Moving this conversation over here, since this thread is more to topic and people on The Stupid Thread want some comedic relief. Bolt, I read the Heterodox article I linked to before I read the WSJ piece you put up. Thanks.
It’s still true. From the Brooking’s Insitute in 2013. This is true regardless of race.
- At least finish high school.
- Get a full-time job.
- Wait until age 21 to get married and have children.
I’ll add a 4th, which is stay married if you have kids.
It’s also true of Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, who tend to do so well. They tend to do these things. Have children later, marry and stay married if they have kids, and have higher educational attainment than many other ethnic groups. They tend to move above the median income within a decade, and that’s true in the US, the UK, and Canada. Also, if growing up Black in America is truly so “corrosive” because of Jim Crow and the legacy of Slavery, then it’s very hard to say that the experiences of these groups are “irrelevant.” Surely there’s something we can learn here, since the immigrants from Africa and the Carribean have generally experienced generational poverty. Jim Crow era laws kept people from acquiring wealth through the accumulation of property, but so did growing up in a mud hut in Africa where you call a trashcan with a metal grate over the top a stove.
From Brookings -
“Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year). There are surely influences other than these principles at play, but following them guides a young adult away from poverty and toward the middle class.”
Unfortunately, talking about social or cultural factors has become very perilous because of… wait for it… Identity Politics. Unequal group outcomes must be blamed on the moral failings of others, generally those in the dominant group. Attempts to discuss any unequal group outcomes by pointing out differences in social or cultural factors is now considered a “conservative stance.” Notice how much has changed, since Brookings did this article in 2013.
As we saw with the outrage at the Wax essay, pointing to social or behavior factors will be attacked as failing to acknowledge white privilege and as a racist position. Taking one or two lines from her essay out of context and using them to make broad generalizations is not a mistake. (You want to go back to the racism of the 1950s?) We can no longer talk about any biological differences between the genders, nor can we say that certain cultural practices are less desirable than any other cultural practices. It’s unacceptable because it does not place the blame for any unequal outcomes on either institutional racism, implicit racism, sexism, misogyny, or the unequal and unfair foundations of Western society.
Did you notice that Klick, the colleague who both signed the condemnation letter for Wax, and wrote the response to Hadit’s summary at Heterodox, says “I don’t think Wax is a racist…” Nice of him to say so. Really. Nice of him to clarify that fact. Although he did sign the “condemnation letter.” Also, nice of him to change his words to “criticize” instead of “condemn.”
In contrast, the language of the students at Penn is here. "We call for the University of Pennsylvania administration — Penn President Gutmann and the deans of each school — as well as faculty to directly confront Wax and Alexander’s op-ed as racist and white supremacist discourse and to push for an investigation into Wax’s advocacy for white supremacy.
Bolt, the cases of Erika and Nicholas Christakis, or Bret Weinstein, are more sympathetic for me than Wax, probably because they are much, much more tactful, NOT that writing a pointed, or provocative essay, or voicing unpopular opinions in an essay should be reasons to call for someone to be fired, or labeled a White Supremacist and Racist! Erika and Nick Christakis, and Weinstein have been unjustly labeled as racists and bigots. They are not.
I know less about Amy Wax, but based on her Op Ed, there’s absolutely no way any reasonable person could justify the response of the mostly anthropology students, calling her a racist and a white supremacist.
She’s certainly not the first person to say that some cultural or behavioral norms are less likely to lead to affluence, or are more likely to lead to poverty. Ha! Thomas Sowell does a whole speech about how cultures aren’t equal. Don’t even get me started on cultural appropriation. The reason we’re NOT using Roman Numerals is because some cultural ideas are superior. There’s no way to avoid it. We adopt superior ideas from other cultures all the time.
An event at Ryerson University in Canada was recently cancelled after university students there put up a FB page entitled “No Fascists in Our City!” to protest the event. The page’s header image depicted a swastika with the red circle, and a slash through it. Yep. When they do that with your name, you’re being called a Nazi. At least two of the four speakers are Jewish professors, and at least one of them is Jewish and has a mixed-race family, including Black siblings. The topic was, The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses. The Irony.
One of the professors who was planning to speak at the Ryerson event was Gad Saad. This is a really very nice clip of him defending the recent incident of offended people calling for Professor Bruce Gilley to be fired. Have a listen, if you have the time.
7:45 minutes.
Re: The idea that the anthro students at Penn were outraged by the lack of empirial data in an Op Ed? Oh man! LOL! Have you seen some of the things that pass as peer reviewed research articles in some of those fields? Believe me, that’s not the problem. And nobody calls you a racist for not citing some evidence, they just eviscerate your ideas in a counter-essay. See Gad Saad above.
Enjoy!
Sleeping Around, With, and Through Time
An Autoethnographic Rendering of a Good Night’s Slumber
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077800416672698
“A Super Wild Story”: Shared Human–Pigeon Lives and the Questions They Beg
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077800417725353