed?

[hernandz]

Eh, I can't buy into this article's premise.  The girl did well in high school, moved on to the college of her choice, but she began to question herself when she failed a test in Statistics -- in spite of the fact she'd always been a good math student in high school.

Thinking back to my own college experience, I clearly remember sitting down with my first textbook, reading the first chapter, and saying, "Oh no.  I have no idea what I just read.  I came from a po-dunk little country high school, and I'm not prepared.  If I'm going to stay here, I'm going to have to step it up."  And I did.  My own daughter told me something similar -- after the fact -- she told me that she initially brought back low grades in two classes, and she said to herself, "Okay, time to start working on a college level."  Neither of us gave up. 

I'm thinking this girl's problems were not related to her race; rather, she was very average in needing to make the adjustment from high school learning to college learning.

Respectfully,  you are right that she needed to make the adjustment to college learning, but I read the premise of the article as that she needed to make a social adjustment that was blocking her view of the academic issue.  To quote the article "They don’t want to ask for help, or they don’t know how. Things spiral, and before they know it, they’re back at home, resentful, demoralized and in debt." She does get her grades back up after she gets some mentoring and afterwards she does see the academic issue needs to be tackled and puts in the work with the tutoring center.  You and your daughter, and many students, even minority students, do make the adjustment by themselves.  But the data is showing that many disadvantaged kids are having trouble with the transition, decidedly more than the middle-income kids.

You are doing wonderful work, teaching at a Title One School. And I hope it doesn't sound as though I think you aren't entitled to your opinion, which benefits from real "boots on the ground" perspective.  But I could see the girl you mentioned earlier, who helps at the library, and always carries a stack of books, having a similar moment, and saying to herself, maybe MrsPete was just being kind when she said I had potential. Maybe I really don't belong at this college.  I don't want her to know that she wasted time on me but I just wasn't good enough.  I think your heart would ache at that.  You would say "that wasn't the message I was sending."  And of course, you would be right. The message is stay in school, and DON'T quit.  But...when doubt hits us, messages get twisted.

It's entirely possible I over-identify with Vanessa.  I left school under that cloud.  Today, some 30 years later, I'm back in college, on track to get the degree I left on the table.  Knowing every day, that I was just as smart then as I am now, but the difference is now I see that self-doubt isn't always accurate, that even if it is, there are ways to work around and through the fear. 

To try and tie this back to the main topic (and sincerest apologies for hijacking the thread a moment), there is a lot of similarity with FIRE.  For most of us, FIRE is not something we are born to.  Many of us come to it through real financial hardships, and we spend lots of time being mad at the world or mad at ourselves but not realizing what steps get us out of the mess.  We often feel as though everyone else had the instruction we somehow missed about how to acquire/keep wealth.  We internalize some message about us and our abilities equaling some moral stature.  Somehow we come to FIRE.  In some cases, a real-life person helps us, in other cases, we stumble across a book, an internet posting, or a blog.  The fog lifts a bit, and we get to sharing our financial details to discover that we are not alone, we are not stuck in the same place, we did need to ask for help and pay attention. We may still screw up, but it won't put us back at the starting line. 

And to be all babyish about this -- your mileage may vary. This is a touchy subject.  This is my perspective.

[MayDay]

The educational differences start so, so young. It's hard to imagine how we will solve that when you compare a group of privileged kids who spent 0-3 going to library baby story time, and toddler music class, and had books read to themdaily, and colored and painted, and then spent ages 4-5 in preschool, which they left with the ability to follow school rules, write and sound out the alphabet, and spent summer on day trips to the zoo, arboretum, and nature center. And meanwhile they had a stable source of food, stable housing, and stable caregivers.

How can a kid who comes into K with none of that possibly going to catch up? 

I don't know how to understand the scope of racial disparities on top of the aforementioned economic disparities. I wish I did. Maybe I can't, really, as a white woman. Everything I know, I learned on the internet through discussio nd like these, so I can't really articulate any personal experiences. But I think I have read enough to know it is real, and that the scope is beyond what I currently understand.

Anecdotes!!!! There was one child of color in my son's K class. She was always unkempt and clothes were dirty. This is a very wealthy, mostly white community. On top of that, she had reoccurring lice throughout the entire school year. The school tried to keep it confidential but that stuff gets out. So here is this kid who doesn't for in re. Skin color, grooming, clothing, was behind academically, missed multiple days of school due to home conditions that were beyond her control, etc. She moved away in the middle of the year. There wasn't really any point to this.... just remin ds me how lucky my kids are, and how I shouldnt take their advantages for granted.

[Ellen]

Hernandz,

Really appreciate your perspective on this. I too had some moments of doubt when I first went (far away) to college, even though most of my high-school teachers and friends would probably have described me as a very self-possessed and confident problem-solver. That NYT magazine piece really resonated w/me even though my background is pretty different from most of the students featured. I commend UT for creating programs that help students know that it's OK, even normal, to seek help in college.

[MooseOutFront]

The educational differences start so, so young. It's hard to imagine how we will solve that when you compare a group of privileged kids who spent 0-3 going to library baby story time, and toddler music class, and had books read to themdaily, and colored and painted, and then spent ages 4-5 in preschool, which they left with the ability to follow school rules, write and sound out the alphabet, and spent summer on day trips to the zoo, arboretum, and nature center. And meanwhile they had a stable source of food, stable housing, and stable caregivers.

How can a kid who comes into K with none of that possibly going to catch up? 

All this. People are talking about college... pffft. I'm reminded of Tony Dungy's "Playoffs?!  We're talkjng about PLAYOFFS?!!" tirade.

[bogart]

The article directly addresses that all students do indeed feel out of place--but the advantaged ones have the wherewithal to know underneath the setbacks that they do belong,

You know, the article makes this claim, but I don't see that it really backs up the italicized part (my emphasis).

And you know, I don't really buy it.  I may misremember, and certainly there were ways in which I felt socially awkward.  But when some ~25 years ago I, a frighteningly middle-class white kid from a great public school system (in which I was not in the top 10% of my class) went to college (flagship state university in another state), I was astonished at how easy and fun the academic part was.  I mean, I got to take classes I wanted (almost without exception -- I had placed out of most general education requirements).  I did well in them, without putting in much work.  There was hardly any homework, as compared to high school.  I only "had" to take 5 courses per semester (technically I think taking as few as 4 was allowed; I typically took 6 or 7) and they only met 2 or 3 times per week.  And I was astounded at how expensive college was (though it was my mom who was paying for it) -- roughly $7K per year, a fact that made me entirely convinced that my professors were there to serve me (and all the other students of course, not me personally!).  So.  I wrote drafts of papers and handed them in early, asking for feedback.  I went to office hours.  I expected to get advice and I did (I also double-majored and minored and graduated in 3.5 years summa cum laude).

And sure, I was smart.  But mostly I was prepared.  And felt entitled -- not, I want to be clear about this, in an obnoxious way (not to say I'm not obnoxious, but really, my collegiate sense of entitlement wasn't an obnoxious one).  I wasn't someone who challenged the grades I earned (there usually wasn't reason to, and the one semester I did "badly," by which I think I mean I earned a B average, I told myself to wash that man boy right out of my hair and get back to focusing on my studies.  And did.).  I signed up for classes that interested me and professors I liked (surely these were biased toward things and people I found straightforward, and in retrospect if I did anything "wrong" it was not challenging myself more by pursuing other fields of study.  But by conventional measures, what I did was reasonable and my academic record rewarded the decisions I made).  I went to class prepared.  I worked ahead and asked for feedback, and I got it, and incorporated it.  And what with not needing to work to earn money while I was in school, it was all pretty relaxed, and I got to hang out and do fun stuff in my spare time, and spend a semester abroad as well.
 
None of which I deserve any particular credit for.  My life up until that point had prepared me -- unbeknownst to me, but all the same -- to do that, and I did it. 

(The high school I attended had been racially integrated for 18 years when I graduated -- it integrated the year I was born.  I don't remember this, but apparently as a first grader I asked my mother why the teacher only spanked the black students in my class.  By high school, the vast majority of the black students in my high school were tracked "down," relative to me and other white students "like" me; I can remember two black students who took AP classes; one was adopted and had white parents with a socioeconomic background similar to my parents'.  Some white students were also tracked "down," and not everyone went to college (though lots of us did), but the racial divisions were pretty sharp, and clear, and repeated systematic socio-economic differences within the town -- see that bit about when the school system integrated.  Our parents had not have the same educational opportunities if we weren't of the same race; when my father graduated high school, by meeting three criteria, he qualified for admission to our flagship state university -- (1) he was a high-school graduate; (2) he was male; (3) he was white.  That was "all" he had to do to get in, but of course, 2/3 of those criteria were outside his control).

[electriceagle]

Since I am (I think) one of the only two actual African Americans on this thread, I feel like I have a responsibility to address some of the issues discussed here. (This will be a long one.)

In politics, there is a lot of bickering about whether the racial wealth gap is due to historical (and continuing) injustice or social factors. There is a tendency to pile all of these ill effects into one column or the other and either lionize or demonize based on the cause assigned.

The real answer is that historical/continuing injustice and cultural issues both contribute to the wealth gap and reinforce each other.

Although slavery and its associated physical, economic and cultural inheritance is important, I'm only going to speak about injustice done to people who are still living.

1) Segregation

Government-sponsored residential segregation ended at different times in different places, but I'm going to treat it as ending in 1968. The final group of individuals who were born in a time when they were formally disallowed the rights afforded to everyone else are now 46 years old. For most people who do not seek early retirement, these are their prime earning years -- old enough to have completed their education and built a career but not so old that physical factors prevent them from working.

Segregation and Jim Crow/lack of voting rights created communities of no opportunity. Think about the things that you vote for on local ballots: schools, libraries, emergency services. If you don't have the ability to put politicians into (and out of) office, your community ends up with garbage dumps and power plants instead of parks and schools. The first 5 years of development are the most important; anyone who starts off in a poor or segregated neighborhood starts off with a massive disadvantage.

African-Americans have not yet had a generation that was not subject to government-sponsored disenfranchisement reach its prime earning years.

2) Racial discrimination, past and present in jobs and education

In the recent past, racial discrimination in jobs and pay was rampant. Now, only subtle discrimination is tolerated.

(Using current-day dollars and ignoring taxes here for the sake of simplicity.) Imagine that you and a white counterpart each do work that is worth $50k/year, but you are paid only $40k/year because your race does not give you access to all employers. Both you and your counterpart live on $30k/yr and invest the remainder at 7% (you: $10k/yr, counterpart: $20k/yr). Where do you end up? Do your kids get to go to Montesorri school? When they are a little older, can you send them to a private school to escape the bad schools in your underresourced neighborhood?

3) Networking and connections

Most jobs are not filled by placing ads in the paper or online. They are filled through networking and personal connections. This is especially true for two categories of jobs: entry-level, pre-education positions (how many of you had your first job at a restaurant owned by someone who your family knew?) and low-differentiation office jobs (clerks, admins, etc: jobs that anyone can do and where -- beyond the extremely bad and the extremely good -- differences in skill levels make little difference to the employer). There are a lot of these low-differentiation jobs and they tend to go to friends of the existing employees. If you don't live in the same place or go to the same schools as the people who already have these jobs, you're out of luck.

4) Maladaptive responses to racial violence

Being African American has always subjected one to the risk of violence. This is especially true in the South and Midwest where official violence was used as a method of social and political control.

If you grew up in an area where you and the people around you were subject to subject to racial violence, you probably adopted behaviors that would allow you to protect yourself:

- Distrust of white people - due to fear of violence and a peference for the safety in numbers associated with black-only environments
- Underuse of formal banking systems - due to a lack of recourse if cheated
- Less interest in accumulating wealth - you have little recourse if it is taken from you
- Hostility to white people and authority figures - due to their association with the violence that you have experienced
- Lack of interest in formal education - you are not eligible for the jobs that it would normally make available to you
- Intense interest in conforming with your group - when the formal system fails to protect people, they develop alternative systems. Just as the formal system requires you to pay taxes, these alternative systems require that you conform to their norms in order to gain protection.

Remember that you experience violence both directly and through the people around you. If people around you or people who you/society associate you with, experience severe violence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_Massacre), you internalize it for self protection.

Unfortunately, the behaviors developed are maladaptive in an integrated society and counterproductive in an environment where networking is important.

When a soldier comes back from a war and can't convince himself to sleep without a gun or to stop scanning rooftops for snipers, we say that he has PTSD. There are a lot of people around with segregation-induced PTSD. They never got on a plane and left the warzone, so they don't know exactly when to stop fighting. Even if they did, they would need help becoming normal again.

To make matters worse, individuals who experience violence and develop these maladaptive responses teach them to their children. The rejection of the larger society that comes with these responses to violence sharpens the effects of residential segregation and makes it more difficult to generate the social networks necessary for a good economic life.

5) Poorly designed social payment programs

Poorly designed social payment programs provide a disproportionately African-American cohort with perverse incentives to stay in poverty.

The classic example is welfare. Imagine that you have little education and a choice between receiving $13k per year without working or $16k per year for working 2000 hours per year (while you have considered the possibility of working your way up to a higher wage, you don't know anyone who has a better job, so you don't consider the possibility in your calculations). Even without considering the cost of social security and medicare taxes, you are working for $1.50 per hour.

To make matters worse, your rent will increase if you live in subsidized housing. You may have a 40% incremental tax rate (30% of income paid for rent in subsidized housing + 10% payroll tax).

Would you take the near-minimum wage job? Not if you're good at math. You're much better off taking the government's money and confining your labor to the informal sector.

Unfortunately, our country's social programs are designed to keep people from starving in the streets rather than to build them up: http://time.com/27708/my-neighborhood-makes-it-easier-to-get-pregnant-than-to-go-to-college/

Now that welfare has mostly been replaced with disability, the situation is even worse. Instead of choosing between $13k for staying home and $16k for working, you have to consider that you won't be able to get your benefits back if you ever work. This is because your disability payments are based on the fiction that you "can't" work. Once you prove that not to be true, you lose those payments permanently.

Option A) 1.50 per hour minus taxes, and you can't go back to disability if you lose the job
Option B) Take the government's check and work in the informal sector

Again, while you have considered the possibility of working your way up to a higher wage, you don't know anyone who has a better job, so you don't consider the possibility in your decisionmaking.

Of course, if you are stuck in a poverty trap, you can only live in a segregated area and will need to present some of the maladaptive behaviors described above in order to get along with your neighbors.

To keep this post from becoming too long, I'll stop here.

[fixer-upper]

IMHO, the best way to end the cycle is to let people be uncomfortable in poverty.  Letting people go hungry for a few days teaches them a lesson that can't be learned by handing them a prepaid card that they can use to buy junk food.

Should we stack them up like college kids in dorms rather than giving them a section 8 voucher for a house that many in the working class can't afford?  Should we make them perform some sort of labor for their benefits?

When being on the dole is more work than having a job, how many would start striving to succeed?

Societies have tried this.  Even if you set aside the very real ethical concerns, fiscally it's idiotic.   
We simply will not cure poverty.   We will always have among us those who have less and those who cannot fend fo themselves.   Some of that is self inflicted and some is random bad luck.   But we can alleviate suffering.   Because doing so is good for poor people and for everyone else,  too.

There's a difference between letting people fall through the cracks and giving them some tough love.  I support the latter. 

Is there anything morally wrong with expecting welfare recipients to perform some work instead of just giving them a free ride?  Wouldn't it be better to ask them to work in a community garden than to give them cans of soda and Cheetos?

Since you mention fiscal idiocracy, I will bring up the point that all of the fixes mentioned here are bandaids rather than a cure.  The only way to address the root of (involuntary) social inequality is to to change the Keynesian monetary system which feeds it.  Until that step is taken, the problem will not only remain, but grow worse over time.

[former player]

Since I am (I think) one of the only two actual African Americans on this thread, I feel like I have a responsibility to address some of the issues discussed here. (This will be a long one....

Thank you, electriceagle, that is the clearest and most believable explanation I've heard in a long time.

I think it is very easy to overlook the influence and staying power of culture/society.  It is a very small percentage of people who ever manage to look outside their own culture, and fewer still who change it.

[2527]

I can understand the situation of black people after having the experience I will describe. 

I am white and never sensed any doors or opportunities being off limits to me, and I never experienced prejudicial thinking about me.  Then, when I was 31, I married a Turkish woman.  She is intelligent (she beats most native speakers at Scrabble), well-spoken, highly educated (she has a master's degree), she is highly secular (she is an agnostic, but doesn't advertise that fact) pleasant and well-adjusted.  But there is a lot ignorance about Turkish people and prejudice against Turkish people.

I can clearly see that we have had social doors closed to us, we have been treated with mistrust by TSA screeners, she has been treated prejudicially by people, she has heard ignorant things, and she has not been considered for jobs she reasonably should have been considered for. 

These things are real and they exist.  And they exist in people's minds and they are usually unspoken so they can't be confronted.  Black people, and others, live with them every day and they take a toll in many ways. 

[Bakari]

I think this thread illustrates well what's wrong with the phrase "people of color".  There is just as much difference between the experince of a recent Asian immigrant and a native born Black person as between either of them and a native born white person.  It isn't a meaningful group.  It only serves to reinforce the idea that European is the "default", and everyone else is "other".

electriceagle, that was an excellent summary!

I am Black, and never sensed any doors or opportunities being off limits to me, and I never experienced prejudicial thinking about me that I've been aware of. 
I have never been harassed by police or had trouble getting any job I applied for.

I think a lot of what we call "racial" discrimination is really "cultural" discrimination, which, while similar and with overlap, is really not the same thing.  We have no choice about skin tone.  We have choice about how we speak and dress and act.

Its largely culture that keeps the past effects of racism perpetuating - violence from authority has been entirely eclipsed by internal violence, denial of education replaced by rejection of education.

I find it amusing and disturbing when people in rent controlled cities complain about "gentrification".  If there's rent control, then nobody is being forced out of their home due to higher prices.  What it is secretly code for is "white people moving into predominantly black neighborhoods" - i.e. integration.

IMHO, the best way to end the cycle is to let people be uncomfortable in poverty.  Letting people go hungry for a few days teaches them a lesson that can't be learned by handing them a prepaid card that they can use to buy junk food.

Should we stack them up like college kids in dorms rather than giving them a section 8 voucher for a house that many in the working class can't afford?  Should we make them perform some sort of labor for their benefits?

When being on the dole is more work than having a job, how many would start striving to succeed?

You get two years.  That's it.  If you don't have a job within 2 years, they cut you off.
When my family was on it, they demanded that my mother drop out of college (where she was finishing a Master's degree at UC Berkeley) and take whatever minimum wage job she could get, or else lose all benefits.  She opted for the latter.

Basically, because of the political demands of voters like you, the system is set up now more than ever to discourage people from striving to succeed.
This was implemented YEARS ago, under Clinton!  How do people still think "welfare" means "free ride forever"?

What have your experiences been like as a mustachian of color? 

If anything, I think being an educated well spoken Black person has been to my advantage - people in positions of authority love the opportunity to hire a Black person without having to lower their standards.  Because their is so much disparity in education and culture, this isn't always terribly easy.
 I have no basis for this, but sometimes I wonder if it doesn't get me out of traffic tickets - nothing about any vehicle I've ever driven would make someone suspect my race, and I usually have tinted windows.  When they see who I am they are thinking "oh no, I don't want to give another ticket to a Black guy, i'll get accused of profiling" and I get off with warnings for stuff where I was clearly in the wrong.  Maybe that has nothing to do with it...

Do you feel as though your racial/ethnic background has played a part , either positively or negatively, in your pursuit of FI?

Not really either way, no.  Mostly personal friends occasionally tease me for eing stingy with money in conjunction with my (partially) Jewish ancestry. 

In your experience, what do you believe the solution(s) to be for eliminating the racial wealth gap?

Mandatory, and free, preschool (for everyone).
Mandatory, and free, kindergarten.
Schools funded per student, on the federal level, as opposed to locally (currently locally makes 50% of school budgets, so that poor areas have poor schools). 
Eliminate financial penalties for the school based on the test scores of the students.  Having less resources does not help students perform better!
Public school teacher salaries should be cut by roughly 5-10% (approximately the amount private school teachers make), principals and administrators by 25-50% (to be within 25% more than teachers).  All of this extra money would go to hiring more teachers to reduce classroom size. 
Undergraduate college fully paid (not just tuition, but books and living stipend) as long as GPA stays up, for family income working class and below

Drug use decriminalized.  (Selling should not be.)

A shift away from capitalism and toward a free market, plus overtime laws reflecting increases in productivity, could eliminate involuntary unemployment and raise wages across the board enough that "minimum wage" wasn't even relevant.  All that would go a huge way toward eliminating all poverty (except in the case of disability with no family support), across all races.

I've written a bunch of other stuff on race in the past: http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/search/label/race

[starguru]

Bakari and ElectricEagle,

I find both your posts very informative.   You guys also seem to be a bit at odds with each other.  ElectricEagle seems to be saying that there are structural racism issues that are still hindering minorities, and Bakari seems to be saying that cultural discrimination is the dominating effect (i.e. when you wrote "Its largely culture that keeps the past effects of racism perpetuating - violence from authority has been entirely eclipsed by internal violence, denial of education replaced by rejection of education.").

Am I misreading something?  Can you guys go into more detail?

ElectricEagle, have you ever experienced racism first hand? 

[clarkfan1979]

I do think there is a cultural component to saving/investing money.  I am white and my hometown has a very high Hispanic population. Most of them work in construction and landscaping. About 50% of the freshmen class at the high school is Hispanic. However, upon graduation, only about 15-20% of the graduating class is Hispanic. There is a lot of pressure on the kids to drop out at 16 and start working to provide for their family. At a very young age I always thought this was sad because they are stuck in a cycle of low pay and low education. However, there was a small number of white families that were stuck in the same cycle, so I don't think the culture is based entirely on ethnicity. I think the cultural component has more to do with current family income, job type and education. Low pay and low education jobs also don't have any 401K and rarely health benefits.

From my personal experience, I noticed based on a parents financial situation/education level, they were more or less willing to fund education. I was a first generation college student and I was lucky that my parents funded my college. However, funding graduate school was completely out of the question. However, parents that may have a graduate education have no problem funding a graduate education for their kids. A doctor would be willing to help out a kid with 200K to go to medical school. Simply giving money to kids didn't seem to work for any of my friends. However, funding education did seem to work. Lastly, small business owners also tended to have kids that started their own business. 

[bogart]

When a soldier comes back from a war and can't convince himself to sleep without a gun or to stop scanning rooftops for snipers, we say that he has PTSD. There are a lot of people around with segregation-induced PTSD. They never got on a plane and left the warzone, so they don't know exactly when to stop fighting. Even if they did, they would need help becoming normal again.

As already described, I have no first-hand experience of it, but Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration provides some pretty compelling accounts of this and related issues (e.g. the phenomenal strictness with which it was necessary for African Americans living in the Jim Crow south to raise their children), though her book is (more) focused on those who did get -- not on planes, but on trains, and left the warzone -- electriceagle's word, but I'll use it -- or perhaps departed one for another.  But a key point of her book is that most African Americans who left the South as part of that migration actually moved back and forth, either for work (e.g. as train porters) or to stay connected with family who remained in the South, and that that created its own challenges (to say the least), in terms of living in (and out of) the warzone (and let's not imagine that there is not and never has been such a warzone north of the Mason-Dixon line).

(More recently, one of my sisters-in-law is someone who, as a child, spent half of each year in the U.S. and half of each year behind the Iron Curtain.  It was the Glasnost era, so the curtain was getting rusty, but I pretty much cannot wrap my head around the challenges, for a child, of living 50% of the time in a place with the US' civil rights/liberties' protections, and 50% of the time in a nation that was a satellite of the USSR.  Obviously the two aren't strictly comparable, but I get something of a sense of that sort of divide for African Americans crossing in and out of the Jim Crow South from Wilkerson's book).

And if anyone imagines that racial lines of the sort that shape, e.g., networking opportunities are a thing of the past in the US South, you are very welcome to come to church with me this Sunday. 

[MooseOutFront]

What have your experiences been like as a mustachian of color? 

If anything, I think being an educated well spoken Black person has been to my advantage - people in positions of authority love the opportunity to hire a Black person without having to lower their standards.  Because their is so much disparity in education and culture, this isn't always terribly easy.

I find this to be very true and very well phrased based on conversations I've had with SR. Management over the years.   

[thepokercab]

3) Networking and connections

Most jobs are not filled by placing ads in the paper or online. They are filled through networking and personal connections. This is especially true for two categories of jobs: entry-level, pre-education positions (how many of you had your first job at a restaurant owned by someone who your family knew?) and low-differentiation office jobs (clerks, admins, etc: jobs that anyone can do and where -- beyond the extremely bad and the extremely good -- differences in skill levels make little difference to the employer). There are a lot of these low-differentiation jobs and they tend to go to friends of the existing employees. If you don't live in the same place or go to the same schools as the people who already have these jobs, you're out of luck.

Just wanted to highlight this.  Personally, i'm white, and while I got my undergraduate degree, that wasn't really that big of a deal.  The most important thing was the connections I made during internships and other projects.  Those people are the ones that showed me the ropes, taught me the norms and values that are important in my field, and gave me the opportunities I needed to succeed.  They also looked exactly like me, and had very similar backgrounds as me.  It's hard to determine what kind of effect that had. 

As I'm moved forward in my career, and started hiring people, I've also noticed its much easier for me to tap into my personal network and look for talent.  Of course, my network looks alot like me, and the people that they might recommend to me tend to look a lot like them. And the cycle continues... I think though that at my work place we've recognized this as an issue and have been really trying to expand our employment pools, and reach into under-represented communities.   

[fixer-upper]

IMHO, the best way to end the cycle is to let people be uncomfortable in poverty.  Letting people go hungry for a few days teaches them a lesson that can't be learned by handing them a prepaid card that they can use to buy junk food.

Should we stack them up like college kids in dorms rather than giving them a section 8 voucher for a house that many in the working class can't afford?  Should we make them perform some sort of labor for their benefits?

When being on the dole is more work than having a job, how many would start striving to succeed?

You get two years.  That's it.  If you don't have a job within 2 years, they cut you off.
When my family was on it, they demanded that my mother drop out of college (where she was finishing a Master's degree at UC Berkeley) and take whatever minimum wage job she could get, or else lose all benefits.  She opted for the latter.

Basically, because of the political demands of voters like you, the system is set up now more than ever to discourage people from starving to succeed.
This was implemented YEARS ago, under Clinton!  How do people still think "welfare" means "free ride forever"?

Because of people like you, we have people expecting to use the welfare system as a form of financial aid for postgraduate study.  That's NOT what it was intended to be used for.

[Jamesqf]

I am Black, and never sensed any doors or opportunities being off limits to me, and I never experienced prejudicial thinking about me that I've been aware of. 
I have never been harassed by police or had trouble getting any job I applied for.

As a white (mostly, and the rest doesn't show) kid growing up in a place where there probably wasn't a black person living within 20 miles, I experienced just the opposite.  Maybe the indicators aren't so obvious to the outsider, but in a small community everyone knows who's "po' white trash" and treats you accordingly.  I think it's just basic human nature: they have to have somebody down at the bottom of the heap.

I think a lot of what we call "racial" discrimination is really "cultural" discrimination, which, while similar and with overlap, is really not the same thing.  We have no choice about skin tone.  We have choice about how we speak and dress and act.

Yes, and I had to go through a similar process of learning to deal with mainstream 'white' culture.  Yet I've known several black people who grew up middle class, and had little trouble fitting into the mainstream.

[anisotropy]

Yes it's "cultural" discrimination rather than "racial" !!!

[electriceagle]

Bakari and ElectricEagle,

I find both your posts very informative.   You guys also seem to be a bit at odds with each other.  ElectricEagle seems to be saying that there are structural racism issues that are still hindering minorities, and Bakari seems to be saying that cultural discrimination is the dominating effect (i.e. when you wrote "Its largely culture that keeps the past effects of racism perpetuating - violence from authority has been entirely eclipsed by internal violence, denial of education replaced by rejection of education.").

Am I misreading something?  Can you guys go into more detail?

ElectricEagle, have you ever experienced racism first hand?

Hi Starguru,

I don't think that Bakari and I are at odds. My post was a bit of a dissertation with summaries of the major causes of wealth inequality that affect African American's living today.

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.

Fifty years ago, the color of your skin was the primary determinant of the trajectory of your life. Now, it is one of many factors. Along with the quality of your preschool (if you went to one), the neighborhood that you grew up in, your parents' wealth, the amount of lead that you were exposed to as a child and access to networking through parents and family friends, it has a significant but not insurmountable effect on the average person's life outcomes. Unfortunately, many of these other factors are correlated with race because of the historical problems that African Americans have experienced.

These factors are not racism and are not discrimination, but they are the primary root causes of the wealth gap that started this thread.

I don't agree with the idea that white people should go around flagellating over their guilt/privilege or treat black people as broken souls who need to be fixed by the government. That is a waste of time and energy and leads to dysfunctional systems like welfare/disability that pay people to lay around and screw up their own lives as well as socially isolating them so that the maladaptive behaviors/cultural problems become reinforced.

[MrsPete]

Hmmm....I would argue that, as a society, we're already allowing people to feel the discomfort associated with poverty, hence the higher rates of a host of negative life outcomes that disproportionately impact those of lower income.  I also take issue with the assumption that someone's current status somehow implies that they aren't "trying" to succeed.

It depends upon your perspective.  Yes, people living in poverty do "feel the discomfort" of having less, being unable to do and have things . . . but certainly not on the level of people in the past or people in some other countries.

For example, no one should be hungry in America, yet my stupid cousin's family is.  Because they don't cook, they spend their food money -- which sometimes comes from food stamps, sometimes he works -- on quick, no-cook junk like cereal, crackers, and cheap frozen meals -- store brand?  Ewwww.  Money doesn't go far on those items, so they run out.  Similarly, when he works, they go to Golden Corral and gorge (and steal rolls and fried chicken) on payday . . . then they eat Bojangles for two days . . . and then they're hungry for the rest of the week.  My grandmother and I tried very hard to teach them to cook good, cheap foods, but they (especially his wife) will not hear of it.  She doesn't like to cook, she isn't good at it, she doesn't want to learn, she doesn't have time, the kids prefer Bojangles meals to pintos and cornbread -- the excuses go on and on.  I've quit trying.  They have CHOSEN to be hungry. 

And in that sense, he isn't trying. 
And I don't think he's alone. 

[MrsPete]

But the data is showing that many disadvantaged kids are having trouble with the transition, decidedly more than the middle-income kids.

Off-topic a bit, but I was pleasantly surprised at just how much "transition to college" help is available today for students.  When I went away to college, we just moved in and had to learn to manage for ourselves (well, we had an overnight orientation, during which we registered for classes and ate in the dining hall once); however, when my college daughter moved in, she had lots of help:

- She was allowed to move in one day early, and the RA had a get-to-know-you that night for the new freshmen.
- She was assigned to a small group with about 30 students (all in her major, led by an older student in her major).  The group leader gave them a tour of campus, which included taking them to the cafeteria to eat together, to the library for an orientation of resources, and to the bookstore to pick up their books (they don't buy books on her campus -- they're included in tuition).  This group met a couple times over the rest of that first semester, and the older student was a kind of mentor to them. 
- They had numerous social events that first week:  Midnight pancake breakfast, picnic with the school's dean, and other social events.  In each case, they were invited to go along with their small group, but they could also go with friends. 

My point: I think schools are doing more to bring all freshmen into the fold.  I think it's better than it was in the past. 

[Gin1984]

Bakari and ElectricEagle,

I find both your posts very informative.   You guys also seem to be a bit at odds with each other.  ElectricEagle seems to be saying that there are structural racism issues that are still hindering minorities, and Bakari seems to be saying that cultural discrimination is the dominating effect (i.e. when you wrote "Its largely culture that keeps the past effects of racism perpetuating - violence from authority has been entirely eclipsed by internal violence, denial of education replaced by rejection of education.").

Am I misreading something?  Can you guys go into more detail?

ElectricEagle, have you ever experienced racism first hand?

Hi Starguru,

I don't think that Bakari and I are at odds. My post was a bit of a dissertation with summaries of the major causes of wealth inequality that affect African American's living today.

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.

Fifty years ago, the color of your skin was the primary determinant of the trajectory of your life. Now, it is one of many factors. Along with the quality of your preschool (if you went to one), the neighborhood that you grew up in, your parents' wealth, the amount of lead that you were exposed to as a child and access to networking through parents and family friends, it has a significant but not insurmountable effect on the average person's life outcomes. Unfortunately, many of these other factors are correlated with race because of the historical problems that African Americans have experienced.

These factors are not racism and are not discrimination, but they are the primary root causes of the wealth gap that started this thread.

I don't agree with the idea that white people should go around flagellating over their guilt/privilege or treat black people as broken souls who need to be fixed by the government. That is a waste of time and energy and leads to dysfunctional systems like welfare/disability that pay people to lay around and screw up their own lives as well as socially isolating them so that the maladaptive behaviors/cultural problems become reinforced.

I read an journal article in which researchers made a program to predict PhD students getting tenure jobs.  They had to account for gender and race because otherwise it would not work.  I am at a conference so I don't have the link on me, but I can send it to anyone who is interested on Monday.  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.

[Bakari]

Bakari and ElectricEagle,

I find both your posts very informative.   You guys also seem to be a bit at odds with each other.  ElectricEagle seems to be saying that there are structural racism issues that are still hindering minorities, and Bakari seems to be saying that cultural discrimination is the dominating effect (i.e. when you wrote "Its largely culture that keeps the past effects of racism perpetuating - violence from authority has been entirely eclipsed by internal violence, denial of education replaced by rejection of education.").

Am I misreading something?  Can you guys go into more detail?

ElectricEagle, have you ever experienced racism first hand?

I thought Eagle's post was excellent, one of the best summaries for its size I've ever read.
I didn't feel we were at odds.  Eagle's post went into the (recent) history - there were very real structural, institutional, legal issues so recent that many people who experienced it first hand are still alive today.  We treat it like ancient history - something we are aware happened, like the burning of the library at Alexandria or something - but there are people who remember legalized discrimination.
Those are the conditions that set up the culture we have today.
That isn't going to suddenly change via magic.

If everyone in a position of power - bosses, judges, police, politicians - all became completely colorblind tomorrow, it would solve nothing.
People who were poor yesterday would still be poor.  There would still be high rates of violence, drug use, and divorce and low rates of education and saving money among the people descended from American slavery, even if was impossible to identify them as a group visually from a distance. 

Individual responsibility and social factors for behavior is a false dichotomy.  No individual can validly claim that because of their living conditions they had to sell crack or shoot someone.  But at the same time, if a specific group of people is forced into poverty, denied basic human rights and marginalized for generations, of course it going to tend to develop a higher crime rate and less respect for the rules of the larger society.

And of course, the world won't become color blind tomorrow.
Activists love to use the word "institutional" racism, but that was made explicitly illegal in 1964.  The term doesn't mean anything.  There is nothing about, for example, the court system that formalizes racism.  But juries are made of individual human citizens.  If the average random citizen has slight subconscious prejudices, well, you will get the results we see: Blacks are convicted more often for identical crimes compared to Whites.

So now we have a chicken and egg problem: there really are differences in crime rate and education between Blacks and Whites.
So its not entirely unreasonable for police to stop more Blacks or bosses to hire more Whites. 

A person doesn't need to grow up prejudiced to start to see trends and patterns in the world in front of them.
So it becomes cyclic and self-reinforcing, the more people are expected to behave a certain way, the more likely they are to fulfill that expectation, which then confirms people's expectations.

Something has to break the cycle.  Just removing the structural racism (which has been basically done completely) won't break the cycle.  It would take affirmative action.  Hence the name of the program designed to do just that, although it isn't enough by itself.  40 acres might be a good start (with the stipulation it couldn't be sold - a lot of kids in my 'hood would use the cash to buy 30" rims).  Maybe some public service messages by prominent Black role models "Stop committing crimes, you are making us all look bad.  Go to college.  Buy some land, fuck spinning rims."
I don't know what the real solution is

[hybrid]

First of all, what a great thread with some great responses. Sorry, just another white guy commenting. But as someone pointed out, that's the dominant audience on this site so whatcha gonna do?

I am 47 and have lived in Richmond since I was 6. Richmond isn't the Deep South, but it is the former capital of the Confederacy and so I have lived through a lot of change as ElectricEagle has described. In Virginia cities are separate entities from counties, so when white flight took off in the 70s the city schools became almost all black over time, and that hasn't changed in 2014. It's as if we went back to segregated schools all over again, and Richmond is for black kids. However a funny thing happened in the neighboring counties. When I was in high school in the early 80s Chesterfield County schools were mostly lily white. My son graduated from CCPS last year and those same schools are now about 20% black roughly (blacks comprise about 25% of the population in Virginia). On it's own and over time, without busing, integration slowly but surely happened. Not every CCPS school is that way, there are a few elems that are minority dominated and the wealthiest school areas are still overwhelmingly white (because, well, whites have most of the wealth) but by and large integration has been a success. So what happened?

Here is my theory. It wasn't just whites that fled the dysfunctional schools in Richmond. Blacks that were determined to have something better for their kids began populating the counties as well, and these folks represent the black middle class in our area today.

Race issues have not gone away in Chesterfield and are more pronounced in Richmond, but they are greatly diminished from previous decades. The issues now involve culture and class. And here's the key point. In 2014 I don't think there is a damn thing the white community can do about it, only the black community can help lift up the black community. So kudos to the OP for everything she is doing, there need to be millions more people just like her. Money isn't going to fix the problem of cultural attitudes, cultural attitudes cannot be changed with money (Richmond spends far more per student than Chesterfield, yet achievement is dismal by comparison). On top of that, I don't think "white guilt" is all that prevalent any more, I think it has been replaced with "white exhaustion". Life is easier to navigate when it isn't racially and culturally complicated, and racial and racist legacies have complicated things, thus the desire to self-segregate. I don't think most whites are racists any more like they were 100 years ago (when the KKK boasted over 4 million members in the 1920s), the differentiators now are class and culture. Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior. Black culture has to value education more. Black culture has to embrace two parent households more (a staggering 70% of kids in nearby Petersburg are born to unwed mothers). Black culture has to come to terms with the notion that "acting white" has nothing to do with acting like a white person (as many poor whites don't "act white" either), it has to do with being successful, and success is color blind. Thankfully, a large subset of black culture has made that transition and sadly a large(r?) subset of black culture hasn't. I don't think whites appreciate this, we make the mistake of assuming there is just one black culture, and they wear their pants below their ass.

I'm sure I could have written this better as it is such a terribly complicated subject, but I hope I managed to get a few points across.     

[anisotropy]

IMHO, the best way to end the cycle is to let people be uncomfortable in poverty.  Letting people go hungry for a few days teaches them a lesson that can't be learned by handing them a prepaid card that they can use to buy junk food.

Should we stack them up like college kids in dorms rather than giving them a section 8 voucher for a house that many in the working class can't afford?  Should we make them perform some sort of labor for their benefits?

When being on the dole is more work than having a job, how many would start striving to succeed?

Societies have tried this.  Even if you set aside the very real ethical concerns, fiscally it's idiotic.   
We simply will not cure poverty.   We will always have among us those who have less and those who cannot fend fo themselves.   Some of that is self inflicted and some is random bad luck.   But we can alleviate suffering.   Because doing so is good for poor people and for everyone else,  too.

There's a difference between letting people fall through the cracks and giving them some tough love.  I support the latter. 

Is there anything morally wrong with expecting welfare recipients to perform some work instead of just giving them a free ride?  Wouldn't it be better to ask them to work in a community garden than to give them cans of soda and Cheetos?

Since you mention fiscal idiocracy, I will bring up the point that all of the fixes mentioned here are bandaids rather than a cure.  The only way to address the root of (involuntary) social inequality is to to change the Keynesian monetary system which feeds it.  Until that step is taken, the problem will not only remain, but grow worse over time.

The root of social inequality is "free will" and human nature. There is no cure. We can only attempt to fix the symptons with ducktapes. Down the road a purging fire is inevitable.

[norabird]

Thankfully, a large subset of black culture has made that transition and sadly a large(r?) subset of black culture hasn't.

I am wary of this culture argument. Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the dialog in the Atlantic article and I agree with his take that it is deeply unfair to have created this problem of inequality through societal systems and then turn it into an 'oh well, black should fix their culture' thing. I'm not saying you aren't coming from a genuine place but I think the country itself has to take responsibility for the situation being what it is, since that is where the actual responsibility for things lies.

[starguru]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture.  Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

[electriceagle]

Here is my theory. It wasn't just whites that fled the dysfunctional schools in Richmond. Blacks that were determined to have something better for their kids began populating the counties as well, and these folks represent the black middle class in our area today.   

Yes, "black flight" is a real and common phenomenon. (Unless they consider it their mission to stay in order to provide social services) the best and most able families often move out of segregated areas as they develop the ability to do so. This has largely been effective in reducing poverty among African Americans as they get access to the same schools, libraries, etc as everyone else. Just as important, it removes them from a social environment that rewards self-destructive behavior (the "culture" / maladaptive behaviors that have been discussed here so extensively).

[starguru]

Bakari and ElectricEagle,

I find both your posts very informative.   You guys also seem to be a bit at odds with each other.  ElectricEagle seems to be saying that there are structural racism issues that are still hindering minorities, and Bakari seems to be saying that cultural discrimination is the dominating effect (i.e. when you wrote "Its largely culture that keeps the past effects of racism perpetuating - violence from authority has been entirely eclipsed by internal violence, denial of education replaced by rejection of education.").

Am I misreading something?  Can you guys go into more detail?

ElectricEagle, have you ever experienced racism first hand?

Hi Starguru,

I don't think that Bakari and I are at odds. My post was a bit of a dissertation with summaries of the major causes of wealth inequality that affect African American's living today.

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.

Fifty years ago, the color of your skin was the primary determinant of the trajectory of your life. Now, it is one of many factors. Along with the quality of your preschool (if you went to one), the neighborhood that you grew up in, your parents' wealth, the amount of lead that you were exposed to as a child and access to networking through parents and family friends, it has a significant but not insurmountable effect on the average person's life outcomes. Unfortunately, many of these other factors are correlated with race because of the historical problems that African Americans have experienced.

These factors are not racism and are not discrimination, but they are the primary root causes of the wealth gap that started this thread.

I don't agree with the idea that white people should go around flagellating over their guilt/privilege or treat black people as broken souls who need to be fixed by the government. That is a waste of time and energy and leads to dysfunctional systems like welfare/disability that pay people to lay around and screw up their own lives as well as socially isolating them so that the maladaptive behaviors/cultural problems become reinforced.

I thought Eagle's post was excellent, one of the best summaries for its size I've ever read.
I didn't feel we were at odds.  Eagle's post went into the (recent) history - there were very real structural, institutional, legal issues so recent that many people who experienced it first hand are still alive today.  We treat it like ancient history - something we are aware happened, like the burning of the library at Alexandria or something - but there are people who remember legalized discrimination.
Those are the conditions that set up the culture we have today.
That isn't going to suddenly change via magic.

If everyone in a position of power - bosses, judges, police, politicians - all became completely colorblind tomorrow, it would solve nothing.
People who were poor yesterday would still be poor.  There would still be high rates of violence, drug use, and divorce and low rates of education and saving money among the people descended from American slavery, even if was impossible to identify them as a group visually from a distance. 

Individual responsibility and social factors for behavior is a false dichotomy.  No individual can validly claim that because of their living conditions they had to sell crack or shoot someone.  But at the same time, if a specific group of people is forced into poverty, denied basic human rights and marginalized for generations, of course it going to tend to develop a higher crime rate and less respect for the rules of the larger society.

And of course, the world won't become color blind tomorrow.
Activists love to use the word "institutional" racism, but that was made explicitly illegal in 1964.  The term doesn't mean anything.  There is nothing about, for example, the court system that formalizes racism.  But juries are made of individual human citizens.  If the average random citizen has slight subconscious prejudices, well, you will get the results we see: Blacks are convicted more often for identical crimes compared to Whites.

So now we have a chicken and egg problem: there really are differences in crime rate and education between Blacks and Whites.
So its not entirely unreasonable for police to stop more Blacks or bosses to hire more Whites. 

A person doesn't need to grow up prejudiced to start to see trends and patterns in the world in front of them.
So it becomes cyclic and self-reinforcing, the more people are expected to behave a certain way, the more likely they are to fulfill that expectation, which then confirms people's expectations.

Something has to break the cycle.  Just removing the structural racism (which has been basically done completely) won't break the cycle.  It would take affirmative action.  Hence the name of the program designed to do just that, although it isn't enough by itself.  40 acres might be a good start (with the stipulation it couldn't be sold - a lot of kids in my 'hood would use the cash to buy 30" rims).  Maybe some public service messages by prominent Black role models "Stop committing crimes, you are making us all look bad.  Go to college.  Buy some land, fuck spinning rims."
I don't know what the real solution is

Thank you both for taking the time to reply in detail.  Very interesting, thought provoking stuff.  I think many of us live in our towers and away from all this, so we don't have to think about it very often.  I wonder how the issues you describe affect other minorities.

I also wonder how much of it really starts with poverty.  Ive had discussions with friends who used to teach in inner city (Boston); they would talk about how the poverty is just so ingrained it's impossible to escape from it.  And poverty leads to all sorts of unfortunate consequences (from the teacher's point of view, school environments which are basically nothing more than a free meal and safe zone from the students' lives outside school).  I would also image many would say people can and do escape from poverty, so it should be on the individual to make their situation better.     

Im going to take some more time to digest and think about this, and read later replies.  Thanx again. 

[Gin1984]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture. Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

What is the benefit to society to do so?

[norabird]

Maybe if we use the word 'understand the history behind' instead of 'accept' it is more clear. Because the culture is not in a vacuum--it is the product of carefully engineered decisions by our government.

[MrsPete]

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. 

[Jamesqf]

I also wonder how much of it really starts with poverty.  Ive had discussions with friends who used to teach in inner city (Boston); they would talk about how the poverty is just so ingrained it's impossible to escape from it.

I don't think it's entirely poverty.  I'd say many, if not most, immigrant cultures start out in poverty, yet most of their descendants wind up with a normal income distribution: some poor, a bunch of middle class, and a few rich.  It's much more a matter of cultural cohesion. As with groups like the Amish, Hassidic Jews, and so on: most of the people raised in the culture feel as though they belong to THAT group.  (The ones who don't just leave.)  So if the behaviors that bind the culture make it difficult to escape poverty, most who stay within the culture won't escape.  (Yeah, kind of a tautology, but I can't think how to express the idea more clearly.)

[goatmom]

Very interesting thread.  I really appreciate a better understanding of the historical background. I am white (Irish, no guilt here). I don't have much to add here but I live in the Northeast and I have never heard anyone seethe about the low pants.  Chuckle yes.  Maybe that reaction is geographic.  My own experience was growing up in poverty but with a mom that walked us all to the library.  We had no money, but books were free!  We were poor because of number of children not because my father didn't work hard or we wasted money.  He wouldn't let us get free lunch at school because there was shame in that.  We ate peanut butter sandwiches every day.  We shopped at Goodwill.  We walked everywhere.  I think involved parents and education are key. 

[starguru]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture. Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

What is the benefit to society to do so?

Whats the benefit to society if we didn't disdain low pantaloons (and other non white cultural norms)? If that is what you mean, isn't the benefit it makes us less racist?

[mcrow]

I'm white, FYI.

Technically I have some Native blood but never claim it because it's too small to count for anything (1/8th or so) and I didn't grow up in the culture.

With that said, I did grow up dirt poor. There were not many days growing up where we had 3 actual meals, we didn't have a car, we lived on food stamps and charity. My mom was 16 when she had me, 20 and 22 when she had my brothers, no dads stuck around. So, young single mom with a 9th grade education  with three boys. Safe to say we were in as bad a socioeconomic state as most monorities. In fact, our white family mirrored the problem of many minority families....young mothers, no fathers.

Actually, the small town I grew up in this was pretty common in white families. IME, the small town white poor are similar in state to inner city minority poor in a lot of ways. One group gets a lot more attention for their state than the other does but the fact remains that there are more poor whites than minorities (in total number anyway) right now. I'm not saying this to make this a race issue at all, in fact  my point here is too much time is focused on the race of the poor when that's not the primary issue.

The primary issue is, no matter your race, that when you are poor gaining the resources to improve your economic standing is very difficult and the government isn't helping the situation. The poor don't have cars to drive to a good job, probably can't afford a bus pass if they live somewhere with a bus system. Where I grew up, there were no buses, no taxi and the nearest grocery store was 20 miles away. So, being poor with no car is a whole different thing there, you have to rely on someone being able to drive you to the store. In the small town, there are no jobs and if there are you have to drive to them.

Another problem is education. Education is so expensive today that even for a 2 year degree you end up $15-$20k in debt only to come out and make $25-$30k a year or go for 4 years and get out $80k in debt. There are also many fewer careers that you can do on the the job training for and make good money, everything is beginning to require a degree. Some jobs that used to require a 2 year degree are now pushing for a 4 and some that require a 4 are pushing for a Masters. Not having and education and pushing education too hard over real life training and experience is compounding the problem. There are many fields where you can learn the job well with experience alone and can be great at it but nobody will hire you without some stupid degree and/or certification.

In all honesty, I don't think race plays much role in being poor or upward mobility, it is just the simple fact that being poor is a disadvantage. Not that I think it is right to take from others to give to the disadvantaged, no, that's not right either. Another common problem I run into with poor, no matter the race, is a large number of them have no real desire to improve their standing when they can have cable TV, health insurance, food, cellphone, a place to live and utilities paid for and not have to work. There are generations of families that basically pass on the welfare lifestyle. Can't blame them, why work and make $25k when you can stay home and get $50k in beneifts? This is how I feel like the the governement is keeping the poor under their thumb.

Again, poor is poor in my book and they face similar issues regardless of race.

[Gin1984]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture. Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

What is the benefit to society to do so?

Whats the benefit to society if we didn't disdain low pantaloons (and other non white cultural norms)? If that is what you mean, isn't the benefit it makes us less racist?

Teenage boys, of multiple races wear lower pants.  Accepting a behavior that has no benefit does not correlate, in my mind, to decreasing discrimination based on race.  One can, of course, change behavior that is associated with "ghetto culture".  And frankly, if I told the parents of those who were raised around me that we should accept it, the race would not matter ALL of them would flip out at me for accepting trashy behavior.  Then again, I was raised upper middle class, so maybe those who got there, of AA have already disdained that behavior so the idea would be more anger inducing that for others. 

[hybrid]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture.  Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

I'm being frank, I'm not necessarily being right... ;-)

Bakari writes in his blog about the necessity of black youth to speak proper English. There is nothing to be gained from speaking poorly, and much that can be lost. The same principle applies. Pants that don't even function properly as pants gains the wearer nothing of lasting value.

And white people like me can say that all they want, and it will fall on deaf ears, with reason. Black people with influence need to say it for the words to ring true. This is why I say I don't think whites can do much when it comes to black cultural problems, we have little to no legitimacy in the black community, with reason.

Being frank and not necessarily right again, many whites are not interested in appreciating the history behind the current ghetto culture, they just want it to change. And I think they have gone beyond their white guilt to white exhaustion because whites don't know how to help change it, or if they even have any power to, so they have mostly thrown their hands up in the air. Not their problem any more. Richmond schools are broken not because there is a lack of funds or a lack of desire for change (just as the schoolteacher describes earlier), but for societal reasons. 

   

[mcrow]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture.  Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

I'm being frank, I'm not necessarily being right... ;-)

Bakari writes in his blog about the necessity of black youth to speak proper English. There is nothing to be gained from speaking poorly, and much that can be lost. The same principle applies. Pants that don't even function properly as pants gains the wearer nothing of lasting value.

And white people like me can say that all they want, and it will fall on deaf ears, with reason. Black people with influence need to say it for the words to ring true. This is why I say I don't think whites can do much when it comes to black cultural problems, we have little to no legitimacy in the black community, with reason.

Being frank and not necessarily right again, many whites are not interested in appreciating the history behind the current ghetto culture, they just want it to change. And I think they have gone beyond their white guilt to white exhaustion because whites don't know how to help change it, or if they even have any power to, so they have mostly thrown their hands up in the air. Not their problem any more. Richmond schools are broken not because there is a lack of funds or a lack of desire for change (just as the schoolteacher describes earlier), but for societal reasons. 

 

I will point out that where dress and use of language is concerned, it is a problem with all races of poor.

Like I said above, I grew up in a poor small town. Speaking proper english isn't strong suit among hillbillies  as well and dress isn't really any better, just different. It's a fuctiong of living poor, these things go with the territory. Granted, you improve your chances of getting a job or a chance if you look and sound like you have something between your ears.

[Albert]

I'm a white European from the upper middle class and I can't say much about the issues of minorities in US except add my anecdotal observation that education gap between whites/asians on one side and balcks/hispanics on the other seems to be still vast. I've spent 7 years in US as a grad student and a postdoc. In all that time I was never taught by a black/hispanic professor, I've only ever met one from that category and he was a native of Ghana. I've also encountered just one black grad student, one black postdoc and two hispanic grad students out of at least 100 people I interacted with during that time. In the classes I taught as a teaching assistant there were usually 1-2 minority students (not counting Asians) among 20-30 kids. All that was 5-12 years ago.

[Gin1984]

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture.  Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything.  If one seethes at low pantaloons, can one seethe at african non-standard names?  Or anything else that is different from what one is used to?

I appreciate hearing your perspective; I would bet that many agree with some of your points.

I'm being frank, I'm not necessarily being right... ;-)

Bakari writes in his blog about the necessity of black youth to speak proper English. There is nothing to be gained from speaking poorly, and much that can be lost. The same principle applies. Pants that don't even function properly as pants gains the wearer nothing of lasting value.

And white people like me can say that all they want, and it will fall on deaf ears, with reason. Black people with influence need to say it for the words to ring true. This is why I say I don't think whites can do much when it comes to black cultural problems, we have little to no legitimacy in the black community, with reason.

Being frank and not necessarily right again, many whites are not interested in appreciating the history behind the current ghetto culture, they just want it to change. And I think they have gone beyond their white guilt to white exhaustion because whites don't know how to help change it, or if they even have any power to, so they have mostly thrown their hands up in the air. Not their problem any more. Richmond schools are broken not because there is a lack of funds or a lack of desire for change (just as the schoolteacher describes earlier), but for societal reasons. 

 

I will point out that where dress and use of language is concerned, it is a problem with all races of poor.

Like I said above, I grew up in a poor small town. Speaking proper english isn't strong suit among hillbillies  as well and dress isn't really any better, just different. It's a fuctiong of living poor, these things go with the territory. Granted, you improve your chances of getting a job or a chance if you look and sound like you have something between your ears.

Did your parent tell you not to trust those who were better off or not to get an education?  My mom was urban poor as a child but she still was taught proper English, the need of education and the want to get better.

[mcrow]

I'm a white European from the upper middle class and I can't say much about the issues of minorities in US except add my anecdotal observation that education gap between whites/asians on one side and balcks/hispanics on the other seems to be still vast. I've spent 7 years in US as a grad student and a postdoc. In all that time I was never taught by a black/hispanic professor, I've only ever met one from that category and he was a native of Ghana. I've also encountered just one black grad student, one black postdoc and two hispanic grad students out of at least 100 people I interacted with during that time. In the classes I taught as a teaching assistant there were usually 1-2 minority students (not counting Asians) among 20-30 kids. All that was 5-12 years ago.

Not sure what school you went to but I don't think what you describe is the normal for where I live here in MN. There are a lot of minority professors here and a very diverse campus from what I can tell. Sure, there are more white professors and students but MN is a very white state as well. 

IMO, I don't think there really is all that much of difference in the ability of a poor person from one race to another to go to colllege. None  of them have the money unless they get a grant, scholarship or loan and minorities at this point may have a little better chance of getting accesss to those.

I think part of the issue with that is cultural issues of being poor. Like me for instance, I grew up poor and was sort of the black sheep of the family for wanting to go to college. I think that is a common sentiment among poor regardless of race. It's hard because if you go to school, get a career and make decent money then everyone back home treats you differently because you don't have the same problems as them any more or maybe relatives think you owe them something...ect.

The simple act of improving your economic situation can sort of alienate you from your family and friends in some cases.

[mcrow]

Did your parent tell you not to trust those who were better off or not to get an education?  My mom was urban poor as a child but she still was taught proper English, the need of education and the want to get better.

No, my Mom (single mother who had me at 16) wanted me to be educated and did her best to see that I did but she was just a kid herself that never finished 10th grade. She grew up poor in a bad inner city area, moved to a small town when I was born.  The point being that she didn't know proper english or have writing skills because she was a kid who was preganant at 15. She was raised in a home with a very abusive father so, it wasn't the best situation. Sure, if she'd have ever been taught proper english she probably would have passed it on. Either way, I learned it on my own by going to school.

[partgypsy]

I don't have much to say, other been a very interesting conversation. As part of my job I review autobiographical interviews with veterans, a number who grew up in segregated south. I had no idea the breath and depth of the physical and psychological intimidation, threats and actual violence to not step out of place, in the sense of what type of jobs you took or pursued, and what kind of recourse you had legally (none), including doing jobs and then not being paid or other people claiming the work. It is hard to see one generation completely erasing the effects of, basically living in a different kind of world than most experienced.
Now that we are here, I do agree having equal access to good public education is part, but not all of the solution, and to change welfare to include more incentives for job and skills training. though this may be controversial, not to "punish" people in that disability status is all or nothing. There are people who try very hard with disabilities to re-enter the job market, who maybe have to work twice as hard as the average person to keep that regular job, who then lose all disability assistance, which is a disincentive. Also instead of spending money on criminalizing drug use, spend money on rehabilitating people to get off drugs and gain jobs and skills. I don't have all the answers, it is a complex problem and as others have said poverty, disruptive home life, worse environmental exposure, quality schooling overlap with one's racial problem so one would have to address the former to address disparities in the latter. I found the explanation of black cultural behavior to be interesting, in that they ARE adaptive behaviors in the area in the subculture they live, but maladaptive in the larger culture which marginalizes them. 

[Jamesqf]

Did your parent tell you not to trust those who were better off or not to get an education?

To a certain degree, yes, those were messages I got growing up.  Never trust anyone wearing a suit & tie (which I still think is a good rule of thumb :-)), and get my damned nose out of that book.

Not sure what school you went to but I don't think what you describe is the normal for where I live here in MN. There are a lot of minority professors here and a very diverse campus from what I can tell.

I think it depends a lot on your field.  Overall, yes, there's a fair degree of diversity.  In STEM fields, not so much.  Or rather, the diversity is in a different direction, as white Americans tend to be outnumbered by foreign students & recent immigrants, and US-born blacks & hispanics were virtually nonexistent.  (This is over an intermittent college career that started in the mid-80s.)

Being frank and not necessarily right again, many whites are not interested in appreciating the history behind the current ghetto culture, they just want it to change. And I think they have gone beyond their white guilt to white exhaustion...

I think that's probably true of a lot of whites who grew up in the middle to upper classes.  But I also think that a good many of us who grew up poor, especially in parts of the country where there wasn't a significant black (or other non-white) minority presence, really find the white guilt thing incomprehensible (emotionally, if not intellectually), since we're still waiting for our white privilege to show up.

[Bakari]

The root of social inequality is "free will" and human nature.

You do realize we are discussing the legacy of human slavery, right?
That was just two lifetimes ago.
Jim Crow ended less than one lifetime ago.


I am at a loss of what to even say.
well, of something productive and good natured anyway...

[bugbaby]

I'll chime in here... I'm a black immigrant mustachian in US... I know a fairly large network of pple from Africa who are also engineers, physicians, scientists etc... Also back home almost all my peers are professionals. But many from rural and urban ghetto backgrounds aren't. The difference is there's no welfare over there, so pple do farming , construction, domestic work etc.. Its how the world works... What you turn out is to a huge extent the product of your environment.  Those who feel they have an inherent superiority just because of their history are blind. In the small city here many of my white neighbors are out of work due the decline of their blue collar industries. Many are doing drugs and welfare e.g both my neighbors upstairs, across the street, next door etc. Most pple of 'color' around here are immigrants doing taxi driving, small business etc.   Its just how it is.

Sent from my Lenovo S6000L-F using Tapatalk

[ChrisLansing]

@fitzgeralday   I have not had time to look at the link to the article, but I will do so this weekend. 

Re: The cost of college for the poor.   I don't want to suggest the poor shouldn't go after 4 year degrees, but as many have pointed out if the connections are lacking, the job opportunities will also be lacking.   Going from poverty, with it's multiple disadvantages, to middle class professional status is a huge transition to make.     It might be wise to encourage poor kids to be plumbers or electricians?   Welders?   An associate degree in these fields can be well under $10K (closer to $6K in my area) for 2 years, and while that's considerable money for a poor person, if they can somehow figure out how to finance such an education, (loans/grants) the chance that it will pay off is quite good.   

Re:Low Pants.    If your town is surrounded on 3 sides by corn fields, you are not a gangster, so pull your f****** pants up.   (This is for the white kids)   

Re: Proper English.   Whether or not we are sensitive to the reasons for some minority groups having a "lingo" of their own, the inability to speak standard English is a real handicap.   As far as I can see there is no getting around this for African-Americans and Latinos.    OTOH, I've often observed that many Asians are reasonably successful w/o being able to speak English well.   Many times these Asians are in scientific fields where the real proof of ability is being able to do the work -rather than being able to speak eloquently about the work.   There also seems to be an attitude among whites that Asians are trying, and that they are not expected to get it just right as it's hard to speak fluently when one learns English as and adult.    There seems to be an attitude that other minorities who grew up here should be able to speak standard English.   So there seems to be a bit of a double standard, though there is also a skill component involved.   

Re: Mustacianism.    Who needs mustacian principles more than the poor (of any race) ?     How to teach the principles I'm not sure; as others point out there are considerable cultural obstacles to overcome.   If a couple of white computer engineers are going to go into debt for a fancypants life of financial stress and late retirement, I'm not going to loose any sleep over it.   They can dramatically change their life by changing their habits.     But surely the poor need the principles even more.   "F*** spinning rims" - I could not agree more.    You're not eating well and your job is insecure, you're behind on the rent, and you are spending money on spinning rims?    Really?   A white person doing that deserves a "face punch".   It's hard to see why the same standard doesn't apply to minorities.     Somehow mustacian principles need to become more accepted in some sub-cultures.   

(As an aside, I have found that older vehicles with "Dubs" and a wild paint job offer an opportunity for a middle aged white guy (me) to strike up a conversation with Blacks/Latinos through a mutual interest in customized cars.   While I think these are foolish things to spend money on (unless one is well off) it is an opportunity to speak to people who I might otherwise never converse with.    Even if we never become more than casual acquaintances there seems to be an appreciation that I dig their cars).   

Re: Where people live.    It's true that there are China towns and Korea towns, and such.     But it's also true that a great many Asians settle in predominantly white areas.      By settling in primarily white areas they get the benefits of better social infrastructure, including better schools.     I don't want to go too far in comparing American born minorities with Asian immigrants because the historical background for each group is very different.    I think I can understand the phenomena of "Black flight" that others have mentioned.   

[Bakari]

I am wary of this culture argument. Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about the dialog in the Atlantic article and I agree with his take that it is deeply unfair to have created this problem of inequality through societal systems and then turn it into an 'oh well, black should fix their culture' thing. I'm not saying you aren't coming from a genuine place but I think the country itself has to take responsibility for the situation being what it is, since that is where the actual responsibility for things lies.

False dichotomy.  The country itself bears responsibility AND individuals can make choices that defy their sub-group's cultural expectations.

Most whites I know absolutely seethe when they see a kid with pants down below their ass. It's not the kid they are seething at, it's the perceived ghetto culture they are seething at (especially when they see that behavior in suburban neighborhoods). I truly believe only black culture can discourage that sort of behavior.

I wonder if black people would say white people need to accept the ghetto culture.  Low pants by themselves don't necessarily mean anything. 

It actually does "mean" something - even if the seething Whites - not to mention the Black kids doing it - no longer remember what it means.
And its actually an excellent example of the poor urban Black subculture glorifying crime and violence.
The trend originated as solidarity with with prison inmates - particularly those in solitary and on death row - who aren't allowed belts in order to prevent suicides.
And the people who end up in solitary and on death row are not the low level drug use offenders...

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.

However, I think today white women may have surpassed them in "lowest difficulty level"...

Not entirely true, there is still not fully equal pay for equivalent work, and some evidence of discrimination in hiring - we have never even had a female president.
But for the most part I agree with a lot of your points.
Of course, it isn't always in women's best interests that men's freedom hasn't expanded as much as women's - the career mom has to work AND raise kids, because society says a "real" man doesn't become a stay-at-home-dad. 

 I won't go off topic here any further, but I wrote about that recently:
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2014/02/wearing-skirt.html

...
In all honesty, I don't think race plays much role in being poor or upward mobility, it is just the simple fact that being poor is a disadvantage.

yeah... and some races start out poor because their parents had the disadvantage of being poor because their parents had the disadvantage of being poor because their parents were forced to be poor by the US legal system.  Others don't have that disadvantage.

Not that I think it is right to take from others to give to the disadvantaged, no, that's not right either. Another common problem I run into with poor, no matter the race, is a large number of them have no real desire to improve their standing when they can have cable TV, health insurance, food, cellphone, a place to live and utilities paid for and not have to work. There are generations of families that basically pass on the welfare lifestyle. Can't blame them, why work and make $25k when you can stay home and get $50k in beneifts? This is how I feel like the the governement is keeping the poor under their thumb.

You get 2 years on welfare, then you are cut off.
Who are these people you are talking about, with cable TV and cell phones and never working?
Around here even people with legitimate disability claims work, because the benefits don't cover rent and food.
The people who don't work and have no claim to being disabled live outside on street corners and in parks.