Wow. Other countries, and governments, and researchers, dropped 'race' a long, long time ago. Robust data is collected under the category 'ethinicity', which encompasses a great deal more than white and black. America is so retro in some things. I shake my head in wonder. (Critical race theory? Studied that 30 years ago, but that's not what it was branded in sociology circles back then.)
It seems like Greg is promoting a fake-it-til-you-make-it campaign. We all walk around with highly evolved stereotyping machines in our heads. We all see race. On average we clearly interact far more with racial in-groups than out-groups. I suppose we could all try to overcome these realities with a disciplined and very mindful change in the way we speak about race, but that seems extraordinarily unlikely to achieve success. Fighting thousands of years of human nature is quite a task. It seems the more likely path will be that we intermix so much that our brain becomes less and less reliant on racial stereotyping because its just no longer all that useful. That will take patience though. Not our strong suit.
As long as we are talking about overcoming human nature I would think openness and forgiveness would be the quickest solution. Let's all be totally honest about the stereotypes that we carry around. Air them out and discuss. I bet we could get rid of half of them with a kind of society wide cognitive behavioral therapy session. Have all of our unfounded stereotypes dissected and challenged. This is the approach Daryl Davis takes and it has lead to dozens of KKK members seeing the light. So imagine what it would do for good people who just don’t have a lot of exposure to other races. The current strategy for well-meaning people who carry around racial stereotypes is to smile and pretend they don’t have them. Racial awkwardness is a big impediment to more integration. Awkwardness is often the result of not knowing what you are supposed to say and worrying what you are thinking will offend.
This is a dream of course. This kind of honesty might lead to a lot of fist fights.
Disparate outcomes measured by race imply that their cause is the inability of the individual to achieve because of their race. Once within that paradigm we are left with whether the cause is internal or external to that individual. Is it their adoption of some societal induced reduced expectation or an undefined external systemic racist structure or some other internal or external racial factor. Regardless of the outcome of the discussion, we are stuck within the framework of race. We are unable to offer a solution that doesn’t involve race which brings with it all the baggage of the racial “victim”.
It seems (at least to me) that if we truly want to solve problems then we need to deracialize the way we think about the issues we are trying to address. If we ignore race and gather data differently then we can deracialize both the problem and the solution. What percentage of convicted felons come from homes living in poverty, what percentage of those felons were raised in urban environments, what percentage of those felons came from single mother households, what percentage of those felons didn’t graduate high school, etc., etc. If we are addressing a societal issue, why would we ever care if the racial percentages of the resulting population differ from their make-up in the overall population. It is our societal problem, not a racial problem, that we are attempting to address.
Perhaps my ignorance is showing and while we can attribute 95% of a particular issue (high school dropout rates, incarceration rates, unemployment rates, etc.) to cross racial factors, there remains a racial disparity that is solely a function of race that as Mr. Thomas argues comes from a racialized world view. For me, that should be the last factor we consider and not the framework within which we approach the problem.
1. When you spend time in the U.S., you learn racial categories and you learn to believe them. Glenn calls this "being raced." Greg calls it racialization and details the steps involved.
2. These racial categories are deeply entrenched in the culture, social practices, everyday conversation, social science data, etc.
3. They're both willing to acknowledge the reality of these categories
Where Glenn and Greg disagree:
1. Glenn is describing what is. Greg is envisioning what could be. As Glenn says, his argument is deliberately not normative; it's not evaluating how good or bad race-ing/racialization is. Greg is making an evaluation. He's saying: this isn't working, and here is what better looks like.
Question for Glenn: if you were to take a normative stance and ask what better looks like, setting aside the odds of bringing it to fruition, what do you think of Greg's vision?
2. In referencing these racial categories, Glenn is comfortable sticking with the conventions, e.g. black and white. Greg says: no, we need more accurate ways of talking about this. Hence his terminology "racialized as black."
Question for Glenn: using terms like "racialized as black" is obviously a bit more effort and even awkward when few other people say it, but you've never been one to shy away from standing apart from the crowd. If you set aside this verbal awkwardness, doesn't this terminology acknowledge the social convention of race-ing as well as, if not better than, the word "black?" I realize you don't see the upside gains of this shift, but can you name any downsides?
Mr. Roscoe, thank you for your thoughts. Two clarifying questions for you:
1. One way to deracialize people is to use different language. Let's say the U.S. Census started capturing data on how people are identified/racialized by others. Let's then say the charts on wealth you provide above reflected these shifts: they had all the same data but in the legend said "racialized black" instead of "black" and "racialized white" instead of "white." Ditto for the charts on 4th grade reading scores you provide in your piece on affirmative action, and so on. I contend that this change of terminology does not diminish a confrontation with brutal facts. Would you agree?
2. Let's say we paid attention to all of the important charts you provide AND, per Greg Thomas, also look at charts showing progress over time, e.g. the massive increase in the black-identified middle class in the past several decades. No need to stop looking at the bad news when we look at some good news. What objection would you make to this?
Thanks for your questions. Here are a couple of responses:
1. A rose by any other name smells the same. What would be accomplished by the approach you suggest? Would it lead to a reduction in racial discrepancies? Would people who think they're victims of discrimination feel better about their situations if they thought of themselves as "racialized black" or "racialized white?" I'm skeptical.
2, Progress towards closing racial disparities stalled out many years ago. Derek Neal's paper suggests that what he called the "skills convergence" ended during the late 1980's. The academic achievement gap and the college readiness gap, for example, have persisted for decades.
The wealth gap hasn't improved much over the years according to the St. Louis Fed:
One of their charts shows that 82% of black families had less wealth than the typical white family in 2019 compared to 86% in 1989. Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton and others have done work that shows the same pattern ("WEALTH OF TWO NATIONS: THE U.S. RACIAL WEALTH GAP, 1860-2020"). Use this link to access the paper:
The racial wealth gap is the largest and most persistent of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans—with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. This wealth gap has evolved in a “hockey-stick” pattern, from a starting point of nearly 60 to 1 at the eve of the Civil War, to a ratio of 10 to 1 by 1920, and to7 to 1 during the 1950s, where it has hovered ever since. These figures come from our new data set on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios, the first continuous time series on the racial wealth gap covering the last 160 years. We constructed this database through the use of historical census data, early state tax records, national reports, annual studies on Black economic progress, and historical and modern waves of national surveys.
We find that the most dramatic episode of racial wealth convergence occurred in the first 50 years after Emancipation (during the Reconstruction Era), but that this initial rapid convergence gave away to much slower declines in the wealth gap during the 20thcentury. Since the 1980s, we even document a re-divergence in the racial wealth gap, instead of further convergence, which can be explained by a widening of the racial gap in capital gains.
A 2018 analysis from Zillow showed that the black-white homeownership gap was wider then (30 percentage points) than it was in 1900 (27 percentage points):
Median black household income was about 58% of that for whites in 1989 vs, 62% in 2021 (Use the link below, download the report, and look at the numbers in Table A-2 if you want to do a deep dive.
At least half of Black America has experienced minimal progress when it comes to closing the academic achievement gap. the income gap, the wealth gap, the homeownership gap, etc. What would you say to them?
The dilemma for older blacks and for black leaders is that they don't have a good explanation for the lack of progress since the late 1980's. They don't want to acknowledge their failures so they say racism is the primary cause. That claim doesn't hold up under scrutiny, but the bias narrative resonates with a lot of people.
I could be wrong, but my sense is that people can know that things aren't going well but aren't sure what to do about it. Many of them know that the bias narrative is baloney, but they haven't heard a clear and fleshed out version of the development narrative. Folks are ready for the "brutal facts" as long as they're accompanied by a clear vision and a realistic plan of action.
1. Some roses have lost their scent. Others have died.
Still, you ask a good question: "What would be accomplished by...?" If the answer is nothing, as you appear to assume, then I agree: why bother? Greg has made a strong case for the social and economic ills caused by racializing people. My hunch is you don't share his view of these. Nor do you see any benefit to deracializing people. I've written at length on this issue (an ebook called How To Be An Anti-race Antiracist, a deliberate play on Kendi, whom I have separately critiqued) but here's a quick and partial response:
a. Want people to stop complaining and start developing themselves...to shift from a victim mentality to a hero's journey or developmental approach? This requires a growth mindset. Believing you are a member of a race with fixed attributes doesn't help. So, in response to your question about people "feeling better", I would say: maybe better, but more likely they'd have new capacities, i.e. this is not just about "feeling."
What's behind me saying this: I'm an executive coach who has worked with senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies for 20 years. My speciality is helping people shift their narratives and take new actions. Loads of research around this...
b. We don't know what will happen until we try, but why give up on innovation before you start?
When 3M introduced post-it notes, did they imagine all the ways people would use them? Nope. When Honda was trying to introduce its motorcycles into the U.S. market, did it realize that customers in the L.A. area would chose to request the smaller motorcycles driven by Honda salespeople rather than the larger ones that Honda was deliberately trying to sell Americans? Not at all. (Henry Mintzberg, the great Canadian management thinker, has written about this).
As Americans, does our interest in inventing and innovating only apply to the for-profit sector? Do we act as though these capacities are useless in the area of social policy and shifting social habits? Gosh, I would hope not.
2. I admire and agree with your data but I don't think you've answered my basic question: what's wrong with presenting data showing progress of black-identified Americans IN ADDITION TO all the data around the disparities?
- I have zero arguments with your data about the racial wealth gap. I remember hearing Mel Oliver speak 25 years ago about his book Black Wealth, White Wealth and was sold on the importance of tracking wealth over income. This is a massive social, economic and political challenge. I'm with you all the way on this..
AND...
- All of the data you provide is a comparison of "black" and "whites." Why no data showing a comparison of black-identified Americans today versus, say, 1970 or 1950 WITHOUT comparing to "whites?" Why do all of the statistics you provide need to be a comparison between groups? With GDP, sure economists compare the U.S. to other countries, but they put as much attention on changing in U.S. GDP over time without comparing to other countries. Ditto for many other socioeconomic measures—why not do that here? Has there been no progress in the material conditions of black-identified Americans in the U.S.?
Ironically, the extreme progressive postmodernists would agree. Reading their writing I almost get the sense not only has there been no progress since the 1950s but life isn't much better than during slavery. It's a remarkable way of creating a narrative that denies the truth of hard-earned gains.
In my line of work, we focus on bad news AND good news. Disaster and dignity. This is essential to getting people to shift their social habits, how they spend their time, what choices they make, etc. I'm curious what keeps you from being willing to do this on this topic.
1. I'm all for deracializing America. Greg Thomas and I disagree about how far we should go with this and what steps are required to reach whatever level of racialization is appropriate. I covered this is my first response. Here's an excerpt:
We all seem to agree that today's highly racialized environment is bad, but I didn't get a clear sense of what his deracialized replacement looks like. Does he want the government to stop collecting racial data? Should we stop worrying about noticeable differences across the races (e.g., academic achievement gap, income gap, employment gap, wealth gap, life expectancy gap, differences in poverty rates, differences in incarceration rates, differences in criminal victimization rates, etc.)? What about differences relating to gender, age, sexual orientation, and other noticeable differences between easily identified groups of Americans? Should we stop worrying about them too? Should we abandon the concept of hate crimes? A lot of people would be relieved if these things happened, but we might not be a better country if we ignored these issues.
Last but not least, I didn't get a clear sense of what Greg Thomas thinks “blackness” should be. Can it be reduced to just culture? Does he think we should give up most black institutions since many of them perceive their missions to include more than just preserving black culture?
I say in a subsequent post that we need to debunk the bias narrative and show that the development narrative offers a path towards black progress. I think that's consistent with your "hero's journey" approach and having a "growth mindset" but feel free to provide more feedback.
2. Experience has taught me that language needs to be clear, concise, and unambiguous if you want to effectively communicate with with large groups of people.
You asked, "...what's wrong with presenting data showing progress of black-identified Americans IN ADDITION TO all the data around the disparities?" That approach allows people to avoid "confronting the brutal facts." It mutes the sense of purpose and urgency ("Things are OK. What's the rush?") needed to effect real and sustained change at scale.
It's fair to point out that things aren't as bad as they were in 1950, but the relative stagnation since the late 1980's is inescapable. Marc Morial of the National Urban League often refers to Black America as the caboose at the end of America's economic train. Black folks go faster or slower depending upon the speed of the train, but their relative position never changes:
The data I presented backs up that assertion. Equally important, progress in absolute terms has spotty at best. The Zillow report I referenced showed that black homeownership rates were lower in 2018 than they were in the mid 1980's. Real (inflation- adjusted) median household income for blacks was lower in 2017 than it was during the late 1990's:
Whites, Hispanics, and Asians, by contrast, all made progress during this period. To be fair, that period included two recessions, most notably "The Great Recession" of 2007-08, but those groups still had higher incomes during that period.
The stagnation I'm describing shows up in lots of ways. You can get a feel for it if you follow what's happening in black neighborhoods in cities around the country. They lack vibrancy and often look and feel run down. The black pessimism that Pew's data shows reflects this stagnation, as does the exodus of black people from places like Baltimore, Chicago, and New York.
I understand that some people look for signs of hope, but as friends of mine like to say, "Hope isn't a strategy." That's especially true when you're trying to make big changes at scale. You have to be clear-eyed and persistent.
Thanks for these good comments. I think I have a better understand of where you are coming from.
1. Maybe I didn't read your original post closely enough but your comment here ("I'm all for deracializing America") is the first time I recall your advocating for deracialization. It's good to see this say this directly. When you previously said that "today's racialized environment is bad" I didn't interpret that as making a case for deracialization. Thanks for the correction.
The rest of the excerpt from your first response I already addressed in my most recent #2, so I'll leave that be for now.
What does Greg mean by "blackness"? I'd add to that: what does anyone mean when they say "black." The terms indeed means different things to different people. Good topic for another thread.
2. I now see much more clearly why you want to keep your message and data focused on the disparities between "black" and "white" and the lack of progress recently in such disparities. For you, showing absolute figures of progress among black-identified Americans dilutes your message. It distracts people from understand how bad the disparities are. And the key to persuading people to act is to highlight the depth of the disparity. I suppose we might call this one theory of persuasion.
I have a different theory of persuasion as, I think, does Greg. My theory is that if you present both good news and bad news, the combination gives people enough of a nudge to take action yet without pushing them into moods of pessimism and resignation. You don't lose urgency. You take urgency and add a sense of momentum.
Greg makes a great case for stories and data that support a heroic narrative, one that doesn't ignore the brutal facts but shows people rising beyond them. He also makes a strong case that if you want the American people to invest in anything, you need to show the value of what they are investing in. What do you think of this "investment" form of persuasion? Once you accept that it has validity, then it becomes hard to devote 100% of your time/attention/charts to showing how bad a particular group is doing. People want to invest in positive assets. There is a story of black-identified Americans improving their value as assets to America. Why can't we tell this story?
Again, if you have a different theory of persuasion, then what I've just written makes no sense. I get it.
Also: which stories and which data we present depends on the audience. Basic segmentation. There are some audience for whom the full bad news produces positive action. There are some audiences for which the full bad news produces complete inaction. That's why a broad repertoire of narratives and data provides for a more nimble approach in a complex world.
Thank you for taking up my invitation to discuss data just for black-identified Americans over time. Based on the data you selected (home ownership and median household income) and the years you selected (mid 80s to 2017ish), the story is negative. Are there literally no positive trends for black-identified Americans during those time periods?
Perhaps as importantly, comparisons to the 80s make sense if your goal is to assess progress in the past 30 years, particularly if you want proof of a bad news story. But what if your goal, for the reasons I've outlined, is to show real progress. I'm sure you can find other periods (1958 to 2018?) for which it is an enormously important story. What makes these numbers less valid? Again, if your theory of persuasion is to only show the bad news, then you wouldn't tell this story. But if you wanted to tell this story, you could, and the data would be just as valid. More importantly, from my perspective, it would have the effect of demonstrating the increase in value of the asset known as black-identified Americans. And counteract the widely shared extreme progressive narrative that nothing really has changed and nothing will ever get better.
As for "Hope isn't a strategy," I agree. Yet that's not what we're talking about here. Positive narratives grounded in story and data aren't just about some vague thing called "hope". There is all sorts of data from the fields of positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and applied neuroscience that provide a direct link between the narratives people holds in their minds and the actions they take. If you want to reverse "pessimism" and "stagnation" telling people that their lives suck doesn't do it. Helping them learn their capacities, build new ones, and create a new narrative for their lives helps. I imagine that providing data and charts would help you understand this argument. Perhaps that's a topic for another thread.
Thanks for your comments. The timeline leading up to the symposium is long and includes thousands of words. I understand why you would think I don't want to deracialize. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think that can happen, however, as long as large racial disparities exist and the bias narrative holds sway.
Discussions about what constitutes "blackness" and whether it needs to be redefined have been had on previous episodes of The Glenn Show, including the one that featured Greg Thomas and John McWhorter.
Being "black" is very or extremely important to 76% of Black Americans according to a survey that Pew Research did last April:
Greg didn't define his deracialized version of "blackness" when he appeared on The Glenn Show and it's still not clear to me what that entails. As you said, that's another topic for another thread, but it's clear that the bias narrative is an integral component of "blackness" for much of Black America. The other Pew analysis I referenced shows that a large percentage of black people don't think they can achieve equality with their peers because of various forms of racism.
We seem to disagree when it comes to the best way to spur people to action. I've been around long enough to know mixing good news with bad news rarely yield good results when dealing with large groups of people. There has to be a sense of urgency in order to get people to make fundamental changes. That's what's required to reduce the disparities I've highlighted.
You have to give people clear and convincing reasons if you want them to make significant changes. The message for me is simple:
1. Racism is not a major impediment to black progress. The stagnation will continue as long as the bias narrative holds sway.
2. Black people can achieve their version of the "American Dream" if they're prepared to make fundamental changes. We see examples of this all around us, especially with black immigrants.
The simpler the message, the better. Roger Ferguson's three steps for closing the racial wealth gap, for example, are logical and easily understood. This excerpt from one of Greg Thomas' posts, by contrast, rang hollow for me:
For example, from a racialized perspective, there’s a wealth gap of $164,100 between “whites” and “blacks” in a recent Federal Reserve survey. Yet, as Ian Rowe details in his excellent work Agency:
According to the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median net worth of a two-parent, college-educated black family is $219,600. For a white, single-parent household, the median net worth is $60,730,” a differential of $158,870 in favor of such “blacks.”
Who compares the wealth of single parent white households with that of black married couple households? Is this meaningless "apples to oranges" comparison supposed to be good news or something that's useful if we want to close the wealth gap? All things being equal, black wealth lags white wealth across the entire distribution. That's what's important and that's the issue that needs to be addressed.
You mentioned taking a longer term perspective when talking about black progress. Maybe I didn't make this point strongly enough, but half of Black America is 32 or younger. I won't go so far as to say young people don't care about what happened 60-70 years ago, but they've only experienced stagnation. It's important to talk to them about things they've seen firsthand and to offer them a path towards a better life for them and their children.
"Who compares the wealth of single parent white households with that of black married couple households? Is this meaningless "apples to oranges" comparison supposed to be good news or something that's useful if we want to close the wealth gap?"
Ian Rowe in his book, Agency" that's who. His point, as is mine, is that the factors determining disparate statistical results MUST INCLUDE VARIABLES ASIDE FROM RACE!!
It is not true that the half of Black America 32 or younger have "only experienced stagnation," Clifton. Human beings are not stick figures in statistical measures based on the fallacious idea of race. I believe in clarity and precision in language too. So why not say SOME young people identified as black have experienced stagnation?
Have the children of the 340,000 black-identified millionaires only experienced stagnation?
I don't mean to imply that children of wealthy parents don't have problems, goodness no. But, for goodness sake, why can't you grok that from a business and investment perspective, there must be assets of some kind, tangible to intangible, to draw upon to raise angel or venture capital?
Your narrative of lack and limitation, I daresay, lends itself more to the bias narrative than the development narrative. The bias narrative is focused on how historical discrimination and so-called systemic racism is the reason we see disparities. The bias narrative is more focused on external obstacles over internal communal and cultural resources, whether expressed by individuals or the group. The development narrative points to the need for Afro-Americans to develop the skills, habits, and mindsets that will allow us to improve ourselves internally, within the group, to ameliorate the disparities and problems that still beset us.
By painting an exclusive picture of lack and limitation, you provide fuel for those who center on the bias narrative. They will point to the same statistics you do, but will look at external causes as the basis. My perspective, which transcends the bias narrative while including the reality that we as a group, and as a society, have far to go, paints a picture of our actual historical and cultural achievements as a people, and supports thereby a development narrative. One develops based on foundations. Our achievements is one such foundation.
Although personal, individual accounts aren't "statistically significant," they still can serve as representative anecdotes with larger implications. Take my daughter, for instance, now 27 years old. She is in the cohort of 32-and under that comprises 50% of the group. She grew up in an environment of working to middle-class people; within the family, it was primarily Afro-American in ethnic and cultural terms, at school, it was a diverse mixture of students from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds on Staten Island.
Her mother and I divorced when she was very young; her mother and I both remarried, so according to "statistical measures," she grew up in a "broken home." NO. She had a birth mother and a stepmother, a biological father and a stepfather--we all loved and love her and supported her growth and development. As a pre-teen, she stayed with me on weekends, and I would take her to Barnes & Nobles regularly for her to be around books and literature. She was surrounded by books and music and art at home too. She studied at the Harlem School of the Arts when I lived in Harlem.
How did she fare? Well, she was deeply disappointed when she wasn't accepted to any of the NYC specialized schools. But God works in mysterious ways. My former wife, her mom, and I agreed that she should come live with me and my wife in New Rochelle, NY, and attend the very good public high school there, rather than the lackluster high school she was zoned for in Staten Island.
She blossomed academically and otherwise, coming into her own as a young lady. And when she applied to college, she did so via early admission at Dartmouth . . . and was accepted! She continued to blossom there, majoring in computer science. In her junior year, she was selected as one of the top ten college women of the year by Vogue magazine, and was also one of three Afro-American young ladies honored by Michelle Obama on the Black Girls Rock television program.
After graduation, for several years she worked as a computer engineer in Silicon Valley. Two years ago, she applied for graduate school. She was accepted, and is currently in her last semester in a joint MBA-Engineering program at MIT.
Does my daughter's story not matter because it's relatively rare, indeed exceptional for a young person of ANY background? Cannot her story of Afro-American success despite the odds inspire others? This is an example why stories of actual success and achievement are crucial: they can inspire others who can themselves see what's possible, and can build their own aspirations for growth and development.
Here's a quote from my mentor Albert Murray on why such asset-framing is essential:
“Sometimes Americans are disposed to fair play and sometimes they are not. But they almost always invest their time, money, and enthusiasm in assets with promise, not liabilities. Even those who become involved in salvage operations have been sold on inherent potential.”
You ask about my deracialized version of blackness. Simple: it acknowledges that we are a people, an ethnic group, with a powerful culture, who have made strides in spite of almost insurmountable odds, and have contributed greatly to America's culture and conception of freedom. I don't use the term "blackness" per se because it is too akin to a persistent belief in race and racialization. We are a people, nonetheless, as I've said, with an ethnic and cultural identity. It is not necessary to hold onto the idea of race, the practice of racialization, and the mindset of a racial worldview, to have a personal and ethno-cultural group identity.
I'm just trying to get more people to realize and accept that reality, but racecraft keeps getting in the way. But there are a growing group of persons, for instance, Amiel Handelsman, who see the light at the end of the tunnel, and rather than making excuses for why the time isn't right to deracialize, shows the courage to do so NOW.
Thank you for these perspectives. I appreciate all the experience, wisdom, and data you bring. And it's healthy that we can name where we disagree, notably about the best sequence to take between deracialization and reducing disparities.
Per my prior comment, I trust you share my view that different audiences require different messages. Toward that end, I agree with you that if the audience is 25 year old black-identified Americans, comparing today's economic/educational numbers to the 1950s rings hollow. We agree there must be better messages than this. Yours might be data on disparities. I might focus my message for this group on deracialization for the sake of cultivating growth mindsets, getting out of a feeling of being stuck, and taking positive paths forward.
As for the data of 1950s versus today, that would be more valuable for the audience of anyone making decisions about where to invest public and private resources, e.g. public officials, foundations, corporate leaders, etc.—so they recognize the valuable asset they are investing in instead of continuing to see black-identified as liabilities on the balance sheet. I cannot tell you how many liberals, progressives, moderates and conservatives in my acquaintance speak about black-identified Americans (often with compassion, sometimes pity, sometimes apathy) as a problem to solve, as something to feel guilty about, etc (depending on the person), rather than as an asset to invest in. It's endemic.
In case I didn't make it clear, I am 100% behind your emphasis on shifting the public dialogue from purely income measures to also wealth measures. Oliver and Shapiro's book "Black Wealth, White Wealth" convinced me of this 25 years ago, and nothing since then has changed my thinking. Being in conversation together about how to increase the wealth of black-identified Americans—that's a conversation worth being in. We may differ on how to get there, but share a commitment to the goal.
Having seen this movie before, how can anyone think that racializing every part of society once more will work out better? Race will never go away so long as it can be exploited for personal profit or political gain, and perhaps both. We enter Black History Month with theme of resistance. Resistance against what exactly? Civil rights have largely been achieved. That doesn't mean society is perfect but if perfection is the standard, then everyone will be perpetually disappointed.
What avenues of life are blacks excluded from these days? There is no field or industry that actively shuts them out. On the contrary, one company after another falls all over itself to hire or promote blacks, often irrespective of their ability or the results. Universities have watered down standards to increasing minority admissions, which should be seen as patently insulting and a case of setting people up for failure, but instead its hailed as a step forward. Everything from math to campus honor codes to punctuality has been characterized as evidence of white supremacy, again insulting the large numbers of black people who find none of those things especially vexing.
In reading Clifton's numbers, it reflects the "bias narrative" he cites. People have been conditioned to believe that every negative outcome that a black person experiences is solely due to race. How convenient. What excuse do people in other racial groups have when things do not go their way? This is 2023, not 1923. Police brutality? If anything, police have been castrated to the detriment of the law-abiding minority residents of those neighborhoods and cities. When you ask someone how many civilians of all races are killed by law enforcement annually, the gap between the response and the facts is enormous. THAT is a narrative in play, creating an illusion of reality. I daresay this is where the argument to de-emphasize race comes from - when it become a catch-all, then it sounds more like an excuse than an explanation.
In any society populated by heterogeneous groups, some disparities are likely. They exist in homogeneous societies, too, but no one there has the luxury of substituting an immutable characteristic for agency. As Glenn has repeatedly said, American blacks are the wealthiest, most powerful, and freest people of African descent anywhere on the planet. Far from saying good-bye to race, we have plunged headlong in the opposite direction, treating it as the only thing, which is not helping anyone. We have the DIE industry, which actively participates in racial and gender discrimination, but of the sort that is deemed acceptable. No; that's not how it works. Such discrimination is wrong on its face; it does not become okay because of who the targets are.
To the preceding three writers: at a time in the 20th Century when the various national "Communist" parties were becoming notorious for failures and atrocities, the CPUSA impressed the world with its justifiable denunciation of Jim Crow America. Now they are trying to cash in on last-century glory with all this absurd counting of blood drops and white-people-bashing.
Thanks to all three of you for directing attention to the absurdity.
Well said Alex. I always find it strange that people blame "Structural Racism" for the ills of communities that are currently largely staffed by Black Administrators and Police chiefs. How does this happen? And yet, we see many of these same problems in poor White Appalachian residents.
I am not a dog that chases my tail. Nor will I chase yours. With what blood quantum does a "white" person become black? Or at what quantum does a black person become white? Silly questions? Not when "serious" members of the government call Clearance Thomas, "white." Not when the five black police officers in Memphis are seriously accused of racism.
Many abhor "racism" in a very narrow technical sense and would not countenance the "typing" of people by skin spectrometer readings. Yet, that is exactly how "we" deal with Indians. Whether you do or do NOT receive tribal profits from gaming is, for many tribes and the members, a strictly blood quantum measurement.
So what does this have to do with other PoC? Obvious. Liberals can't affirm membership in some form of government (tribal, in this case) is UNRELATED to blood quantum, when in fact, that is how "rights" and tribal membership are determined. If race and racial history are meaningful constructs to define tribal government membership rights and casino profits rights, then we must acknowledge that rights of citizenship ARE directly related to skin color and blood heritage. And, actually, from my point of view as a non-native, it is really funny that folks with "Indian names" and who also might have an "Indian" profile, are in fact denied tribal membership because they cannot document their blood heritage. No matter that these individuals "look" like "Indians." Oh, YES, and that is defined by a federal government that does NOT practice racism. ( More Biden lies. )
Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment? What a joke. Clearly, we're still in the early stage of trying to deal with "skin color" and history as the basis for superior rights and inferior rights. What, not a relevant issue today? Au contraire. The Lac du Flambeau Tribe has blocked road access to my friends home. While they can drive their vehicles to their home, the title to which they "own" totally, they cannot return from the pharmacy by car. Last night, it was about -30 in real temp. To allow a friend to pickup insulin, my friend was allowed to pass the blockaded road, but he was NOT allowed to return to his home. [ https://lakelandtimes.com/ ] Had he been a "tribal" member, well then, sure he would not have been affected.
Seriously, was Obama "black," or white? Same for others. 10%, 20%, 49% -- at what point are we defined as "white" or "black? ?
This showed up in the Chronicle of Higher Education but I don't know if either participant has seen it. https://www.brookings.edu/2023/01/23/college-enrollment-gaps-how-academic-preparation-influences-opportunity/ In short these researchers found that 62% of Black students do go to college in some form and higher SES and academic preparation might make Black students more likely to attend college than equivalent white students. This suggests that differing school districts may spend exactly the same amount of money but have different expectations about how much of it is just to avoid the worst possible outcomes for the students. It feeds into Greg's point that even if the strengths in the Black community are not enough to save the community by themselves now, if they are not treated as something to build on then the worst-off members of the community may not thrive.
Thanks for your comment. I hadn't seen the Brooking analysis you referenced and haven't had a chance to read it carefully. I'm surprised they say 62% of black students go to college. That's inconsistent with data from the National Center for Education Statistics that says the overall college enrollment rate for 18 to 24 year-olds was 40% in 2020 and that the enrollment rate for blacks was 36%:
The overall college enrollment rate for 18- to 24-year-olds was 40 percent in 2020. The college enrollment rate in 2020 was higher for 18- to 24-year-olds who were Asian (64 percent) than for those who were White (41 percent), Hispanic (36 percent), Black (36 percent), of Two or more races (34 percent), Pacific Islander (34 percent), and American Indian/Alaska Native (22 percent).
College can be a pathway to a lucrative career, but only if you graduate. The college completion rates I quoted from the National Center for Education Statistics show graduation rates for black college students are lower than those of their peers. More recent analyses from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and Third Way show a similar pattern:
A look at NAEP scores and ACT college readiness benchmarks shows that black students, as a group, enter college not as well prepared as their peers. Here's a link for ACT college readiness scores:
Download the 2022 National Profile Report and go to Figure 3.1 or Table 3.3 if you want to do a deep dive.
It stands to reason that students entering college who aren't as well prepared as their peers will struggle and that fewer of them will graduate.
I'm not sure how to interpret this part of your comment:
"This suggests that differing school districts may spend exactly the same amount of money but have different expectations about how much of it is just to avoid the worst possible outcomes for the students. It feeds into Greg's point that even if the strengths in the Black community are not enough to save the community by themselves now, if they are not treated as something to build on then the worst-off members of the community may not thrive."
The money spent per pupil on instruction by K-12 schools doesn't vary much by race according to the St. Louis Fed. That doesn't totally refute your point about schools potentially trying to "avoid the worst possible outcomes" for students, but I don't know how to measure this. Either way, the question is what can we do to boost the academic performance of black students? We have to take a hard look at things like chronic absenteeism and parental engagement if we want to close the gap.
That 62% a) includes 2-year colleges and b) was based on the High School Longitudinal Survey which is a representative sample of 2009-10 ninth graders, so the survey must have some way to track them.
I tried so hard to write that about expectations clearly; I am not sure I know how to measure it in an objective way either. But my fundamental position which I at least tried to email Glenn last year is that telling Black Americans to emulate Jews and some Asian groups is telling Black Americans to emulate groups where education is a value. These groups will elevate any school system they are in because they have a notion of the value of education and what education should be like independent of that school system. In St. Louis where I live, Sumner High School was by all accounts a wonderful school that after integration fell on such hard times that the school board was thinking about closing it, but in general segregation squelched the notion of education as a value in so many people because there could be only so many jobs for educated people and education was used to show Black people that they were inferior by such things as the Black schools obviously having fewer resources than the white schools. So education becomes a kind of good behavior that people believe in for utilitarian reasons. You need to study what the school system considers that their success means and that may need a deep study of what teachers and administrators actually say and do.
Thanks for your comments and your clarification of the Brookings analysis. I eventually figured it out after looking at the Appendix.
I agree with you about expectations at school, but I don't know how to measure it either. This is especially true at a time when teachers are often pressured to modify grades (e.g., No zeros allowed. Nobody gets less than a 50 even if they didn't turn in their assignment. Teachers are encouraged to give students second chances to do make up work to offset poor or missed assignments. Etc.) and to ignore disciplinary issues in order to minimize suspensions and expulsions. The overall message seems to be that kids need to move on to the next grade except in extraordinary circumstances. Teachers who give kids failing grades often open themselves up to harsh scrutiny.
It is easier for a human, or a pollster, or a chart maker to identify and compare white and black. Suppose your sort groups are "uses an economic system well" and "uses an economic system poorly?" Hard to picture, poll for, or display. Thus we tend to default to the obvious weaker explanations, and thus weaker categories for group sorting.
Suppose you have White average income is $40,000 and Black average income at $25,000. Very easy to follow your cognitive bias and blame "racism" for the "obvious differences." But add more data:
Rich whites make $50,000 and poor whites make $0. Rich Blacks make $50,000 and poor blacks make $0. If whites are 80-20 and blacks are 50-50, you get the same statistic above. With extra data the problem is more easy to visualize as a "Poor Income Level" problem. Any racism that exists is in the ratio of Poor Blacks to Poor Whites. You have two ways to fight then, change the income of poor people, or figure out how to address the ratios of just the poor people. But then all people making money studying just "Race" are out of work.
The continuance of Race as a category persists until we learn how to view others as belonging to multiple categories. Personality? Culture? Activities? Enthusiasms? Skills? Race does tend to disappear as a category as you get deeper into a skill set. We could study any trade group with mixed races and probably learn a great deal about how people relate to other people when they have something to talk about. Maybe we start with Football Fans at the Super Bowl next week?
It is not much of an elephant. Murray looked back at a huge stack of tests and made the only comparison he could. That is the source of the stated difference in IQ bewtween blacks and whites. Sowell once pointed out that Jewish immigrants in early 1900s scored very low on IQ tests, but a generation later scored very high. All it took then was cultural adaptation. What we need is more data on where the actual differences occur now. As the great Ronald Fryer likes to say, "We could test that!"
Gather as much data as you can and make as many comparisons as you can. Rich vs ooor. Two parents vs one. Blacks vs Whites. Male vs Female. Good schools vs bad. Glenn's pretty smart. Probably got an IQ off the charts. John's likely still on the chart, but up there. If the difference shows up as racial we have one thing to address. If it shows up as rich vs poor it is another.
The elephants stampeding all over the place are us all being too damn chicken to face actual facts and solve real problems.
And here is an old, but interesting article about a minority woman whose child was refused IQ testing because at that time in California it was deemed racially and culturally biased. I don't know if this is still the case in California:
I firmly believe that racial and ethnic differences in IQ have very little to do with racial genetics per se, although individual genetics may play a part. Many of these studies point out that the issues are many times multifactorial, but the bottom line seems to lie in the cultural milieu the child is exposed to.
I think it's also important to understand individual's different learning and or thought processing characteristics to help determine each person's potential.
It's not realistic, nor is it the responsibility for a society to expect to make every child a potential neurosurgeon. The function of education as I see it is to prepare the child for the ability to earn a decent living, whether as a tradesperson, in the service field or as a professional. However, the solutions to childhood education, particularly in minorities will not be quick and easy. Teaching children of any race that they are victims and oppressed by the racial majority, and that the values of professionalism, timeliness, hard work and education are vestiges of a supremacist culture will be extremely counterproductive.
This seems like this is the quintessential question of the chicken and the egg: are people racialized by society or do they racialize themselves? At some point it seems like both sides need to call a truce if we want to move past this.
Clifton, you said “My overall point is that we can't deracialize America as long as large racial disparities persist and the bias narrative holds sway “. Doesn’t the bias narrative require a racial identity? Without racial identity doesn’t the bias narrative lose its teeth? I mean, everyone with a victim mentality will find something to blame for their failures/shortcomings. The problem, from my experience, comes when everyone affirms the legitimacy of their victimhood, instead of saying “Man, that sucks. What can you do different/better next time?” (This is a general observation, not specific to race).
Thanks Amy! I appreciate your comment. Pew Research issued a report last April that was titled, "Race Is Central to Identity for Black Americans and Affects How They Connect With Each Other:"
No matter where they are from, who they are, their economic circumstances or educational backgrounds, significant majorities of Black Americans say being Black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves, with about three-quarters (76%) overall saying so.
Having an identity is to be human. Most people want to be part of something bigger than themselves. We have family identities. We join groups. We root for our favorite athletes and sports teams because we feel a connection with them. We enjoy the company of people who share our culture, values, norms, heritage, sensibilities, etc. These things lead to social cohesion. They help explain why people are willing to make sacrifices for others and/or the common good.
Social cohesion collapses when large numbers of people think they and other members of their group are victims of discrimination. They view their neighbors and fellow citizens warily and pay more attention to the differences between them and their peers instead of the things they have in common.
Debunking the bias narrative is critical if we want to reduce racial disparities and deracialize America. More black people might embrace Roger Ferguson's ideas for closing the racial wealth gap, for example, if they had more trust in the financial markets. A distrust of financial institutions is one of the reasons why cryptocurrencies became popular with black consumers in recent years according to the Kansas City Fed:
The collapse of cryptocurrencies is well documented. People who purchased them because they distrusted financial institutions exemplify what can happen when false narratives hold sway.
Clifton, I agree that black identity is clearly a thing. I don’t dispute how important it is. Right now, the narrative I hear is to constantly tell me that groups are under attack by other groups. If you identify as part of those groups and are constantly told that you are discriminated against, you would certainly develop a worldview and identity in which that is the case. For example, when you survey white people a shocking number believe they (or I should say “we”) are under attack more than any other group, Christians claim to be under assault in America, etc. So an individual’s perception of bias is not the best indicator of bias.
Let me separate the conversation from race per se, and maybe you’ll understand my question better. Let’s say I am a young female engineer and I have an issue with an older male engineer actively undermining me. I can tell myself, “Wow, this guy is a jerk. How can I resolve my particular situation”. Or I can say “this office is sexist and I am the victim of discrimination.” Maybe both are true, but one is empowering, and the other not. One makes the problem one explicitly of identity and the other just an interpersonal issue to resolve. Worse, if I think about it in those identity based terms, I might think there is some truth to the identity of my group (in this case young female engineers) is in actuality inferior and/or a separate group from the overwhelming majority (older male engineers). I’d argue, in reality we are one group (engineers working on solving whatever technical issue).
Now maybe I’m misunderstanding something… but in my attempt at a non race analogy, if the result is all female engineers migrate to different departments so that the company is sex-segregated because the female engineers can’t trust the male engineers to be fair in their interactions… soon it would be a self-fulfilling arrangement, wouldn’t it? And who would actually benefit in that arrangement?
The female engineer can frame the issue the ways you suggested - "This guy's a jerk! What can I do about it?" or "This place is sexist and I'm the victim of discrimination!" She could also ask herself a series of questions to help determine if the issues she has with her colleague are borne of something other than sexism (e.g., Do either of them have personality traits or approaches to their jobs that rub each other the wrong way? Do other women at work have issues with this guy or is her situation unique? Does he get along with other young colleagues?). She could ask herself a lot of questions before she reached any conclusions about her colleague and decided what to do next. How far and how honestly she's willing to go with this exercise tells us a lot about her maturity and how much her "identity" influences her decision-making.
I agree, if I'm understanding your point correctly, that "identity" often keeps people from reconciling their differences and achieving "win-win" scenarios.
I think that is clearly true that identity can get in the way, but that wasn’t quite where I was going. I tried to pick a realistic and concrete example of a situation and reaction without the burden of that being an established “identity”, sort of like Star Trek exploring our world by putting it in an outer space context. Clearly not doing as well as I’d like. It was an example in my own life, but I’m not trying to make it about me.
But let’s say it’s me, since that’s where we are. There is a difference between being affirmed that my treatment was because of an identity (young female) and being encouraged to think of it as a specific incident makes a difference (I was encouraged to see it both ways over the years)... It especially makes a difference when it happens dozens of times, in different situations and with different people. It’s really easy to get a chip on your shoulder if you let it. This is objectively borne out by the number of young women who leave STEM fields in the first few years of their careers (I believe in the early 2000s it was as high as 50%). And yet, there is not an identity of “young females in STEM”. If that became an entrenched identity, I think it would only serve to make the problem worse. And then who benefits? And how do you ever move past it?
I don’t know if that made it more clear, or not. But to take *me* out of it: If you hold on strongly to an identity that is forged as part of being a group that is discriminated against, how do you let go of the idea that you are discriminated against because of your membership in the group (ie bias narrative)?
You ask a good and tough question at the end of your reply. We can never know with certainty why others act the way they do or why they react to us the way they do. It takes a good deal of wisdom and maturity to avoid immediately suspecting the worse when things don't go well when we interact with others. This is especially true for young people.
Friends of mine have wrestled with finding ways to make young female engineers feel accepted and appreciated at work. Mentoring seems to help. So does frequent and constructive feedback from bosses. That said, nothing is foolproof.
My sense is that the bias narrative loses strength when there's clear evidence that it's wrong, we have faith that bias will be addressed when it occurs, or we can see examples of people who share our "identity" but are thriving.
I appreciate you saying you try, but that really shouldn’t be necessary. In my experience there were very overtly inappropriate situations that made everyone in the room uncomfortable (and went out of their way to say so). But that is not something where 80% being normal humans erases the 20% that are just unprofessional jerks… once again though, that is not my point. Let me say it another way… for me I wanted to be seen as an engineer and all of my issues were when I was instead perceived of primarily as a young female. If I internalized that I was a female as my primary identity I would see the world through that lens and not as an engineer in an office. I was given lots of reasons to see myself in that gendered way, but I resented that expectation too much to do it. Your data on “blackness” indicates “black” is the primary identity. In identifying that way so strongly, all the bad things that happen are because of the “black” identity and not because of anything else. To me, that impedes progress. Does that make sense? If not, I should probably stop, though I do really enjoy beating metaphorical dead horses.
My physician wife had some of the same issues in her medical group. Oddly, some of the older doctors who were of foreign birth and more fundamental religious backgrounds were more accepting of her than the younger men. And the blatant fact was that most of the men were very accepting and supportive, but there were a few jerks who treated both her and other male colleagues poorly.
Which goes to the fact that there really are still many racist individuals in this country, and they are of all different races and ethnicities themselves. This does not mean that the whole of "White" America is racist in and of itself. Nor should people of any race excoriate another race for the bad actions of the few bad actors within those racial groups.
Very often we hear people say "I do not see color". Some on the cultural left laugh at them. No data to prove this, but I have the intuition that what many are saying, or trying to say, is that of course they see color but do not see race, yet lack the language to describe this liminal space, searching for something beyond what our long-lived constructions will conceptually and linguistically allow. I was introduced to this "raceless-ness" (but fulsome appreciation of ethnicity) through Crouch, and Murray, on whom I wrote a thesis. Murray sought to puncture the myth of race. He used the phrase "so-called black and white," he used "afro-american," he used "negro", perhaps as chord changes, signposts through which we may improvise our way, living with and confronting both "the cold hard facts of life," - race as currently understood - all the while searching for and perhaps building an Omni-American conception with its attendant language, with which this conversation surely consonant.
A couple of ideas. This is a fruitful exchange, but the problem I have with the statistics provided is that they are a kind of normalized and racialized narrative of political complaint that, by using race, always has the hidden time bomb of allowing some racial theory of causation. This is why using race defies the scientific method. Consider describing any chemical reaction without reference to temperature and pressure. You cannot. Not even something as simple as determining the boiling point of water will be consistent if you do not account for the pressure of the environment of the reaction in question.
Now take the question of the increase of nominally black real wealth indicated by the chart provided. What does the inclusion of white and hispanic figures have to do with the trajectory of the black line? Nothing. It simply provides a comparison by race. So long as people carry around racial theories, you can only be assured that wealth (or lack of wealth) will be attributed to race.
Why not make this comparison by blood type? It's something done quite commonly in Japan. The reason is simple. We in America have no deep social meaning associated with blood type as we do with race. Nobody is asserting that we should positively or negatively discriminate, select or monitor by blood type for social purposes. Instead we feel compelled to include race.
I say the reason for this is owing to the power that accrues to those with the most compelling racial theory. It's not that the race itself changes, but our idea of what we can do with the political power to discriminate, select or monitor by race. The underlying common understanding of race doesn't change. The black racial stereotype of being highly sexualized is never exchanged for the stereotype associated with another race. Those myths are fixed and they are perpetuated.
So individuals who have been racialized and accept that racial identity will always be at pains to figure out which way the racial politics will go. They are compelled to pay attention to 'The Bell Curve' or try to map their understanding of race to people in other countries, in other time periods. It is therefore no surprise that people who are 'Afrocentric' in one decade are 'Woke' in another. Round and round the rugged rock of race they run until they are ragged rascals, wondering where their ancient glory went and where their future glory lies.
Of course it lies in the power of policy to come up with patches and circuses until a final solution is presented.
American race is a fiat identity created to 'justify' the civil deprivations of slavery. Practically every way to devalue that identity is a step in the direction towards equality and undermines all future temptations and moral hazards of racial theories.
In my opinion the fact that the vast majority of rapes/sexual assaults committed on white victims are intraracial is very meaningful in itself.
You are right, the situation has changed compared to the times when white men could exploit their power over Black women. According to the 2008 data I have quoted there were no reported rapes/sexual assaults committed on Black victims by white offenders.
As to the pre-Civil war interracial rape numbers, Martha Hodes writes in her fascinating book "White Women, Black Men" that "the accusation of rape of white women by black men in the slave South, as well as during the Civil War, when white men were absent from Southern homes" was actually infrequent. The situation fundamentally changed only in the late 19th century when Black men started being portrayed as a threat to white women by racist propaganda (one can see some excellent examples of such propaganda here: http://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/1898/primary/dem-sources/cartoons-no).
Let's remember, too, that many whites, especially in the South, refused to believe that a white woman could have a consensual relationship with a Black man. This makes any historical statistics on rapes committed by Black men on white women extremely unreliable.
The stats you are responding to are extremely misleading. It is not true that there were zero black victim/white perpetrator rapes. How could you see that statistic and not be skeptical? Look at the footnote.
*Estimate based on 10 or fewer sample cases
So they asked 10 or fewer black victims and none of them had been raped by a white person so they applied it to the total number of victims. It's actually shocking that they would report numbers based on such a small sample.
Second obvious factor is that the vast majority of rapes/sexual assaults happen within relationships of some kind (date rape). There are far more black male /white female relationships than there are white male / black female relationships. So you would expect some disparity between the number. Also due to the fact they count "verbal threats of rape or sexual assault" in these numbers.
And lastly, the pool of potential white victims (PWV) is 5x as large as the pool of potential black victims (PBV). This would negate your whole theory. (But statistics aren't my strength so maybe I am missing something)
I did not imply that there was something cheery about these data. What I meant is that they prove that white women in the US are usually raped by white men. You were wondering if there were any statistics and I have provided some statistics.
You are right, Black offenders are overrepresented among the rapists of white victims, but these statistics don't indicate that the "hypersexualized black male stereotype" may be true, contrary to what you seemed to be implying in an earlier comment ("Perhaps the statistics would demonstrate the utter falsity of the hypersexualized black male stereotype. An ancient and doggedly persistent "myth" might finally be laid to rest. But perhaps not.").
Various complex factors explain these statistics, I am later going to mention some academic articles. First of all, women are usually raped by men they know, not by strangers. Because of the current dynamics of interracial interactions there is a much greater likelihood of interaction between a Black man and a white woman than between a white man and a Black woman.
Secondly, in the case of stranger rape perpetrators probably don't look for victims in their own neighbourhoods. And if they look for them in other areas, it is much easier to get access to a white victim than to a Black victim. Thirdly, a white woman may be easy to be overpowered by a Black perpetrator both for psychological reasons (including the stereotype of the aggressive Black criminal) and for physical reasons (white American women are much less likely to be physically strong than Black women).
The statistics I have quoted prove that Black offenders are much more likely to rob than to rape white victims, which is not in the least surprising. Anyway "hypersexuality" (a highly questionable term) is not the same as the likelihood of committing rape. It would be much more helpful to study e.g. statistics on porn use. A man can have a very high libido without ever committing rape.
I think the problem with that is the very low dimensionality of social science. Given how little we know about any behavioral influences of genetics, all such racial questions are dealing in the wrong dimensions. The analogy is saying that chemistry is simply measuring percentages of earth, air, fire and water. So long as we are measuring in the simplified terms of race, we will never come to any insight. Or that psychology is simply measuring the four homours (blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy).
Im suggesting then, as a data engineer, that Amazon, for example, can know what you want to buy and never ask you about race; that there are thousands of behavioral markers that are influenced by choices and situations that number in the billions. What humans might do in the complex adaptive system of today's society is impossible to measure or predict in 17th century terms.
I should clarify that I do not expect that anyone should reroute their racial ideas through a proper filter of genetics. Statistical morality is a cheesy cheat that misses the point entirely. Only the sort of bumbling Babbitts who would invite people to a party based on a spreadsheet analysis would pursue that angle. I'm not talking about New Genetic Rules for Karens. I'm talking about red pilling the entire universe of racial thought.
The endgame of this idea is that there is only the most marginal amount of friction for those who deny or defy their 'proper' racial heritage. What happens to the Irish American who calls bullshit on St. Patricks Day? What happens to the black American who calls bullshit on Black History Month? More than nothing. Racial politics is to blame.
Three men trying to reach the same admirable end using different terminology. It seems to me that a life well led cannot put aside God’s intended differences.
Do you think if in 1964 we had committed ourselves to a colorblind society -- by law with respect to government action, by declaration with respect to institutions, we would have it today?
Certainly the differences between the races are entirely superficial, but these superficialities ride shotgun with culture and heritage, which are not superficial at all. Consequently it's not just outsiders who categorize members of other races on these grounds, it's also the self-identified members of the races themselves. The desire to self-partition in this way is probably linked to the primitive part of the human brain that wants to be on a "team." As long as that is part of human nature, I wouldn't bet on the future of deracialization.
Blue-eyed white people are at higher risk for age-related macular degeneration than their brown-eyed white counterparts. Would you say that means there is some kind of fundamental difference between them?
Except in that case it isn’t genetics, per se. Blue eyes have less pigment to protect the eyes from (mostly sun) damage. Similarly, if you have fairer skin you have a higher risk of skin cancer… there are certainly black identified people with light eyes and/or skin.
Wow. Other countries, and governments, and researchers, dropped 'race' a long, long time ago. Robust data is collected under the category 'ethinicity', which encompasses a great deal more than white and black. America is so retro in some things. I shake my head in wonder. (Critical race theory? Studied that 30 years ago, but that's not what it was branded in sociology circles back then.)
It seems like Greg is promoting a fake-it-til-you-make-it campaign. We all walk around with highly evolved stereotyping machines in our heads. We all see race. On average we clearly interact far more with racial in-groups than out-groups. I suppose we could all try to overcome these realities with a disciplined and very mindful change in the way we speak about race, but that seems extraordinarily unlikely to achieve success. Fighting thousands of years of human nature is quite a task. It seems the more likely path will be that we intermix so much that our brain becomes less and less reliant on racial stereotyping because its just no longer all that useful. That will take patience though. Not our strong suit.
As long as we are talking about overcoming human nature I would think openness and forgiveness would be the quickest solution. Let's all be totally honest about the stereotypes that we carry around. Air them out and discuss. I bet we could get rid of half of them with a kind of society wide cognitive behavioral therapy session. Have all of our unfounded stereotypes dissected and challenged. This is the approach Daryl Davis takes and it has lead to dozens of KKK members seeing the light. So imagine what it would do for good people who just don’t have a lot of exposure to other races. The current strategy for well-meaning people who carry around racial stereotypes is to smile and pretend they don’t have them. Racial awkwardness is a big impediment to more integration. Awkwardness is often the result of not knowing what you are supposed to say and worrying what you are thinking will offend.
This is a dream of course. This kind of honesty might lead to a lot of fist fights.
Disparate outcomes measured by race imply that their cause is the inability of the individual to achieve because of their race. Once within that paradigm we are left with whether the cause is internal or external to that individual. Is it their adoption of some societal induced reduced expectation or an undefined external systemic racist structure or some other internal or external racial factor. Regardless of the outcome of the discussion, we are stuck within the framework of race. We are unable to offer a solution that doesn’t involve race which brings with it all the baggage of the racial “victim”.
It seems (at least to me) that if we truly want to solve problems then we need to deracialize the way we think about the issues we are trying to address. If we ignore race and gather data differently then we can deracialize both the problem and the solution. What percentage of convicted felons come from homes living in poverty, what percentage of those felons were raised in urban environments, what percentage of those felons came from single mother households, what percentage of those felons didn’t graduate high school, etc., etc. If we are addressing a societal issue, why would we ever care if the racial percentages of the resulting population differ from their make-up in the overall population. It is our societal problem, not a racial problem, that we are attempting to address.
Perhaps my ignorance is showing and while we can attribute 95% of a particular issue (high school dropout rates, incarceration rates, unemployment rates, etc.) to cross racial factors, there remains a racial disparity that is solely a function of race that as Mr. Thomas argues comes from a racialized world view. For me, that should be the last factor we consider and not the framework within which we approach the problem.
Where Glenn and Greg appear to agree:
1. When you spend time in the U.S., you learn racial categories and you learn to believe them. Glenn calls this "being raced." Greg calls it racialization and details the steps involved.
2. These racial categories are deeply entrenched in the culture, social practices, everyday conversation, social science data, etc.
3. They're both willing to acknowledge the reality of these categories
Where Glenn and Greg disagree:
1. Glenn is describing what is. Greg is envisioning what could be. As Glenn says, his argument is deliberately not normative; it's not evaluating how good or bad race-ing/racialization is. Greg is making an evaluation. He's saying: this isn't working, and here is what better looks like.
Question for Glenn: if you were to take a normative stance and ask what better looks like, setting aside the odds of bringing it to fruition, what do you think of Greg's vision?
2. In referencing these racial categories, Glenn is comfortable sticking with the conventions, e.g. black and white. Greg says: no, we need more accurate ways of talking about this. Hence his terminology "racialized as black."
Question for Glenn: using terms like "racialized as black" is obviously a bit more effort and even awkward when few other people say it, but you've never been one to shy away from standing apart from the crowd. If you set aside this verbal awkwardness, doesn't this terminology acknowledge the social convention of race-ing as well as, if not better than, the word "black?" I realize you don't see the upside gains of this shift, but can you name any downsides?
Mr. Roscoe, thank you for your thoughts. Two clarifying questions for you:
1. One way to deracialize people is to use different language. Let's say the U.S. Census started capturing data on how people are identified/racialized by others. Let's then say the charts on wealth you provide above reflected these shifts: they had all the same data but in the legend said "racialized black" instead of "black" and "racialized white" instead of "white." Ditto for the charts on 4th grade reading scores you provide in your piece on affirmative action, and so on. I contend that this change of terminology does not diminish a confrontation with brutal facts. Would you agree?
2. Let's say we paid attention to all of the important charts you provide AND, per Greg Thomas, also look at charts showing progress over time, e.g. the massive increase in the black-identified middle class in the past several decades. No need to stop looking at the bad news when we look at some good news. What objection would you make to this?
Thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks for your questions. Here are a couple of responses:
1. A rose by any other name smells the same. What would be accomplished by the approach you suggest? Would it lead to a reduction in racial discrepancies? Would people who think they're victims of discrimination feel better about their situations if they thought of themselves as "racialized black" or "racialized white?" I'm skeptical.
2, Progress towards closing racial disparities stalled out many years ago. Derek Neal's paper suggests that what he called the "skills convergence" ended during the late 1980's. The academic achievement gap and the college readiness gap, for example, have persisted for decades.
The wealth gap hasn't improved much over the years according to the St. Louis Fed:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-wealth-inequality-changed-over-time-key-statistics
One of their charts shows that 82% of black families had less wealth than the typical white family in 2019 compared to 86% in 1989. Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton and others have done work that shows the same pattern ("WEALTH OF TWO NATIONS: THE U.S. RACIAL WEALTH GAP, 1860-2020"). Use this link to access the paper:
https://www.elloraderenoncourt.com/research
Use this link to access a non-technical summary:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmefnmslupdav23/DKKS_2022_Research_Brief.pdf?dl=0
Here are the opening paragraphs:
The racial wealth gap is the largest and most persistent of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans—with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. This wealth gap has evolved in a “hockey-stick” pattern, from a starting point of nearly 60 to 1 at the eve of the Civil War, to a ratio of 10 to 1 by 1920, and to7 to 1 during the 1950s, where it has hovered ever since. These figures come from our new data set on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios, the first continuous time series on the racial wealth gap covering the last 160 years. We constructed this database through the use of historical census data, early state tax records, national reports, annual studies on Black economic progress, and historical and modern waves of national surveys.
We find that the most dramatic episode of racial wealth convergence occurred in the first 50 years after Emancipation (during the Reconstruction Era), but that this initial rapid convergence gave away to much slower declines in the wealth gap during the 20thcentury. Since the 1980s, we even document a re-divergence in the racial wealth gap, instead of further convergence, which can be explained by a widening of the racial gap in capital gains.
A 2018 analysis from Zillow showed that the black-white homeownership gap was wider then (30 percentage points) than it was in 1900 (27 percentage points):
https://www.zillow.com/research/homeownership-gap-widens-19384/
The gap was about 30 percentage points as of Q4 of 2022 according to the US Census Bureau:
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html
The gap in median household incomes hasn't closed much over the years either according to the US Census Bureau:
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html
Median black household income was about 58% of that for whites in 1989 vs, 62% in 2021 (Use the link below, download the report, and look at the numbers in Table A-2 if you want to do a deep dive.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html
The median age for blacks in America was 32 as of 2019 according to Pew Research:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/
At least half of Black America has experienced minimal progress when it comes to closing the academic achievement gap. the income gap, the wealth gap, the homeownership gap, etc. What would you say to them?
The dilemma for older blacks and for black leaders is that they don't have a good explanation for the lack of progress since the late 1980's. They don't want to acknowledge their failures so they say racism is the primary cause. That claim doesn't hold up under scrutiny, but the bias narrative resonates with a lot of people.
I could be wrong, but my sense is that people can know that things aren't going well but aren't sure what to do about it. Many of them know that the bias narrative is baloney, but they haven't heard a clear and fleshed out version of the development narrative. Folks are ready for the "brutal facts" as long as they're accompanied by a clear vision and a realistic plan of action.
Mr. Roscoe,
Thanks for your response.
1. Some roses have lost their scent. Others have died.
Still, you ask a good question: "What would be accomplished by...?" If the answer is nothing, as you appear to assume, then I agree: why bother? Greg has made a strong case for the social and economic ills caused by racializing people. My hunch is you don't share his view of these. Nor do you see any benefit to deracializing people. I've written at length on this issue (an ebook called How To Be An Anti-race Antiracist, a deliberate play on Kendi, whom I have separately critiqued) but here's a quick and partial response:
a. Want people to stop complaining and start developing themselves...to shift from a victim mentality to a hero's journey or developmental approach? This requires a growth mindset. Believing you are a member of a race with fixed attributes doesn't help. So, in response to your question about people "feeling better", I would say: maybe better, but more likely they'd have new capacities, i.e. this is not just about "feeling."
What's behind me saying this: I'm an executive coach who has worked with senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies for 20 years. My speciality is helping people shift their narratives and take new actions. Loads of research around this...
b. We don't know what will happen until we try, but why give up on innovation before you start?
When 3M introduced post-it notes, did they imagine all the ways people would use them? Nope. When Honda was trying to introduce its motorcycles into the U.S. market, did it realize that customers in the L.A. area would chose to request the smaller motorcycles driven by Honda salespeople rather than the larger ones that Honda was deliberately trying to sell Americans? Not at all. (Henry Mintzberg, the great Canadian management thinker, has written about this).
As Americans, does our interest in inventing and innovating only apply to the for-profit sector? Do we act as though these capacities are useless in the area of social policy and shifting social habits? Gosh, I would hope not.
2. I admire and agree with your data but I don't think you've answered my basic question: what's wrong with presenting data showing progress of black-identified Americans IN ADDITION TO all the data around the disparities?
- I have zero arguments with your data about the racial wealth gap. I remember hearing Mel Oliver speak 25 years ago about his book Black Wealth, White Wealth and was sold on the importance of tracking wealth over income. This is a massive social, economic and political challenge. I'm with you all the way on this..
AND...
- All of the data you provide is a comparison of "black" and "whites." Why no data showing a comparison of black-identified Americans today versus, say, 1970 or 1950 WITHOUT comparing to "whites?" Why do all of the statistics you provide need to be a comparison between groups? With GDP, sure economists compare the U.S. to other countries, but they put as much attention on changing in U.S. GDP over time without comparing to other countries. Ditto for many other socioeconomic measures—why not do that here? Has there been no progress in the material conditions of black-identified Americans in the U.S.?
Ironically, the extreme progressive postmodernists would agree. Reading their writing I almost get the sense not only has there been no progress since the 1950s but life isn't much better than during slavery. It's a remarkable way of creating a narrative that denies the truth of hard-earned gains.
In my line of work, we focus on bad news AND good news. Disaster and dignity. This is essential to getting people to shift their social habits, how they spend their time, what choices they make, etc. I'm curious what keeps you from being willing to do this on this topic.
I welcome your thoughts.
Thanks for your response.
1. I'm all for deracializing America. Greg Thomas and I disagree about how far we should go with this and what steps are required to reach whatever level of racialization is appropriate. I covered this is my first response. Here's an excerpt:
We all seem to agree that today's highly racialized environment is bad, but I didn't get a clear sense of what his deracialized replacement looks like. Does he want the government to stop collecting racial data? Should we stop worrying about noticeable differences across the races (e.g., academic achievement gap, income gap, employment gap, wealth gap, life expectancy gap, differences in poverty rates, differences in incarceration rates, differences in criminal victimization rates, etc.)? What about differences relating to gender, age, sexual orientation, and other noticeable differences between easily identified groups of Americans? Should we stop worrying about them too? Should we abandon the concept of hate crimes? A lot of people would be relieved if these things happened, but we might not be a better country if we ignored these issues.
Last but not least, I didn't get a clear sense of what Greg Thomas thinks “blackness” should be. Can it be reduced to just culture? Does he think we should give up most black institutions since many of them perceive their missions to include more than just preserving black culture?
I say in a subsequent post that we need to debunk the bias narrative and show that the development narrative offers a path towards black progress. I think that's consistent with your "hero's journey" approach and having a "growth mindset" but feel free to provide more feedback.
2. Experience has taught me that language needs to be clear, concise, and unambiguous if you want to effectively communicate with with large groups of people.
You asked, "...what's wrong with presenting data showing progress of black-identified Americans IN ADDITION TO all the data around the disparities?" That approach allows people to avoid "confronting the brutal facts." It mutes the sense of purpose and urgency ("Things are OK. What's the rush?") needed to effect real and sustained change at scale.
It's fair to point out that things aren't as bad as they were in 1950, but the relative stagnation since the late 1980's is inescapable. Marc Morial of the National Urban League often refers to Black America as the caboose at the end of America's economic train. Black folks go faster or slower depending upon the speed of the train, but their relative position never changes:
https://www.washingtoninformer.com/national-urban-league-blacks-remain-relegated-to-americas-caboose/
The data I presented backs up that assertion. Equally important, progress in absolute terms has spotty at best. The Zillow report I referenced showed that black homeownership rates were lower in 2018 than they were in the mid 1980's. Real (inflation- adjusted) median household income for blacks was lower in 2017 than it was during the late 1990's:
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/demo/p60-263/figure1.pdf
Whites, Hispanics, and Asians, by contrast, all made progress during this period. To be fair, that period included two recessions, most notably "The Great Recession" of 2007-08, but those groups still had higher incomes during that period.
The stagnation I'm describing shows up in lots of ways. You can get a feel for it if you follow what's happening in black neighborhoods in cities around the country. They lack vibrancy and often look and feel run down. The black pessimism that Pew's data shows reflects this stagnation, as does the exodus of black people from places like Baltimore, Chicago, and New York.
I understand that some people look for signs of hope, but as friends of mine like to say, "Hope isn't a strategy." That's especially true when you're trying to make big changes at scale. You have to be clear-eyed and persistent.
Thanks for these good comments. I think I have a better understand of where you are coming from.
1. Maybe I didn't read your original post closely enough but your comment here ("I'm all for deracializing America") is the first time I recall your advocating for deracialization. It's good to see this say this directly. When you previously said that "today's racialized environment is bad" I didn't interpret that as making a case for deracialization. Thanks for the correction.
The rest of the excerpt from your first response I already addressed in my most recent #2, so I'll leave that be for now.
What does Greg mean by "blackness"? I'd add to that: what does anyone mean when they say "black." The terms indeed means different things to different people. Good topic for another thread.
2. I now see much more clearly why you want to keep your message and data focused on the disparities between "black" and "white" and the lack of progress recently in such disparities. For you, showing absolute figures of progress among black-identified Americans dilutes your message. It distracts people from understand how bad the disparities are. And the key to persuading people to act is to highlight the depth of the disparity. I suppose we might call this one theory of persuasion.
I have a different theory of persuasion as, I think, does Greg. My theory is that if you present both good news and bad news, the combination gives people enough of a nudge to take action yet without pushing them into moods of pessimism and resignation. You don't lose urgency. You take urgency and add a sense of momentum.
Greg makes a great case for stories and data that support a heroic narrative, one that doesn't ignore the brutal facts but shows people rising beyond them. He also makes a strong case that if you want the American people to invest in anything, you need to show the value of what they are investing in. What do you think of this "investment" form of persuasion? Once you accept that it has validity, then it becomes hard to devote 100% of your time/attention/charts to showing how bad a particular group is doing. People want to invest in positive assets. There is a story of black-identified Americans improving their value as assets to America. Why can't we tell this story?
Again, if you have a different theory of persuasion, then what I've just written makes no sense. I get it.
Also: which stories and which data we present depends on the audience. Basic segmentation. There are some audience for whom the full bad news produces positive action. There are some audiences for which the full bad news produces complete inaction. That's why a broad repertoire of narratives and data provides for a more nimble approach in a complex world.
Thank you for taking up my invitation to discuss data just for black-identified Americans over time. Based on the data you selected (home ownership and median household income) and the years you selected (mid 80s to 2017ish), the story is negative. Are there literally no positive trends for black-identified Americans during those time periods?
Perhaps as importantly, comparisons to the 80s make sense if your goal is to assess progress in the past 30 years, particularly if you want proof of a bad news story. But what if your goal, for the reasons I've outlined, is to show real progress. I'm sure you can find other periods (1958 to 2018?) for which it is an enormously important story. What makes these numbers less valid? Again, if your theory of persuasion is to only show the bad news, then you wouldn't tell this story. But if you wanted to tell this story, you could, and the data would be just as valid. More importantly, from my perspective, it would have the effect of demonstrating the increase in value of the asset known as black-identified Americans. And counteract the widely shared extreme progressive narrative that nothing really has changed and nothing will ever get better.
As for "Hope isn't a strategy," I agree. Yet that's not what we're talking about here. Positive narratives grounded in story and data aren't just about some vague thing called "hope". There is all sorts of data from the fields of positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and applied neuroscience that provide a direct link between the narratives people holds in their minds and the actions they take. If you want to reverse "pessimism" and "stagnation" telling people that their lives suck doesn't do it. Helping them learn their capacities, build new ones, and create a new narrative for their lives helps. I imagine that providing data and charts would help you understand this argument. Perhaps that's a topic for another thread.
Thanks for the dialogue. I appreciate it.
Thanks for your comments. The timeline leading up to the symposium is long and includes thousands of words. I understand why you would think I don't want to deracialize. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think that can happen, however, as long as large racial disparities exist and the bias narrative holds sway.
Discussions about what constitutes "blackness" and whether it needs to be redefined have been had on previous episodes of The Glenn Show, including the one that featured Greg Thomas and John McWhorter.
Being "black" is very or extremely important to 76% of Black Americans according to a survey that Pew Research did last April:
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2022/04/14/race-is-central-to-identity-for-black-americans-and-affects-how-they-connect-with-each-other/
Greg didn't define his deracialized version of "blackness" when he appeared on The Glenn Show and it's still not clear to me what that entails. As you said, that's another topic for another thread, but it's clear that the bias narrative is an integral component of "blackness" for much of Black America. The other Pew analysis I referenced shows that a large percentage of black people don't think they can achieve equality with their peers because of various forms of racism.
We seem to disagree when it comes to the best way to spur people to action. I've been around long enough to know mixing good news with bad news rarely yield good results when dealing with large groups of people. There has to be a sense of urgency in order to get people to make fundamental changes. That's what's required to reduce the disparities I've highlighted.
You have to give people clear and convincing reasons if you want them to make significant changes. The message for me is simple:
1. Racism is not a major impediment to black progress. The stagnation will continue as long as the bias narrative holds sway.
2. Black people can achieve their version of the "American Dream" if they're prepared to make fundamental changes. We see examples of this all around us, especially with black immigrants.
The simpler the message, the better. Roger Ferguson's three steps for closing the racial wealth gap, for example, are logical and easily understood. This excerpt from one of Greg Thomas' posts, by contrast, rang hollow for me:
For example, from a racialized perspective, there’s a wealth gap of $164,100 between “whites” and “blacks” in a recent Federal Reserve survey. Yet, as Ian Rowe details in his excellent work Agency:
According to the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median net worth of a two-parent, college-educated black family is $219,600. For a white, single-parent household, the median net worth is $60,730,” a differential of $158,870 in favor of such “blacks.”
Who compares the wealth of single parent white households with that of black married couple households? Is this meaningless "apples to oranges" comparison supposed to be good news or something that's useful if we want to close the wealth gap? All things being equal, black wealth lags white wealth across the entire distribution. That's what's important and that's the issue that needs to be addressed.
You mentioned taking a longer term perspective when talking about black progress. Maybe I didn't make this point strongly enough, but half of Black America is 32 or younger. I won't go so far as to say young people don't care about what happened 60-70 years ago, but they've only experienced stagnation. It's important to talk to them about things they've seen firsthand and to offer them a path towards a better life for them and their children.
"Who compares the wealth of single parent white households with that of black married couple households? Is this meaningless "apples to oranges" comparison supposed to be good news or something that's useful if we want to close the wealth gap?"
Ian Rowe in his book, Agency" that's who. His point, as is mine, is that the factors determining disparate statistical results MUST INCLUDE VARIABLES ASIDE FROM RACE!!
It is not true that the half of Black America 32 or younger have "only experienced stagnation," Clifton. Human beings are not stick figures in statistical measures based on the fallacious idea of race. I believe in clarity and precision in language too. So why not say SOME young people identified as black have experienced stagnation?
Have the children of the 340,000 black-identified millionaires only experienced stagnation?
I don't mean to imply that children of wealthy parents don't have problems, goodness no. But, for goodness sake, why can't you grok that from a business and investment perspective, there must be assets of some kind, tangible to intangible, to draw upon to raise angel or venture capital?
Your narrative of lack and limitation, I daresay, lends itself more to the bias narrative than the development narrative. The bias narrative is focused on how historical discrimination and so-called systemic racism is the reason we see disparities. The bias narrative is more focused on external obstacles over internal communal and cultural resources, whether expressed by individuals or the group. The development narrative points to the need for Afro-Americans to develop the skills, habits, and mindsets that will allow us to improve ourselves internally, within the group, to ameliorate the disparities and problems that still beset us.
By painting an exclusive picture of lack and limitation, you provide fuel for those who center on the bias narrative. They will point to the same statistics you do, but will look at external causes as the basis. My perspective, which transcends the bias narrative while including the reality that we as a group, and as a society, have far to go, paints a picture of our actual historical and cultural achievements as a people, and supports thereby a development narrative. One develops based on foundations. Our achievements is one such foundation.
Although personal, individual accounts aren't "statistically significant," they still can serve as representative anecdotes with larger implications. Take my daughter, for instance, now 27 years old. She is in the cohort of 32-and under that comprises 50% of the group. She grew up in an environment of working to middle-class people; within the family, it was primarily Afro-American in ethnic and cultural terms, at school, it was a diverse mixture of students from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds on Staten Island.
Her mother and I divorced when she was very young; her mother and I both remarried, so according to "statistical measures," she grew up in a "broken home." NO. She had a birth mother and a stepmother, a biological father and a stepfather--we all loved and love her and supported her growth and development. As a pre-teen, she stayed with me on weekends, and I would take her to Barnes & Nobles regularly for her to be around books and literature. She was surrounded by books and music and art at home too. She studied at the Harlem School of the Arts when I lived in Harlem.
How did she fare? Well, she was deeply disappointed when she wasn't accepted to any of the NYC specialized schools. But God works in mysterious ways. My former wife, her mom, and I agreed that she should come live with me and my wife in New Rochelle, NY, and attend the very good public high school there, rather than the lackluster high school she was zoned for in Staten Island.
She blossomed academically and otherwise, coming into her own as a young lady. And when she applied to college, she did so via early admission at Dartmouth . . . and was accepted! She continued to blossom there, majoring in computer science. In her junior year, she was selected as one of the top ten college women of the year by Vogue magazine, and was also one of three Afro-American young ladies honored by Michelle Obama on the Black Girls Rock television program.
After graduation, for several years she worked as a computer engineer in Silicon Valley. Two years ago, she applied for graduate school. She was accepted, and is currently in her last semester in a joint MBA-Engineering program at MIT.
Does my daughter's story not matter because it's relatively rare, indeed exceptional for a young person of ANY background? Cannot her story of Afro-American success despite the odds inspire others? This is an example why stories of actual success and achievement are crucial: they can inspire others who can themselves see what's possible, and can build their own aspirations for growth and development.
Here's a quote from my mentor Albert Murray on why such asset-framing is essential:
“Sometimes Americans are disposed to fair play and sometimes they are not. But they almost always invest their time, money, and enthusiasm in assets with promise, not liabilities. Even those who become involved in salvage operations have been sold on inherent potential.”
You ask about my deracialized version of blackness. Simple: it acknowledges that we are a people, an ethnic group, with a powerful culture, who have made strides in spite of almost insurmountable odds, and have contributed greatly to America's culture and conception of freedom. I don't use the term "blackness" per se because it is too akin to a persistent belief in race and racialization. We are a people, nonetheless, as I've said, with an ethnic and cultural identity. It is not necessary to hold onto the idea of race, the practice of racialization, and the mindset of a racial worldview, to have a personal and ethno-cultural group identity.
I'm just trying to get more people to realize and accept that reality, but racecraft keeps getting in the way. But there are a growing group of persons, for instance, Amiel Handelsman, who see the light at the end of the tunnel, and rather than making excuses for why the time isn't right to deracialize, shows the courage to do so NOW.
Thank you for these perspectives. I appreciate all the experience, wisdom, and data you bring. And it's healthy that we can name where we disagree, notably about the best sequence to take between deracialization and reducing disparities.
Per my prior comment, I trust you share my view that different audiences require different messages. Toward that end, I agree with you that if the audience is 25 year old black-identified Americans, comparing today's economic/educational numbers to the 1950s rings hollow. We agree there must be better messages than this. Yours might be data on disparities. I might focus my message for this group on deracialization for the sake of cultivating growth mindsets, getting out of a feeling of being stuck, and taking positive paths forward.
As for the data of 1950s versus today, that would be more valuable for the audience of anyone making decisions about where to invest public and private resources, e.g. public officials, foundations, corporate leaders, etc.—so they recognize the valuable asset they are investing in instead of continuing to see black-identified as liabilities on the balance sheet. I cannot tell you how many liberals, progressives, moderates and conservatives in my acquaintance speak about black-identified Americans (often with compassion, sometimes pity, sometimes apathy) as a problem to solve, as something to feel guilty about, etc (depending on the person), rather than as an asset to invest in. It's endemic.
In case I didn't make it clear, I am 100% behind your emphasis on shifting the public dialogue from purely income measures to also wealth measures. Oliver and Shapiro's book "Black Wealth, White Wealth" convinced me of this 25 years ago, and nothing since then has changed my thinking. Being in conversation together about how to increase the wealth of black-identified Americans—that's a conversation worth being in. We may differ on how to get there, but share a commitment to the goal.
Having seen this movie before, how can anyone think that racializing every part of society once more will work out better? Race will never go away so long as it can be exploited for personal profit or political gain, and perhaps both. We enter Black History Month with theme of resistance. Resistance against what exactly? Civil rights have largely been achieved. That doesn't mean society is perfect but if perfection is the standard, then everyone will be perpetually disappointed.
What avenues of life are blacks excluded from these days? There is no field or industry that actively shuts them out. On the contrary, one company after another falls all over itself to hire or promote blacks, often irrespective of their ability or the results. Universities have watered down standards to increasing minority admissions, which should be seen as patently insulting and a case of setting people up for failure, but instead its hailed as a step forward. Everything from math to campus honor codes to punctuality has been characterized as evidence of white supremacy, again insulting the large numbers of black people who find none of those things especially vexing.
In reading Clifton's numbers, it reflects the "bias narrative" he cites. People have been conditioned to believe that every negative outcome that a black person experiences is solely due to race. How convenient. What excuse do people in other racial groups have when things do not go their way? This is 2023, not 1923. Police brutality? If anything, police have been castrated to the detriment of the law-abiding minority residents of those neighborhoods and cities. When you ask someone how many civilians of all races are killed by law enforcement annually, the gap between the response and the facts is enormous. THAT is a narrative in play, creating an illusion of reality. I daresay this is where the argument to de-emphasize race comes from - when it become a catch-all, then it sounds more like an excuse than an explanation.
In any society populated by heterogeneous groups, some disparities are likely. They exist in homogeneous societies, too, but no one there has the luxury of substituting an immutable characteristic for agency. As Glenn has repeatedly said, American blacks are the wealthiest, most powerful, and freest people of African descent anywhere on the planet. Far from saying good-bye to race, we have plunged headlong in the opposite direction, treating it as the only thing, which is not helping anyone. We have the DIE industry, which actively participates in racial and gender discrimination, but of the sort that is deemed acceptable. No; that's not how it works. Such discrimination is wrong on its face; it does not become okay because of who the targets are.
To the preceding three writers: at a time in the 20th Century when the various national "Communist" parties were becoming notorious for failures and atrocities, the CPUSA impressed the world with its justifiable denunciation of Jim Crow America. Now they are trying to cash in on last-century glory with all this absurd counting of blood drops and white-people-bashing.
Thanks to all three of you for directing attention to the absurdity.
Well said Alex. I always find it strange that people blame "Structural Racism" for the ills of communities that are currently largely staffed by Black Administrators and Police chiefs. How does this happen? And yet, we see many of these same problems in poor White Appalachian residents.
I am not a dog that chases my tail. Nor will I chase yours. With what blood quantum does a "white" person become black? Or at what quantum does a black person become white? Silly questions? Not when "serious" members of the government call Clearance Thomas, "white." Not when the five black police officers in Memphis are seriously accused of racism.
Many abhor "racism" in a very narrow technical sense and would not countenance the "typing" of people by skin spectrometer readings. Yet, that is exactly how "we" deal with Indians. Whether you do or do NOT receive tribal profits from gaming is, for many tribes and the members, a strictly blood quantum measurement.
So what does this have to do with other PoC? Obvious. Liberals can't affirm membership in some form of government (tribal, in this case) is UNRELATED to blood quantum, when in fact, that is how "rights" and tribal membership are determined. If race and racial history are meaningful constructs to define tribal government membership rights and casino profits rights, then we must acknowledge that rights of citizenship ARE directly related to skin color and blood heritage. And, actually, from my point of view as a non-native, it is really funny that folks with "Indian names" and who also might have an "Indian" profile, are in fact denied tribal membership because they cannot document their blood heritage. No matter that these individuals "look" like "Indians." Oh, YES, and that is defined by a federal government that does NOT practice racism. ( More Biden lies. )
Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment? What a joke. Clearly, we're still in the early stage of trying to deal with "skin color" and history as the basis for superior rights and inferior rights. What, not a relevant issue today? Au contraire. The Lac du Flambeau Tribe has blocked road access to my friends home. While they can drive their vehicles to their home, the title to which they "own" totally, they cannot return from the pharmacy by car. Last night, it was about -30 in real temp. To allow a friend to pickup insulin, my friend was allowed to pass the blockaded road, but he was NOT allowed to return to his home. [ https://lakelandtimes.com/ ] Had he been a "tribal" member, well then, sure he would not have been affected.
Seriously, was Obama "black," or white? Same for others. 10%, 20%, 49% -- at what point are we defined as "white" or "black? ?
This showed up in the Chronicle of Higher Education but I don't know if either participant has seen it. https://www.brookings.edu/2023/01/23/college-enrollment-gaps-how-academic-preparation-influences-opportunity/ In short these researchers found that 62% of Black students do go to college in some form and higher SES and academic preparation might make Black students more likely to attend college than equivalent white students. This suggests that differing school districts may spend exactly the same amount of money but have different expectations about how much of it is just to avoid the worst possible outcomes for the students. It feeds into Greg's point that even if the strengths in the Black community are not enough to save the community by themselves now, if they are not treated as something to build on then the worst-off members of the community may not thrive.
Thanks for your comment. I hadn't seen the Brooking analysis you referenced and haven't had a chance to read it carefully. I'm surprised they say 62% of black students go to college. That's inconsistent with data from the National Center for Education Statistics that says the overall college enrollment rate for 18 to 24 year-olds was 40% in 2020 and that the enrollment rate for blacks was 36%:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb
Here's an excerpt:
The overall college enrollment rate for 18- to 24-year-olds was 40 percent in 2020. The college enrollment rate in 2020 was higher for 18- to 24-year-olds who were Asian (64 percent) than for those who were White (41 percent), Hispanic (36 percent), Black (36 percent), of Two or more races (34 percent), Pacific Islander (34 percent), and American Indian/Alaska Native (22 percent).
College can be a pathway to a lucrative career, but only if you graduate. The college completion rates I quoted from the National Center for Education Statistics show graduation rates for black college students are lower than those of their peers. More recent analyses from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and Third Way show a similar pattern:
https://nscresearchcenter.org/completing-college/
https://www.thirdway.org/graphic/sticky-facts-on-college-completion
A look at NAEP scores and ACT college readiness benchmarks shows that black students, as a group, enter college not as well prepared as their peers. Here's a link for ACT college readiness scores:
https://www.act.org/content/act/en/research/services-and-resources/data-and-visualization/grad-class-database-2022.html
Download the 2022 National Profile Report and go to Figure 3.1 or Table 3.3 if you want to do a deep dive.
It stands to reason that students entering college who aren't as well prepared as their peers will struggle and that fewer of them will graduate.
I'm not sure how to interpret this part of your comment:
"This suggests that differing school districts may spend exactly the same amount of money but have different expectations about how much of it is just to avoid the worst possible outcomes for the students. It feeds into Greg's point that even if the strengths in the Black community are not enough to save the community by themselves now, if they are not treated as something to build on then the worst-off members of the community may not thrive."
The money spent per pupil on instruction by K-12 schools doesn't vary much by race according to the St. Louis Fed. That doesn't totally refute your point about schools potentially trying to "avoid the worst possible outcomes" for students, but I don't know how to measure this. Either way, the question is what can we do to boost the academic performance of black students? We have to take a hard look at things like chronic absenteeism and parental engagement if we want to close the gap.
That 62% a) includes 2-year colleges and b) was based on the High School Longitudinal Survey which is a representative sample of 2009-10 ninth graders, so the survey must have some way to track them.
I tried so hard to write that about expectations clearly; I am not sure I know how to measure it in an objective way either. But my fundamental position which I at least tried to email Glenn last year is that telling Black Americans to emulate Jews and some Asian groups is telling Black Americans to emulate groups where education is a value. These groups will elevate any school system they are in because they have a notion of the value of education and what education should be like independent of that school system. In St. Louis where I live, Sumner High School was by all accounts a wonderful school that after integration fell on such hard times that the school board was thinking about closing it, but in general segregation squelched the notion of education as a value in so many people because there could be only so many jobs for educated people and education was used to show Black people that they were inferior by such things as the Black schools obviously having fewer resources than the white schools. So education becomes a kind of good behavior that people believe in for utilitarian reasons. You need to study what the school system considers that their success means and that may need a deep study of what teachers and administrators actually say and do.
Thanks for your comments and your clarification of the Brookings analysis. I eventually figured it out after looking at the Appendix.
I agree with you about expectations at school, but I don't know how to measure it either. This is especially true at a time when teachers are often pressured to modify grades (e.g., No zeros allowed. Nobody gets less than a 50 even if they didn't turn in their assignment. Teachers are encouraged to give students second chances to do make up work to offset poor or missed assignments. Etc.) and to ignore disciplinary issues in order to minimize suspensions and expulsions. The overall message seems to be that kids need to move on to the next grade except in extraordinary circumstances. Teachers who give kids failing grades often open themselves up to harsh scrutiny.
(nods intently)
It is easier for a human, or a pollster, or a chart maker to identify and compare white and black. Suppose your sort groups are "uses an economic system well" and "uses an economic system poorly?" Hard to picture, poll for, or display. Thus we tend to default to the obvious weaker explanations, and thus weaker categories for group sorting.
Suppose you have White average income is $40,000 and Black average income at $25,000. Very easy to follow your cognitive bias and blame "racism" for the "obvious differences." But add more data:
Rich whites make $50,000 and poor whites make $0. Rich Blacks make $50,000 and poor blacks make $0. If whites are 80-20 and blacks are 50-50, you get the same statistic above. With extra data the problem is more easy to visualize as a "Poor Income Level" problem. Any racism that exists is in the ratio of Poor Blacks to Poor Whites. You have two ways to fight then, change the income of poor people, or figure out how to address the ratios of just the poor people. But then all people making money studying just "Race" are out of work.
The continuance of Race as a category persists until we learn how to view others as belonging to multiple categories. Personality? Culture? Activities? Enthusiasms? Skills? Race does tend to disappear as a category as you get deeper into a skill set. We could study any trade group with mixed races and probably learn a great deal about how people relate to other people when they have something to talk about. Maybe we start with Football Fans at the Super Bowl next week?
It is not much of an elephant. Murray looked back at a huge stack of tests and made the only comparison he could. That is the source of the stated difference in IQ bewtween blacks and whites. Sowell once pointed out that Jewish immigrants in early 1900s scored very low on IQ tests, but a generation later scored very high. All it took then was cultural adaptation. What we need is more data on where the actual differences occur now. As the great Ronald Fryer likes to say, "We could test that!"
Gather as much data as you can and make as many comparisons as you can. Rich vs ooor. Two parents vs one. Blacks vs Whites. Male vs Female. Good schools vs bad. Glenn's pretty smart. Probably got an IQ off the charts. John's likely still on the chart, but up there. If the difference shows up as racial we have one thing to address. If it shows up as rich vs poor it is another.
The elephants stampeding all over the place are us all being too damn chicken to face actual facts and solve real problems.
I am linking to an article on the effect of violence exposure of kids to learning and IQ, for one instance:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/191640
Here is an abstract on racial differences in IQ, linked to the intellectual home environment:
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1978-06591-001
Here is another study on Black children adopted into White homes:
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/18/archives/an-iq-study-of-black-children-in-white-homes.html
Here's an Indian study on the relationship of environment and genetics on intelligence:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479093/
And here is an old, but interesting article about a minority woman whose child was refused IQ testing because at that time in California it was deemed racially and culturally biased. I don't know if this is still the case in California:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/07/06/iq-tests-restricted-by-race/9c85a956-4ec9-4dfa-8191-70af9c1ff0cb/
I firmly believe that racial and ethnic differences in IQ have very little to do with racial genetics per se, although individual genetics may play a part. Many of these studies point out that the issues are many times multifactorial, but the bottom line seems to lie in the cultural milieu the child is exposed to.
I think it's also important to understand individual's different learning and or thought processing characteristics to help determine each person's potential.
It's not realistic, nor is it the responsibility for a society to expect to make every child a potential neurosurgeon. The function of education as I see it is to prepare the child for the ability to earn a decent living, whether as a tradesperson, in the service field or as a professional. However, the solutions to childhood education, particularly in minorities will not be quick and easy. Teaching children of any race that they are victims and oppressed by the racial majority, and that the values of professionalism, timeliness, hard work and education are vestiges of a supremacist culture will be extremely counterproductive.
“Hispanics?”
I though Mexicans identify as Mexican, Chileans as Chilean, and Spaniards as citizens of Spain.
This seems like this is the quintessential question of the chicken and the egg: are people racialized by society or do they racialize themselves? At some point it seems like both sides need to call a truce if we want to move past this.
Clifton, you said “My overall point is that we can't deracialize America as long as large racial disparities persist and the bias narrative holds sway “. Doesn’t the bias narrative require a racial identity? Without racial identity doesn’t the bias narrative lose its teeth? I mean, everyone with a victim mentality will find something to blame for their failures/shortcomings. The problem, from my experience, comes when everyone affirms the legitimacy of their victimhood, instead of saying “Man, that sucks. What can you do different/better next time?” (This is a general observation, not specific to race).
Thanks Amy! I appreciate your comment. Pew Research issued a report last April that was titled, "Race Is Central to Identity for Black Americans and Affects How They Connect With Each Other:"
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-ethnicity/2022/04/14/race-is-central-to-identity-for-black-americans-and-affects-how-they-connect-with-each-other/
Here's the opening paragraph:
No matter where they are from, who they are, their economic circumstances or educational backgrounds, significant majorities of Black Americans say being Black is extremely or very important to how they think about themselves, with about three-quarters (76%) overall saying so.
Having an identity is to be human. Most people want to be part of something bigger than themselves. We have family identities. We join groups. We root for our favorite athletes and sports teams because we feel a connection with them. We enjoy the company of people who share our culture, values, norms, heritage, sensibilities, etc. These things lead to social cohesion. They help explain why people are willing to make sacrifices for others and/or the common good.
Social cohesion collapses when large numbers of people think they and other members of their group are victims of discrimination. They view their neighbors and fellow citizens warily and pay more attention to the differences between them and their peers instead of the things they have in common.
Debunking the bias narrative is critical if we want to reduce racial disparities and deracialize America. More black people might embrace Roger Ferguson's ideas for closing the racial wealth gap, for example, if they had more trust in the financial markets. A distrust of financial institutions is one of the reasons why cryptocurrencies became popular with black consumers in recent years according to the Kansas City Fed:
https://www.kansascityfed.org/ten/2022-fall-ten-magazine/inside-the-rise-of-black-consumer-cryptocurrency-ownership/
The collapse of cryptocurrencies is well documented. People who purchased them because they distrusted financial institutions exemplify what can happen when false narratives hold sway.
Clifton, I agree that black identity is clearly a thing. I don’t dispute how important it is. Right now, the narrative I hear is to constantly tell me that groups are under attack by other groups. If you identify as part of those groups and are constantly told that you are discriminated against, you would certainly develop a worldview and identity in which that is the case. For example, when you survey white people a shocking number believe they (or I should say “we”) are under attack more than any other group, Christians claim to be under assault in America, etc. So an individual’s perception of bias is not the best indicator of bias.
Let me separate the conversation from race per se, and maybe you’ll understand my question better. Let’s say I am a young female engineer and I have an issue with an older male engineer actively undermining me. I can tell myself, “Wow, this guy is a jerk. How can I resolve my particular situation”. Or I can say “this office is sexist and I am the victim of discrimination.” Maybe both are true, but one is empowering, and the other not. One makes the problem one explicitly of identity and the other just an interpersonal issue to resolve. Worse, if I think about it in those identity based terms, I might think there is some truth to the identity of my group (in this case young female engineers) is in actuality inferior and/or a separate group from the overwhelming majority (older male engineers). I’d argue, in reality we are one group (engineers working on solving whatever technical issue).
Now maybe I’m misunderstanding something… but in my attempt at a non race analogy, if the result is all female engineers migrate to different departments so that the company is sex-segregated because the female engineers can’t trust the male engineers to be fair in their interactions… soon it would be a self-fulfilling arrangement, wouldn’t it? And who would actually benefit in that arrangement?
The female engineer can frame the issue the ways you suggested - "This guy's a jerk! What can I do about it?" or "This place is sexist and I'm the victim of discrimination!" She could also ask herself a series of questions to help determine if the issues she has with her colleague are borne of something other than sexism (e.g., Do either of them have personality traits or approaches to their jobs that rub each other the wrong way? Do other women at work have issues with this guy or is her situation unique? Does he get along with other young colleagues?). She could ask herself a lot of questions before she reached any conclusions about her colleague and decided what to do next. How far and how honestly she's willing to go with this exercise tells us a lot about her maturity and how much her "identity" influences her decision-making.
I agree, if I'm understanding your point correctly, that "identity" often keeps people from reconciling their differences and achieving "win-win" scenarios.
I think that is clearly true that identity can get in the way, but that wasn’t quite where I was going. I tried to pick a realistic and concrete example of a situation and reaction without the burden of that being an established “identity”, sort of like Star Trek exploring our world by putting it in an outer space context. Clearly not doing as well as I’d like. It was an example in my own life, but I’m not trying to make it about me.
But let’s say it’s me, since that’s where we are. There is a difference between being affirmed that my treatment was because of an identity (young female) and being encouraged to think of it as a specific incident makes a difference (I was encouraged to see it both ways over the years)... It especially makes a difference when it happens dozens of times, in different situations and with different people. It’s really easy to get a chip on your shoulder if you let it. This is objectively borne out by the number of young women who leave STEM fields in the first few years of their careers (I believe in the early 2000s it was as high as 50%). And yet, there is not an identity of “young females in STEM”. If that became an entrenched identity, I think it would only serve to make the problem worse. And then who benefits? And how do you ever move past it?
I don’t know if that made it more clear, or not. But to take *me* out of it: If you hold on strongly to an identity that is forged as part of being a group that is discriminated against, how do you let go of the idea that you are discriminated against because of your membership in the group (ie bias narrative)?
You ask a good and tough question at the end of your reply. We can never know with certainty why others act the way they do or why they react to us the way they do. It takes a good deal of wisdom and maturity to avoid immediately suspecting the worse when things don't go well when we interact with others. This is especially true for young people.
Friends of mine have wrestled with finding ways to make young female engineers feel accepted and appreciated at work. Mentoring seems to help. So does frequent and constructive feedback from bosses. That said, nothing is foolproof.
My sense is that the bias narrative loses strength when there's clear evidence that it's wrong, we have faith that bias will be addressed when it occurs, or we can see examples of people who share our "identity" but are thriving.
I appreciate you saying you try, but that really shouldn’t be necessary. In my experience there were very overtly inappropriate situations that made everyone in the room uncomfortable (and went out of their way to say so). But that is not something where 80% being normal humans erases the 20% that are just unprofessional jerks… once again though, that is not my point. Let me say it another way… for me I wanted to be seen as an engineer and all of my issues were when I was instead perceived of primarily as a young female. If I internalized that I was a female as my primary identity I would see the world through that lens and not as an engineer in an office. I was given lots of reasons to see myself in that gendered way, but I resented that expectation too much to do it. Your data on “blackness” indicates “black” is the primary identity. In identifying that way so strongly, all the bad things that happen are because of the “black” identity and not because of anything else. To me, that impedes progress. Does that make sense? If not, I should probably stop, though I do really enjoy beating metaphorical dead horses.
My physician wife had some of the same issues in her medical group. Oddly, some of the older doctors who were of foreign birth and more fundamental religious backgrounds were more accepting of her than the younger men. And the blatant fact was that most of the men were very accepting and supportive, but there were a few jerks who treated both her and other male colleagues poorly.
Which goes to the fact that there really are still many racist individuals in this country, and they are of all different races and ethnicities themselves. This does not mean that the whole of "White" America is racist in and of itself. Nor should people of any race excoriate another race for the bad actions of the few bad actors within those racial groups.
Very often we hear people say "I do not see color". Some on the cultural left laugh at them. No data to prove this, but I have the intuition that what many are saying, or trying to say, is that of course they see color but do not see race, yet lack the language to describe this liminal space, searching for something beyond what our long-lived constructions will conceptually and linguistically allow. I was introduced to this "raceless-ness" (but fulsome appreciation of ethnicity) through Crouch, and Murray, on whom I wrote a thesis. Murray sought to puncture the myth of race. He used the phrase "so-called black and white," he used "afro-american," he used "negro", perhaps as chord changes, signposts through which we may improvise our way, living with and confronting both "the cold hard facts of life," - race as currently understood - all the while searching for and perhaps building an Omni-American conception with its attendant language, with which this conversation surely consonant.
A couple of ideas. This is a fruitful exchange, but the problem I have with the statistics provided is that they are a kind of normalized and racialized narrative of political complaint that, by using race, always has the hidden time bomb of allowing some racial theory of causation. This is why using race defies the scientific method. Consider describing any chemical reaction without reference to temperature and pressure. You cannot. Not even something as simple as determining the boiling point of water will be consistent if you do not account for the pressure of the environment of the reaction in question.
Now take the question of the increase of nominally black real wealth indicated by the chart provided. What does the inclusion of white and hispanic figures have to do with the trajectory of the black line? Nothing. It simply provides a comparison by race. So long as people carry around racial theories, you can only be assured that wealth (or lack of wealth) will be attributed to race.
Why not make this comparison by blood type? It's something done quite commonly in Japan. The reason is simple. We in America have no deep social meaning associated with blood type as we do with race. Nobody is asserting that we should positively or negatively discriminate, select or monitor by blood type for social purposes. Instead we feel compelled to include race.
I say the reason for this is owing to the power that accrues to those with the most compelling racial theory. It's not that the race itself changes, but our idea of what we can do with the political power to discriminate, select or monitor by race. The underlying common understanding of race doesn't change. The black racial stereotype of being highly sexualized is never exchanged for the stereotype associated with another race. Those myths are fixed and they are perpetuated.
So individuals who have been racialized and accept that racial identity will always be at pains to figure out which way the racial politics will go. They are compelled to pay attention to 'The Bell Curve' or try to map their understanding of race to people in other countries, in other time periods. It is therefore no surprise that people who are 'Afrocentric' in one decade are 'Woke' in another. Round and round the rugged rock of race they run until they are ragged rascals, wondering where their ancient glory went and where their future glory lies.
Of course it lies in the power of policy to come up with patches and circuses until a final solution is presented.
American race is a fiat identity created to 'justify' the civil deprivations of slavery. Practically every way to devalue that identity is a step in the direction towards equality and undermines all future temptations and moral hazards of racial theories.
In 2008 among white victims of rape/sexual assault only 16% perceived the offender as Black: http://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/cv0842.pdf The vast majority of rapes are intraracial.
In my opinion the fact that the vast majority of rapes/sexual assaults committed on white victims are intraracial is very meaningful in itself.
You are right, the situation has changed compared to the times when white men could exploit their power over Black women. According to the 2008 data I have quoted there were no reported rapes/sexual assaults committed on Black victims by white offenders.
As to the pre-Civil war interracial rape numbers, Martha Hodes writes in her fascinating book "White Women, Black Men" that "the accusation of rape of white women by black men in the slave South, as well as during the Civil War, when white men were absent from Southern homes" was actually infrequent. The situation fundamentally changed only in the late 19th century when Black men started being portrayed as a threat to white women by racist propaganda (one can see some excellent examples of such propaganda here: http://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/1898/primary/dem-sources/cartoons-no).
Let's remember, too, that many whites, especially in the South, refused to believe that a white woman could have a consensual relationship with a Black man. This makes any historical statistics on rapes committed by Black men on white women extremely unreliable.
Lets noodle them even further
The stats you are responding to are extremely misleading. It is not true that there were zero black victim/white perpetrator rapes. How could you see that statistic and not be skeptical? Look at the footnote.
*Estimate based on 10 or fewer sample cases
So they asked 10 or fewer black victims and none of them had been raped by a white person so they applied it to the total number of victims. It's actually shocking that they would report numbers based on such a small sample.
Second obvious factor is that the vast majority of rapes/sexual assaults happen within relationships of some kind (date rape). There are far more black male /white female relationships than there are white male / black female relationships. So you would expect some disparity between the number. Also due to the fact they count "verbal threats of rape or sexual assault" in these numbers.
And lastly, the pool of potential white victims (PWV) is 5x as large as the pool of potential black victims (PBV). This would negate your whole theory. (But statistics aren't my strength so maybe I am missing something)
I did not imply that there was something cheery about these data. What I meant is that they prove that white women in the US are usually raped by white men. You were wondering if there were any statistics and I have provided some statistics.
You are right, Black offenders are overrepresented among the rapists of white victims, but these statistics don't indicate that the "hypersexualized black male stereotype" may be true, contrary to what you seemed to be implying in an earlier comment ("Perhaps the statistics would demonstrate the utter falsity of the hypersexualized black male stereotype. An ancient and doggedly persistent "myth" might finally be laid to rest. But perhaps not.").
Various complex factors explain these statistics, I am later going to mention some academic articles. First of all, women are usually raped by men they know, not by strangers. Because of the current dynamics of interracial interactions there is a much greater likelihood of interaction between a Black man and a white woman than between a white man and a Black woman.
Secondly, in the case of stranger rape perpetrators probably don't look for victims in their own neighbourhoods. And if they look for them in other areas, it is much easier to get access to a white victim than to a Black victim. Thirdly, a white woman may be easy to be overpowered by a Black perpetrator both for psychological reasons (including the stereotype of the aggressive Black criminal) and for physical reasons (white American women are much less likely to be physically strong than Black women).
The statistics I have quoted prove that Black offenders are much more likely to rob than to rape white victims, which is not in the least surprising. Anyway "hypersexuality" (a highly questionable term) is not the same as the likelihood of committing rape. It would be much more helpful to study e.g. statistics on porn use. A man can have a very high libido without ever committing rape.
I think the problem with that is the very low dimensionality of social science. Given how little we know about any behavioral influences of genetics, all such racial questions are dealing in the wrong dimensions. The analogy is saying that chemistry is simply measuring percentages of earth, air, fire and water. So long as we are measuring in the simplified terms of race, we will never come to any insight. Or that psychology is simply measuring the four homours (blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy).
Im suggesting then, as a data engineer, that Amazon, for example, can know what you want to buy and never ask you about race; that there are thousands of behavioral markers that are influenced by choices and situations that number in the billions. What humans might do in the complex adaptive system of today's society is impossible to measure or predict in 17th century terms.
I should clarify that I do not expect that anyone should reroute their racial ideas through a proper filter of genetics. Statistical morality is a cheesy cheat that misses the point entirely. Only the sort of bumbling Babbitts who would invite people to a party based on a spreadsheet analysis would pursue that angle. I'm not talking about New Genetic Rules for Karens. I'm talking about red pilling the entire universe of racial thought.
The endgame of this idea is that there is only the most marginal amount of friction for those who deny or defy their 'proper' racial heritage. What happens to the Irish American who calls bullshit on St. Patricks Day? What happens to the black American who calls bullshit on Black History Month? More than nothing. Racial politics is to blame.
Three men trying to reach the same admirable end using different terminology. It seems to me that a life well led cannot put aside God’s intended differences.
Do you think if in 1964 we had committed ourselves to a colorblind society -- by law with respect to government action, by declaration with respect to institutions, we would have it today?
Certainly the differences between the races are entirely superficial, but these superficialities ride shotgun with culture and heritage, which are not superficial at all. Consequently it's not just outsiders who categorize members of other races on these grounds, it's also the self-identified members of the races themselves. The desire to self-partition in this way is probably linked to the primitive part of the human brain that wants to be on a "team." As long as that is part of human nature, I wouldn't bet on the future of deracialization.
Blue-eyed white people are at higher risk for age-related macular degeneration than their brown-eyed white counterparts. Would you say that means there is some kind of fundamental difference between them?
Except in that case it isn’t genetics, per se. Blue eyes have less pigment to protect the eyes from (mostly sun) damage. Similarly, if you have fairer skin you have a higher risk of skin cancer… there are certainly black identified people with light eyes and/or skin.
Yes as always it comes down to a matter of definitions.