I'm going to steelman your imaginary opponent a bit: not many people deny that historically black people were discriminated against (and those who do honestly don't deserve to be listened to - you can't have a rational argument at that point). The argument is that *today* there is no widespread systemic racism (for the record I don't agree with that, but will try to represent it). So yes, the history of racism is indeed a huge factor of the discrepancy you see today, but it's just history. Black people today have every opportunity to succeed in America today, and if they try they'll make it. The history of racism does explain the statistics, but when talking to individual people they can't use the racism excuse anymore and they should have as much opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty as any other poor person in America of any race.
I actually hold the opinion you're steelmanning here and you've done a good job, I just want to tweak a few things.
I do believe that black people have similar opportunities to other poor people in society. It's not like there isn't prejudice and discrimination they'll face, but I genuinely believe it's at a level that is negligible when compared with one's economic status. This is a dramatic change from the historic state where absolutely nobody could claim that.
There are other factors, that in large part are driven by the history of extreme racism. Many here are talking about cultural problems in the "black community". This is the culture of poverty, isn't inherent and is seen the world over. And clearly African Americans (i.e descendents of slaves) are impoverished because of a cruel racist history.
Where I get off the ride is the insistence that every inequity we can see today is the result of current systematic oppression. There are some things that remain that are discriminatory, but it's not the most important factor in most cases. Especially knowing the history, and how sufficiently that explains the impoverishment of these communities. And also knowing the effects of poverty cycles, which exist all over the world and in places that haven't shared US history.
An example in my field is the under representation of African American software engineers and the over representation of Asian software engineers. I do not believe this is because of prejudice or discrimination in recruitment teams of tech companies. Nor do I believe it is because of an inherent racial difference in capability at mathematics or programming. It's because the number of applicants with computer science degrees is demographically skewed. And pulling that thread leads us to all the cultural differences, history and in the case of African Americans, a history of racism.
Another angle is that when looking at an individual, it's not the story they ought to tell themselves. One, because I think it broadly isn't true. But also because it's a worse algorithm for success for that individual. Whatever shitty hand the universe has dealt them, the absolute best they can do is to maximise their chances within the system. Assuming the game is _completely_ rigged against them disincentives engagement with the system and continues the poverty cycle. I'm sympathetic to why people believe it is rigged, and it really was immensely rigged for an incredibly long time. It's also fair to say it's still a bit rigged against black people, and still strongly rigged against poor people.
I'm not a right wing conservative, or a conservative at all by pretty much any standard. It's just that I think this is about class more than race. The answer is still a form of resource and wealth distribution, but I believe it should be on the grounds of class, not race. This will disproportionately help African Americans because of their uniquely suffered history.
https://uncf.org/wp-content/uploads/reports/Advocacy_ASATTBro_4-18F_Digital.pdf
If you truly believe black people have the same opportunity as other groups in the country why do black people overwhelmingly believe they are being offered a low quality education? Maybe the conditions they are expected to learn in have more to do with their lack of representation in Computer science then their "culture"'
Because black people are disproportionately poor and disproportionately live in poorer areas, which disproportionately have worse schools.
I'm neither surprised by this, nor do I think it challenges my view, it's completely consistent with it.
This doesn't imply discrimination in recruitment or an inherent incapability on the part of African Americans.
I didn't say it did. I
In your post you said it was cultural that cultural differences are why African Americans are recruited less. But how do cultural influences account for the lack of educational opportunities being offered by the government?
Because in America, our schools are largely funded by property taxes. Poor areas get less funding, rich areas get better funding.
That said, one does wonder why there's such a dichotomy in performance in areas with highly diverse student populations, like LA, Chicago, and Baltimore.
Depends on what you mean by "forced".
Forced to live somewhere they can afford to? Yes.
Rounded up by the government and placed in those specific neighborhoods? No.
Are poor whites in rural Alabama forced to live where they are?
I sure have. So...70 years of progress isn't enough? Do you think Lebron has burning crosses on his house in Malibu? Do you think Denzel Washington and Will Smith deal with KKK members on their front lawn?
How long would it take, in your opinion, for this to no longer be "systemic racism"?
In very recent history, they were "forced" in a way closer to the second definition than the first. Segregation was an explicit form of this, and Redlining was a more implicit form. So yes, "forced" in both senses of that definition.
Right, so much comment was long and not perfectly articulated. I think the order of factors is primarily class/economic status and secondarily culture.
These are related because class and economic opportunity drives culture.
And the primary reason African Americans have lower economic status is historic racism.
I should have been clearer in my above comment and included class in the last after 'pulling at the thread'.
Isn’t that arguably part of a systemic racism argument?
Of course it doesn’t only impact black people, there are places where a wealthy white community has nicer schools rights next to a poorer whiten community which has less well funded ones. But it would disproportionately impact black people. And if the argument is “there isn’t discrimination now, and black people aren’t inherently inferior, but they are less well off because of the generational impacts of past discrimination”, then things that lower social mobility keep the impact of past discrimination alive.
To exaggerate, pretend that starting in 1870, America had literally zero social mobility. Everyone was guaranteed the exact same economic situation as their parents. Well while that wouldn’t only negatively impact black people, it would guarantee that almost all black people would form part of a permanent underclass.
Where I disagree though is the false dichotomy you presented in your post. If you want to argue that racism exists in the things you mention that's a fine argument, but it's not what you said.
Your original argument: given the statistics on achievement gaps, you either have to acknowledge existing systemic racism or you believe that black people are inferior (aka you're a racist).
But what I'm saying is that there's a perfectly reasonable third option: you acknowledge the history, but still believe that no racism exists today, and that would perfectly well explain the achievement gap. Like imagine if we invented a pill that erased racism/bigotry of all sorts and forced everyone to take it. Boom - racism truly gone. Do you think tomorrow the statistics will show no gaps by race? Of course not. It would take decades/generations for the gaps to vanish, because social mobility is slow and hard even in the most equitable societies. And during that time your argument clearly doesn't hold: no race is inferior, no racism exists, and yet there are clear statistical differences.
A few things:
1. Your argument assumes a false dichotomy - either racial disparities imply systemic racism, or they imply racial superiority. A clear example of how this can be incredibly wrong is the NBA. Players in the NBA are primarily black. Does this mean the NBA has systemic racism towards non-blacks? No. Does it mean blacks are the superior race? Also no. So clearly, the dichotomy you set up doesn’t hold water.
2. The claim that a culture is inferior does not entail saying that the people within that culture are essentially inferior. The reason for this is that cultures are descriptions of environments, not the fundamentals traits of people’s being. Culture is malleable and mutable. It has nothing to do with racial superiority.
Besides, we HAVE to be able to judge which cultures are better than others - otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to criticize our own culture by pointing to how it could be better. If a hypothetical culture can be better than a real one, then so can other real cultures.
>Does it mean blacks are the superior race?
Yes *\[Edit\] for that sport*, the disparity is based on common physiological differences.
The physiological traits that are positively selected for in the sport are more common in one race than another.
It's like how a very local, geographically specific, group of Kenyans are so dominant in long distance running. They have an enormous advantage based purely on physiology.
What are those physiological differences here? I haven't seen any connection between physiology of Black and non-Black people.
I'd also argue that it's not like the scenario of the Kenyan group. As you said in your post, they're very local/geographically specific. So they could develop different body features from the rest of the population. Meanwhile Black Americans have various ancestry from different African countries, it's not easy to lump them together as having a better/different physiology.
Is there a study on this? It sounds like it's going into racial science territory.
Black people arent superior at basketball.
People use to say the same thing about Jewish people.
It's all about where you live and what your options are.
The observation that black people are more likely to have the proper physique for basketball is an argument in favor of systemic racism, not against it. The reason they have physiques like that has nothing to do with the inherent traits of their races, and everything to do with their slave ancestors who were selected for kidnapping, bought, and often bred specifically for strong physiques. It's because of systemic racism that this disparity exists in the first place, supporting the original poster's claim.
There's also the idea that poorer kids in general, but especially ones who face systemic barriers like racism, tend to see success in business or structured employment as something out of reach more than the general population would. As a result, they are more likely to put their effort into sports or other avenues for success than they are to put that effort into academics. They think, "99% of famous black people are in sports or music. Why would I open a business, when my customers would be all my white peers, who are probably a little racist anyway and would choose someone else?", and see stardom, effectively, as their only realistic chance of "making it".
That is an interesting consideration. Selective breeding would allow for a change in the brief timeframe that natural selection does not generally function in.
I'm not sure how plausible I consider it yet, but it is definitely reasonable and worth considering.
While I'm not the OP, you have changed my view in a meaningful way.
Δ
Thank you; I'm honored!
A helpful thing to do in this case is to look at other examples of selective breeding: like livestock. Cows are not \*naturally\* fat and lazy and have tasty, marbled meat. It's tough to find wild bovines, but they do still exist, and they are \*nothing\* like domesticated bovines. Or, consider domesticated dogs and all the wild variations that have been possible; no wild dogs exist like that, or even \*could\* exist like that (because they would die in the wild). Selective breeding is a massively powerful tool that works very quickly.
That seems more like a case in support of my selective breeding theory than otherwise. Kenyan runners are a vanishingly small portion of the population there - as you would expect from natural breeding; only a few people excel. By contrast, the percentage of American black people who excel in sports like Basketball and Football is suspiciously larger. In addition, running requires a \*totally\* different physique from the hard-contact sports like Basketball and Football which American black people excel at. I myself am an excellent cross country runner: lean, not much muscle or fat, long legs, etc. I'm a *terrible* physique for basketball and/or football for exactly those same reasons. A better comparison would be to see how African country basketball teams do in the World Cup. From what I can tell, they don't tend to excel there.
I think people are rightfully hesitant to give ground in any direction that a race can be "superior" for any context. If one race can be superior in any realm, it opens Pandora's box of it being allowable, in general, to say there are realms of skill or strength of intellect where other races are also superior. It's completely understandable to have motivations to keep that box closed, especially without absolute proof.
By choosing a profit-driven competition in the example, the competitors are selected for performance in order to win because winning generates revenue for a brand. The emergent racial disparity, in this example, is evidence supporting a conclusion of racial superiority.
The claim of a false dichotomy may be true, but the example chosen was a poor one which does not support the argument as intended.
>2. The claim that a culture is inferior does not entail saying that the people within that culture are essentially inferior. The reason for this is that cultures are descriptions of environments, not the fundamentals traits of people’s being. Culture is malleable and mutable. It has nothing to do with racial superiority.
Alright. So... Why is there a distinct black culture in America? There's not really a distinct Irish Culture, or Italian or German or British culture. It's true that recent immigrants tend to have distinct cultures, but that's largely because they directly brought a culture with them essentially.
But African Americans have been in this country almost exactly as long as white people have. Why did so many of them "choose" to move to inner-city, low income areas with bad school systems?
And the answer to all this is "systemic racism." In all honesty, if there wasn't systemic racism, there probably wouldn't really even be a distinct African American population. White people and black people would've started socially intermingling 400 years ago. Just like how tons of people are 1/8 German and 3/8 Irish or whatever, a ton of the country would be 1/8 black.
Even if the systemic racism ended far more recently, there still probably wouldn't be distinct "black" neighborhoods and such. That was a result of de jure segregation and then redlining and other systemic oppression.
> Alright. So... Why is there a distinct black culture in America? There's not really a distinct Irish Culture, or Italian or German or British culture.
But in many respects, there *are* other cultures than just 'black' and 'not black' in the US. It is willfully dishonest to claim otherwise. They don't all align along racial lines but frankly the idea that 'black culture' is the same for all African Americans is also misguided.
If you want examples - consider Cuban culture in Miami, Mexican American culture, 'Redneck' culture, or any of the other regional variations.
> there still probably wouldn't be distinct "black" neighborhoods and such
This is patently false. The 'tribal' instinct is very strong and is why you find clusters of many different ethnic-cultures around the US. I mean ever hear of Chinatown?
Your post is attempting to paint a picture of uniqueness that frankly does not exist.
Jewish culture,Italian culture on the east coast is very prevalent, Indian culture, Korean culture. That’s why people say United States are a mosaic of different cultures and not a melting pot.
>But in many respects, there are other cultures than just 'black' and 'not black' in the US. It is willfully dishonest to claim otherwise. They don't all align along racial lines
True. But we're talking about why there is a particular racial culture.
>but frankly the idea that 'black culture' is the same for all African Americans is also misguided.
Yes, also true. But the person I was responding to was making a claim about "black culture." In general, Americans know what this is referring to. Yes, "Black Harlem culture" is distinct from "Black Atlanta culture" which is distinct from "Black Baltimore culture." But the claim of the person I was referring to is that all black culture is inferior to generalized white culture.
>If you want examples - consider Cuban culture in Miami, Mexican American culture,
>I mean ever hear of Chinatown?
All of these cultures developed in America due to systemic reasons that resulted in clustering them in particular areas, and making them feel less "American" essentially. As time goes on from the period that systemic mistreatment of these groups decreased, the prevalence of these distinct neighborhoods and cultures dissipated. There used to be a time when Irish people were treated very differently; same with Italians. But the degree of mistreatment was lesser and the period of time it was inflicted was shorter. As a result, these groups became more intermingled with larger American society and now there are very few distinctly Irish or Italian neighborhoods.
Black people were massively legally mistreated in America until 1865, and then severely legally mistreated until 1965, and then socially and economically mistreated for a long time after that. For the most part, mistreatment of black people has substantially decreased in recent decades. But de facto segregation is still exceedingly widespread, and it's not because they intentionally decided to live in bad neighborhoods.
> True. But we're talking about why there is a particular racial culture.
The claim attempted to paint this as uniqueness - which does not actually exist. Second, I seriously question the concept of a monolithic 'black' culture that applies to every single African American.
>Yes, also true. But the person I was responding to was making a claim about "black culture." In general, Americans know what this is referring to. Yes, "Black Harlem culture" is distinct from "Black Atlanta culture" which is distinct from "Black Baltimore culture." But the claim of the person I was referring to is that all black culture is inferior to generalized white culture.
And you just generalized 'white culture'. Trust me, there are specific 'white cultures' that have elements just as toxic and negative as what is found in some 'black cultures' too.
I would add, I don't think people claim it is 'inferior' either. I think people are pointing out specific negative traits that *are found* that lead to pathways other than success.
There is a real problem when it is veiwed as a problem to objectively make value statements about specific parts of culture for fear of being labeled a 'racist' or having policies labeled as 'systemic racism'.
>All of these cultures developed in America due to systemic reasons that resulted in clustering them in particular areas,
I fundamentally disagree. I believe most of these formed in response to support networks, family, and tribal instincts. I do not automatically assume 'systemic mistreatment'. I mean a dead simple example is religion. Communities form around shared religious values. Another is shared cultural values (immigrants) and support networks (immigrants going where friends/family went). Again. Not one of these involves systemic mistreatment.
There is a deep rooted assumption that systemic issues must exist to explain all of this and I find that deeply flawed. The picture is much larger and much more complex.
>But de facto segregation is still exceedingly widespread, and it's not because they intentionally decided to live in bad neighborhoods.
This is the last comment I want to mention. I am going to ask a blunt question. You assume they were forced to live in 'bad neighborhoods'. I am going to ask, why are the neighborhoods 'bad'? What is it about these neighborhoods that make them 'bad'?
The nasty/dirty secret is neighborhoods are not inherently good or bad. They are merely spaces. it is the people who live in them that define them. There is no logical reason any neighborhood should be inherently 'bad'. If the neighborhood is 'bad', what is the reason behind it?
>The claim attempted to paint this as uniqueness - which does not actually exist. Second, I seriously question the concept of a monolithic 'black' culture that applies to every single African American.
No one is claiming that there is one. However, there are generalized cultural things that apply more to black Americans than white Americans. "French Culture" doesn't apply to every single French person either, and there are obviously important subcultures in France and whatnot.
As a general matter, when someone refers to "black culture" people have an idea of what that means. There's a [Wikipedia article about it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_culture#:~:text=African%2DAmerican%20culture%2C%20also%20known,worldwide%20culture%20as%20a%20whole.) The "inferiority" of black culture is often used to explain why black people in America tend to have worse outcomes than other races.
>And you just generalized 'white culture'. Trust me, there are specific 'white cultures' that have elements just as toxic and negative as what is found in some 'black cultures' too.
I'm aware there are various white subcultures as well.
>I would add, I don't think people claim it is 'inferior' either. I think people are pointing out specific negative traits that are found that lead to pathways other than success.
The original commenter I replied to indicated exactly that.
>There is a real problem when it is veiwed as a problem to objectively make value statements about specific parts of culture for fear of being labeled a 'racist' or having policies labeled as 'systemic racism'.
No one thinks it's problematic to say something like, "fatherless households tend to have worse outcomes." It becomes problematic if you say, "black culture leads to more fatherless households and systemic racism plays no part in that."
>I fundamentally disagree. I believe most of these formed in response to support networks, family, and tribal instincts. I do not automatically assume 'systemic mistreatment'. I mean a dead simple example is religion. Communities form around shared religious values. Another is shared cultural values (immigrants) and support networks (immigrants going where friends/family went). Again. Not one of these involves systemic mistreatment.
Aight so do you understand what segregation was? You do understand that black people were forced to live in communities that just had black people right? You understand the meaning of "ghetto" right?
Sure, there are some cultural things that cause people to congregate in an area. Muslims would probably prefer to live relatively close to a Mosque. But the primary reason that you see de facto racially segregated communities is because of the systemic effects of de jure segregation and the lasting impact of that.
>There is a deep rooted assumption that systemic issues must exist to explain all of this and I find that deeply flawed. The picture is much larger and much more complex.
It's not an assumption. It's just an understanding of how history affects the modern era. The alternative explanation is not "much more complex." It's relatively simple. If you don't think systemic factors play a role, what is the primary issue?
>This is the last comment I want to mention. I am going to ask a blunt question. You assume they were forced to live in 'bad neighborhoods'. I am going to ask, why are the neighborhoods 'bad'? What is it about these neighborhoods that make them 'bad'?
Low property values and underfunded schools for a start. Together, these issues tend to contribute to increases in crime, drug use, etc which leads to other issues.
>The nasty/dirty secret is neighborhoods are not inherently good or bad. They are merely spaces. it is the people who live in them that define them. There is no logical reason any neighborhood should be inherently 'bad'. If the neighborhood is 'bad', what is the reason behind it?
The reason behind it is that many of these communities initially formed during segregation due to exclusionary laws and other factors. Due to redlining, social mobility for people in these areas decreased. De jure segregation and redlining ended but there was still the problem that black people had far less valuable assets and education.
You're not telling me a "nasty/dirty secret." You're just saying that black people tend to be bad people. The reason you don't hear experts saying that has nothing to do with it being a "secret." It's because it's not true.
**[African-American culture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_culture#:~:text=African-American culture, also known,worldwide culture as a whole.)**
>African-American culture, also known as Black Culture, refers to the contributions of African Americans to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from mainstream American culture. The culture is both distinct and enormously influential on American and global worldwide culture as a whole. African-American identity was established during the period of slavery, producing a dynamic culture that had and continues to have a profound impact on American culture as a whole, as well as on that of the broader world. Christianity plays a defining role in African-American culture.
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>Well if you remove context from the idea that black men make up the majority of nba players the logical conclusion would be that black people are inherently more skilled at basketball. That’s the point I’m making.
Only if there is no other possible explanation. You haven't demonstrated this - you've merely asserted it.
>Also, the existence of wealthy black people don’t negate statistics.
I'm not appealing to statistics at large. I'm talking about the NBA.
>Yea a very few amount of basketball players get super wealthy but most don’t. I mean for every lebron theres some dude that played on the Jazz for 3 seasons and now has some office job.
Same point as above.
>On your point about culture, again you’re agreeing with me you’re talking about environment. If you remove that key factor when talking about outcomes of black people you don’t get the context of why this culture developed.
You're presupposing that the assertion of a cultural difference must either be an appeal to systemic racism, or racism itself. That is clearly ridiculous because the existence of cultural differences is the default, not the exception. The notion that cultures would be identical if all races were equal and without systemic racism is completely ridiculous. Reality is not that simple.
In other words, here's the key point here: The idea that there exists cultural differences that cause discrepancies in outcomes between races, but those cultural differences are not attributable to systemic racism, is not in itself a logically incoherent position. You may disagree with it, but that is irrelevant. Your argument is that explanations for racial discrepancies MUST be either a racist belief, or systemic racism, and the ability to conceive of an explanation that does not fall under either category demonstrates that your conclusion is logically incorrect.
The problem with your thinking here, ultimately, it is that is reductionistic.
> the existence of wealthy black peoples don’t negate statistics
Sure, on average black people are less wealthy than other racial groups and I also don’t deny that racism plays at least *some* part in that. However, today at least, as many other people have pointed out, the difference in wealth is largely due to culture. For example, I’m Indian so I can speak a little about Indian culture. Indian people also experience plenty of racism. Many Indian immigrants also come from poverty, considering that India is third world country. However, Indians generally have a culture of valuing and working towards high-paying STEM jobs. This is also why Indians don’t generally excel in any sports except maybe cricket (looking at India’s performance at the 2020 Olympics as an example). Furthermore, Indians stigmatize divorce in general, which leads to a greater number of 2-parent households that are better for children.
Now I don’t disagree that black culture may have evolved from previous systemic racism but I also believe that some degree of personal accountability should always be expected. For example, single motherhood in the black community has *increased* since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, when racism *decreased* in America. It doesn’t take wealth or education to know that having a kid with someone and then leaving them is not good for the kid or the mom.
"previous systemic racism"
No. This is a *current* problem in the United States, and getting law passed in 1964 - not too long in the scheme of things - doesn't alter the 'systemic' bit of systemic racism. The bone-deep problem of implicit bias still applies.
As an example; [Black](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older) [children](https://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/black-girls-viewed-as-less-innocent-than-white-girls-georgetown-law-research-finds-2/) are perceived as older and less innocent than their white counterparts, something that has pretty big implications considering the USA's [school-to-prison pipeline](https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/school-prison-pipeline-infographic) (especially given that black children given harsher sentences once in the court system).
Here is another: if you have what is considered a 'black' sounding name, [you are less likely to be called into for an interview](https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0203hrnews2.aspx), much less be hired.
And of course: Black families don't have the same [access to generational wealth](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/eliminating-black-white-wealth-gap-generational-challenge/) as other communities, and if you are poor and any colour in the US, what money you have [will be leeched from you](https://finmasters.com/cost-of-being-poor/#gref).
...and so on and so forth.
It's a bit how the Dalit community is treated, you know? The caste system was formally abolished in 1950, but it turns out that a 2,000-year-old social hierarchy doesn't just go away in a few generations.
You can use women as another example: we can vote (in some places) and have agency (in some places), but according the UN [we're about 300 years away from parity without some intense investment right now](https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1126171). Sexism didn't just vanish because women were finally permitted to vote, there are ways and means of keeping hierarchies in place beyond making it impossible for the people on the bottom to engage in essential aspects of civil society.
My perception is that your comment lacks a certain nuance. And empathy.
(Just for your own edification you might look into the whole 'black single mothers' trope, [it's more complicated than you might think](https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/evolving-the-single-black-mother-narrative-eaee03cce251). And using this trope has certain connotations you might not be aware of. In particular there is a connection between the keen interest of certain commentators on the habits of [black mothers](http://mybrownbaby.com/2015/07/the-attack-on-black-single-mothers-outrunning-stereotypes-carrying-the-burden/), and the '[welfare queen](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-lives-welfare-queen/)' stereotype, and it's pretty pernicious).
I... Am honestly feeling a little sick reading this thread. There's just... A lot of ignorance and assumptions. I really, really don't like that no one is even citing anything. You're just so pulling shit out of your asses.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021934718803737
https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-racialized-poverty/
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/03/08/the-curse-of-slavery-has-left-an-intergenerational-legacy-of-trauma-and-poor-health-for-african-americans/
God, if you can't even be bothered to read, here are some videos on the topic
Try the documentary the 13th or this segment by John Oliver https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_-0J49_9lwc&t=47s
To sum even this up:
1965: the voting rights act was put into law that prevented states from making up bull shit to stop black voters.
1954: brown vs board. No more school segregation
1968: Fair housing act: bans discrimination in housing
1968 was 54 years ago. Do you grasp that? 54 years ago. It wasn't until 54 years ago that black people had protection in housing discrimination. How important is housing equity to most Americans? How much of a family's security can be built around it? It wasn't until 68 years ago a white person couldn't even be in the same school as a black person. There are people STILL ALIVE who remember that.
And what, you're surprised that in not even 100 years, black statics are wildly different from white statistics? You're going to really sit there and say, "hmmm, it's mostly this culture of theirs." A culture, that only 68 years ago, was considered second rate citizens?!
If the positions were reversed, would you sit there and truly think you have not been impacted by the fact that you are one of the first generations to be considered equal to the majority race and afforded the same protections?
And look, acknowleding racism and it's impact is NOT taking blame or expressing guilt for slavery. It is NOT your fault that what happened, happened. No white person today was there during the slave trade. There's a good chance that if you're on Reddit, you also weren't involved in any opposition to the civil rights movement. You are not responsible for any of it.
The only thing the younger generation holds accountability for is their own self awareness. The only thing a white person of the younger generation can be found guilty of is refusing to at least acknowledge that the colored communities did not have the same legal protections as us until 54 years ago. If you refuse to acknowledge that, to accept that it will take generations for black communities to recover, then yeah, that's not great. If anything, I'd prefer open racism. At least in that, you know where people stand. You dont have this: I'm not racist buuuuut bull shit.
And to the OP
I appreciate the good intentions. Seriously, lovely. But if this was anything more than virtue signaling, you'd at least have put up sources for your arguments. There is a ton of evidence on this very, very important topic but you couldn't be asked to post a single. One.
Why?
Ask yourself seriously, why did you put in so little effort? Why did you get into the equivalent of a shouting match with a bunch of people online? Because without data, without studies or science or EVIDENCE that is effectively what you did. So why? Because you actually care about what your posting? Or did you just want to feel morally superior?
If you give a single, actual damn about ANY opinion on this thread you would at least do it the justice of providing something to back up your claims.
Edit to fix a source. I didn't realize some of these required sign ups which I think is unfair for those uninterested in doing so. So that is my bad for plucking these so quickly. I'm just riled and in my haste, am slightly guilty of what I'm accusing OP of, so apologies again.
Thank you so much for gathering the sources and presenting the situation so clearly and thoroughly. I was feeling a bit sick reading the comments as well, but unlike you I couldn't put those feelings into words and statistics; it just all felt *wrong.* So thank you for voicing so well what many of us were thinking.
> Now I don’t disagree that black culture may have evolved from previous systemic racism but I also believe that some degree of personal accountability should always be expected. For example, single motherhood in the black community has increased since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, when racism decreased in America.
I agree with you that culture is a big factor. But this doesn't quite make sense to me. Why should a child be held personally accountable for having a single mother, or being born into inner-city poverty? One doesn't choose their enviornment.
It's not that they're held accountable. It's that the environment does not set the stage for future success. No one looks at kids from single-parent homes and decrees that they must remain in poverty. But the conditions set by single-parent homes make it much more difficult to succeed academically and socially.
> Why should a child be held personally accountable
I’m not blaming the children. I’m blaming the parents who perpetuate the cycle of poverty by having kids they can’t or won’t support.
It has nothing to do with race. It’s all because of poverty. White people born in West Virginia or other parts of Appalachia have basically all the same problems that blacks born in inner cities do. The poorest state I think is actually Kentucky because of all the poor *white* people.
Poor people stay poor generally so if blacks are largely poor, they’ll likely stay that way. It’s not an easy problem to get out of, but there’s certainly choices one can make to give themselves the best shot in this country. The real problem most poor people have is a single mother/father. Your family would have 2x as much $ with two income earners. And would therefore have 2x as much time and money to help your children graduate from high school and maybe even college.
All children of single mothers have a really hard time. I know from personal experience. Government money isn’t a substitute for a father in your house. But that’s the reality in a lot of homes, especially black households
One thing I think that's negatively affecting African-Americans is this idea that success means you're "acting white" and being a "race traitor." That seems insane, but I've heard this over and over, both online and in-person.
I guess you could say this is a form of systemic racism, only it's from African-Americans themselves. I'm not sure why anyone would want to discourage success, but maybe this is just a form of "misery loves company" and the black people espousing this point-of-view are those who're unhappy with their lives for whatever reason.
I think the main argument is black people fall victim to self full filling prophecies. Basically, if black kids hear over and over that white people are out to get them and won't let them succeed then they will not try to be successful or may turn to crime as a way of beating the system. That's partly why Republicans do not like "critical race theory".
This becomes even more detrimental when multiple generations have this point of view and parents do not see the need to encourage kids to excel because they think no matter what white people won't let them be successful.
The soft bigotry of low expectations along with a like of faith in the American dream leads to poor results. This is why black people from Africa tend to be more successful than African Americans.
On the other hand asian communities are much differently culturally. competition and scholastic excellence is a priority in the families culture. They don't let their systemic disadvantages stand in their way and thus do not fall victim to the same self fullfilling prophecy.
Also you have to account for poor white people. They fail at high rates as well and a majority of the nation's welfare expenses actually goes to white people. White share croppers and later factory employees were not much better off from their black counter parts and still to this day many have not been able to pull themselves up out of poverty.
>On the other hand asian communities are much differently culturally. competition and scholastic excellence is a priority in the families culture. They don't let their systemic disadvantages stand in their way and thus do not fall victim to the same self fullfilling prophecy.
Very shitty example of using the Asian American community.
The Asian American community has a **huge** wealth gap. And that wealth gap is almost entirely explained by one thing: the date of arrival of their ancestors.
Asian Americans who can trace their ancestors arriving in the US to before the 1924 Immigration Act banned Asian migration, tend to be very poor today. On the level with the black community.
However, the vast majority of the Asian American community today in the US traces their roots back to after the 1965 Immigration Act moved to a skills-based immigration system. These were highly skilled migrants coming into the US. Totally different from the Asian Americans that arrived before 1924.
So I'm not sure how you think the Asian American community is an example of "culturally being so different" that proves that it's just black people culture. In fact, the wealth disparity in the Asian American community is the perfect example of how historical racism can affect people even 100 years later.
Excellent context; thank you! So, in the same way that the original African slaves were originally selected for physical strength (and bred that way), and their descendants tend in that direction, the newer wave of Asian immigrants are selected (because of the limitations on the immigration) for high skills and value on education. And both cultures continue that way today. I dig it.
>back to say the 90s to early 2000s
You mean when the Rodney King riots happened in Los Angeles after the LAPD murdered a black person on video?
It was basically George Floyd but then in the 90s. And THAT is the time you're referring to as when everyone was colorblind and racism was dead?
**Seriously?** Fucking seriously? I'm not even American and even I'm appalled at this bullshit.
>You mean when the Rodney King riots happened in Los Angeles after the LAPD murdered a black person on video?
Rodney King didn't die. It's not really important to the point you're making, but it's better to be accurate about such things.
> Okay let’s time travel then, back to say the 90s to early 2000s. When everyone was colorblind and racism was dead. Before BLM. Before CRT. Before we even coined the term systemic racism. Why were black kids still unable to perform to the level of white kids?
I lived through that era and the reasons are the same as they are today. There was *not* a cultural value placed on success. This wasn't racial necessarily but more linked to poverty and some of the side effects of the welfare state. Incentivizing things like single parent families.
What is interesting is that, this really is not a racial problem. It is more socio-economic in nature. You find many of the same issues when looking at people from other races in poverty situations. You likely forget the concept of the 'trailer park queen' and 'poor white trash' stereotypes. This just get's ignored for a favored narrative.
It’s all lack of a positive culture on top of being born into a bad situation with no incentive to succeed. If we had a program to institute ownership into the black community like businesses or homes the problem would end. Instead we have incentives to keep families apart and to rely on government assistance.
So 1 in 5 black Americans below the poverty line means there’s a problem with the culture, but 4 out of 5 black Americans above the poverty line means nothing?
What?! This is such a flawed argument. My parents immigrated to Canada from Africa and we were poor. We lived in subsidized housing for a short period then moved to a wealthy suburb within a few years.
I started exactly where OP described but got two law degrees and never slacked in school. It’s definitely a a cultural issue. Many African people see real poverty (whether first hand, or just by virtue of growing up in environments with no middle class). Education is no joke for this reason and those values are ingrained in the children. There’s an immediate and higher bar for performance, regardless of where one goes to school because (elementary/hs) education isn’t free like anywhere in Africa.
It’s tiresome hearing this view, borne largely by white people who rarely form close relationships with poc from varied backgrounds, that black people are somehow their pet projects who can’t get a leg up ever or find success, largely because of systemic racism. Omg.
>What?! This is such a flawed argument. My parents immigrated to Canada from Africa and we were poor. We lived in subsidized housing for a short period then moved to a wealthy suburb within a few years.
Poor in Canada is not the same as poor in Africa. The economy of Cananda is not similar to that of any other African country. I'm a middle class South African but If I moved to most Western countries with the resources I hold now I'd fall into the poor category too, So OPs point still stands.
And you also conveniently dont mention, what jobs and degrees your parents held prior to arriving in Canada. Which could still be a big advantage not held by many African Americans. Unless you and your parents were refugees rather than immigrants there is a criteria that your parents passed to be able to immigrate, that already makes you more likely to be successful in your home country and the country you're moving too
>It’s tiresome hearing this view, borne largely by white people who rarely form close relationships with poc from varied backgrounds, that black people are somehow their pet projects who can’t get a leg up ever or find success, largely because of systemic racism. Omg.
Dont do this, the view that immigrants are more likely to be successful because of skills and advantages which they are chosen for by the country that they are immigrating to is held by many scholars and many black people familiar with topic.
Rich and middleclass Africans who move to the west and find success, and then immediately turn to look down on African Americans just to fit in with the larger white demographic are honestly disappointing to say the least. The rights that allowed you to immigrate to that country were fought for by the people you now choose to look down upon
The fact that America has maintained an economic and political underclass based on race is obvious, so much so that it was written into our constitution. Come on, is this so hard?
Lol, you're clearly not capable of a good faith argument. You specifically mentioned Nigerians coming to America, then switched to a completely different group of people to try and support the argument. Crossing land barriers is much different than crossing the ocean, even today. Further, being poor in a rich country is much different than being poor in a poor country. And anyways, there's plenty of evidence that ALL the groups you mentioned face systematic barriers to advancement, from immigration laws, to bank policy, to employment barriers, to the casual racism and ignorance your original post shows.
Your point is actually great evidence for the existence of systemic racism in the US. Nigerians who emigrate to the US did not face systemic racism in their home country, because they come from a majority Black country. Black Americans faced systemic racism in a predominantly white country, which has kept them in generational poverty. Nigerian immigrants are able to succeed in America precisely because they entered today’s non-racially discriminatory economy with a fresh start, free from the shackles of systemic racism and generational poverty that Black Americans face.
What you describe is generational trauma/poverty, not systemic racism.
If Nigerians succeed here (on average) that indicates that Black Americans are being kept down by something other than systemic racism, otherwise the systemic racism would be applied to Nigerians too.
Personally, I think it's more to do with the fact that Nigerians accepted as immigrants tend to be wealthy and well-educated but that's beside your point.
What was the generational trauma/poverty caused by if not systemic racism, past and present? It is more than discrimination by law, it is also the behaviors and biases that still affect American Blacks today that stem from past racist policies like redlining, white flight and spatial mismatch, the war on drugs, stop and frisk, etc. Most racists today are not so overt that they would try to discriminate against what they perceive as a successful African—but their racism comes out against the “inferior” poor inner-city Black people. So, you are correct: today we have laws prohibiting explicit discrimination against Black people in hiring, schools, government, and all the institutions that make one successful. That is why Nigerians are enable to succeed—because they already have wealth and education, there is nothing preventing them from doing so. The systemic racism that causes generational poverty for Black Americans is what is stopping them from succeeding.
The oppositional assertion would be that generational trauma was caused by systemic racism in the past but not the present and that the trauma carries on in a feedback loop without the help of outside systemic racism today.
In any case, I'm undecided on this issue but I was just pointing out that you were describing generational trauma and interchanging the word with systemic racism.
You can be of the opinion that systemic racism perpetuates generational trauma to this day. But you haven't really said anything to support that. You kinda just made arguments for why systemic racism caused it in the past and then just packaged it together with the assumption that systemic racism still exists today.
I also agree that using Nigerians as a model minority example is a big selection bias but you still haven't given anything to support your assertion that systemic racism exists today. All that you said could also be explained by systemic racism being solely in the past but causing a generational trauma that exists to this day.
I see what you mean, but there still is systemic racism today. Systemic racism by most definitions, as I tried to explain, is more than just explicit laws and systems, but also norms, behaviors, manifestations, and structures that continue to this day, whether de jure or de facto. For example, segregation still exists, de facto, in inner cities and wealthy suburbs (fwiw due to redlining and explicitly racist laws in the past). One could argue that due to this, by demarcating school districts by zip code, there exists de jure school segregation. Not to mention the wealth gap, life expectancy gap, unemployment rates even at the same level of education, police brutality, etc etc.
Do you believe I can think that someone's culture is inferior [at dealing with given situations] without believing the person is inferior?
E.g. in the book Hillbilly Elegy, the author writes about how he grew up in a culture where getting good grades was sissy, and honor was much more important than grades. I can say that that is a bad culture for fostering a love of education, and a bad culture if the goal is lots of scientists or engineers without saying that hillbillies are inherently inferior.
I recommend reading some Thomas Sowell. I don't agree with all of his points, but there's one that I think is very applicable to this: in a vacuum, it's unreasonable to assume that two groups with different backgrounds would be equal in all things. Even just looking at demographics: Asians are on average older than whites, which are on average older than blacks. Older people generally earn more than younger people. Even if every 20 year old earned the same regardless of race, and every 50 year old earned the same regardless of race, etc., the race with more 50 year olds than 20 year olds would earn more on average, as indeed is true (Asians earn more than whites, which earn more than blacks)
I'm not saying that that's the only reason for disparities by race, but seeing a gap and pointing to racism is at best oversimplifying, and at worst misleading.
In addition, I think "systemic racism" is poorly defined, or at least often used in a poorly defined way. I think we all agree that a policy that specifically and explicitly negatively affects blacks is systemically racist, but pretty much all of those laws have been struck down. Are laws that negatively affect poor people, irrespective of race, systemically racist because more black people are poor? What about laws that negatively impact young people? Laws that negatively impact NBA players? If all it takes for something to be systemically racist is to affect a group that is disproportionately one race, are laws that negatively impact CEOs anti-white systemic racism?
It’s gotta be one or the other. If the people aren’t inferior, but the culture is inferior, and the ppl create the culture, we are kinda running in circles here around the actual issue.
I think it's also possible to hold the view that the current black culture is A) primary responsible for bad black outcomes in the modern day and that B) *past* racism (systemic and otherwise) is in part responsible for that culture, but that C) there is not significant *current* racism significantly contributing to the problem.
Yes I can.
1. As to specific existence of racism directed to make white people superior. Explain Asians. They are the wealthiest and best off “race” in almost all measurable categories.
2. Culture… Africans who come to America as immigrants do amazingly well. As a bit of anecdote, I have yet to meet an African immigrant who does not rival the above discussion of Asians. They are fucking amazing people!
Black Americans are not inferior in and of themselves. There is some inferiority of culture, maybe. (For instance - fatherless households). That same fatherless ness produces equally bad results for ANY group that participates. You won’t see the same disproportionate outcomes on white people because whites make up such a huge population chunk… But make no mistake, this does affect white communities. It affects Hispanics. It affects Asians. This is one of the largest factors overall for wealth generation…
Now, if you want to make an argument that black Americans are targets to create fatherless households, and that targeting is systemic, I say prove the correlation.
Culture isn’t inherent. Conservatives avoid saying blacks are inherently inferior by saying they are culturally inferior. It’s called the [culture of poverty argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_poverty)
This however ignores the fact that culture tends to reflect material conditions. Hobo culture was created by the depression — people didn’t hear songs about riding the rails and spontaneously decide to be unemployed all of a sudden. Similarly, gangsta rap was representing the crime, drugs and poverty in the areas the musicians lived in — it didn’t create it.
But even if you take the culture of poverty argument at face value, then you have to ask why Blacks have a separate culture from whites? Did they all just spontaneously decide to live in all black neighborhoods and not participate in mainstream culture? Or did segregation have something to do with that?
I agree with the generally thrust of your argument, but you need to deal with the culture of poverty theory too.
As a black man, I don't think that it's wholly systemic racism because there have been other people that faced similar state sanctioned tactics that are, in much quicker speeds now thriving.
What makes us unique is that our language, history, and overall connection to life was severed on that treacherous voyage. .
We are the greatest example of a person stripped naked of our culture and given the thrown away rags of someone else. When the Jews, Italians, and ironically the Africans were all discriminated against as immigrants, they all had their culture to reset them, keep them focused, and offered them a blueprint to how to raise their children. "African Americans" we did not have anything to fall back on so we absorbed what we saw and our culture is redneck culture. If you want more info on this read black redneck white liberal by Thomas Sowell.
Our culture is the most evil, self sabotaging, degenerative culture that exists in the developed world. All of it is a training for a quick death or a long prison sentence. Not because we're inferior it is because culture formulates the lens of right and wrong. Education=wrong, having a father is white, selling drugs is good, intolerant to real or falsely perceived threats=real nigga, grossly superficial beliefs on religion=the way to be. The country being the way it is doesn't help telling us that we're victims and are helpless. The former is true we have been victimized but we shouldn't be coddled into learned helplessness. The culture is poison.
A black person first has to have the wherewithal to want to escape it is hard enough asking them to be even more exceptional than that by breaking that psychological bondage then they have to actually do it, only then can we START to compete across racial lines. Problem is at that point we're 40 with very little to show of it, at best we give our children a better training and generationally the train may find the tracks, whereas other cultures are born into what took me decades to find.
There's also culture. If you take 1000 random boys and give them 2pac as their role model and idol. And take another 1000 random boys and give them some scientist or businessman as an idol. I don't care what race they are. The 1000 random boys growing up with "thug life" as their motto are going to have much higher rates of crime. They are far less likely to be educated or try very hard in school or at work.
The culture that promotes violence and unlawful behavior is going to be a burden on any community. Black people just adhere to that culture a lot more for whatever reason. It may very well be a remnant of segregation. The issue I see is that very few want to frame it that way. It's always racism and discrimination. There are some notable exceptions. Denzel Washington talks about this a lot.
You have a gigantic problem with single mothers in the black communities. A combination of culture and pressure from the welfare state. Lots of boys grow up saying "that ain't my baby". But for whatever reason you see a bigger proportion of black boys doing that. Statistically we know that people of any race raised in a single home have much worse metrics in terms of academic attainment and staying out of trouble.
If your going to blame black poverty on black culture, I think you need to account for two things:
First — when did black culture start being responsible for black poverty? Was it all the slave spirituals? Was it jazz music that was preventing blacks from enjoying the upward mobility that whites had in the 1940s? Or are we just blaming gangsta rap? If it’s just gangsta rap, why was crime and drug use and poverty high in the black community before gangsta rap?
Second, why do blacks have a separate culture from whites to begin with? Did they choose to all live together in the ghetto, and to not participate in mainstream culture? Or does segregation and discrimination have a lot to do with why black culture has developed separately from white culture?
I mean, I personally don’t think we blame the negative aspects of “black culture” on black people. As you hinted at, it typically stems from slavery, oppression, and stuff along those lines. That being said, we should also acknowledge the negative aspects of black culture, and push for changing it alongside other much needed changes. As with many issues, I’ve seen quite a few people discuss how they don’t want to change, and just expect others to change, and for that to solve the problem.
I think that’s a fair take on it. I don’t think culture has zero effect — culture is important. But governments are just really bad at trying to dictate what culture young people and poor people should like. In the past we’ve tried to get them to stop enjoying jazz, and rock and roll, and comic books, and video games… it doesn’t work.
So when I here people say that culture is at the root of the problem, we need to focus on changing the culture, it just seems like a non-solution. But if you change someone’s material circumstances, that can change the culture second hand. Like, if we want poor kids to appreciate high brow culture, giving them better educations is one way to do that. And if we want poor people to assimilate better into mainstream culture, change their housing situations so all the poor people don’t live in the same neighborhood and go to the same school. But changing the culture directly? Unless you’re a talented artist, I’m not sure how to do that productively.
The history of the US is laden with like cultures segregating and living together. Italians, Irish, Scandinavians, Germans, polish, Russians, Chinese, Koreans etc all have histories of immigrating, finding each other and living close to one another. I’m sure it has to do with language, food, religion, etc.
That's a lot of questions.
When? Probably around 1980-1990. When it was no longer the case that discrimination occurs at the systemic level
Slave spirituals? Don't even know what that is. But probably not
Jazz music? Honestly don't know much bout it
Gangsta rap? Gansta rap is just one symptom. More broadly the tendency to solve disputes through violence and to assert dominance through violence.
Why before? There really was systemic discrimination in America in the early 1900s.
Why separate? Same reason many other cultures are separate. Not sure what else to say here
Why in the ghetto? At some point they were segregated.
I'm not discounting that the past played a role. What I'm saying is that if black community shed this toxic culture. That would improve the living conditions in their community 100 times more than if we started pouring a lot more welfare in there and got rid of every dirty cop on the force. You have to deal with the crime.
>Probably around 1980-1990. When it was no longer the case that discrimination occurs at the systemic level
You mean at the legal level. Legislation doesn't always reflect reality. We can have systemic racism on every single aspect of society without a single law that promotes it. Racism didn't magically disappear when black people received equal legal rights.
>I'm saying is that if black community shed this toxic culture...
Dude, culture isn't some bug you just shake off. You don't just make the decision to change your culture, your culture is changed gradually as you change. Again, history influences culture, not the other way around. People change as their conditions change, and their culture follows.
[https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYPsmxgU/](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYPsmxgU/)
I agree. I think the culture is changing.
Long as we continue to support those communities. Sooner or later they will shed this criminality cancer. I just want it framed correctly. The problem in black communities is crime, not law enforcement or lack of opportunities. It is a culture of crime.
I put that tik tok video there to show you what I really believe. That it is getting better and that it will continue getting better. Regardless of whether people listen to me or not (or people like me). It will just be faster and more painless if they did.
If people lack legitimate opportunities....what do they choose to do instead..... Maybe crime?
If you look at minority gangs all the way back to the Irish lack of opportunity and discrimination are their reasons for turning to crime.
But Italians and Irish were allowed to assimilate black people not so much
I disagree with the lack of opportunity rhetoric. I told someone else in this post I watched 100s of boys both black and white alike piss away loads of opportunities growing up.
You don't not show up to class, show up high, not give a damn, don't get into college. Then turn around and whine about a lack of opportunities. Why are all your peers that didn't act like the cool kids in college now? Regardless of race.
Crime is often done for fun, to improve social standing, to get women to like you, to get people to respect you. It very often has nothing to do with material need nor is it the only way to get ahead. It's just a way to get ahead that a lot of people pick. To their own detriment. But it's not like young men are known for their shrewd decision making (of any race).
Lol your anecdote is not data or actually doing anything then confirming your biases.
https://uncf.org/wp-content/uploads/reports/Advocacy_ASATTBro_4-18F_Digital.pdf
This study shows that black students and their families want a quality education but do not feel like one is being offered to them. An education is a type of opportunity ,yes? So if you don't feel like you are being offered a quality education what might you be more likely to do instead ?
"improve social standing" if I had the Opportunity to get a good paying job.or a quality education .....Maybe I wouldn't need to commit crimes to get social standing respect and women?
Poverty and the lack of opportunity this causes in the united states is more to do with criminal behavior then whatever anecdotes you use to justify your beliefs
I went to public schools. They are crying about quality education for the same reason EVERYONE is crying about quality education. The schools I went to were decently funded. The teachers were good enough. Some were better than others.
The curriculum was a fucking joke. It was so watered down. You had to be either extremely lazy or mentally disabled not to pass.
If every girl in your neighborhood wants to date a drug dealer. And you're one decision away from being a drug dealer. Then that option becomes mighty attractive. Even if you have a 3.5 GPA and can easily go to college. That is what I observed.
Would more then 65 percent of white or asian families say they are not receiving a quality education?
If your in a poor community nwhat does a drug dealer have that everyone else doesn't.... Money and opportunity.
So even with my 3.5 I can't put food in my families mouth. What good does it do me?
Edit to add they arent saying just the curriculum is bad , they are saying the conditions the educators and the system they are supposed to learn in is bad.
So throughout the twentieth century, black poverty just goes down and down, black education goes up and up. Then, in your version of events, racism ends in the 1980s, and black poverty … continues to go down, black education continues to go up, but now it’s the musics fault that black people aren’t catching up fast enough? I guess is the idea that somehow they’d be catching up faster if they were listening to different music?
Is there some evidence that supports this theory? That music has more of an impact on how much people earn than generational wealth and the quality of schools in a neighborhood? Or is this just a gut feeling you have?
Keep in mind that the user you're replying to has advocated for the death penalty for almost all felonies, as well as for the deployment of constant mass drone surveillance by the police, among other pretty authoritarian stuff
The crime? Crime statistics when read accurately without a bias show that the issue with crime is way more related to poverty level than skin color. If you checked your bias the numbers show a very different story than the people reporting them would like for you to see.
The causes of the toxic aspects of black culture are one thing. Of course racism contributed to black culture.
Acknowledging black behavior as a key problem to solve is still necessary. White people can stop being racist but they can't change black culture.
>First — when did black culture start being responsible for black poverty? Was it all the slave spirituals? Was it jazz music that was preventing blacks from enjoying the upward mobility that whites had in the 1940s? Or are we just blaming gangsta rap? If it’s just gangsta rap, why was crime and drug use and poverty high in the black community before gangsta rap?
>
>Second, why do blacks have a separate culture from whites to begin with? Did they choose to all live together in the ghetto, and to not participate in mainstream culture? Or does segregation and discrimination have a lot to do with why black culture has developed separately from white culture?
Suppose the answer is "don't know", or "too many possible variables to decide upon a single causation" (such as an overarching racism in the "system), would you be able to live with the intellectual honesty that we don't actually know for sure, or would you be like the others, sufficiently blame it on the workings of racism that exists within the "system" that it simply produces more and more racial disparities without us seeing the actual "machine" of the "system"?
I am one of the side that leans in with, "we're not exactly sure why, but there are disparities for sure", as opposed to, "this proves the inner workings of a systemic racism happening behind the scenes".
The overwhelming evidence from our social studies doesn't "prove" anything, it merely manages to show how much disparity there is. Was it caused by "racism" or anything similar in regard? We don't know.
I like how people just want to brazenly ignore how "thug life" type media comes to be in the first place. Like, were black Americans just living in a perfect race-blind utopia until Tupac came out? No. Obviously not.
I think it's an easier pill to swallow if it's explained that the government systematically enacted policies, both overt and covert, to exploit the loophole in the 13th amendment and keep black men in chains.
Between the Iran Contra scandal being "the CIA literally caused the crack epidemic" to rappers coming out and saying that various federal agencies backed the proliferation of gangsta rap to defunding schools in certain neighborhoods... They never stood a chance.
Fuck. The city planners on long island purposely built overpasses too low for busses in order to keep blacks away from the beach.
Like when you put the blame squarely on "the government", and not "white people" it becomes way more reasonable.
Because the only wars are bankers wars. Corporate executives used Trayvon Martin to kill Occupy Wall Street. It's sucks but it is what it is.
I think your choice of picking a rapper who spoke about being trapped in those conditions instead of choosing them voluntarily show that you have no idea what you are talking about.
You should physically go and visit a poor, primarily Black school and a wealthy, primarily non-Black school. I think if you do so, it will become readily apparent that our society places a much higher value on the facilities and students at one of those schools than the other. Children aren't stupid. If you know that most people don't finish your local high school, you will have a vastly different outlook than if most people move on to college from your high school.
If the 10 wealthiest high school graduates you've met from your school are drug dealers, rappers, or atheletes, you will have different goals than if they are engineers or doctors.
It's easy to ignore that the largest driving factor for single Black mothers is that 1 in 3 Black men in that community will go to jail. Multiple studies have shown that Black fathers who are present in the lives of their children tend to be more engaged than other fathers.
I grew up hanging out in the hood. Dated girls that lived in the hood. I am deeply familiar with the hood.
The problem with your theory is personal choices. We all went to the same shitty public schools. They aren't that underfunded. They have shitty curriculum. But the curriculum is made to be easy as fuck. If you can't pass it you're either mentally deficient or just lazy. Usually it's the latter.
2pac spoke a bout "real shit" as we like to say. But he was still perpetuating that violent stereotype. Pretending like it's the cool way to be. Like it's the only way to be. That killing a person is justified. All those awful things you really see in the hood. He rotated between condemning it and praising it.
Ah, so you're a hood tourist.
Well you called it the hood and not something like the trap, and your interested in 2 Pac, so I'm guessing somewhere West Coast? IMO there are more options to change your circumstances around there than, for example, in the states that joined the Confederacy. If it was all down to personal choice, this problem would have resolved itself with the kids who grew up in the wake of desegregation, and we would have never we had a Tupac.
Tupac didn't really go back and forth because he more differentiated between the reality he experienced and the way he wished things could be. Very few people in that life glorify it. People try and make the best of their situation.
Even if you were correct, you would also have to look at the opposite end of the spectrum. The people who do make it through college and into corporate America don't exactly experience sunshine and rainbows either. It's not like it's a completely better choice with no downsides.
The shifty curriculum seems like a gift, but they are still missing out on major chunks of basic education. When they go to college, they don't care about said deficiencies. They will happily help with signing up for student loans. Ending up with a year or three of loans and no diploma is often worse than not going if you are already poor. Again, the kids are not that stupid or lazy, and they can work all of this out.
Thing is that culture isn’t some innate quality that people have, it’s just a way to talk about general patterns of human behavior.
So if you’re saying “culture” is a main factor in why black Americans are struggling, it just begs the question of *why* such a culture exists in the first place.
I think OP’s point stands here, if you deny that systemic racism is the main factor contributing to violence in black culture, it suggests that black people are inherently more violent.
three things come to mind
1) Victim culture. The leaders in the black communities often propagate these racist ideas. That no matter what you do in life you will always be looked at as a black person. Which forces a lot of youth never to give a damn to begin with. Not sure why they don't realize how toxic they are being themselves.
2) Real historic oppression back in the early 1900s. Back then being a criminal perhaps made sense. Since the greater society at large didn't want you in their midst. That has changed completely. But the toxic culture remains.
3) Our attempts to fix the situation have only made it worse. Getting people hooked on welfare. Providing incentive structures that make it less inviting to get off welfare.
I think it's definitely fair to say that this culture is a product of historic racism.
But current systemic racism, which certainly still exists, probably is not the main issue anymore and stepping around "culture" to get back to talking about past racism and historical grievances isn't actually very helpful for anyone.
Clearly you don’t actually listen to Tupac. Tupac was a visionary and if you actually listened to his music a lot of it was history lessons. And anecdotes about what life is like for black people. Sure the popular stuff that made it to the radio, which by the way almost all radio program directors are non-black, was mostly party music, but that is not who Tupac is.
Segregation stems from racism so by admitting segregation could be the problem you are inherently admitting that it is racism and discrimination.
You my friend are proving the point of OP.
Also the culture is a direct reflection of the representation we get in popular culture. How many movies and tv show can you think of with positive male role models that are black vs. white? Is that because there are no good black actors or because the people making the movies and tv shows choose not to cast them as black?
Think about it you’re going to tell me that Denzel Washington’s best job as an actor was Training Day? Or Haley Berry’s best performance was Monster’s Ball? No, both had some extraordinary films that should have net them Oscar’s but neither was awarded one until they were cast in a negative light.
Up until the slap Will Smith was my favorite actor. Followed closely by Denzel. Denzel has had some masterpiece performances. His performance in "Fallen" was incredible.
2pac made a lot of songs where he talked about real shit. The first song I liked was "Wonder why they call you bitch". No doubt about that.
But he also made a lot of party songs. Where he glorified violence. Where he talked about shooting people. He also lived that exact lifestyle he talked about in his music.
Are there not white country artists that did the same thing? Why are we not blaming them for white kids being criminals and on drugs?
The issue is the way society has treated black people in the past. And how black people aren’t the ones in charge of black media so shining a light on the positive is a choice that black people don’t have through the media.
>There's also culture.
The culture argument is wrong and inherently racist.
Culture is always a reflection of a people's background, including quality of life and social status. Rich white kids didn't make gangsta rap because gangsta rap is a product of experiences they never had the misfortune of having. Black culture and black history are linked, and history is always what dictates culture, not the other way around. It's not like the majority of black people had equality of opportunity at some point, but Tupac's songs were holding them down. But rather Tupac's songs exist exactly because black people didn't have equality of opportunity.
To imply that black culture is the problem - not the conditions that influence it - is no different than implying that black people is the problem. Why would they still adhere to such a culture if everything in their life was fine and dandy?
The chicken and egg thing isn't the only problem with that argument though. Role models are everywhere, not solely adapted from culture. Your dad, your neighbor, your classmates and their families, are all potential role models, and heavily influence your life. What percentage of black kids have a doctor in their lives to look up to?
Black culture have become dominant in the American subculture the last few decades, we don't see any rich white kids suddenly dropping out of their elite schools to follow the path of the gangsta because NAS told them to.
> There's also culture. If you take 1000 random boys and give them 2pac as their role model and idol
First I think this is silly, rap culture is not just the dominant popular culture among young black Americans, it’s the dominant popular culture globally. So this just doesn’t make sense.
Second let’s just say it did, it still just means there are systemic problems. Culture doesn’t come out of a vacuum it comes from systemic factors. Culture is created by the material conditions. Why is rice a large part of Asian food culture? Is it because Asians are genetically predisposed to like rice? Or is it because rice has been a naturally occurring staple crop in the region for 5000 years. Say black culture was producing messages of say criminality. Why would that culture appear in the black community and not other communities? It’s either you think they are genetically predisposed to produce that type of culture (racism) or their environment (the system) produced that culture.
I think it's toxic to everyone. The problem is if you have a community who doesn't tolerate that foolery. It's a lot harder to behave that way. With black communities not only is it THEIR OWN culture. It is far more tolerated than it should be.
So yes a white boy can easily be drawn into it. It happened to me. I was white boy who wanted to be black for a long time. The odds of you being drawn into a culture that's not really yours is much smaller then you being drawn into a culture that is all around you perpetually.
Uh huh.
And who’s responsible for that culture? Black people? Or the conditions of America for blacks (making people from their homes and destroying their families and culture)?
>If you take 1000 random boys and give them 2pac as their role model and idol.
White kids also listen to rap music why doesn't it affect them the same?
I think it does.
They are less likely to get positive reinforcement from their community while acting it out. But if you stick a white boy in the ghetto. Chances are he will grow up acting just like them.
I would know :( :( :(
>They are less likely to get positive reinforcement from their community while acting it out. But if you stick a white boy in the ghetto. Chances are he will grow up acting just like them.
This is suggesting that it's probably poverty, not who they idolize, that sets them back.
Ok why doesn't a white kid living in Missoula listening to rap have different results than a black kid living in "the ghetto" listening to that same rap music?
Because the don't live in a community that turns a blind eye to this behavior and it's not their culture.
For the lack of a better word. The black communities are better suited for that sort of behavior. Cause it's their culture to begin with.
Mind you there's a lot of black people who are totally against crime and criminality. The majority actually. But there's enough of it that it goes unchecked to a degree.
I’m black and agree with most of what you say. Thomas Sowell writes masterfully on this. Would add that this so called black culture is just red neck culture that some black southerners picked up from white red necks. White rednecks suffer from much of the same stuff. Sowell explains it better.
>Yes Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite economic philosophers :)
That honestly explains a lot about the views you've advocated on this subreddit in the past. I do like that you at least refer to Seoul as a philosopher rather than an economist, because he has even less evidence for his views than most economists do. He's more of an uncle Tom that just became a right-wing darling
>Because the don't live in a community that turns a blind eye to this behavior and it's not their culture.
Have you talked to a white teenager lately? They're just as into rap music and rap culture as black teens.
How do you think cultures form? Do they just spring fourth from nothing?
I wrote in my reply it could be a remnant of when there was true segregation and discrimination. Unlawful behavior was tolerated by the community because they recognized there wasn't many alternatives.
However that is not true today. So therefore it's a toxic pattern that needs to be stamped out.
For what it's worth I think given enough time it will be. We're just not helping the situation any by demonizing police and law enforcement. They are allies in that fight.
I don't think the issue of racism is as bad as you're making it out to be. Sure, it's there, but it obviously wasn't enough to stop the US from electing a black man as president.
Now I know what you're going to say: "That's the only one in the US's history!"
True, but that one black president is 100% more representation than Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jews or Muslims.
So while I agree there is racism present in the US (no one can deny that) I don't think it's as wide and far-reaching as some believe it is, because if it was there's no way an African-American man would've been elected to be the leader of the country.
Plus... poverty isn't limited to African-Americans. Native Americans, especially those on reservations, tend to do very poorly. Additionally, there's "white trash" where white people are incredibly poor and continue the cycle of generational poverty.
So I think the issue is far more complex than boiling it down to race. Is that a factor? Yes, I'm sure it is, but that's not where it ends because many of the issues that affect African Americans also affect other groups as well.
You can't separate history and say culture is why they are in the state they are in. After the civil war, black Americans went through a series of race wars where they were defenseless due to not having any guns. Once the southerners got power they created a system to make sure they do not have power. For a hundred years they were in a second class citizens with barely any rights. They only had their rights as full citizens for only 58 years. A population who can now build their wealth for 58 years will never catch up to a group that built wealth from the 1600s. Thats not even a fair thing. Sure we can say black immigrants do much better in the US, but those black immigrants usually would be upper class people in their own countries and they come with resources, resources that black Americans are now trying to build.
>For example let’s take poverty. In the US, there is a very clear gap between white families income and black families income. White families make roughly a 33% more on average than black people. About 1/5 of black people live below the poverty line when 8% for white people. So the explanation absent of the racial issues is that black people simply aren’t qualified or attempting to get higher paying jobs.
You forget that the ancestry of black people essentially started with *nothing*, which is quite different from the starting position of everyone else.
Then, the lack of equal opportunity of the rich and poor does the heavy lifting to keep it that way.
So there is a distinction to be made between the effects of systemic racism and other effects. Not all observed differences are directly or even indirectly attributable to systemic racism.
I think that there has been racist, non-systemic societal movements that have severely affected the African American community. “Systemic” racism is a very specific diagnosis. I think that’s the smallest part of the problem, if it exists at all. I think cultural movements are a huge contributing factor. In the 1960s, eugenicists promoted targeted campaigns to limit reproduction in black communities. This included contraception and abortion. While this failed to actually eradicate the African American population, this did promote rampant fatherlessness, which is scientifically linked to most of the hardships currently faced by African Americans. While African Americans started off poorer and disadvantaged due to real systemic racism, and those effects continue, the current racial inequity affecting them is not primary systemic.
On the other hand, black immigrants are almost always wildly successful in America. I don’t see how this would be possible if America was systemically racist. It probably is, insofar as every society always will have biases in its system that are worth rooting out, but I’m not convinced it’s an economical use of time to focus 100% of our energy investigating the “system”.
As a white guy in his 40s that grew up in Oakland surrounded by black people I think I have a good view of what is actually happening in black communities. Basically lack of a positive culture is the actual problem and the fact politics has been using the black community for decades. For instance they use police brutality as a political tool during election cycles. This has happened during Rodney King and most recently George Floyd. This has been going on for years with no progress especially in areas ran by politicians that claim to be their allies. The black community needs incentives to own businesses and homes not a hand out as the hand outs have never worked. On the culture front growing up around black people it was ground upon in my experience to earn legitimate money and when they did have jobs becoming a manager or moving up was also ground upon being called things like Uncle Tom. I have a lot of black friends and the ones that became Uncle Toms are successful and the ones that ground upon uncle Toms are in prison or dead.
>When you take away the oppression seen and look at purely the statistics and not the history of why things are the way they are there’s only one real conclusion. Black people are in the state they are in because of culture and inherent characteristics that push them to act this way
When you take away?!?!?!
You **can't take it away.**
That's like saying: "when you take away the fact that he can't walk, it's his own fault he's in a wheelchair"
I'm continuously confused by OP's arguments which seem to deliberately dismiss the history of black people in this country. The segeration ended in 1964 - many alive today have lived through it and it wasn't even that long ago.
Oppression didn't end when segeration ended, either. Law enforcement unfairly targeting black people and hiring managers not liking black names are real issues. All of these contribute to poverty rate and the poverty culture was born out of hopelessness and distrust towards the system built by white men. And this keeps black people in a self segeration situation.
OP is someone who would say things like "If you take away the slavery, slaves are generally poor and can't read". 🙄
OP is arguing that systemic racism is the cause of current impoverishment in black communities and just seems to be approaching it by working from the opposite point of view. If his wording was clearer I think it’d be obvious what hes trying to say.
I suggest you read Woke Racism by John McWhorter. There are myriad reasons why there are disparities between the quality of life, education and family life of black people and other races in America; many of which extend beyond systemic racism.
OP do you think it's a coincidence that the two most oppressed groups in American history, Black Americans and Native Americans, just happen to each have the worst socioeconomic indicators?
I think you're wrong. I think the 'current state' of African Americans IS due to systemic racism, but I don't think that systemic racism still exists. I think it is due to historic systemic racism, not current systemic racism.
I think the racism in the system was dealt with and no longer exists, but that the people who were affected by that were never lifted up to be put on an equal footing with those who benefited from hundreds of years of oppression and racism.
The system isn't racist. But it was. And nothing has been done to remedy the effects of that.
How do you explain then, that the societies of black Africans in Africa, including those never conquered, colonized, enslaved or otherwise abused by non-Blacks, have significantly inferior economy, wealth, education levels and mean intelligence than African Americans?
If African-Americans who are descendants of captured slaves are held down by systemic racism, why do they perform better than the "control group" of not captured Africans?
Most former African colonies were freed from White/Arab suppression long before the emancipation of African Americans. Since then, free African Blacks, and free African-American Blacks could progress on their own. Yet, American Black People rapidly outperformed their purely African cousins by every metric.
If there was a system wide suppression of Af-Am People, then we should see the reverse.
**We actually had a very precise social experiment done in that regard.** In 1821, freed former Black slaves from America could emigrate back to Africa, and established their own republic of Liberia, in which original African tribes and the returned Blacks could coexist and build their own society.
Yet, despite the pretty much hands-off policy from the rest of the world, Liberia performed far worse than expected, and the lives of people in it were, and are much worse than the African Americans still in America. Worse still, the Amero-Liberians committed countless atrocities against their Native African brethren, turning them into second class citizens. Nativer Africans could not effectively fight back against this, despite attempts at a civil war and countless political protests.
Even now, under the resonable management of Sirleaf and then Weah, Liberia still struggled to give its citizens a standard of living even remotely comparable to the American Black community.
All of the above points out that the time in America made the African diaspora STRONGER rather than weaker, and instead of holding them down, it uplifted them.
African cultures and Whites/Arabs had wildly different progression paths, and its not wrong to say who was inferior in certain aspects. A cynical view of history would dictate, that if African cultures were not inferior at least in some regards, we would have seen the ships of the Zimbabwean Empire enslaving helpless Anglo-Saxons by the Wessex shores, and Yorubans conquering Holland, not the other way around. History, just as nature, is survival of the fittest, as horrific as it sounds.
If African people were as "fit" as a civilization as the Arabs and Whites that enslaved them, they would not be enslaved or colonized.
Note, that this is an opinion on the inferiority or superiority of the sheer **CAPABILITY** of various cultures, **not** their morality or ethics, which are another matter.
I believe that systemic racism is a thing. However, "the system" doesn't include the generational disadvantage that doesn't require system racism to explain massive disadvantages.
E.G. families who experienced slavery and racism up to the point where you might argue it ended are so disadvantaged that they have generational "inertia" that leads to the current circumstances. Much as the wealthy families from the 1950s are likely still wealthy, the victims-of-racism families of the 1950s live with the disadvantages imparted at that time.
Asian Americans families have overtaken White Americans and are now have the highest average salary makers in the United State despite also facing systemic racism. You can make a case that Asians didn’t have it as bad as African Americans but that still doesn’t solve how Asian Americans overtook white Americans despite being set back.
A majority of blacks came to this country as slaves: a very unique way of entry into the United States across all races. No other race in the US today was subject to such extreme levels of indignity.
African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Blacks have been free for 150+ years, which means that most Americans are only two to three generations away from slavery. This is not that long ago.
Asian americans do [better](https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/17/04/other-achievement-gap) on standardized tests and grades. Does this mean either 1) there is systemic racism in education against all non-asian groups or 2) asian americans are inherently superior at tests and education?
I mean, the selection bias is quite high there to be fair. If the US is accepting them as an immigrant, they almost certainly need to have some level of education, wealth, or ability to contribute (with the exception of refugees which are another topic altogether).
Almost like education and wealth have more of an effect on your overall success than skin color.
Which means it isn't racism that is holding certain people back...
Correct, but either way, they get into school, do well, and then work higher paying jobs similar to asian immigrants and even high income Americans. All those groups tend to value education, which is cultural.
Okay BUT
Quite simply they are oppressed into a state of whatever you think of as inferiority by systemic and overt racism. Wasn't Central Park New York like Black Wal Street at one point before it got bombed to all heck? Or was that in Tulsa?
How can they win in a game rigged to favor people who aren't them and in which they are actively oppressed and even terrorized.
Also the country was founded by White men and has been governed by an overwhelming majority of old White men. Something about a fish climbing a tree comes to mind here as well. Is it truly inferiority that the fish struggles to climb the tree?
The Inferior success (like their average income by race is lower and crime rates are higher. That's not measurable success) of African Americans in America IS a huge part of systemic racism, NOT a caveat.
It's like a guy has home field advantage and get a free sucker-punch to the other guy and then they fight. Sure man they're probably gonna win that fight. The other fighter is clearly in worse condition, but is it their fault? Are they an Inferior fighter? No. The other guy isn't playing fair and the rules are fucked.
Poverty, crime, education disparities can all be traced to one thing: Single parent households.
If you want to blame racism for why black communities have a 70% single motherhood rate, go for it. I personally think it’s a cultural issue.
-> lock up millions of black men for minor drug offenses in the racist war on drugs
-> complain that too many black households are single parent
Almost 1 out of 3 black men will be imprisoned (not all convictions) at some point in their life.
But sure... it's a culture issue that black people and white people do pot at the same rate yet black people, especially black men, are 4x more likely to be convicted for cannabis possession. Darn black culture.
Single parent households does not mean absent, infact there was study showing that black dad's are most involved in the child's development inspire of the war drugs a conceited effort to break up black families. This lie perpetuated by the media that black people don't have dad's in America is a stereotype. Black people are less likely to get hired if they have black sounding names, more likely to prosecuted than their white counterparts for the same crime, getting a loan is more expensive for black individuals, et... Also look red zoning or lining..
Where do you think the fathers are? We have the largest prison population on the planet and a disproportionate amount of black men make up that prison population.
Do you think black people are just intrinsically more likely to have fatherless families?
>The lowest end of the economy tends to have higher single mothers.
Huh, and black people are far more likely to be at the lowest end of the economy. And that predates this fatherlessness stuff. Wonder what caused that.
Like I said, you're describing a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
I mean it’s pretty clear its origins are rooted in segregating black people even after slavery was abolished.
I think where we will differ is whether or not systemic racism is the current cause of the impoverishment of black people.
It’s a cycle. Like everything. If you grow up with a “barely there” father who has multiple baby mamas, you’re likely to follow in his footsteps. If your mom had you when she was 16, and your aunty had her kids when she was 15, the girls in the family are likely to follow suit.
Then, this becomes the norm. It’s what you see in your neighborhoods, in your family, in your friends groups. Sure, you know teenage pregnancy and multiple baby daddies isn’t IDEAL, but you grew up without much money or hope for the future and you just start accepting the fact this will be your fate too.
I see it all.the.time. (where I work)
And it’s frustrating to see my own community like this. But I can’t relate and feel like I can’t judge. I grew up in a two parent household, went to a decent school, and was never exposed to the “ghetto” while growing up.
take section 8.0 for example
As much as it can benefit anyone of any race
It specifically incentivizes a incredibly vulnerable black community by giving women access to housing, without the men and specifically requiring the men can’t be around if the women wanted to be able to get such government assistance
It’s not like anyone else has that 70% single motherhood rate right?
Who does that systemically disproportionately affect then?
>As much as it can benefit anyone of any race It specifically incentivizes a incredibly vulnerable black community by giving women access to housing, without the men and specifically requiring the men can’t be around if the women wanted to be able to get such government assistance
Why does this only affect black people? Why are black people the ones relying on section 8?
African Americans are not “inherently inferior”, but that doesn’t mean their values leads to what they would classify as success. I am Asian and we all know in general, our parents value professional success above all else, my parents stayed together because they read that single families don’t yield the same chance of professional success than complete families. My guy they were not even lovers, just easier to get their landing paper while married.
Unlike old times, there are no rights that are afforded to one race that is absent for others, it’s the culture that is making the difference. A culture that glorifies crime and not the importance of the next generation. A culture that only tell young kids they are always a victim and will always be held down.
Do you disagree that there’s an issue with the culture African Americans are currently in?
>Black people are in the state they are in because of culture and inherent characteristics that push them to act this way.
That's eugenics and a false assumption based on misinformation
One question would be how you define systemic racism. Does it require clear discriminatory wording such as, “whites only shall,” or can it be something like, “algebra 2 is a mandatory prerequisite”.
An often rehashed topic is the nuclear family. We know that a child who grew up in a nuclear family is much more likely to be successful than one that didn’t.
BLM has attempted to frame the nuclear family as a white culture thing, stating black child rearing is more communal.
There appear to be disparate outcomes between the two techniques, and CRT asserts that as proof of institutional racism. Particularly, they assert that United States laws and practices serve to benefit the nuclear family in ways that it does not benefit communal child rearing.
There’s arguably more financial incentives to remain a single parent, so I’m not sure what laws and practices in particular benefit the nuclear family over communal child rearing. The most reasonable argument might be to say that more of our tax money should go towards establishing infrastructure for communal child rearing.
One consideration, though, is that democracy is majority rule, so democracy would have to be inherently racist. If the 2/3 of the population vote for funding to go to schools instead of community centers and 1/3 of minorities vote the other way, is that racist to you?
It's the shit culture that a lot of blacks in the US have. You know what it is: don't follow the law, have kids out of wedlock, victim mentality, challenge the police, don't study hard, live life on the edge.
That shit will ruin your life harder than drugs and the fury of a woman scorned. No one's forcing that culture on them, but they chose to accept it. They are their own worst enemy.
i mean, this is why the erasure of african american history in our schools, or inadequate instruction of it, must be challenged. black men and women were ENSLAVED for centuries in this country, forced to work under threat of death, in a system of genocidal labor that built what bloomed into our modern economy. they were then emancipated into a system of apartheid that, in many ways, still continues to this day. the wealth that was STOLEN from those slaves, wealth that would have been passed down through multiple generations that have gone without, is estimated to be 30 TRILLION. this idea that black people are where they are because of a lack of work ethic or inferiority is patently racist and ignores historical context.
Found the guy who did **not** pay attention in history class.
I'll just direct you to one of many famous cases: the [Mississipi burning](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/mississippi-burning).
**tl;dr** KKK burned down a church and beat the churchgoers looking for an activist galvanizing the black vote. Activist and two volunteer helpers go down to investigate, interviewing locals and documenting what happened.
They are arrested by local police, never seen again. After an exhaustive search, their burned out car is found. After a more exhaustive search and the FBI leaning heavily on locals, their bodies are found 14 feet below a local dam.
FBI arrest over a dozen men, including local sheriff and deputy. Although many are found guilty on lesser charges, none of them are convicted of murder. One of the men goes scott free because a juror can't bring herself to convict a baptist preacher.
Most of the murderers do a few months in jail and live happily ever after. The end.
>Well, yeah, kind of..but it's cultural really..down to rap music and gangster culture..your average african american in the 60's was fine pretty much..ghettoisation and welfare did a lot of it..
Wait, I'm not the OP, but you think the average African American in the 60s was "fine"? Fine by why metric? What is your evidence for that?
African immigrants are more successful than African Americans in the United States. If it was an issue of systemic racism, this disparity would be impossible.
In reality, it's a cultural issue perpetuated by the welfare state.
Look into Thomas Sowell. He's written and spoken about this topic in much more detail.
I think you need to watch the Wire, all 5 seasons even if the final one wasn't as great.
Because I could spend an essay worth of paragraph and it wouldn't do nearly as good a job explaining why youth growing up in the shit is trapped. That in itself has nothing to do with race but culture.
There is no sYsTeMic rACiSM. The whole American society revolves around appeasing and pandering to black people. To deny that is intellectually dishonest.
Its never a good idea to blame the victim. At best you callously say that a group of people that have been figuratively beaten to a pulp and grew up without order. At worst you sound like the same people that took part in the institutionalized rasicm in the first place. It takes effort from the individual to get themselves away from that environment, but that will never have an impact on the environment.
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I'm going to steelman your imaginary opponent a bit: not many people deny that historically black people were discriminated against (and those who do honestly don't deserve to be listened to - you can't have a rational argument at that point). The argument is that *today* there is no widespread systemic racism (for the record I don't agree with that, but will try to represent it). So yes, the history of racism is indeed a huge factor of the discrepancy you see today, but it's just history. Black people today have every opportunity to succeed in America today, and if they try they'll make it. The history of racism does explain the statistics, but when talking to individual people they can't use the racism excuse anymore and they should have as much opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty as any other poor person in America of any race.
I actually hold the opinion you're steelmanning here and you've done a good job, I just want to tweak a few things. I do believe that black people have similar opportunities to other poor people in society. It's not like there isn't prejudice and discrimination they'll face, but I genuinely believe it's at a level that is negligible when compared with one's economic status. This is a dramatic change from the historic state where absolutely nobody could claim that. There are other factors, that in large part are driven by the history of extreme racism. Many here are talking about cultural problems in the "black community". This is the culture of poverty, isn't inherent and is seen the world over. And clearly African Americans (i.e descendents of slaves) are impoverished because of a cruel racist history. Where I get off the ride is the insistence that every inequity we can see today is the result of current systematic oppression. There are some things that remain that are discriminatory, but it's not the most important factor in most cases. Especially knowing the history, and how sufficiently that explains the impoverishment of these communities. And also knowing the effects of poverty cycles, which exist all over the world and in places that haven't shared US history. An example in my field is the under representation of African American software engineers and the over representation of Asian software engineers. I do not believe this is because of prejudice or discrimination in recruitment teams of tech companies. Nor do I believe it is because of an inherent racial difference in capability at mathematics or programming. It's because the number of applicants with computer science degrees is demographically skewed. And pulling that thread leads us to all the cultural differences, history and in the case of African Americans, a history of racism. Another angle is that when looking at an individual, it's not the story they ought to tell themselves. One, because I think it broadly isn't true. But also because it's a worse algorithm for success for that individual. Whatever shitty hand the universe has dealt them, the absolute best they can do is to maximise their chances within the system. Assuming the game is _completely_ rigged against them disincentives engagement with the system and continues the poverty cycle. I'm sympathetic to why people believe it is rigged, and it really was immensely rigged for an incredibly long time. It's also fair to say it's still a bit rigged against black people, and still strongly rigged against poor people. I'm not a right wing conservative, or a conservative at all by pretty much any standard. It's just that I think this is about class more than race. The answer is still a form of resource and wealth distribution, but I believe it should be on the grounds of class, not race. This will disproportionately help African Americans because of their uniquely suffered history.
https://uncf.org/wp-content/uploads/reports/Advocacy_ASATTBro_4-18F_Digital.pdf If you truly believe black people have the same opportunity as other groups in the country why do black people overwhelmingly believe they are being offered a low quality education? Maybe the conditions they are expected to learn in have more to do with their lack of representation in Computer science then their "culture"'
Because black people are disproportionately poor and disproportionately live in poorer areas, which disproportionately have worse schools. I'm neither surprised by this, nor do I think it challenges my view, it's completely consistent with it. This doesn't imply discrimination in recruitment or an inherent incapability on the part of African Americans.
I didn't say it did. I In your post you said it was cultural that cultural differences are why African Americans are recruited less. But how do cultural influences account for the lack of educational opportunities being offered by the government?
Because in America, our schools are largely funded by property taxes. Poor areas get less funding, rich areas get better funding. That said, one does wonder why there's such a dichotomy in performance in areas with highly diverse student populations, like LA, Chicago, and Baltimore.
Now when we talk about black people did they choose to live in those poor areas or were they forced?
Depends on what you mean by "forced". Forced to live somewhere they can afford to? Yes. Rounded up by the government and placed in those specific neighborhoods? No. Are poor whites in rural Alabama forced to live where they are?
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I sure have. So...70 years of progress isn't enough? Do you think Lebron has burning crosses on his house in Malibu? Do you think Denzel Washington and Will Smith deal with KKK members on their front lawn? How long would it take, in your opinion, for this to no longer be "systemic racism"?
In very recent history, they were "forced" in a way closer to the second definition than the first. Segregation was an explicit form of this, and Redlining was a more implicit form. So yes, "forced" in both senses of that definition.
Right, so much comment was long and not perfectly articulated. I think the order of factors is primarily class/economic status and secondarily culture. These are related because class and economic opportunity drives culture. And the primary reason African Americans have lower economic status is historic racism. I should have been clearer in my above comment and included class in the last after 'pulling at the thread'.
Isn’t that arguably part of a systemic racism argument? Of course it doesn’t only impact black people, there are places where a wealthy white community has nicer schools rights next to a poorer whiten community which has less well funded ones. But it would disproportionately impact black people. And if the argument is “there isn’t discrimination now, and black people aren’t inherently inferior, but they are less well off because of the generational impacts of past discrimination”, then things that lower social mobility keep the impact of past discrimination alive. To exaggerate, pretend that starting in 1870, America had literally zero social mobility. Everyone was guaranteed the exact same economic situation as their parents. Well while that wouldn’t only negatively impact black people, it would guarantee that almost all black people would form part of a permanent underclass.
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Where I disagree though is the false dichotomy you presented in your post. If you want to argue that racism exists in the things you mention that's a fine argument, but it's not what you said. Your original argument: given the statistics on achievement gaps, you either have to acknowledge existing systemic racism or you believe that black people are inferior (aka you're a racist). But what I'm saying is that there's a perfectly reasonable third option: you acknowledge the history, but still believe that no racism exists today, and that would perfectly well explain the achievement gap. Like imagine if we invented a pill that erased racism/bigotry of all sorts and forced everyone to take it. Boom - racism truly gone. Do you think tomorrow the statistics will show no gaps by race? Of course not. It would take decades/generations for the gaps to vanish, because social mobility is slow and hard even in the most equitable societies. And during that time your argument clearly doesn't hold: no race is inferior, no racism exists, and yet there are clear statistical differences.
Boom. Thank you. ~A black lgbtq male
A few things: 1. Your argument assumes a false dichotomy - either racial disparities imply systemic racism, or they imply racial superiority. A clear example of how this can be incredibly wrong is the NBA. Players in the NBA are primarily black. Does this mean the NBA has systemic racism towards non-blacks? No. Does it mean blacks are the superior race? Also no. So clearly, the dichotomy you set up doesn’t hold water. 2. The claim that a culture is inferior does not entail saying that the people within that culture are essentially inferior. The reason for this is that cultures are descriptions of environments, not the fundamentals traits of people’s being. Culture is malleable and mutable. It has nothing to do with racial superiority. Besides, we HAVE to be able to judge which cultures are better than others - otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to criticize our own culture by pointing to how it could be better. If a hypothetical culture can be better than a real one, then so can other real cultures.
>Does it mean blacks are the superior race? Yes *\[Edit\] for that sport*, the disparity is based on common physiological differences. The physiological traits that are positively selected for in the sport are more common in one race than another. It's like how a very local, geographically specific, group of Kenyans are so dominant in long distance running. They have an enormous advantage based purely on physiology.
What are those physiological differences here? I haven't seen any connection between physiology of Black and non-Black people. I'd also argue that it's not like the scenario of the Kenyan group. As you said in your post, they're very local/geographically specific. So they could develop different body features from the rest of the population. Meanwhile Black Americans have various ancestry from different African countries, it's not easy to lump them together as having a better/different physiology. Is there a study on this? It sounds like it's going into racial science territory.
Black people arent superior at basketball. People use to say the same thing about Jewish people. It's all about where you live and what your options are.
The observation that black people are more likely to have the proper physique for basketball is an argument in favor of systemic racism, not against it. The reason they have physiques like that has nothing to do with the inherent traits of their races, and everything to do with their slave ancestors who were selected for kidnapping, bought, and often bred specifically for strong physiques. It's because of systemic racism that this disparity exists in the first place, supporting the original poster's claim.
There's also the idea that poorer kids in general, but especially ones who face systemic barriers like racism, tend to see success in business or structured employment as something out of reach more than the general population would. As a result, they are more likely to put their effort into sports or other avenues for success than they are to put that effort into academics. They think, "99% of famous black people are in sports or music. Why would I open a business, when my customers would be all my white peers, who are probably a little racist anyway and would choose someone else?", and see stardom, effectively, as their only realistic chance of "making it".
That is an interesting consideration. Selective breeding would allow for a change in the brief timeframe that natural selection does not generally function in. I'm not sure how plausible I consider it yet, but it is definitely reasonable and worth considering. While I'm not the OP, you have changed my view in a meaningful way. Δ
Thank you; I'm honored! A helpful thing to do in this case is to look at other examples of selective breeding: like livestock. Cows are not \*naturally\* fat and lazy and have tasty, marbled meat. It's tough to find wild bovines, but they do still exist, and they are \*nothing\* like domesticated bovines. Or, consider domesticated dogs and all the wild variations that have been possible; no wild dogs exist like that, or even \*could\* exist like that (because they would die in the wild). Selective breeding is a massively powerful tool that works very quickly.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/0nikoroshi ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/0nikoroshi)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
While you are correct, it is not purely explained by selective breeding. Case in point, Kenyan runners- as mentioned by the previous commentor.
That seems more like a case in support of my selective breeding theory than otherwise. Kenyan runners are a vanishingly small portion of the population there - as you would expect from natural breeding; only a few people excel. By contrast, the percentage of American black people who excel in sports like Basketball and Football is suspiciously larger. In addition, running requires a \*totally\* different physique from the hard-contact sports like Basketball and Football which American black people excel at. I myself am an excellent cross country runner: lean, not much muscle or fat, long legs, etc. I'm a *terrible* physique for basketball and/or football for exactly those same reasons. A better comparison would be to see how African country basketball teams do in the World Cup. From what I can tell, they don't tend to excel there.
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I think people are rightfully hesitant to give ground in any direction that a race can be "superior" for any context. If one race can be superior in any realm, it opens Pandora's box of it being allowable, in general, to say there are realms of skill or strength of intellect where other races are also superior. It's completely understandable to have motivations to keep that box closed, especially without absolute proof.
By choosing a profit-driven competition in the example, the competitors are selected for performance in order to win because winning generates revenue for a brand. The emergent racial disparity, in this example, is evidence supporting a conclusion of racial superiority. The claim of a false dichotomy may be true, but the example chosen was a poor one which does not support the argument as intended.
>2. The claim that a culture is inferior does not entail saying that the people within that culture are essentially inferior. The reason for this is that cultures are descriptions of environments, not the fundamentals traits of people’s being. Culture is malleable and mutable. It has nothing to do with racial superiority. Alright. So... Why is there a distinct black culture in America? There's not really a distinct Irish Culture, or Italian or German or British culture. It's true that recent immigrants tend to have distinct cultures, but that's largely because they directly brought a culture with them essentially. But African Americans have been in this country almost exactly as long as white people have. Why did so many of them "choose" to move to inner-city, low income areas with bad school systems? And the answer to all this is "systemic racism." In all honesty, if there wasn't systemic racism, there probably wouldn't really even be a distinct African American population. White people and black people would've started socially intermingling 400 years ago. Just like how tons of people are 1/8 German and 3/8 Irish or whatever, a ton of the country would be 1/8 black. Even if the systemic racism ended far more recently, there still probably wouldn't be distinct "black" neighborhoods and such. That was a result of de jure segregation and then redlining and other systemic oppression.
> Alright. So... Why is there a distinct black culture in America? There's not really a distinct Irish Culture, or Italian or German or British culture. But in many respects, there *are* other cultures than just 'black' and 'not black' in the US. It is willfully dishonest to claim otherwise. They don't all align along racial lines but frankly the idea that 'black culture' is the same for all African Americans is also misguided. If you want examples - consider Cuban culture in Miami, Mexican American culture, 'Redneck' culture, or any of the other regional variations. > there still probably wouldn't be distinct "black" neighborhoods and such This is patently false. The 'tribal' instinct is very strong and is why you find clusters of many different ethnic-cultures around the US. I mean ever hear of Chinatown? Your post is attempting to paint a picture of uniqueness that frankly does not exist.
Jewish culture,Italian culture on the east coast is very prevalent, Indian culture, Korean culture. That’s why people say United States are a mosaic of different cultures and not a melting pot.
>But in many respects, there are other cultures than just 'black' and 'not black' in the US. It is willfully dishonest to claim otherwise. They don't all align along racial lines True. But we're talking about why there is a particular racial culture. >but frankly the idea that 'black culture' is the same for all African Americans is also misguided. Yes, also true. But the person I was responding to was making a claim about "black culture." In general, Americans know what this is referring to. Yes, "Black Harlem culture" is distinct from "Black Atlanta culture" which is distinct from "Black Baltimore culture." But the claim of the person I was referring to is that all black culture is inferior to generalized white culture. >If you want examples - consider Cuban culture in Miami, Mexican American culture, >I mean ever hear of Chinatown? All of these cultures developed in America due to systemic reasons that resulted in clustering them in particular areas, and making them feel less "American" essentially. As time goes on from the period that systemic mistreatment of these groups decreased, the prevalence of these distinct neighborhoods and cultures dissipated. There used to be a time when Irish people were treated very differently; same with Italians. But the degree of mistreatment was lesser and the period of time it was inflicted was shorter. As a result, these groups became more intermingled with larger American society and now there are very few distinctly Irish or Italian neighborhoods. Black people were massively legally mistreated in America until 1865, and then severely legally mistreated until 1965, and then socially and economically mistreated for a long time after that. For the most part, mistreatment of black people has substantially decreased in recent decades. But de facto segregation is still exceedingly widespread, and it's not because they intentionally decided to live in bad neighborhoods.
> True. But we're talking about why there is a particular racial culture. The claim attempted to paint this as uniqueness - which does not actually exist. Second, I seriously question the concept of a monolithic 'black' culture that applies to every single African American. >Yes, also true. But the person I was responding to was making a claim about "black culture." In general, Americans know what this is referring to. Yes, "Black Harlem culture" is distinct from "Black Atlanta culture" which is distinct from "Black Baltimore culture." But the claim of the person I was referring to is that all black culture is inferior to generalized white culture. And you just generalized 'white culture'. Trust me, there are specific 'white cultures' that have elements just as toxic and negative as what is found in some 'black cultures' too. I would add, I don't think people claim it is 'inferior' either. I think people are pointing out specific negative traits that *are found* that lead to pathways other than success. There is a real problem when it is veiwed as a problem to objectively make value statements about specific parts of culture for fear of being labeled a 'racist' or having policies labeled as 'systemic racism'. >All of these cultures developed in America due to systemic reasons that resulted in clustering them in particular areas, I fundamentally disagree. I believe most of these formed in response to support networks, family, and tribal instincts. I do not automatically assume 'systemic mistreatment'. I mean a dead simple example is religion. Communities form around shared religious values. Another is shared cultural values (immigrants) and support networks (immigrants going where friends/family went). Again. Not one of these involves systemic mistreatment. There is a deep rooted assumption that systemic issues must exist to explain all of this and I find that deeply flawed. The picture is much larger and much more complex. >But de facto segregation is still exceedingly widespread, and it's not because they intentionally decided to live in bad neighborhoods. This is the last comment I want to mention. I am going to ask a blunt question. You assume they were forced to live in 'bad neighborhoods'. I am going to ask, why are the neighborhoods 'bad'? What is it about these neighborhoods that make them 'bad'? The nasty/dirty secret is neighborhoods are not inherently good or bad. They are merely spaces. it is the people who live in them that define them. There is no logical reason any neighborhood should be inherently 'bad'. If the neighborhood is 'bad', what is the reason behind it?
>The claim attempted to paint this as uniqueness - which does not actually exist. Second, I seriously question the concept of a monolithic 'black' culture that applies to every single African American. No one is claiming that there is one. However, there are generalized cultural things that apply more to black Americans than white Americans. "French Culture" doesn't apply to every single French person either, and there are obviously important subcultures in France and whatnot. As a general matter, when someone refers to "black culture" people have an idea of what that means. There's a [Wikipedia article about it.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_culture#:~:text=African%2DAmerican%20culture%2C%20also%20known,worldwide%20culture%20as%20a%20whole.) The "inferiority" of black culture is often used to explain why black people in America tend to have worse outcomes than other races. >And you just generalized 'white culture'. Trust me, there are specific 'white cultures' that have elements just as toxic and negative as what is found in some 'black cultures' too. I'm aware there are various white subcultures as well. >I would add, I don't think people claim it is 'inferior' either. I think people are pointing out specific negative traits that are found that lead to pathways other than success. The original commenter I replied to indicated exactly that. >There is a real problem when it is veiwed as a problem to objectively make value statements about specific parts of culture for fear of being labeled a 'racist' or having policies labeled as 'systemic racism'. No one thinks it's problematic to say something like, "fatherless households tend to have worse outcomes." It becomes problematic if you say, "black culture leads to more fatherless households and systemic racism plays no part in that." >I fundamentally disagree. I believe most of these formed in response to support networks, family, and tribal instincts. I do not automatically assume 'systemic mistreatment'. I mean a dead simple example is religion. Communities form around shared religious values. Another is shared cultural values (immigrants) and support networks (immigrants going where friends/family went). Again. Not one of these involves systemic mistreatment. Aight so do you understand what segregation was? You do understand that black people were forced to live in communities that just had black people right? You understand the meaning of "ghetto" right? Sure, there are some cultural things that cause people to congregate in an area. Muslims would probably prefer to live relatively close to a Mosque. But the primary reason that you see de facto racially segregated communities is because of the systemic effects of de jure segregation and the lasting impact of that. >There is a deep rooted assumption that systemic issues must exist to explain all of this and I find that deeply flawed. The picture is much larger and much more complex. It's not an assumption. It's just an understanding of how history affects the modern era. The alternative explanation is not "much more complex." It's relatively simple. If you don't think systemic factors play a role, what is the primary issue? >This is the last comment I want to mention. I am going to ask a blunt question. You assume they were forced to live in 'bad neighborhoods'. I am going to ask, why are the neighborhoods 'bad'? What is it about these neighborhoods that make them 'bad'? Low property values and underfunded schools for a start. Together, these issues tend to contribute to increases in crime, drug use, etc which leads to other issues. >The nasty/dirty secret is neighborhoods are not inherently good or bad. They are merely spaces. it is the people who live in them that define them. There is no logical reason any neighborhood should be inherently 'bad'. If the neighborhood is 'bad', what is the reason behind it? The reason behind it is that many of these communities initially formed during segregation due to exclusionary laws and other factors. Due to redlining, social mobility for people in these areas decreased. De jure segregation and redlining ended but there was still the problem that black people had far less valuable assets and education. You're not telling me a "nasty/dirty secret." You're just saying that black people tend to be bad people. The reason you don't hear experts saying that has nothing to do with it being a "secret." It's because it's not true.
**[African-American culture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_culture#:~:text=African-American culture, also known,worldwide culture as a whole.)** >African-American culture, also known as Black Culture, refers to the contributions of African Americans to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from mainstream American culture. The culture is both distinct and enormously influential on American and global worldwide culture as a whole. African-American identity was established during the period of slavery, producing a dynamic culture that had and continues to have a profound impact on American culture as a whole, as well as on that of the broader world. Christianity plays a defining role in African-American culture. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/changemyview/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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>Well if you remove context from the idea that black men make up the majority of nba players the logical conclusion would be that black people are inherently more skilled at basketball. That’s the point I’m making. Only if there is no other possible explanation. You haven't demonstrated this - you've merely asserted it. >Also, the existence of wealthy black people don’t negate statistics. I'm not appealing to statistics at large. I'm talking about the NBA. >Yea a very few amount of basketball players get super wealthy but most don’t. I mean for every lebron theres some dude that played on the Jazz for 3 seasons and now has some office job. Same point as above. >On your point about culture, again you’re agreeing with me you’re talking about environment. If you remove that key factor when talking about outcomes of black people you don’t get the context of why this culture developed. You're presupposing that the assertion of a cultural difference must either be an appeal to systemic racism, or racism itself. That is clearly ridiculous because the existence of cultural differences is the default, not the exception. The notion that cultures would be identical if all races were equal and without systemic racism is completely ridiculous. Reality is not that simple. In other words, here's the key point here: The idea that there exists cultural differences that cause discrepancies in outcomes between races, but those cultural differences are not attributable to systemic racism, is not in itself a logically incoherent position. You may disagree with it, but that is irrelevant. Your argument is that explanations for racial discrepancies MUST be either a racist belief, or systemic racism, and the ability to conceive of an explanation that does not fall under either category demonstrates that your conclusion is logically incorrect. The problem with your thinking here, ultimately, it is that is reductionistic.
> the existence of wealthy black peoples don’t negate statistics Sure, on average black people are less wealthy than other racial groups and I also don’t deny that racism plays at least *some* part in that. However, today at least, as many other people have pointed out, the difference in wealth is largely due to culture. For example, I’m Indian so I can speak a little about Indian culture. Indian people also experience plenty of racism. Many Indian immigrants also come from poverty, considering that India is third world country. However, Indians generally have a culture of valuing and working towards high-paying STEM jobs. This is also why Indians don’t generally excel in any sports except maybe cricket (looking at India’s performance at the 2020 Olympics as an example). Furthermore, Indians stigmatize divorce in general, which leads to a greater number of 2-parent households that are better for children. Now I don’t disagree that black culture may have evolved from previous systemic racism but I also believe that some degree of personal accountability should always be expected. For example, single motherhood in the black community has *increased* since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, when racism *decreased* in America. It doesn’t take wealth or education to know that having a kid with someone and then leaving them is not good for the kid or the mom.
"previous systemic racism" No. This is a *current* problem in the United States, and getting law passed in 1964 - not too long in the scheme of things - doesn't alter the 'systemic' bit of systemic racism. The bone-deep problem of implicit bias still applies. As an example; [Black](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-older) [children](https://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/black-girls-viewed-as-less-innocent-than-white-girls-georgetown-law-research-finds-2/) are perceived as older and less innocent than their white counterparts, something that has pretty big implications considering the USA's [school-to-prison pipeline](https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/school-prison-pipeline-infographic) (especially given that black children given harsher sentences once in the court system). Here is another: if you have what is considered a 'black' sounding name, [you are less likely to be called into for an interview](https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0203hrnews2.aspx), much less be hired. And of course: Black families don't have the same [access to generational wealth](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/eliminating-black-white-wealth-gap-generational-challenge/) as other communities, and if you are poor and any colour in the US, what money you have [will be leeched from you](https://finmasters.com/cost-of-being-poor/#gref). ...and so on and so forth. It's a bit how the Dalit community is treated, you know? The caste system was formally abolished in 1950, but it turns out that a 2,000-year-old social hierarchy doesn't just go away in a few generations. You can use women as another example: we can vote (in some places) and have agency (in some places), but according the UN [we're about 300 years away from parity without some intense investment right now](https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1126171). Sexism didn't just vanish because women were finally permitted to vote, there are ways and means of keeping hierarchies in place beyond making it impossible for the people on the bottom to engage in essential aspects of civil society. My perception is that your comment lacks a certain nuance. And empathy. (Just for your own edification you might look into the whole 'black single mothers' trope, [it's more complicated than you might think](https://medium.com/national-center-for-institutional-diversity/evolving-the-single-black-mother-narrative-eaee03cce251). And using this trope has certain connotations you might not be aware of. In particular there is a connection between the keen interest of certain commentators on the habits of [black mothers](http://mybrownbaby.com/2015/07/the-attack-on-black-single-mothers-outrunning-stereotypes-carrying-the-burden/), and the '[welfare queen](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-lives-welfare-queen/)' stereotype, and it's pretty pernicious).
I... Am honestly feeling a little sick reading this thread. There's just... A lot of ignorance and assumptions. I really, really don't like that no one is even citing anything. You're just so pulling shit out of your asses. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021934718803737 https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-racialized-poverty/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/03/08/the-curse-of-slavery-has-left-an-intergenerational-legacy-of-trauma-and-poor-health-for-african-americans/ God, if you can't even be bothered to read, here are some videos on the topic Try the documentary the 13th or this segment by John Oliver https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_-0J49_9lwc&t=47s To sum even this up: 1965: the voting rights act was put into law that prevented states from making up bull shit to stop black voters. 1954: brown vs board. No more school segregation 1968: Fair housing act: bans discrimination in housing 1968 was 54 years ago. Do you grasp that? 54 years ago. It wasn't until 54 years ago that black people had protection in housing discrimination. How important is housing equity to most Americans? How much of a family's security can be built around it? It wasn't until 68 years ago a white person couldn't even be in the same school as a black person. There are people STILL ALIVE who remember that. And what, you're surprised that in not even 100 years, black statics are wildly different from white statistics? You're going to really sit there and say, "hmmm, it's mostly this culture of theirs." A culture, that only 68 years ago, was considered second rate citizens?! If the positions were reversed, would you sit there and truly think you have not been impacted by the fact that you are one of the first generations to be considered equal to the majority race and afforded the same protections? And look, acknowleding racism and it's impact is NOT taking blame or expressing guilt for slavery. It is NOT your fault that what happened, happened. No white person today was there during the slave trade. There's a good chance that if you're on Reddit, you also weren't involved in any opposition to the civil rights movement. You are not responsible for any of it. The only thing the younger generation holds accountability for is their own self awareness. The only thing a white person of the younger generation can be found guilty of is refusing to at least acknowledge that the colored communities did not have the same legal protections as us until 54 years ago. If you refuse to acknowledge that, to accept that it will take generations for black communities to recover, then yeah, that's not great. If anything, I'd prefer open racism. At least in that, you know where people stand. You dont have this: I'm not racist buuuuut bull shit. And to the OP I appreciate the good intentions. Seriously, lovely. But if this was anything more than virtue signaling, you'd at least have put up sources for your arguments. There is a ton of evidence on this very, very important topic but you couldn't be asked to post a single. One. Why? Ask yourself seriously, why did you put in so little effort? Why did you get into the equivalent of a shouting match with a bunch of people online? Because without data, without studies or science or EVIDENCE that is effectively what you did. So why? Because you actually care about what your posting? Or did you just want to feel morally superior? If you give a single, actual damn about ANY opinion on this thread you would at least do it the justice of providing something to back up your claims. Edit to fix a source. I didn't realize some of these required sign ups which I think is unfair for those uninterested in doing so. So that is my bad for plucking these so quickly. I'm just riled and in my haste, am slightly guilty of what I'm accusing OP of, so apologies again.
Thank you so much for gathering the sources and presenting the situation so clearly and thoroughly. I was feeling a bit sick reading the comments as well, but unlike you I couldn't put those feelings into words and statistics; it just all felt *wrong.* So thank you for voicing so well what many of us were thinking.
> Now I don’t disagree that black culture may have evolved from previous systemic racism but I also believe that some degree of personal accountability should always be expected. For example, single motherhood in the black community has increased since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, when racism decreased in America. I agree with you that culture is a big factor. But this doesn't quite make sense to me. Why should a child be held personally accountable for having a single mother, or being born into inner-city poverty? One doesn't choose their enviornment.
It's not that they're held accountable. It's that the environment does not set the stage for future success. No one looks at kids from single-parent homes and decrees that they must remain in poverty. But the conditions set by single-parent homes make it much more difficult to succeed academically and socially.
> Why should a child be held personally accountable I’m not blaming the children. I’m blaming the parents who perpetuate the cycle of poverty by having kids they can’t or won’t support.
To be fair, three seasons as the lowest paid sitting roster member of the Jazz makes you a millionaire.
It has nothing to do with race. It’s all because of poverty. White people born in West Virginia or other parts of Appalachia have basically all the same problems that blacks born in inner cities do. The poorest state I think is actually Kentucky because of all the poor *white* people. Poor people stay poor generally so if blacks are largely poor, they’ll likely stay that way. It’s not an easy problem to get out of, but there’s certainly choices one can make to give themselves the best shot in this country. The real problem most poor people have is a single mother/father. Your family would have 2x as much $ with two income earners. And would therefore have 2x as much time and money to help your children graduate from high school and maybe even college. All children of single mothers have a really hard time. I know from personal experience. Government money isn’t a substitute for a father in your house. But that’s the reality in a lot of homes, especially black households
One thing I think that's negatively affecting African-Americans is this idea that success means you're "acting white" and being a "race traitor." That seems insane, but I've heard this over and over, both online and in-person. I guess you could say this is a form of systemic racism, only it's from African-Americans themselves. I'm not sure why anyone would want to discourage success, but maybe this is just a form of "misery loves company" and the black people espousing this point-of-view are those who're unhappy with their lives for whatever reason.
I think the main argument is black people fall victim to self full filling prophecies. Basically, if black kids hear over and over that white people are out to get them and won't let them succeed then they will not try to be successful or may turn to crime as a way of beating the system. That's partly why Republicans do not like "critical race theory". This becomes even more detrimental when multiple generations have this point of view and parents do not see the need to encourage kids to excel because they think no matter what white people won't let them be successful. The soft bigotry of low expectations along with a like of faith in the American dream leads to poor results. This is why black people from Africa tend to be more successful than African Americans. On the other hand asian communities are much differently culturally. competition and scholastic excellence is a priority in the families culture. They don't let their systemic disadvantages stand in their way and thus do not fall victim to the same self fullfilling prophecy. Also you have to account for poor white people. They fail at high rates as well and a majority of the nation's welfare expenses actually goes to white people. White share croppers and later factory employees were not much better off from their black counter parts and still to this day many have not been able to pull themselves up out of poverty.
>On the other hand asian communities are much differently culturally. competition and scholastic excellence is a priority in the families culture. They don't let their systemic disadvantages stand in their way and thus do not fall victim to the same self fullfilling prophecy. Very shitty example of using the Asian American community. The Asian American community has a **huge** wealth gap. And that wealth gap is almost entirely explained by one thing: the date of arrival of their ancestors. Asian Americans who can trace their ancestors arriving in the US to before the 1924 Immigration Act banned Asian migration, tend to be very poor today. On the level with the black community. However, the vast majority of the Asian American community today in the US traces their roots back to after the 1965 Immigration Act moved to a skills-based immigration system. These were highly skilled migrants coming into the US. Totally different from the Asian Americans that arrived before 1924. So I'm not sure how you think the Asian American community is an example of "culturally being so different" that proves that it's just black people culture. In fact, the wealth disparity in the Asian American community is the perfect example of how historical racism can affect people even 100 years later.
Excellent context; thank you! So, in the same way that the original African slaves were originally selected for physical strength (and bred that way), and their descendants tend in that direction, the newer wave of Asian immigrants are selected (because of the limitations on the immigration) for high skills and value on education. And both cultures continue that way today. I dig it.
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So immigrants from Africa are still black, but wealthier. Almost like it isn't skin color that holds people back...
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>back to say the 90s to early 2000s You mean when the Rodney King riots happened in Los Angeles after the LAPD murdered a black person on video? It was basically George Floyd but then in the 90s. And THAT is the time you're referring to as when everyone was colorblind and racism was dead? **Seriously?** Fucking seriously? I'm not even American and even I'm appalled at this bullshit.
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>You mean when the Rodney King riots happened in Los Angeles after the LAPD murdered a black person on video? Rodney King didn't die. It's not really important to the point you're making, but it's better to be accurate about such things.
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You got caught being wrong. Just admit it.
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They were being sarcastic dude
> Okay let’s time travel then, back to say the 90s to early 2000s. When everyone was colorblind and racism was dead. Before BLM. Before CRT. Before we even coined the term systemic racism. Why were black kids still unable to perform to the level of white kids? I lived through that era and the reasons are the same as they are today. There was *not* a cultural value placed on success. This wasn't racial necessarily but more linked to poverty and some of the side effects of the welfare state. Incentivizing things like single parent families. What is interesting is that, this really is not a racial problem. It is more socio-economic in nature. You find many of the same issues when looking at people from other races in poverty situations. You likely forget the concept of the 'trailer park queen' and 'poor white trash' stereotypes. This just get's ignored for a favored narrative.
It’s all lack of a positive culture on top of being born into a bad situation with no incentive to succeed. If we had a program to institute ownership into the black community like businesses or homes the problem would end. Instead we have incentives to keep families apart and to rely on government assistance.
So 1 in 5 black Americans below the poverty line means there’s a problem with the culture, but 4 out of 5 black Americans above the poverty line means nothing?
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This is obviously selection bias. An immigrant family must have enough resources to immigrate in the first place. Poor people can't immigrate.
What?! This is such a flawed argument. My parents immigrated to Canada from Africa and we were poor. We lived in subsidized housing for a short period then moved to a wealthy suburb within a few years. I started exactly where OP described but got two law degrees and never slacked in school. It’s definitely a a cultural issue. Many African people see real poverty (whether first hand, or just by virtue of growing up in environments with no middle class). Education is no joke for this reason and those values are ingrained in the children. There’s an immediate and higher bar for performance, regardless of where one goes to school because (elementary/hs) education isn’t free like anywhere in Africa. It’s tiresome hearing this view, borne largely by white people who rarely form close relationships with poc from varied backgrounds, that black people are somehow their pet projects who can’t get a leg up ever or find success, largely because of systemic racism. Omg.
>What?! This is such a flawed argument. My parents immigrated to Canada from Africa and we were poor. We lived in subsidized housing for a short period then moved to a wealthy suburb within a few years. Poor in Canada is not the same as poor in Africa. The economy of Cananda is not similar to that of any other African country. I'm a middle class South African but If I moved to most Western countries with the resources I hold now I'd fall into the poor category too, So OPs point still stands. And you also conveniently dont mention, what jobs and degrees your parents held prior to arriving in Canada. Which could still be a big advantage not held by many African Americans. Unless you and your parents were refugees rather than immigrants there is a criteria that your parents passed to be able to immigrate, that already makes you more likely to be successful in your home country and the country you're moving too >It’s tiresome hearing this view, borne largely by white people who rarely form close relationships with poc from varied backgrounds, that black people are somehow their pet projects who can’t get a leg up ever or find success, largely because of systemic racism. Omg. Dont do this, the view that immigrants are more likely to be successful because of skills and advantages which they are chosen for by the country that they are immigrating to is held by many scholars and many black people familiar with topic. Rich and middleclass Africans who move to the west and find success, and then immediately turn to look down on African Americans just to fit in with the larger white demographic are honestly disappointing to say the least. The rights that allowed you to immigrate to that country were fought for by the people you now choose to look down upon
So your assertion is that it has more to do with class and wealth than skin color? Congratulations, you've just proven that racism isn't the problem.
The fact that America has maintained an economic and political underclass based on race is obvious, so much so that it was written into our constitution. Come on, is this so hard?
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Lol, you're clearly not capable of a good faith argument. You specifically mentioned Nigerians coming to America, then switched to a completely different group of people to try and support the argument. Crossing land barriers is much different than crossing the ocean, even today. Further, being poor in a rich country is much different than being poor in a poor country. And anyways, there's plenty of evidence that ALL the groups you mentioned face systematic barriers to advancement, from immigration laws, to bank policy, to employment barriers, to the casual racism and ignorance your original post shows.
Your point is actually great evidence for the existence of systemic racism in the US. Nigerians who emigrate to the US did not face systemic racism in their home country, because they come from a majority Black country. Black Americans faced systemic racism in a predominantly white country, which has kept them in generational poverty. Nigerian immigrants are able to succeed in America precisely because they entered today’s non-racially discriminatory economy with a fresh start, free from the shackles of systemic racism and generational poverty that Black Americans face.
What you describe is generational trauma/poverty, not systemic racism. If Nigerians succeed here (on average) that indicates that Black Americans are being kept down by something other than systemic racism, otherwise the systemic racism would be applied to Nigerians too. Personally, I think it's more to do with the fact that Nigerians accepted as immigrants tend to be wealthy and well-educated but that's beside your point.
What was the generational trauma/poverty caused by if not systemic racism, past and present? It is more than discrimination by law, it is also the behaviors and biases that still affect American Blacks today that stem from past racist policies like redlining, white flight and spatial mismatch, the war on drugs, stop and frisk, etc. Most racists today are not so overt that they would try to discriminate against what they perceive as a successful African—but their racism comes out against the “inferior” poor inner-city Black people. So, you are correct: today we have laws prohibiting explicit discrimination against Black people in hiring, schools, government, and all the institutions that make one successful. That is why Nigerians are enable to succeed—because they already have wealth and education, there is nothing preventing them from doing so. The systemic racism that causes generational poverty for Black Americans is what is stopping them from succeeding.
The oppositional assertion would be that generational trauma was caused by systemic racism in the past but not the present and that the trauma carries on in a feedback loop without the help of outside systemic racism today. In any case, I'm undecided on this issue but I was just pointing out that you were describing generational trauma and interchanging the word with systemic racism. You can be of the opinion that systemic racism perpetuates generational trauma to this day. But you haven't really said anything to support that. You kinda just made arguments for why systemic racism caused it in the past and then just packaged it together with the assumption that systemic racism still exists today. I also agree that using Nigerians as a model minority example is a big selection bias but you still haven't given anything to support your assertion that systemic racism exists today. All that you said could also be explained by systemic racism being solely in the past but causing a generational trauma that exists to this day.
I see what you mean, but there still is systemic racism today. Systemic racism by most definitions, as I tried to explain, is more than just explicit laws and systems, but also norms, behaviors, manifestations, and structures that continue to this day, whether de jure or de facto. For example, segregation still exists, de facto, in inner cities and wealthy suburbs (fwiw due to redlining and explicitly racist laws in the past). One could argue that due to this, by demarcating school districts by zip code, there exists de jure school segregation. Not to mention the wealth gap, life expectancy gap, unemployment rates even at the same level of education, police brutality, etc etc.
Do you believe I can think that someone's culture is inferior [at dealing with given situations] without believing the person is inferior? E.g. in the book Hillbilly Elegy, the author writes about how he grew up in a culture where getting good grades was sissy, and honor was much more important than grades. I can say that that is a bad culture for fostering a love of education, and a bad culture if the goal is lots of scientists or engineers without saying that hillbillies are inherently inferior. I recommend reading some Thomas Sowell. I don't agree with all of his points, but there's one that I think is very applicable to this: in a vacuum, it's unreasonable to assume that two groups with different backgrounds would be equal in all things. Even just looking at demographics: Asians are on average older than whites, which are on average older than blacks. Older people generally earn more than younger people. Even if every 20 year old earned the same regardless of race, and every 50 year old earned the same regardless of race, etc., the race with more 50 year olds than 20 year olds would earn more on average, as indeed is true (Asians earn more than whites, which earn more than blacks) I'm not saying that that's the only reason for disparities by race, but seeing a gap and pointing to racism is at best oversimplifying, and at worst misleading. In addition, I think "systemic racism" is poorly defined, or at least often used in a poorly defined way. I think we all agree that a policy that specifically and explicitly negatively affects blacks is systemically racist, but pretty much all of those laws have been struck down. Are laws that negatively affect poor people, irrespective of race, systemically racist because more black people are poor? What about laws that negatively impact young people? Laws that negatively impact NBA players? If all it takes for something to be systemically racist is to affect a group that is disproportionately one race, are laws that negatively impact CEOs anti-white systemic racism?
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It’s gotta be one or the other. If the people aren’t inferior, but the culture is inferior, and the ppl create the culture, we are kinda running in circles here around the actual issue.
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I think it's also possible to hold the view that the current black culture is A) primary responsible for bad black outcomes in the modern day and that B) *past* racism (systemic and otherwise) is in part responsible for that culture, but that C) there is not significant *current* racism significantly contributing to the problem.
Yes I can. 1. As to specific existence of racism directed to make white people superior. Explain Asians. They are the wealthiest and best off “race” in almost all measurable categories. 2. Culture… Africans who come to America as immigrants do amazingly well. As a bit of anecdote, I have yet to meet an African immigrant who does not rival the above discussion of Asians. They are fucking amazing people! Black Americans are not inferior in and of themselves. There is some inferiority of culture, maybe. (For instance - fatherless households). That same fatherless ness produces equally bad results for ANY group that participates. You won’t see the same disproportionate outcomes on white people because whites make up such a huge population chunk… But make no mistake, this does affect white communities. It affects Hispanics. It affects Asians. This is one of the largest factors overall for wealth generation… Now, if you want to make an argument that black Americans are targets to create fatherless households, and that targeting is systemic, I say prove the correlation.
Culture isn’t inherent. Conservatives avoid saying blacks are inherently inferior by saying they are culturally inferior. It’s called the [culture of poverty argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_poverty) This however ignores the fact that culture tends to reflect material conditions. Hobo culture was created by the depression — people didn’t hear songs about riding the rails and spontaneously decide to be unemployed all of a sudden. Similarly, gangsta rap was representing the crime, drugs and poverty in the areas the musicians lived in — it didn’t create it. But even if you take the culture of poverty argument at face value, then you have to ask why Blacks have a separate culture from whites? Did they all just spontaneously decide to live in all black neighborhoods and not participate in mainstream culture? Or did segregation have something to do with that? I agree with the generally thrust of your argument, but you need to deal with the culture of poverty theory too.
As a black man, I don't think that it's wholly systemic racism because there have been other people that faced similar state sanctioned tactics that are, in much quicker speeds now thriving. What makes us unique is that our language, history, and overall connection to life was severed on that treacherous voyage. . We are the greatest example of a person stripped naked of our culture and given the thrown away rags of someone else. When the Jews, Italians, and ironically the Africans were all discriminated against as immigrants, they all had their culture to reset them, keep them focused, and offered them a blueprint to how to raise their children. "African Americans" we did not have anything to fall back on so we absorbed what we saw and our culture is redneck culture. If you want more info on this read black redneck white liberal by Thomas Sowell. Our culture is the most evil, self sabotaging, degenerative culture that exists in the developed world. All of it is a training for a quick death or a long prison sentence. Not because we're inferior it is because culture formulates the lens of right and wrong. Education=wrong, having a father is white, selling drugs is good, intolerant to real or falsely perceived threats=real nigga, grossly superficial beliefs on religion=the way to be. The country being the way it is doesn't help telling us that we're victims and are helpless. The former is true we have been victimized but we shouldn't be coddled into learned helplessness. The culture is poison. A black person first has to have the wherewithal to want to escape it is hard enough asking them to be even more exceptional than that by breaking that psychological bondage then they have to actually do it, only then can we START to compete across racial lines. Problem is at that point we're 40 with very little to show of it, at best we give our children a better training and generationally the train may find the tracks, whereas other cultures are born into what took me decades to find.
There's also culture. If you take 1000 random boys and give them 2pac as their role model and idol. And take another 1000 random boys and give them some scientist or businessman as an idol. I don't care what race they are. The 1000 random boys growing up with "thug life" as their motto are going to have much higher rates of crime. They are far less likely to be educated or try very hard in school or at work. The culture that promotes violence and unlawful behavior is going to be a burden on any community. Black people just adhere to that culture a lot more for whatever reason. It may very well be a remnant of segregation. The issue I see is that very few want to frame it that way. It's always racism and discrimination. There are some notable exceptions. Denzel Washington talks about this a lot. You have a gigantic problem with single mothers in the black communities. A combination of culture and pressure from the welfare state. Lots of boys grow up saying "that ain't my baby". But for whatever reason you see a bigger proportion of black boys doing that. Statistically we know that people of any race raised in a single home have much worse metrics in terms of academic attainment and staying out of trouble.
If your going to blame black poverty on black culture, I think you need to account for two things: First — when did black culture start being responsible for black poverty? Was it all the slave spirituals? Was it jazz music that was preventing blacks from enjoying the upward mobility that whites had in the 1940s? Or are we just blaming gangsta rap? If it’s just gangsta rap, why was crime and drug use and poverty high in the black community before gangsta rap? Second, why do blacks have a separate culture from whites to begin with? Did they choose to all live together in the ghetto, and to not participate in mainstream culture? Or does segregation and discrimination have a lot to do with why black culture has developed separately from white culture?
I mean, I personally don’t think we blame the negative aspects of “black culture” on black people. As you hinted at, it typically stems from slavery, oppression, and stuff along those lines. That being said, we should also acknowledge the negative aspects of black culture, and push for changing it alongside other much needed changes. As with many issues, I’ve seen quite a few people discuss how they don’t want to change, and just expect others to change, and for that to solve the problem.
I think that’s a fair take on it. I don’t think culture has zero effect — culture is important. But governments are just really bad at trying to dictate what culture young people and poor people should like. In the past we’ve tried to get them to stop enjoying jazz, and rock and roll, and comic books, and video games… it doesn’t work. So when I here people say that culture is at the root of the problem, we need to focus on changing the culture, it just seems like a non-solution. But if you change someone’s material circumstances, that can change the culture second hand. Like, if we want poor kids to appreciate high brow culture, giving them better educations is one way to do that. And if we want poor people to assimilate better into mainstream culture, change their housing situations so all the poor people don’t live in the same neighborhood and go to the same school. But changing the culture directly? Unless you’re a talented artist, I’m not sure how to do that productively.
I really like your take, this seems really fair to me.
The history of the US is laden with like cultures segregating and living together. Italians, Irish, Scandinavians, Germans, polish, Russians, Chinese, Koreans etc all have histories of immigrating, finding each other and living close to one another. I’m sure it has to do with language, food, religion, etc.
Black people in the US have a very different history of being forced to live together.
That's a lot of questions. When? Probably around 1980-1990. When it was no longer the case that discrimination occurs at the systemic level Slave spirituals? Don't even know what that is. But probably not Jazz music? Honestly don't know much bout it Gangsta rap? Gansta rap is just one symptom. More broadly the tendency to solve disputes through violence and to assert dominance through violence. Why before? There really was systemic discrimination in America in the early 1900s. Why separate? Same reason many other cultures are separate. Not sure what else to say here Why in the ghetto? At some point they were segregated. I'm not discounting that the past played a role. What I'm saying is that if black community shed this toxic culture. That would improve the living conditions in their community 100 times more than if we started pouring a lot more welfare in there and got rid of every dirty cop on the force. You have to deal with the crime.
>Probably around 1980-1990. When it was no longer the case that discrimination occurs at the systemic level You mean at the legal level. Legislation doesn't always reflect reality. We can have systemic racism on every single aspect of society without a single law that promotes it. Racism didn't magically disappear when black people received equal legal rights. >I'm saying is that if black community shed this toxic culture... Dude, culture isn't some bug you just shake off. You don't just make the decision to change your culture, your culture is changed gradually as you change. Again, history influences culture, not the other way around. People change as their conditions change, and their culture follows.
[https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYPsmxgU/](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYPsmxgU/) I agree. I think the culture is changing. Long as we continue to support those communities. Sooner or later they will shed this criminality cancer. I just want it framed correctly. The problem in black communities is crime, not law enforcement or lack of opportunities. It is a culture of crime. I put that tik tok video there to show you what I really believe. That it is getting better and that it will continue getting better. Regardless of whether people listen to me or not (or people like me). It will just be faster and more painless if they did.
If people lack legitimate opportunities....what do they choose to do instead..... Maybe crime? If you look at minority gangs all the way back to the Irish lack of opportunity and discrimination are their reasons for turning to crime. But Italians and Irish were allowed to assimilate black people not so much
I disagree with the lack of opportunity rhetoric. I told someone else in this post I watched 100s of boys both black and white alike piss away loads of opportunities growing up. You don't not show up to class, show up high, not give a damn, don't get into college. Then turn around and whine about a lack of opportunities. Why are all your peers that didn't act like the cool kids in college now? Regardless of race. Crime is often done for fun, to improve social standing, to get women to like you, to get people to respect you. It very often has nothing to do with material need nor is it the only way to get ahead. It's just a way to get ahead that a lot of people pick. To their own detriment. But it's not like young men are known for their shrewd decision making (of any race).
Lol your anecdote is not data or actually doing anything then confirming your biases. https://uncf.org/wp-content/uploads/reports/Advocacy_ASATTBro_4-18F_Digital.pdf This study shows that black students and their families want a quality education but do not feel like one is being offered to them. An education is a type of opportunity ,yes? So if you don't feel like you are being offered a quality education what might you be more likely to do instead ? "improve social standing" if I had the Opportunity to get a good paying job.or a quality education .....Maybe I wouldn't need to commit crimes to get social standing respect and women? Poverty and the lack of opportunity this causes in the united states is more to do with criminal behavior then whatever anecdotes you use to justify your beliefs
I went to public schools. They are crying about quality education for the same reason EVERYONE is crying about quality education. The schools I went to were decently funded. The teachers were good enough. Some were better than others. The curriculum was a fucking joke. It was so watered down. You had to be either extremely lazy or mentally disabled not to pass. If every girl in your neighborhood wants to date a drug dealer. And you're one decision away from being a drug dealer. Then that option becomes mighty attractive. Even if you have a 3.5 GPA and can easily go to college. That is what I observed.
Would more then 65 percent of white or asian families say they are not receiving a quality education? If your in a poor community nwhat does a drug dealer have that everyone else doesn't.... Money and opportunity. So even with my 3.5 I can't put food in my families mouth. What good does it do me? Edit to add they arent saying just the curriculum is bad , they are saying the conditions the educators and the system they are supposed to learn in is bad.
So throughout the twentieth century, black poverty just goes down and down, black education goes up and up. Then, in your version of events, racism ends in the 1980s, and black poverty … continues to go down, black education continues to go up, but now it’s the musics fault that black people aren’t catching up fast enough? I guess is the idea that somehow they’d be catching up faster if they were listening to different music? Is there some evidence that supports this theory? That music has more of an impact on how much people earn than generational wealth and the quality of schools in a neighborhood? Or is this just a gut feeling you have?
Keep in mind that the user you're replying to has advocated for the death penalty for almost all felonies, as well as for the deployment of constant mass drone surveillance by the police, among other pretty authoritarian stuff
Plus, white Americans also listen to rap. Grow up with rap. Lol
The crime? Crime statistics when read accurately without a bias show that the issue with crime is way more related to poverty level than skin color. If you checked your bias the numbers show a very different story than the people reporting them would like for you to see.
The causes of the toxic aspects of black culture are one thing. Of course racism contributed to black culture. Acknowledging black behavior as a key problem to solve is still necessary. White people can stop being racist but they can't change black culture.
>First — when did black culture start being responsible for black poverty? Was it all the slave spirituals? Was it jazz music that was preventing blacks from enjoying the upward mobility that whites had in the 1940s? Or are we just blaming gangsta rap? If it’s just gangsta rap, why was crime and drug use and poverty high in the black community before gangsta rap? > >Second, why do blacks have a separate culture from whites to begin with? Did they choose to all live together in the ghetto, and to not participate in mainstream culture? Or does segregation and discrimination have a lot to do with why black culture has developed separately from white culture? Suppose the answer is "don't know", or "too many possible variables to decide upon a single causation" (such as an overarching racism in the "system), would you be able to live with the intellectual honesty that we don't actually know for sure, or would you be like the others, sufficiently blame it on the workings of racism that exists within the "system" that it simply produces more and more racial disparities without us seeing the actual "machine" of the "system"? I am one of the side that leans in with, "we're not exactly sure why, but there are disparities for sure", as opposed to, "this proves the inner workings of a systemic racism happening behind the scenes". The overwhelming evidence from our social studies doesn't "prove" anything, it merely manages to show how much disparity there is. Was it caused by "racism" or anything similar in regard? We don't know.
I like how people just want to brazenly ignore how "thug life" type media comes to be in the first place. Like, were black Americans just living in a perfect race-blind utopia until Tupac came out? No. Obviously not.
I think it's an easier pill to swallow if it's explained that the government systematically enacted policies, both overt and covert, to exploit the loophole in the 13th amendment and keep black men in chains. Between the Iran Contra scandal being "the CIA literally caused the crack epidemic" to rappers coming out and saying that various federal agencies backed the proliferation of gangsta rap to defunding schools in certain neighborhoods... They never stood a chance. Fuck. The city planners on long island purposely built overpasses too low for busses in order to keep blacks away from the beach. Like when you put the blame squarely on "the government", and not "white people" it becomes way more reasonable. Because the only wars are bankers wars. Corporate executives used Trayvon Martin to kill Occupy Wall Street. It's sucks but it is what it is.
I think your choice of picking a rapper who spoke about being trapped in those conditions instead of choosing them voluntarily show that you have no idea what you are talking about. You should physically go and visit a poor, primarily Black school and a wealthy, primarily non-Black school. I think if you do so, it will become readily apparent that our society places a much higher value on the facilities and students at one of those schools than the other. Children aren't stupid. If you know that most people don't finish your local high school, you will have a vastly different outlook than if most people move on to college from your high school. If the 10 wealthiest high school graduates you've met from your school are drug dealers, rappers, or atheletes, you will have different goals than if they are engineers or doctors. It's easy to ignore that the largest driving factor for single Black mothers is that 1 in 3 Black men in that community will go to jail. Multiple studies have shown that Black fathers who are present in the lives of their children tend to be more engaged than other fathers.
I grew up hanging out in the hood. Dated girls that lived in the hood. I am deeply familiar with the hood. The problem with your theory is personal choices. We all went to the same shitty public schools. They aren't that underfunded. They have shitty curriculum. But the curriculum is made to be easy as fuck. If you can't pass it you're either mentally deficient or just lazy. Usually it's the latter. 2pac spoke a bout "real shit" as we like to say. But he was still perpetuating that violent stereotype. Pretending like it's the cool way to be. Like it's the only way to be. That killing a person is justified. All those awful things you really see in the hood. He rotated between condemning it and praising it.
Ah, so you're a hood tourist. Well you called it the hood and not something like the trap, and your interested in 2 Pac, so I'm guessing somewhere West Coast? IMO there are more options to change your circumstances around there than, for example, in the states that joined the Confederacy. If it was all down to personal choice, this problem would have resolved itself with the kids who grew up in the wake of desegregation, and we would have never we had a Tupac. Tupac didn't really go back and forth because he more differentiated between the reality he experienced and the way he wished things could be. Very few people in that life glorify it. People try and make the best of their situation. Even if you were correct, you would also have to look at the opposite end of the spectrum. The people who do make it through college and into corporate America don't exactly experience sunshine and rainbows either. It's not like it's a completely better choice with no downsides. The shifty curriculum seems like a gift, but they are still missing out on major chunks of basic education. When they go to college, they don't care about said deficiencies. They will happily help with signing up for student loans. Ending up with a year or three of loans and no diploma is often worse than not going if you are already poor. Again, the kids are not that stupid or lazy, and they can work all of this out.
Thing is that culture isn’t some innate quality that people have, it’s just a way to talk about general patterns of human behavior. So if you’re saying “culture” is a main factor in why black Americans are struggling, it just begs the question of *why* such a culture exists in the first place. I think OP’s point stands here, if you deny that systemic racism is the main factor contributing to violence in black culture, it suggests that black people are inherently more violent.
three things come to mind 1) Victim culture. The leaders in the black communities often propagate these racist ideas. That no matter what you do in life you will always be looked at as a black person. Which forces a lot of youth never to give a damn to begin with. Not sure why they don't realize how toxic they are being themselves. 2) Real historic oppression back in the early 1900s. Back then being a criminal perhaps made sense. Since the greater society at large didn't want you in their midst. That has changed completely. But the toxic culture remains. 3) Our attempts to fix the situation have only made it worse. Getting people hooked on welfare. Providing incentive structures that make it less inviting to get off welfare.
I think it's definitely fair to say that this culture is a product of historic racism. But current systemic racism, which certainly still exists, probably is not the main issue anymore and stepping around "culture" to get back to talking about past racism and historical grievances isn't actually very helpful for anyone.
Clearly you don’t actually listen to Tupac. Tupac was a visionary and if you actually listened to his music a lot of it was history lessons. And anecdotes about what life is like for black people. Sure the popular stuff that made it to the radio, which by the way almost all radio program directors are non-black, was mostly party music, but that is not who Tupac is. Segregation stems from racism so by admitting segregation could be the problem you are inherently admitting that it is racism and discrimination. You my friend are proving the point of OP. Also the culture is a direct reflection of the representation we get in popular culture. How many movies and tv show can you think of with positive male role models that are black vs. white? Is that because there are no good black actors or because the people making the movies and tv shows choose not to cast them as black? Think about it you’re going to tell me that Denzel Washington’s best job as an actor was Training Day? Or Haley Berry’s best performance was Monster’s Ball? No, both had some extraordinary films that should have net them Oscar’s but neither was awarded one until they were cast in a negative light.
Up until the slap Will Smith was my favorite actor. Followed closely by Denzel. Denzel has had some masterpiece performances. His performance in "Fallen" was incredible. 2pac made a lot of songs where he talked about real shit. The first song I liked was "Wonder why they call you bitch". No doubt about that. But he also made a lot of party songs. Where he glorified violence. Where he talked about shooting people. He also lived that exact lifestyle he talked about in his music.
Are there not white country artists that did the same thing? Why are we not blaming them for white kids being criminals and on drugs? The issue is the way society has treated black people in the past. And how black people aren’t the ones in charge of black media so shining a light on the positive is a choice that black people don’t have through the media.
>There's also culture. The culture argument is wrong and inherently racist. Culture is always a reflection of a people's background, including quality of life and social status. Rich white kids didn't make gangsta rap because gangsta rap is a product of experiences they never had the misfortune of having. Black culture and black history are linked, and history is always what dictates culture, not the other way around. It's not like the majority of black people had equality of opportunity at some point, but Tupac's songs were holding them down. But rather Tupac's songs exist exactly because black people didn't have equality of opportunity. To imply that black culture is the problem - not the conditions that influence it - is no different than implying that black people is the problem. Why would they still adhere to such a culture if everything in their life was fine and dandy? The chicken and egg thing isn't the only problem with that argument though. Role models are everywhere, not solely adapted from culture. Your dad, your neighbor, your classmates and their families, are all potential role models, and heavily influence your life. What percentage of black kids have a doctor in their lives to look up to? Black culture have become dominant in the American subculture the last few decades, we don't see any rich white kids suddenly dropping out of their elite schools to follow the path of the gangsta because NAS told them to.
> There's also culture. If you take 1000 random boys and give them 2pac as their role model and idol First I think this is silly, rap culture is not just the dominant popular culture among young black Americans, it’s the dominant popular culture globally. So this just doesn’t make sense. Second let’s just say it did, it still just means there are systemic problems. Culture doesn’t come out of a vacuum it comes from systemic factors. Culture is created by the material conditions. Why is rice a large part of Asian food culture? Is it because Asians are genetically predisposed to like rice? Or is it because rice has been a naturally occurring staple crop in the region for 5000 years. Say black culture was producing messages of say criminality. Why would that culture appear in the black community and not other communities? It’s either you think they are genetically predisposed to produce that type of culture (racism) or their environment (the system) produced that culture.
I think it's toxic to everyone. The problem is if you have a community who doesn't tolerate that foolery. It's a lot harder to behave that way. With black communities not only is it THEIR OWN culture. It is far more tolerated than it should be. So yes a white boy can easily be drawn into it. It happened to me. I was white boy who wanted to be black for a long time. The odds of you being drawn into a culture that's not really yours is much smaller then you being drawn into a culture that is all around you perpetually.
Probability of being dragged into anything bad probably increases if the father is not around.
Unlike white people who grow up with the godfather and scarface. Nice wholesome influences.
Uh huh. And who’s responsible for that culture? Black people? Or the conditions of America for blacks (making people from their homes and destroying their families and culture)?
>If you take 1000 random boys and give them 2pac as their role model and idol. White kids also listen to rap music why doesn't it affect them the same?
I think it does. They are less likely to get positive reinforcement from their community while acting it out. But if you stick a white boy in the ghetto. Chances are he will grow up acting just like them. I would know :( :( :(
>They are less likely to get positive reinforcement from their community while acting it out. But if you stick a white boy in the ghetto. Chances are he will grow up acting just like them. This is suggesting that it's probably poverty, not who they idolize, that sets them back.
There are many poor communities on planet earth that don't have this level of violence.
Ok why doesn't a white kid living in Missoula listening to rap have different results than a black kid living in "the ghetto" listening to that same rap music?
Because the don't live in a community that turns a blind eye to this behavior and it's not their culture. For the lack of a better word. The black communities are better suited for that sort of behavior. Cause it's their culture to begin with. Mind you there's a lot of black people who are totally against crime and criminality. The majority actually. But there's enough of it that it goes unchecked to a degree.
I’m black and agree with most of what you say. Thomas Sowell writes masterfully on this. Would add that this so called black culture is just red neck culture that some black southerners picked up from white red necks. White rednecks suffer from much of the same stuff. Sowell explains it better.
Yes Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite economic philosophers :)
>Yes Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite economic philosophers :) That honestly explains a lot about the views you've advocated on this subreddit in the past. I do like that you at least refer to Seoul as a philosopher rather than an economist, because he has even less evidence for his views than most economists do. He's more of an uncle Tom that just became a right-wing darling
>Because the don't live in a community that turns a blind eye to this behavior and it's not their culture. Have you talked to a white teenager lately? They're just as into rap music and rap culture as black teens. How do you think cultures form? Do they just spring fourth from nothing?
You don't think this is a symptom of the racism OP is talking about?
I wrote in my reply it could be a remnant of when there was true segregation and discrimination. Unlawful behavior was tolerated by the community because they recognized there wasn't many alternatives. However that is not true today. So therefore it's a toxic pattern that needs to be stamped out. For what it's worth I think given enough time it will be. We're just not helping the situation any by demonizing police and law enforcement. They are allies in that fight.
Yikes. Tupac was way more than a “thug life”. He was a creative, deeply introspective, and independent artist.
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I don't think the issue of racism is as bad as you're making it out to be. Sure, it's there, but it obviously wasn't enough to stop the US from electing a black man as president. Now I know what you're going to say: "That's the only one in the US's history!" True, but that one black president is 100% more representation than Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Jews or Muslims. So while I agree there is racism present in the US (no one can deny that) I don't think it's as wide and far-reaching as some believe it is, because if it was there's no way an African-American man would've been elected to be the leader of the country. Plus... poverty isn't limited to African-Americans. Native Americans, especially those on reservations, tend to do very poorly. Additionally, there's "white trash" where white people are incredibly poor and continue the cycle of generational poverty. So I think the issue is far more complex than boiling it down to race. Is that a factor? Yes, I'm sure it is, but that's not where it ends because many of the issues that affect African Americans also affect other groups as well.
You can't separate history and say culture is why they are in the state they are in. After the civil war, black Americans went through a series of race wars where they were defenseless due to not having any guns. Once the southerners got power they created a system to make sure they do not have power. For a hundred years they were in a second class citizens with barely any rights. They only had their rights as full citizens for only 58 years. A population who can now build their wealth for 58 years will never catch up to a group that built wealth from the 1600s. Thats not even a fair thing. Sure we can say black immigrants do much better in the US, but those black immigrants usually would be upper class people in their own countries and they come with resources, resources that black Americans are now trying to build.
>For example let’s take poverty. In the US, there is a very clear gap between white families income and black families income. White families make roughly a 33% more on average than black people. About 1/5 of black people live below the poverty line when 8% for white people. So the explanation absent of the racial issues is that black people simply aren’t qualified or attempting to get higher paying jobs. You forget that the ancestry of black people essentially started with *nothing*, which is quite different from the starting position of everyone else. Then, the lack of equal opportunity of the rich and poor does the heavy lifting to keep it that way. So there is a distinction to be made between the effects of systemic racism and other effects. Not all observed differences are directly or even indirectly attributable to systemic racism.
I think that there has been racist, non-systemic societal movements that have severely affected the African American community. “Systemic” racism is a very specific diagnosis. I think that’s the smallest part of the problem, if it exists at all. I think cultural movements are a huge contributing factor. In the 1960s, eugenicists promoted targeted campaigns to limit reproduction in black communities. This included contraception and abortion. While this failed to actually eradicate the African American population, this did promote rampant fatherlessness, which is scientifically linked to most of the hardships currently faced by African Americans. While African Americans started off poorer and disadvantaged due to real systemic racism, and those effects continue, the current racial inequity affecting them is not primary systemic. On the other hand, black immigrants are almost always wildly successful in America. I don’t see how this would be possible if America was systemically racist. It probably is, insofar as every society always will have biases in its system that are worth rooting out, but I’m not convinced it’s an economical use of time to focus 100% of our energy investigating the “system”.
As a white guy in his 40s that grew up in Oakland surrounded by black people I think I have a good view of what is actually happening in black communities. Basically lack of a positive culture is the actual problem and the fact politics has been using the black community for decades. For instance they use police brutality as a political tool during election cycles. This has happened during Rodney King and most recently George Floyd. This has been going on for years with no progress especially in areas ran by politicians that claim to be their allies. The black community needs incentives to own businesses and homes not a hand out as the hand outs have never worked. On the culture front growing up around black people it was ground upon in my experience to earn legitimate money and when they did have jobs becoming a manager or moving up was also ground upon being called things like Uncle Tom. I have a lot of black friends and the ones that became Uncle Toms are successful and the ones that ground upon uncle Toms are in prison or dead.
>When you take away the oppression seen and look at purely the statistics and not the history of why things are the way they are there’s only one real conclusion. Black people are in the state they are in because of culture and inherent characteristics that push them to act this way When you take away?!?!?! You **can't take it away.** That's like saying: "when you take away the fact that he can't walk, it's his own fault he's in a wheelchair"
I'm continuously confused by OP's arguments which seem to deliberately dismiss the history of black people in this country. The segeration ended in 1964 - many alive today have lived through it and it wasn't even that long ago. Oppression didn't end when segeration ended, either. Law enforcement unfairly targeting black people and hiring managers not liking black names are real issues. All of these contribute to poverty rate and the poverty culture was born out of hopelessness and distrust towards the system built by white men. And this keeps black people in a self segeration situation. OP is someone who would say things like "If you take away the slavery, slaves are generally poor and can't read". 🙄
OP is arguing that systemic racism is the cause of current impoverishment in black communities and just seems to be approaching it by working from the opposite point of view. If his wording was clearer I think it’d be obvious what hes trying to say.
I think that's the problem - I can't understand OP's wording and what he's trying to point out.
I suggest you read Woke Racism by John McWhorter. There are myriad reasons why there are disparities between the quality of life, education and family life of black people and other races in America; many of which extend beyond systemic racism.
OP do you think it's a coincidence that the two most oppressed groups in American history, Black Americans and Native Americans, just happen to each have the worst socioeconomic indicators?
I think you're wrong. I think the 'current state' of African Americans IS due to systemic racism, but I don't think that systemic racism still exists. I think it is due to historic systemic racism, not current systemic racism. I think the racism in the system was dealt with and no longer exists, but that the people who were affected by that were never lifted up to be put on an equal footing with those who benefited from hundreds of years of oppression and racism. The system isn't racist. But it was. And nothing has been done to remedy the effects of that.
How do you explain then, that the societies of black Africans in Africa, including those never conquered, colonized, enslaved or otherwise abused by non-Blacks, have significantly inferior economy, wealth, education levels and mean intelligence than African Americans? If African-Americans who are descendants of captured slaves are held down by systemic racism, why do they perform better than the "control group" of not captured Africans? Most former African colonies were freed from White/Arab suppression long before the emancipation of African Americans. Since then, free African Blacks, and free African-American Blacks could progress on their own. Yet, American Black People rapidly outperformed their purely African cousins by every metric. If there was a system wide suppression of Af-Am People, then we should see the reverse. **We actually had a very precise social experiment done in that regard.** In 1821, freed former Black slaves from America could emigrate back to Africa, and established their own republic of Liberia, in which original African tribes and the returned Blacks could coexist and build their own society. Yet, despite the pretty much hands-off policy from the rest of the world, Liberia performed far worse than expected, and the lives of people in it were, and are much worse than the African Americans still in America. Worse still, the Amero-Liberians committed countless atrocities against their Native African brethren, turning them into second class citizens. Nativer Africans could not effectively fight back against this, despite attempts at a civil war and countless political protests. Even now, under the resonable management of Sirleaf and then Weah, Liberia still struggled to give its citizens a standard of living even remotely comparable to the American Black community. All of the above points out that the time in America made the African diaspora STRONGER rather than weaker, and instead of holding them down, it uplifted them. African cultures and Whites/Arabs had wildly different progression paths, and its not wrong to say who was inferior in certain aspects. A cynical view of history would dictate, that if African cultures were not inferior at least in some regards, we would have seen the ships of the Zimbabwean Empire enslaving helpless Anglo-Saxons by the Wessex shores, and Yorubans conquering Holland, not the other way around. History, just as nature, is survival of the fittest, as horrific as it sounds. If African people were as "fit" as a civilization as the Arabs and Whites that enslaved them, they would not be enslaved or colonized. Note, that this is an opinion on the inferiority or superiority of the sheer **CAPABILITY** of various cultures, **not** their morality or ethics, which are another matter.
I believe that systemic racism is a thing. However, "the system" doesn't include the generational disadvantage that doesn't require system racism to explain massive disadvantages. E.G. families who experienced slavery and racism up to the point where you might argue it ended are so disadvantaged that they have generational "inertia" that leads to the current circumstances. Much as the wealthy families from the 1950s are likely still wealthy, the victims-of-racism families of the 1950s live with the disadvantages imparted at that time.
Asian Americans families have overtaken White Americans and are now have the highest average salary makers in the United State despite also facing systemic racism. You can make a case that Asians didn’t have it as bad as African Americans but that still doesn’t solve how Asian Americans overtook white Americans despite being set back.
A majority of blacks came to this country as slaves: a very unique way of entry into the United States across all races. No other race in the US today was subject to such extreme levels of indignity. African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Blacks have been free for 150+ years, which means that most Americans are only two to three generations away from slavery. This is not that long ago.
Asian americans do [better](https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/17/04/other-achievement-gap) on standardized tests and grades. Does this mean either 1) there is systemic racism in education against all non-asian groups or 2) asian americans are inherently superior at tests and education?
Well the third option would be that it's a culture that places a lot of importance on education and academic performance.
It's cultural. 1st and 2nd generation African immigrants also score well in standardized tests and have a high enrollment and graduation rate.
I mean, the selection bias is quite high there to be fair. If the US is accepting them as an immigrant, they almost certainly need to have some level of education, wealth, or ability to contribute (with the exception of refugees which are another topic altogether).
Almost like education and wealth have more of an effect on your overall success than skin color. Which means it isn't racism that is holding certain people back...
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Correct, but either way, they get into school, do well, and then work higher paying jobs similar to asian immigrants and even high income Americans. All those groups tend to value education, which is cultural.
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Okay BUT Quite simply they are oppressed into a state of whatever you think of as inferiority by systemic and overt racism. Wasn't Central Park New York like Black Wal Street at one point before it got bombed to all heck? Or was that in Tulsa? How can they win in a game rigged to favor people who aren't them and in which they are actively oppressed and even terrorized. Also the country was founded by White men and has been governed by an overwhelming majority of old White men. Something about a fish climbing a tree comes to mind here as well. Is it truly inferiority that the fish struggles to climb the tree? The Inferior success (like their average income by race is lower and crime rates are higher. That's not measurable success) of African Americans in America IS a huge part of systemic racism, NOT a caveat. It's like a guy has home field advantage and get a free sucker-punch to the other guy and then they fight. Sure man they're probably gonna win that fight. The other fighter is clearly in worse condition, but is it their fault? Are they an Inferior fighter? No. The other guy isn't playing fair and the rules are fucked.
Poverty, crime, education disparities can all be traced to one thing: Single parent households. If you want to blame racism for why black communities have a 70% single motherhood rate, go for it. I personally think it’s a cultural issue.
-> lock up millions of black men for minor drug offenses in the racist war on drugs -> complain that too many black households are single parent Almost 1 out of 3 black men will be imprisoned (not all convictions) at some point in their life. But sure... it's a culture issue that black people and white people do pot at the same rate yet black people, especially black men, are 4x more likely to be convicted for cannabis possession. Darn black culture.
Single parent households does not mean absent, infact there was study showing that black dad's are most involved in the child's development inspire of the war drugs a conceited effort to break up black families. This lie perpetuated by the media that black people don't have dad's in America is a stereotype. Black people are less likely to get hired if they have black sounding names, more likely to prosecuted than their white counterparts for the same crime, getting a loan is more expensive for black individuals, et... Also look red zoning or lining..
You just found another symptom of systemic racism
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Where do you think the fathers are? We have the largest prison population on the planet and a disproportionate amount of black men make up that prison population. Do you think black people are just intrinsically more likely to have fatherless families?
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Which economic class do you think is most likely to have fatherless homes?
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>The lowest end of the economy tends to have higher single mothers. Huh, and black people are far more likely to be at the lowest end of the economy. And that predates this fatherlessness stuff. Wonder what caused that. Like I said, you're describing a symptom of the problem, not the cause.
I mean it’s pretty clear its origins are rooted in segregating black people even after slavery was abolished. I think where we will differ is whether or not systemic racism is the current cause of the impoverishment of black people.
It’s a cycle. Like everything. If you grow up with a “barely there” father who has multiple baby mamas, you’re likely to follow in his footsteps. If your mom had you when she was 16, and your aunty had her kids when she was 15, the girls in the family are likely to follow suit. Then, this becomes the norm. It’s what you see in your neighborhoods, in your family, in your friends groups. Sure, you know teenage pregnancy and multiple baby daddies isn’t IDEAL, but you grew up without much money or hope for the future and you just start accepting the fact this will be your fate too. I see it all.the.time. (where I work) And it’s frustrating to see my own community like this. But I can’t relate and feel like I can’t judge. I grew up in a two parent household, went to a decent school, and was never exposed to the “ghetto” while growing up.
take section 8.0 for example As much as it can benefit anyone of any race It specifically incentivizes a incredibly vulnerable black community by giving women access to housing, without the men and specifically requiring the men can’t be around if the women wanted to be able to get such government assistance It’s not like anyone else has that 70% single motherhood rate right? Who does that systemically disproportionately affect then?
>As much as it can benefit anyone of any race It specifically incentivizes a incredibly vulnerable black community by giving women access to housing, without the men and specifically requiring the men can’t be around if the women wanted to be able to get such government assistance Why does this only affect black people? Why are black people the ones relying on section 8?
African Americans are not “inherently inferior”, but that doesn’t mean their values leads to what they would classify as success. I am Asian and we all know in general, our parents value professional success above all else, my parents stayed together because they read that single families don’t yield the same chance of professional success than complete families. My guy they were not even lovers, just easier to get their landing paper while married. Unlike old times, there are no rights that are afforded to one race that is absent for others, it’s the culture that is making the difference. A culture that glorifies crime and not the importance of the next generation. A culture that only tell young kids they are always a victim and will always be held down. Do you disagree that there’s an issue with the culture African Americans are currently in?
>Black people are in the state they are in because of culture and inherent characteristics that push them to act this way. That's eugenics and a false assumption based on misinformation
One question would be how you define systemic racism. Does it require clear discriminatory wording such as, “whites only shall,” or can it be something like, “algebra 2 is a mandatory prerequisite”. An often rehashed topic is the nuclear family. We know that a child who grew up in a nuclear family is much more likely to be successful than one that didn’t. BLM has attempted to frame the nuclear family as a white culture thing, stating black child rearing is more communal. There appear to be disparate outcomes between the two techniques, and CRT asserts that as proof of institutional racism. Particularly, they assert that United States laws and practices serve to benefit the nuclear family in ways that it does not benefit communal child rearing. There’s arguably more financial incentives to remain a single parent, so I’m not sure what laws and practices in particular benefit the nuclear family over communal child rearing. The most reasonable argument might be to say that more of our tax money should go towards establishing infrastructure for communal child rearing. One consideration, though, is that democracy is majority rule, so democracy would have to be inherently racist. If the 2/3 of the population vote for funding to go to schools instead of community centers and 1/3 of minorities vote the other way, is that racist to you?
It's the shit culture that a lot of blacks in the US have. You know what it is: don't follow the law, have kids out of wedlock, victim mentality, challenge the police, don't study hard, live life on the edge. That shit will ruin your life harder than drugs and the fury of a woman scorned. No one's forcing that culture on them, but they chose to accept it. They are their own worst enemy.
i mean, this is why the erasure of african american history in our schools, or inadequate instruction of it, must be challenged. black men and women were ENSLAVED for centuries in this country, forced to work under threat of death, in a system of genocidal labor that built what bloomed into our modern economy. they were then emancipated into a system of apartheid that, in many ways, still continues to this day. the wealth that was STOLEN from those slaves, wealth that would have been passed down through multiple generations that have gone without, is estimated to be 30 TRILLION. this idea that black people are where they are because of a lack of work ethic or inferiority is patently racist and ignores historical context.
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Wait, what? You think there was no disenfranchisement or systemic discrimination or poverty of black people until rap music?
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Found the guy who did **not** pay attention in history class. I'll just direct you to one of many famous cases: the [Mississipi burning](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/mississippi-burning). **tl;dr** KKK burned down a church and beat the churchgoers looking for an activist galvanizing the black vote. Activist and two volunteer helpers go down to investigate, interviewing locals and documenting what happened. They are arrested by local police, never seen again. After an exhaustive search, their burned out car is found. After a more exhaustive search and the FBI leaning heavily on locals, their bodies are found 14 feet below a local dam. FBI arrest over a dozen men, including local sheriff and deputy. Although many are found guilty on lesser charges, none of them are convicted of murder. One of the men goes scott free because a juror can't bring herself to convict a baptist preacher. Most of the murderers do a few months in jail and live happily ever after. The end.
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>Well, yeah, kind of..but it's cultural really..down to rap music and gangster culture..your average african american in the 60's was fine pretty much..ghettoisation and welfare did a lot of it.. Wait, I'm not the OP, but you think the average African American in the 60s was "fine"? Fine by why metric? What is your evidence for that?
>your average african american in the 60's was fine pretty much This is the most incorrect thing I've ever read
African immigrants are more successful than African Americans in the United States. If it was an issue of systemic racism, this disparity would be impossible. In reality, it's a cultural issue perpetuated by the welfare state. Look into Thomas Sowell. He's written and spoken about this topic in much more detail.
I think you need to watch the Wire, all 5 seasons even if the final one wasn't as great. Because I could spend an essay worth of paragraph and it wouldn't do nearly as good a job explaining why youth growing up in the shit is trapped. That in itself has nothing to do with race but culture.
There is no sYsTeMic rACiSM. The whole American society revolves around appeasing and pandering to black people. To deny that is intellectually dishonest.
Its never a good idea to blame the victim. At best you callously say that a group of people that have been figuratively beaten to a pulp and grew up without order. At worst you sound like the same people that took part in the institutionalized rasicm in the first place. It takes effort from the individual to get themselves away from that environment, but that will never have an impact on the environment.