

What Morgan Freeman Doesn’t Understand About Race - rpm4321
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/06/morgan_freeman_don_lemon_and_race_the_actor_doesn_t_understand_the_link.html

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omonra
I think the Slate author is wrong and it's very easy to prove that by
considering the performance of immigrant blacks in America vs native blacks.

Since both groups consist of people of same race, the disparity in outcomes
must have something to do with culture of the groups in question.

For example [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/what-
drives...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/what-drives-
success.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all):

"There are some black and Hispanic groups in America that far outperform some
white and Asian groups. Immigrants from many West Indian and African
countries, such as Jamaica, Ghana, and Haiti, are climbing America’s higher
education ladder, but perhaps the most prominent are Nigerians. Nigerians make
up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in
2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were
of Nigerian ancestry; over a fourth of Nigerian-Americans have a graduate or
professional degree, as compared with only about 11 percent of whites."

Same argument would deal with 'discrimination' \- as a black Nigerian is
likely to experience same sort of discrimination as black American (probably
more so as they're also foreign).

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taeric
I feel this is misrepresenting his point. Sounded to me more that he meant
there is nothing intrinsic on someone's "race" that indicates where they
"should" be in any wealth gap. Not that there is a lack of representation of
race in the gap.

That is, I am not really surprised that there are more minorities below the
poverty line. I would not be too shocked to see that people's views on race
contribute to this gap. What I think Freeman was saying, and I agree with, is
that there is no reason someone's race should have any influence on where they
are.

More succinctly put, people's irrational views on race contribute way more
than race itself does.

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ASneakyFox
When an article has that many stats in it you know its all garbage.

