Race and Net Worth

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Jason

Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/ ... story.html

For those who do not like to click, the headline is "Median Net Worth of Black Bostonians is $8.00." Yeah eight bucks. Like not even a McDonald's super sized meal. Like in no bank account let alone mortgage.

I am not a bleeding heart, but I am admittedly a defender of systemic explanations of economic "have/have not" issues due to my country's (US) history of housing the most abject and onerous slave society in the history of Western Civilization. This was a mere 150 years ago and it wasn't like equality rose and racism disappeared immediately thereafter.

I also have a history with the city of Boston which is generally acknowledged as the most racist city in the non-Southern United States. I can attest to that. It's brutal.

So as someone who spends a lot of time reading about net worth to see where I can compare and such, this was not really a surprise. But what I thought about was that the demographic constitution of this board reflects said divide.

suomalainen
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by suomalainen »

I had a colleague at work who once said that he didn't understand "Black Lives Matter". "What are they marching for? I haven't seen any racism." And then I see a sticker on a car in the parking garage "Police Lives Matter". No one ever said they didn't, moron! But for hundreds of years black lives really did not matter! Why people continue to refuse to see the historical context surrounding race relations has always mystified me.

The above doesn't lead to "Therefore, you should vote Democratic" and embrace their solutions, but when the red side seems to not even be able to acknowledge the problem, it's hard to take their "solutions" seriously.

Jason

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

I believe close to 50% of Caribbean blacks have at one time been married but only slightly more than 25% of US Blacks.

In the African American community, especially amongst young women, marriage is not held in high priority but child rearing is. Furthermore, due to mass incarceration ie. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Caught by Gottschalk ,the available pool of eligible males compared to available females is highly imbalanced. In Matthew Desmond's "Evicted" a sociological study of housing in Milwaukee, WI, it was demonstrated that what mass incarceration is to the African American Male, housing is to the African American female who is often found as a single mother, suffering economic hardship due to and exacerbated by constant housing insecurity. It's a potent cocktail and at least partially explains the $8.00 net worth thing.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

In Matthew Desmond's "Evicted"...
Evicted is a great book. It really demonstrates how housing problems can pile up on the poor, resulting in hopeless economic situations that lead to all sorts of other problems. It also shows how many people shoot themselves in the foot by making terrible decisions. It's a page turner too, very light on the stats.

Jason

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

Along with "On The Run" by Alice Goffman it the best "narrative" based sociological account I have read. Although she got a lot of shit for it.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

It's a terrible problem with no easy solution that I can see. This week one of the kids I was working with was a 5 year old straight-outta-somewhere. He was a tiny little guy, but sharp as a tack, able to help older kids who were struggling with technology and do math at an above-average level, but all day long he would lose his temper, yell out streams of profanity, and throw things across the room. So, off he would go to spend another two minutes in the corner. Another assistant who was also just helping out this week, shook his head and said to me "Imagine what his home life must be like." One of the other boys kept addressing this assistant as "old man" which made us chuckle, but also shake our heads.

These children are already in a classroom where there is generally 1 highly trained adult for every 2 children, so they are some of the very lucky few who are being given a chance. I don't know what more can be done, so it seems to me that something different ought to be attempted. Racism exists, but the high rate of incarceration is not initialized at moments of interaction with racist police officers or justice system. It starts with behavior already exhibited at a very early age. If it were up to me, I would take that little guy home with me for the holidays, and read him picture books, let him run in the woods,and build volcanoes out of clay, but that's not how the system works, so all I could do when he threw the school-issued I-pad on to the floor was tell him to take a 2 minute break in the corner, again.

IlliniDave
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by IlliniDave »

Jason wrote:
Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:15 am

I also have a history with the city of Boston which is generally acknowledged as the most racist city in the non-Southern United States. I can attest to that. It's brutal.
I've lived in the northern Midwest, the Notheast (Boston area), and the Southeast US. It's anecdotal, but in my experience racism is is considerably more overt and I dunno, maybe nasty is the right word, in the north, at least as far as urban areas go. It's important to point out that I did not live anywhere in the south until the late 1980s, so I'm not speaking to what may have happened here in the 1960s and prior when most of the stereotypes of the South were cast in concrete. Just one guy's opinion, but the South has changed a lot compared to the images I watched on TV as a little Midwestern kid. It's not a perfectly inclusive utopia, but to hazard a guess I'd say most African Americans would find a lot more economic opportunity in a southern city of comparable size, even if the total wealth of the city is lower, than in Boston or even Chicago (unless of course they get into politics in Chicago).

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

So they phone interviewed 400 people out of 673,000...
I know everyone has decided that polling is useless since it didn't predict Trump but it really doesn't take a large sample to get a reasonably accurate representation of a population provided the survey is well designed. There's basic statistics behind how they decide how many people need to be polled, though two different researchers can arrive at different conclusions due to the assumptions that have to be made when adjustments are required (some segments of the population are less likely to have a phone so the researcher tries to account for this, etc.).

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Sclass
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Sclass »

ffj wrote:
Thu Dec 14, 2017 6:36 pm
So they phone interviewed 400 people out of 673,000 to determine that native blacks have $8 of wealth, and of course the reason for the wealth disparity is solely racism. Sounds about right. Absolute zero research on the dynamics of why this could occur, if true, other than racism.
I was scratching my head about this article and was wondering why I was speechless. FFJ summed it up.

What a silly article. Racism is real. Yes the African American neighborhoods have problems (at least the one I came from). But seriously if whites and blacks in my part of LA came together and had a big kumbayya it would still be a mess there. There are some deep systemic cultural problems in the community that probably wouldn’t go away even if everyone went colorblind.

Wait - I don’t know this but I’d guess poor white communities suffer from a lot of the same diseases. Violence, substance abuse, HIV, fetal alcohol syndrome in adults etc.

theanimal
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by theanimal »

It's interesting to compare the history of racism and blacks versus the history of racism and Asians. Both were enslaved in the US. Both were looked down upon and ridiculed. Yet today the difference is quite stark in all categories: employment, crime, net worth etc... I'm not sure I know the reason but it is nonetheless intriguing.

FBeyer
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by FBeyer »

Who cares about the relation between the sample population and the true population? If you can call 400 people anywhere in the world and the median net worth is around 8 dollars for any easily discernible socioeconomic group, something's rotten somewhere.

Jason

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

ffj wrote:
Thu Dec 14, 2017 6:36 pm
Let's fix this problem today. How are you going to accomplish it?
Easy peasy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ns/361631/

7Wannabe5
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

When you give a 6 year old the marshmallow test, the necessary prerequisite is trust in social contract with authority figure. It does not matter how much grit, internal fortitude, willpower, foresight, or precocious math skills the child possesses if he does not know whether he ought to believe in the deal being offered.

The funny thing is that sometimes a child who does manage to rise above initial poor circumstances will be at an advantage as an adult, because less likely to view social structure as reality. IOW, can have a bit of an immigrant advantage without immigrating. I have dated several successful African-American men, one of whom was just old enough to attend segregated schools as a child, and the factors that led to their success were pretty obvious. They would have stood out even as children due to possessing high degree of intelligence, athleticism, and/or artistic talent-pick at least 2. Children do not have the ability to pick their own Circle of 5 Influence, but sometimes they can be picked.

Not completely unrelated note would be that I would hazard to guess that if statistician pulled the 1st grade standardized test/IQ scores of X% of this forum at random, as well as the African-American men I have dated, I would expect the median result would be almost as far off the curve as an $8 net worth. Same goes for burpees contest scores (unless sample was very small, and I was included :lol: )

Also, head nod to IlliniDave, because I was surprised by the experience that I could walk around Birmingham. Alabama with a black boyfriend with much less likelihood of anybody taking notice than in the Detroit area. Another characteristic of successful individual is likelihood to maintain self-possession when heckled; not allow some other individual's idiocy to reflect upon self-worth or cause reaction rather than response.

Everywhere in the human world, the cultural tendency towards viewing duel, feud, vendetta or vigilante behavior as acceptable or necessary to maintain respect results in a high rate of murder. Violent behavior can result from very slight discrepancies in resource bases of young men under these cultural circumstances. So, maybe sometimes simple fact of being born destined to be literally a head taller than peers can result in early ability to avoid such conflicts, as well as greatly increasing likelihood of athletic scholarships and affirmative mentors.

suomalainen
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by suomalainen »

@augustus and @ffj, that comes across to me as victim blaming, very similar to some of the conversations surrounding sexual harassment. Regardless of how imperfect a victim is, it is purely misdirection if you're not also willing to examine the evidence of systemic harm, whether that's a 5% or 50% contributor. There are two parallel issues that are separate and each can be validly discussed rather than dismissed. Just because there's "black on black crime" doesn't mean the penal system isn't racist. Not that I have it handy, but I believe the evidence is abundant in the form of studies showing comparable crimes result in heavier penalties for blacks than other races.

Jason

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

Boston’s first baseball team - 1871
First African American Baseball Player - 1947
Boston’s first African American Baseball player - 1959

What do they say? Baseball, as American as apple pie or some shit like that.

But of course, those reporters just didn’t cold call enough. Probably would have found that the average net worth was at least twice as much.

Riggerjack
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Riggerjack »

Poverty is 100% correlated to poverty. Race is not.
So why would someone suggest we talk about race?

I have found that either A, you aren't interested in poverty, but you are interested in race issues. Or B, you are interested in signalling leftward PC culture, and have no real interest in poverty or race.

I have no real issue with either of those positions, both are valid, and occasionally someone holds those same views for other reasons. But since we have danced this dance a few times, let's at least define goals, rather than wasting time playing ingroup/outgroup identification games.

Jason

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

I disagree with your premise wholeheartedly and will not be coerced into presenting an argument based on your terms.

If you think there is no correlation between race and poverty you do not understand the basic fundamental history of this country and I can’t change that .

We live in a country that founding documents legally classified African-Americans as less than 100 percent of a person.

How you believe that that does not affect systemic poverty is quite frankly beyond me and frightening as well .

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Not that I have it handy, but I believe the evidence is abundant in the form of studies showing comparable crimes result in heavier penalties for blacks than other races.
The same is true in schools. Studies have shown that black students often receive harsher punishment for the same behavior. Maybe it's racism, maybe it's because the rate of these behaviors is higher in these schools and the amount of resources is lower so the principal and other staff just run out of patience and energy. It's not hard to imagine that being suspended or expelled from school isn't helpful to outcomes later in life.

Similarly, it's been found that bad behavior in inner city black schools is often criminalized by getting the police involved and the student entering the criminal justice system for a behavior that would be dealt with by the school alone in a suburb or rural environment. Maybe it's racism, maybe the school just doesn't have the resources to deal with the problem behaviors and find it easier to call in the cavalry whenever there's a fight or theft or whatever. Again, it's not hard to imagine that having a criminal record makes it hard to get started in life when employers and landlords want to avoid people who have a record.

It sucks that the concept of racism has become politicized to the point where the hard core on one side feel like the have to reject it outright and the hard core on the other side are seeing it everywhere and blaming it for every problem. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Of course some people are racist and of course their racist actions affect the people they are directed against. Of course some people make bad decisions and cause problems for themselves and others. Social science isn't physics, there's not one obvious cause that is easily measured and one obvious solution that is easily applied.

Whichever side you are on here please consider reading Evicted. It will both confirm what you already think and give you more information that will challenge your point of view. While you are at it read Moral Politics which will explain why we have trouble agreeing about these issues.

Jason

Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Jason »

Crack cocaine versus powder cocaine Laws. When Newt Gingrich publically apologizes for its racist implications I think we can all admit there’s a problem .

FDR purposefully not including domestics, the primary occupation of African-American women in the new deal policies and social nets.

Racism and baseball was about jobs - do you honestly think African Americans did not want to play major-league baseball. Why would ownership not allow players who were better than her current players to be on their team.

And of course, telling people that they can only piss in separate bathrooms would never have a detrimental effect on a people psyche despite being forced to die for our country in war.

Look at the statistics with regard to who fought in the Vietnam War and tell me race and poverty have no correlation. I honestly want to hear that one.

Edit: funny how before the opioid epidemic which has impacted white America drug abuse was never viewed as a health hazard but a criminal enterprise. It’s common knowledge that you can trace America racist tendencies to How it prosecutes drug users-San Francisco making opiates illegal because it generally was used by the Asian community. Same with marijuana and it’s initial correlation with the African American jazz community

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Race and Net Worth

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

This is sort of tangential but has anyone ever seen the movie The Departed? Remember this line?
Put it this way. You're a black guy in Boston. You don't need any help from me to be completely f___ed.
It's sort of a laugh line in the movie but often jokes are funny because they have a hint of the truth.

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