Incumbents lose, fallout ensues

[energiewende]

Ralin is the only person making sense in this thread. The huge movement in the US to legitimise discrimination provided it's committed by groups other than those doing it in the 19th century is going to tear the country as it transitions from an overwhelmingly majority white biracial society to a true multiracial society with no majority ethnicity.

No, that is bullshit. What it's going to do is ensure that America does NOT become a class with a hereditary white aristocratic class, presiding over a hereditary white/Asian middle class, presiding over a hereditary black/Hispanic underclass.

Which is where we're headed due to the combination of class stratification (i.e. GINI coefficient) and racial status if we do NOT take steps to break the correlation between race and power in this country. It won't break itself; a passive insistence on meritocracy alone is simply not doing the job.

Let me ask two questions:

1. What evidence would be required to persuade you that outcome differences are due to internal (cultural, etc.) factors rather than external (systemic racism) factors?

2. If you were persuaded that internal factors were to blame for outcome differences between races, what would your policy response be?

I think there is a very high probability that differences in outcomes in the US are simply not due to 'oppression'. It does not make sense to me that people can arrive from China, Philippines, and Vietnam and do enormously better than people from Mexico (which is the richest of those four countries, by some margin, and even more so historically) because whites decide to be less racist to, say, Vietnamese, than to mestizo Mexcians who are much more genetically and culturally similar to them (btw, it's more likely the asians will be in the upper class, as they are in Peru). I also don't know of any policy intervention that has reliably been able to levelise differences. Of course US is a very free society, it doesn't force people to live this way or that, and maybe that's good. But if differences in outcomes are due to different ways of life (or cultures, if you prefer) then if US is to remain a free society then it has to accept those differences in outcomes.

[Ralin]

I think there is a very high probability that differences in outcomes in the US are simply not due to 'oppression'. It does not make sense to me that people can arrive from China, Philippines, and Vietnam and do enormously better than people from Mexico (which is the richest of those four countries, by some margin, and even more so historically) because whites decide to be less racist to, say, Vietnamese, than to mestizo Mexcians who are much more genetically and culturally similar to them (btw, it's more likely the asians will be in the upper class, as they are in Peru)

In the case of the Chinese and the Vietnamese it mostly boiled down to them having been middle-class or better before emigrating to the US.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

"Mestizo Mexicans are genetically closer to anglo Americans thus it is inconceivable that they could be treated worse by racism than east Asian people"

This concept manages to be one of the most dramatic misunderstandings of how racism works I've ever read and is actually fairly impressive.

I mean, I won't even go into the whole "good minority" aspect of white racism towards people of east Asian descent in America. I don't know if you're even capable of getting it if you think genetics has anything to do with racism.

[energiewende]

Why are asians a "good minority" in the first place? One possibility is that malicious racists decided to spurn Asians by making them really hard working and successful and, therefore, uncool or something. But what seems much more likely is that they were successful anyway, and those around them approved of that success regardless or even in spite of their race. I also think it makes perfect sense that a white racist would cet. par. be expected to be more favourable to someone who is 50% white than to someone who is 0% white.

The problem with your reasoning is it becomes essentially circular and unfalsifiable, ie. it is not a scientific theory but rather a quasi-religious belief. You had a plausible mechanism (unspoken or even unintentional racism keeps non-whites in a worse social position and prevents them from achieving the power they need to end such racism). But it doesn't fit the facts so you're adding ad-hoc handwaves to explain the exceptions in a desperate attempt to reach the same conclusion anyway. Which is why I ask, what evidence would be required to persuade you that internal rather than external social factors are mostly responsible? If no evidence would persuade you this theory is wrong then it is a religious belief.

In the case of the Chinese and the Vietnamese it mostly boiled down to them having been middle-class or better before emigrating to the US.

Possibly relative to the rest of their incredibly poor societies, but doesn't this kill the theory stone dead? If your argument is that US is actually not particularly racist to people who live like middle class Americans, then the problem is that blacks and hispanics (but not asians) disproportionately don't live that way, not that whites intrinsically hate blacks and hispanics.

[Thanas]

Aisans historically integrating better (or at least appearing to do so) is not a good indicator of racism or not. I shall note that Germany failed to integrate a lot of migrants but managed to do so with the Asian immigrants. Doesn't mean the rest of our policies were functioning (laughable as we had no policy worth speaking of until a few years ago) or that racism did not exist/had little influence.

[AniThyng]

Aisans historically integrating better (or at least appearing to do so) is not a good indicator of racism or not. I shall note that Germany failed to integrate a lot of migrants but managed to do so with the Asian immigrants. Doesn't mean the rest of our policies were functioning (laughable as we had no policy worth speaking of until a few years ago) or that racism did not exist/had little influence.

This is probably a racist statement in of itself, but it probably should be no surprise that educated East Asians appear to integrate better into a western society at all levels, because

1) Asians are either Christian, Buddhist, orr Atheist/don't care, with none of the baggage that Islam carries, and can easily adapt to western norms for these
2) Asians may or may not choose to retain their native tongue, but have no qualms mastering English and/or the local native language
3) Even where there is failure to integrate, somehow, the Asian community involved is successful and a pillar of the economy (or pillar of at the very least, the underworld), so the nature of the prejudice takes a different form (I am pretty sure this is something my personal experience is actually relevant, being an actual hyphenated-chinese)
4) I'm sure westerners can still find plenty of practices of asians objectionable (OMG we beat our children), it still pales in comparison to hot button issues like burkas and the like.

I may be totally wrong, though.

[Ralin]

I think you are. The whole model minority thing mainly applies to a pretty small subset of East Asian immigrants to North America, and like I said a lot of them were benefiting from being better off economically in the first place. I'm hazy on the details, but I'm guessing government support was a factor too; gotta help our former allies on the front line against communism and all. Made it a lot easier to hit the ground running.

[AniThyng]

I think you are. The whole model minority thing mainly applies to a pretty small subset of East Asian immigrants to North America, and like I said a lot of them were benefiting from being better off economically in the first place. I'm hazy on the details, but I'm guessing government support was a factor too; gotta help our former allies on the front line against communism and all. Made it a lot easier to hit the ground running.

I suppose one way to look at it might be what happens with 2nd and 3rd generation hyphenated EastAsians compared to 2nd and 3rd generation <other ethnicity>. What is different? Why? OK, I get that 1st generation east asian immigrants tend to be already well educated and possibly of some means, and that helps. But then they also tend to be already leaning west to begin with as well. Though which came first....

[Siege]

I shall note that Germany failed to integrate a lot of migrants but managed to do so with the Asian immigrants.

I suspect however this is a not to do with something inherent to Asian versus for example Turkish immigrants, but rather a function of scale, social class and social mobility.

In case of Turkish / Moroccan immigrants to The Netherlands the first generation were cheap labour from typically poor areas who saw immigration as a way to achieve a better life. Because large amounts of cheap labour were needed there were a lot of them, because there were many of them that all ended up in an unfamiliar environment they tended to seek the comfort of each other's company, and because they didn't earn much money they did so in low-income neighborhoods. Because it was assumed migrant laborers were only temporarily here and because Dutch society was unfamiliar with the needs of large foreign communities these immigrant communities weren't given the attention they required and deserved. The result, predictably, was ghettoization.

Subsequent generations raised in ghettoized communities start with a disadvantage compared to autochthonous citizens: they come from relatively poor backgrounds (and neighborhoods) with all the disadvantages that entails, and on top of that are less familiar with native cultural customs; hell, their parents may not even properly speak the native language meaning they lag behind in that respect too. All this, combined with latent racism, makes it that much more difficult to get ahead in society. This in turn gives some of them the (not wholly incorrect) impression that they are unwanted, leading to bitterness and the rejection in part or in whole of the culture they perceive as hostile to them.

I feel it's very important to point out that failure to integrate isn't because of "the baggage that Islam carries". Radical Islam wasn't a problem when these immigrants first came to Europe. Only after several generations were systematically over the course of decades ignored, otherized and deprived of the opportunity to advance themselves did we see some radicals beginning to adopt ideologies that make them feel like they belong and that channel their anger (typically in the direction of the society they have plenty reason to be frustrated with to begin with).

Islam isn't the problem, it's just a convenient outlet and a way to establish an own identity apart from the culture that's rejected / that's rejecting them. This happened time and again throughout history (an obvious parallel would be the rise to prominence of the Nation of Islam in the USA, another is Aztlán nationalism).

Now, I'm not that familiar with the history of Asian immigrants to Germany but I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that they probably suffered very few of the same systemic problems that Turkish immigrants did. They probably weren't as numerous, they probably came from relatively more affluent / better educated backgrounds, and they weren't segregated as much.

In fact I'd be willing to bet real money that a lot of these factors I mentioned are in play in the United States with regards to Mexican immigrants too. Many of them come from poor rural backgrounds, live in effectively segregated communities and haven't fully mastered the language, and these factors combined result in communities locked in vicious circles of poverty and social ostracizion. I also bet that when you take a look at the history of the various Chinatowns and Koreatowns across the United States you'll find plenty examples of communities that didn't perform nearly as well as the typical Asian immigrant success story, thus proving that it's nothing inherently to do with Asians versus Mexicans and everything with the ways communities of people interact within the context of a greater society.

What this really boils down to is that it turns out disadvantaged communities have a real hard time pulling themselves up by their bootstraps because, get this, they are disadvantaged. Meanwhile less disadvantaged communities suffer comparatively less from being disadvantaged. This really should surprise no well-thinking person ever, and instead of openly wondering why systematically otherized communities are other than us a more constructive way to spend our time and energy would probably be to seek ways for our society to be more inclusive so that this kind of problem occurs less often in the future.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

The problem with your reasoning is it becomes essentially circular and unfalsifiable, ie. it is not a scientific theory but rather a quasi-religious belief. You had a plausible mechanism (unspoken or even unintentional racism keeps non-whites in a worse social position and prevents them from achieving the power they need to end such racism). But it doesn't fit the facts so you're adding ad-hoc handwaves to explain the exceptions in a desperate attempt to reach the same conclusion anyway. Which is why I ask, what evidence would be required to persuade you that internal rather than external social factors are mostly responsible? If no evidence would persuade you this theory is wrong then it is a religious belief.

How doesn't it fit the facts? You haven't said any way it doesn't except "well I dunno my gut says racism probably isn't a big deal".

[Simon_Jester]

Let me ask two questions:

1. What evidence would be required to persuade you that outcome differences are due to internal (cultural, etc.) factors rather than external (systemic racism) factors?

Just for starters, the absence of blatantly obvious examples of external factors popping up in controlled studies. For example, if Susan Helena Schmidt and Jazmyn Taniah Freeman submit identical resumes to 100 employers, I would expect to see Ms. Freeman getting roughly the same number of requests for job interviews as Ms. Schmidt.

[If you didn't know, the former is an attempt to construct a 'white' American name that few blacks would have, while the latter is a 'black' American name that few whites would have]

If instead Ms. Freeman gets, say, 70% as many requests, there's a systematic external problem. And one with real consequences- if she goes searching for a job, it will take her at least 1.4 times longer to find it on average. That in turn means she is more likely to keep a disadvantageous, low-paying job (because finding a new one is hard). She is more likely to become clinically depressed or discouraged while she IS searching for a new job, resulting in her job search stretching out even longer and being less productive, because no one wants to hire a person who's obviously depressed and stressed out.

This in turn means that she is likely to be poorer, to have a lower-paying job and have it a lower percentage of the time, to be more likely to have to work two jobs to make ends meet, to have less time to raise children... et cetera. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of a vicious cycle.

Now, if this effect and others like it did not exist, I would be more skeptical of the idea that external racism causes blacks to have socioeconomic problems. But they do exist.

2. If you were persuaded that internal factors were to blame for outcome differences between races, what would your policy response be?

I think there is a very high probability that differences in outcomes in the US are simply not due to 'oppression'. It does not make sense to me that people can arrive from China, Philippines, and Vietnam and do enormously better than people from Mexico (which is the richest of those four countries, by some margin, and even more so historically) because whites decide to be less racist to, say, Vietnamese, than to mestizo Mexcians who are much more genetically and culturally similar to them (btw, it's more likely the asians will be in the upper class, as they are in Peru).

You might need detailed knowledge of these things instead of trying to figure out the facts by looking at wealth statistics. A lot of things are hard to explain until you understand the context.

If I had to guess: It's because a large fraction of all Mexican (and other Latino) immigrants are specifically coming to the US with the intent of becoming manual laborers to support a family in Latin America, and hopefully going back one day. A Salvadorean laborer (here for income right now more than anything else) is going to define "success" differently from either, say, a Chinese graduate student (here to get a technical education) or a Vietnamese boat person (here to stay with no place else to go). They will pursue different strategies for success, and will tend to get different long-term socioeconomic outcomes.

I also don't know of any policy intervention that has reliably been able to levelise differences. Of course US is a very free society, it doesn't force people to live this way or that, and maybe that's good. But if differences in outcomes are due to different ways of life (or cultures, if you prefer) then if US is to remain a free society then it has to accept those differences in outcomes.

When differences in outcomes are blatantly NOT caused by different ways of life, or when the different way of life is itself caused by external forces damaging the community, then the opposite is true.

You cannot live in freedom if outsiders are harassing and penalizing you for trying to live at all, or if they try to punish you for not living the "obviously right" way, which is what Grandmaster Jogurt was getting at.

It's easy for successful members of the majority to say that everyone should live in fashion XYZ, because they live in fashion XYZ and are successful.

But suppose they make access to XYZ limited for minority groups. Then they say it is perfectly right and proper for the minority to suffer because they fail to do XYZ. That is morally revolting, and very much anti-freedom, for any reasonable definition of 'freedom.'