By “usurped”, do you mean in contexts like that mentioned in this old thread?
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1937241-the-us-is-expected-to-eventually-become-majority-non-white-p1.html
Noooo! They only have bad traits, no good ones!
Or maybe people are all individuals, with some positive and some negative qualities, and shouldn’t be judged as a group based upon ther sex and color of their skin.
You can read the actual study that the article refers to at http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/ .
@“Cardinal Fang”, I commend you for fighting the good fight to keep pushing the discussion back to the actual study.
If you can’t get past the NY Times paywall and the full study is too long, again I recommend the PBS Newshour’s interview with co-author Raj Chetty of Stanford University. Seven minutes available as video or audio, and there’s a transcript.
Or you can read the non-technical summary at http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_summary.pdf . Note that it has links to more details at the bottom.
@ucbalumnus I commend you too!
@sorghum I wasn’t implying white male tribalism is an evil characteristic. I was thinking of it as an explanation why there was a discrepancy in retaining wealth. In my mind all of us identify with a group or groups. We naturally tend to seek a ‘good fit’, as seen when we discuss College selection. Why? A good fit increases our ability to thrive in that environment.
Now, just because a white male may embrace the camaraderie gained by hiring, helping, mentoring other white males, it doesn’t make him a bad person. It isn’t necessarily done to subjugate other groups…women and minorities. But I do think it’s important to note how that choice may lead to the exclusion of people who don’t belong to that ‘tribe’. On the flip side, I think it’s understandable if someone outside that group may not feel welcomed. But as their numbers increase and confidence in using their voice increases, I believe that’s when change will occur.
@ucbalumnus yes. I skimmed your linked thread. In my community I definitely sense increasing white anxiety, where 20+ years ago (when we moved here), it didn’t seem to exist.
This is an interesting topic. I looked at the co-author, Hendren, on his page and he has a graph showing “The Fading American Dream”. The chances of American children doing better than their parents has been dropping like a rock over the past 60 years! A child born in 1940 had a 90% chance of doing better than his or her parents. A child born in 1985, the last year on the graph, had only a 50% chance of doing better.
Re: #148
You mean https://inequality.stanford.edu/news-events/center-news/fading-american-dream ?
That’s an interesting and provocative result. Note, however, that in the study we’re discussing, the birth cohort is compared with others in their cohort, people born in 1978-1983. In other words, the black boys from wealthy families end up doing worse in their own cohort than the white boys from wealthy families. The black boys in the top quintile grew up to not be in the top two quintiles of people born in 1978-1983. In the present discussion, we’re not talking about whether these boys grow up to have better outcomes than their parents’ generation, but what outcomes they reach compared to others in their own generation.
I agree this doesn’t make you a bad person, as most people including myself would define a bad person.
However, if you hire and mentor white males, but you do not hire and mentor equally qualified people who are not white males, however unconsciously and unintentionally you are making these decisions, that makes you a racist and a sexist. Racism is as racism does. And the same for sexism. If you don’t want to be called a racist, then you have to consciously avoid doing racist things, because probably your unconscious reactions are racist.
No, it doesn’t make you a bad person, but as I said upthread, systems won’t change unless people do. Obviously there is a problem and, therefore, I believe that I have a responsibility to make a conscious effort to provide assistance to the best of my abilities. Not being a bad person isn’t the standard to which I aspire, and to which I hope my children aspire.
So far, two out of the three do a great deal in that regard. The third still hasn’t matured enough to be fully functional yet!
As I have always said, I work with literacy because I’m deeply passionate about the need for adults to be able to read and write. I am proud of that, but there are unintended consequences to everything, including this. I’ve come to note the impact of immigrant rights on the community of poor black people, particularly young males.
@88jm19 There is a book called “Dividing Classes” by Ellen Brantlinger which addresses the tendency of relatively liberal parents to block efforts to create economic diversity in schools. I don’t agree with the author’s conclusions or politics, but it’s interesting to note that her book was written about Bloomington, Ind., which is less than five percent black. There is a belief that this type of behavior only happens regard to race, but in fact economic difference may be more of a force.
Most schools refuse to group students by achievement until they select their own high school classes. Poor children do have lower achievement levels than affluent ones, and I think given the refusal to group by achievement or ability parents forces parents to seek out ability grouping by other means, which is usually limited to putting the child in the wealthiest school system possible or paying for private school.
@MassDaD68 On news sites that limit the number of articles one can read each month I find I can usually read them if I visit the site in “incognito” or “private” mode. Give it a try.
@“Cardinal Fang” Behavior that has a discriminatory effect on the macro-level isn’t necessarily “racist.” An awful lot of teen jobs are given to the children of friends or business associates. This can certainly have a discriminatory effect, but it’s not racist. If someone sets out to hire strangers and structures the search in such a way that one or more racial groups are excluded, that’s racist.
OK, I’ll buy that if you mentor only kids of people you know, and you know mostly white people, then you will not end up mentoring black people, and I guess I would not call that a racist action. (But you might want to consider whether it will have the societal result you want.)
I was talking more about people who (unintentionally) rate a resume that says Shaquille Jackson or Jessica Miller lower than an identical resume that says Chad Miller. People do this, a lot, even though they don’t intend to. As you say, one has to intentionally structure their procedure to avoid this, because relying on impressions will let our unwanted biases creep into decisions.
Did the study zoom in on the black boys from top 10% of families (who have more advantages than the majority of white boys) to see who failed and who succeeded? What were their differences?
Going way back to reply #48…
In other words, it looks like racial stereotyping may cause white people to become racist against their own race and therefore limit their own achievements or goals. That it is learned as early as 7th grade is not an optimistic aspect of the story. And such effects could very well be present among people of other races/ethnicities.
If this,
were true,
then this wouldn’t follow
If sexism has an effect, then black men should do better than black women. If racism has an effect, then white women should do better than black women. They wouldn’t all be the same.