If I understand your position correctly then there is no room for the possibility that blacks (or the so called white trash) are getting in their own way. You have to look upon that possibility as a hypothesis to test for. Otherwise we might as well be treating minority group X like our pets instead of being autonomous human beings.
There have existed a great many persecuted peoples in recent history, the Irish, the Jews, the Chinese, the Roma. My race I know did much better abroad than in our home country, evidently institutional constraints were real.
If you don't look at all the data you're going to open to the reasonable accusation of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
In my view the question to ask is: Do there exist places on earth where this minority X have better metrics (or subgroups within the population)? Here we ignore genetics and environment questions entirely, we are simply searching for evidence contrary to our (often considered disagreeable in our present culture) hypothesis that the people X are the cause of their own suffering.
If not, then by induction we accumulate evidence in favour of the hypothesis. If so, then there is something that can be changed to improve circumstances.
For what it is worth, it seems clear to me that whenever there exist new frontiers, fresh cultural experiments can take hold and there can be new beginnings, with America itself being an example of that.
Even were it all genetics I would still have some optimism because this is something we can intelligently design around with our technologies, although that line of reasoning is treated as being deeply suspect in our present culture and time. I don't think that can last for much longer though, I and many others see those moral qualms as preposterous as the protests of the anti-vax people.
The last thing I'll say is more subjective, but I agree that class issues are the problem the US and Western countries face today. Had we superior economic growth these could be papered over but we don't have the kind of growth we need for that and so they shall have to be faced head on. Stephen Pinker's book on violence reminds me of the futurists who predicted permanent state of peace before world war 1, I think we're heading into some choppy waters.
>If I understand your position correctly then there is no room for the possibility that blacks (or the so called white trash) are getting in their own way. You have to look upon that possibility as a hypothesis to test for. Otherwise we might as well be treating minority group X like our pets instead of being autonomous human beings.
I could acknowledge a subgroup of a larger group "causing their own harm". E.g. white trash, or a subgroup of blacks.
On the other hand, I don't see how a group like blacks can in general, and for its majority, "cause its own harm", in a different amount than another group.
Unless there is evidence of genetic differences to cause discrepancies, I would expect both blacks and whites to have similar percentages of people that "cause their own harm" all other things being equal.
Which is not what we see.
But of course, all other things are not equal either. One group was extracted forcefully from their native culture and country and forced to work as slaves for centuries, the other was not. One group faced persistent persecution and specific laws against it until late in the 20th century, the other did not.
> On the other hand, I don't see how a group like blacks can in general, and for its majority, "cause its own harm", in a different amount than another group.
Alright, I see that to be in error.
Suppose we were talking about sex differences. Feminists frequently point out that men are murderous. They commit almost all murders. Usually of other men. Clearly this is a subgroup in the general population that causes disproportionate problems in an area that another group i.e. women, do not.
I'm not a feminist but I've no trouble or dispute with the notion that men are more violently dangerous than women. We are. It is a fact.
This of course is not an argument to discriminate against all men. Evidently there are different sorts of discrimination. Some wise, some sexist.
> Unless there is evidence of genetic differences to cause discrepancies, I would expect both blacks and whites to have similar percentages of people that "cause their own harm" all other things being equal.
That is exactly what conservatives, reactionaries and others do say. They say there is evidence of genetic differences which lead to different outcomes.
This is not a black/white thing by the way, that is just an American-centric example. We could easily talk about Europeans and Japanese people too, Europeans are significantly more likely to be violent than Japanese people.
Of course average rates of violence is not the only criteria on which people should be judged. There are other things humans do besides that!
> But of course, all other things are not equal either.
Right, exactly.
> One group was extracted forcefully from their native culture and country and forced to work as slaves for centuries, the other was not. One group faced persistent persecution and specific laws against it until late in the 20th century, the other did not.
That is true, and yet if I remember correctly poor whites in Appalachia have fewer years of education and lower incomes than poor (predominately urban) blacks.
This is incidentally why I believe class issues are more problematic for America in the future than race. Race has and is been used as a proxy for class and this is failing to make sense of the world as it is.
To put it like this: I see America a big place where a lot of people got jumbled up together in a haphazard fashion. Then over time, and especially in the last century assorted mating has resulted in concentrations of similar people.
Birds of a feather flock together.
It is funny because in Europe the opposite is kind of happening. At least these are my impressions for whatever they are worth.
It does though give a policy prescription for poor people. They could be distributed randomly by family over a wide geographical area.
At least that is one view, I had better stop now before I get called Stalin or Hitler. ;-)
Let (a) => a group can have a much larger subgroup of its members be something X compared to other groups (e.g. more black criminals than whites, more violent Europeans than Japanese, etc.).
Let (b) => an X subgroup is X because of itself ("caused its own harm").
So, I'm not saying (a) or (a)+(b) can't happen.
What I'm saying is that for (b) to hold, the group should have either a genetic reason to be so, or a cultural one, and the cultural one must also be of their own choosing (e.g. not imposed upon them by external pressure/circumstances).
What I'm also saying is I don't see (b) holding for blacks.
I haven't seen evidence (aside from far-right/racist writings) that they have genetic reasons to be more criminal, etc.
And I haven't seen much in their criminality / culture that can't be explained by their status as ex-slaves/racism targets/subjects of racist legislation/practices, etc.
In other words, I think that for (b) to hold, you have to be in control of your destiny/world in a way that slaves by definition are not, and ex-slaves/second-rate citizens arguably are not.
> Let (a) => a group can have a much larger subgroup of its members be something X compared to other groups (e.g. more black criminals than whites, more violent Europeans than Japanese, etc.).
Sure.
> Let (b) => an X subgroup is X because of itself ("caused its own harm").
It is a tautology.
> What I'm saying is that for (b) to hold, the group should have either a genetic reason to be so, or a cultural one
Hmmmmm. We agree that there exists a reason for everything. Any subgroup (even My Little Pony advocacy groups) exists for a reason.
Whether in the case of violence and/or criminality it is genetic or environmental is one I'm not going to address here because I think it is too complicated to answer convincingly in one way or another and I think we would be fools to be totally confident an answer without years of study.
> and the cultural one must also be of their own choosing (e.g. not imposed upon them by external pressure/circumstances).
Violence can be opportunistic because you're a war-like tribe and have spotted a weakness in another tribe. Consider the Mongols attacking Europeans or the Zulu wiping out the Bush people.
Do you consider that an external circumstance or a cultural choice?
Seems like it could be both simultaneously.
> What I'm also saying is I don't see (b) holding for blacks.
Wait, I thought we were talking about subgroups in a subset? Which is it? The group or the subgroup?
> And I haven't seen much in their criminality / culture that can't be explained by their status as ex-slaves/racism targets/subjects of racist legislation/practices, etc.
Ok. Well I don't live in the United States, but I can tell you that the same subgroup exists in places that never had a history of slavery e.g. Ireland. We have people directly from Africa who live here, and that same subgroup exists here, freshly minted as it were. That is inside of twenty years. Racism is quite unusual here, and you certainly couldn't claim 'structural racism'.
I don't claim to know if it is genetic or cultural, but I am not buying the historical slavery/oppression argument. Groups of people are just not that sensitive to trauma over generations or we (the Irish famine) would have never have survived. What happened to the Jews was just as bleak and yet they have rebounded in living memory.
That's not to say it does not matter. Just that I am not accepting that line of argument. The Irish and Jews are not notably more violent and criminal than they were pre-genocide, and they were also oppressed for centuries.
Now if some analog of the IRA or Mossad's assassination squads existed, then a historical oppression argument would tally up better. The recent sniper shootings for example, seem to fit into that category better.
>> Let (b) => an X subgroup is X because of itself ("caused its own harm").
>It is a tautology.
Yeah, I meant:
"a subgroup of group G is X because of itself ("caused its own harm")"
Or:
"a subgroup is (a bad thing) X because of itself ("caused its own harm")"
>Violence can be opportunistic because you're a war-like tribe and have spotted a weakness in another tribe. Consider the Mongols attacking Europeans or the Zulu wiping out the Bush people. Do you consider that an external circumstance or a cultural choice?
A cultural choice.
>Ok. Well I don't live in the United States, but I can tell you that the same subgroup exists in places that never had a history of slavery e.g. Ireland. We have people directly from Africa who live here, and that same subgroup exists here, freshly minted as it were.
Those "fresh from Africa" weren't slaves in the US, but do come from the same legacy of several centuries of colonialism in Africa itself.
Heck, even their countries' borders where drawn on the map by white men to divide their plundering. Usually with a "divide and conquer" approach, to mix hostile or unrelated local groups/tribes in the same borders and control things playing each other against them. And the meddling, support of friendly lackeys in power, and "divide and conquer" has never stopped since (e.g. for one example few heard/care: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france... ).
>That's not to say it does not matter. Just that I am not accepting that line of argument. The Irish and Jews are not notably more violent and criminal than they were pre-genocide, and they were also oppressed for centuries.
Well, the Jews did establish a quite oppressive and one of the most war-ready and vigilant nation states to protect their identity post-WWII. And a lot of their culture was informed by the persecutions over the centuries.
That said, those persecutions were of a different nature than being held 2-3 centuries as slaves. And their being white, they could always mix far easier into society and climb socially, which they were fully allowed post-WWII. Britain had a Jewish PM back in 1874 -- for them to have a black PM back then would be unheard of and not just protested but derided.
Merely "group a was persecuted too, but is not X like group b" doesn't say much. The specifics of the persecution, and the relative historical accounts of both groups needs to be taken into account.
At some point or another, everyone has been persecuted (e.g. even whites living Europe because of religious persecution) but not all persecution is the same, and not all has hold for the same period, and not all took the same form.
> At some point or another, everyone has been persecuted (e.g. even whites living Europe because of religious persecution) but not all persecution is the same, and not all has hold for the same period, and not all took the same form.
I acknowledge that may very well be so, although now we are in the realm of some subjectivity.
The only thing I've left to say is that with some imagination and creativity e.g. genetic manipulation, changes to legal codes, the development of new frontiers, it may be possible to improve the circumstances of all including the marginalized. A lot of legacy problems just drain away when you have economic growth and a clear vision of a better future. Absent that, old wounds tend to materialize to be the scapegoat for further conflict. It's not great, but it is human.
One observation I've made recently is that when people have a common overriding identity e.g. geeks in a hackerspace, other potential sources of conflict such as identifying as transvestite while others may identify as christian tend to fade away. That is the essence of tribalism and I'm convinced it has a lot to do with the future and the Net.
In one related example; consider 'African-Americans' stopping identification with Africa and instead black but America first i.e. a black American, not an African American. That in of itself would help enormously but not without some controversy.
A second but negative example is the Europeans and the recent migration issue. All manner of Europeans are feeling more 'European' purely by virtue of the other being not plus a potential common enemy in their midst. Ironic but true.
If I understand your position correctly then there is no room for the possibility that blacks (or the so called white trash) are getting in their own way. You have to look upon that possibility as a hypothesis to test for. Otherwise we might as well be treating minority group X like our pets instead of being autonomous human beings.
There have existed a great many persecuted peoples in recent history, the Irish, the Jews, the Chinese, the Roma. My race I know did much better abroad than in our home country, evidently institutional constraints were real.
If you don't look at all the data you're going to open to the reasonable accusation of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
In my view the question to ask is: Do there exist places on earth where this minority X have better metrics (or subgroups within the population)? Here we ignore genetics and environment questions entirely, we are simply searching for evidence contrary to our (often considered disagreeable in our present culture) hypothesis that the people X are the cause of their own suffering.
If not, then by induction we accumulate evidence in favour of the hypothesis. If so, then there is something that can be changed to improve circumstances.
For what it is worth, it seems clear to me that whenever there exist new frontiers, fresh cultural experiments can take hold and there can be new beginnings, with America itself being an example of that.
Even were it all genetics I would still have some optimism because this is something we can intelligently design around with our technologies, although that line of reasoning is treated as being deeply suspect in our present culture and time. I don't think that can last for much longer though, I and many others see those moral qualms as preposterous as the protests of the anti-vax people.
The last thing I'll say is more subjective, but I agree that class issues are the problem the US and Western countries face today. Had we superior economic growth these could be papered over but we don't have the kind of growth we need for that and so they shall have to be faced head on. Stephen Pinker's book on violence reminds me of the futurists who predicted permanent state of peace before world war 1, I think we're heading into some choppy waters.