On blacks, whites, income, and families
Recently there was a lot of talk about a study comparing the incomes in adulthood of black men and women to their white counterparts who grew up in similar economic circumstances. Here were the basic findings:
…[B]lack boys are much less likely to realize the American Dream ”” economically speaking ”” as they move into adulthood, compared to white boys; by contrast, black girls are much more likely to do well economically as young adults, compared to white girls.
In covering this study, a number of media outlets, scholars, and commentators argued the new research showed that family structure did not have much to do with the racial gap in mobility between black and white boys.
W. Bradford Wilcox has written this critique of that point of view of what the study actually shows. The article is worth reading, but here are its main points:
In sum, when it comes to assessing the impact of family structure on the racial gaps in economic mobility between black and white boys, this new study suggests that (1) family structure at the neighborhood level influences economic mobility for black boys, (2) family structure at the household level influences economic mobility for black boys (if you don’t control for their family income growing up), and (3) family structure in adulthood influences black boys’ household income as adults. So, the new Chetty et al. study actually offers further evidence that family structure seems to play an “important role” in the racial gap in economic mobility in America ”” including the gap between white and black boys as they move into adulthood.
One of the main determinants of “family structure” is the presence of absence of a father.
[NOTE: I have not yet had time to read the study, so I’m not reporting on my own impressions, although I may do so later. I know that one of the first things that came to my mind, however, on reading about the study is whether differential rates of incarceration affected the outcomes. In this interview with the lead author of the study, I noticed that he mentions the topic and says:
The reason we focus on black men is when we look at certain outcomes like the probability that they have a job or their odds of being incarcerated or their chances of completing high school, they do look like an outlier relative to all the other groups. Black men are significantly less likely to be employed than black women, they are significantly more likely to be incarcerated, they’re significantly less likely to complete high school. And so it does seem like there are a special set of challenges confronting black men…
…the takeaway from that is not that schools are not important or that having lower-poverty, lower-crime areas are not important; all of those things would help black kids and white kids as we’ve shown in our prior work.
My more specific question is whether the study goes into the incarceration rates for black men raised in families with high incomes as compared to white men raised in families with similar incomes. When I have a bit more time I plan to check the study out on that. The PDF on it is over 100 pages long, and as I indicated, I’m in a hurry at the moment.]
Where people seem to go wrong in this debate is when they say that black male incarceration is a big cause of the difference therefore if we just jail less black men then it will be better. But the incarceration is the end result of the environment and if that doesn’t change they still won’t be much more successful.
This is also the thinking in that program that leads to not reporting small crimes by youth like the Parkland school shooter. It’s behavior and mindset that lead to jail not the other way around.
On page 24 of the study there’s this: “As parental income rises, the incarceration rates decline for both white and black males. But there are substantial disparities even at the top of the parental income distribution. Among children with parents in the top 1%, only 0.2% of white males were incarcerated, whereas 2.2% of black males were incarcerated”
Blacks are just endowed with the Warrior Gene at levels not seen with other races.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121093343.htm
This has MUCH more of an impact with prison aged males.
Let’s face it, juries are very much less likely to sentence a gal to a long prison sentence — even if she logically could merit it.
Whereas a guy is going to get the full stretch for a violent street crime.
The guys are wildly over represented in the ranks of drug distribution.
Whereas, prostitutes are just not going to face Big jail time, no matter what.
The guys with ‘warrior issues’ are going to skew the stats something terrible.
When you stack the Warrior Gene on top of Bastardy and a Brutal Mother — you end up with a fella with a Life Sentence for a slew of violent crimes — that’s what the statistics show.
BTW, this nexus was first spotted in British Columbian prison populations… which was and remains a VERY liberal conviction climate.
Surprising to most, Liberal Conviction Climates produce the MOST severe racial bias in the prison stats. Here’s why:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htm
It’s entirely due to the nature of the criminal behavior distribution across the races. Racial bias, disparate impact, only disappears when no-one is convicted at all, or when everyone is in prison, no matter what.
BTW,LSJWs are now arguing that the Warrior Gene is a nothing burger. The fact that it was discovered by a VERY Liberal Canadian MD passes unremarked. Oh, irony.
I’ve known fellas with flaming tempers. The worst of the bunch pistol whipped train engineers to rob them of their lunch money — when he was 15 years old.
The dude is seriously disturbed. He’s headed back to the Big House. It can only be a matter of time, and blood.
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“And so it does seem like there are a special set of challenges confronting black men”.
No one made those young black men quit school.
No one made those young men commit crimes.
If uneducated, non-english speaking illegal immigrants can find work, so can black men.
When I was 15 my father took ill and was unable to work for 6 months. I had a part time job at a local supermarket and during that time willingly handed my entire paycheck over to my mother, who one day shared with me that my paycheck was being used to put food on our table. I stayed in school, kept up my grades and worked extra hours to help out. And it never occurred to me to resent it.
The only “special challenges” confronting black men in America are of their father’s moral bankruptcy and their own doing.
Black commentator Walter Williams “Roadmap Out of Poverty” :
“Complete high school. Get a job, any kind of a job. Get married before having children. Be a law abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.”
Too many black men lack the moral compass that guides us to make good choices and bad choices limit opportunities to better our lot in life.
This is such an old story. It is not worth revisiting.The roots of black male badness are in the Civil Rights era and its laws and the increasing welfare support of fatherless kids with incentives to make more fatherless kids.
We do not need to belabor all the data yet again. That is the Democratic Party way, to require more data and thus kick the can down the road. The data are IN.
Like it or not, black culture aside (and black culture is not something to idealize), black men have lower median IQs which must be accepted as fact. But black men can jump! Yet we pretend they are equal to non-blacks in all ways!
Now blacks self-segregate. The “Historically Black” colleges and universities remain self-segregated, and the educational products thereof remain poor in quality. We lower college standards to admit more blacks to college AND to professsional schools in order to serve at the altar of Diversity. You want a shitty neurosurgeon or a good neurosurgeon to open your skull? If that surgeon is black, well….there may be a basis for uncertainty now called Bigotry.
For a control group, look at black Africa 2-3 generations after independence of the former colonies. It ain’t pretty, and its getting worse. And we want to lead the USA in the same direction.
black males being incarcerated at a high rate is a hoax conspiracy theory made up by the left to persuasive people into believing that blacks don’t commit more crimes but merely victims being thrown into jails at a much higher rate because they are targeted by racist republican voting cops.
If what they said were true, why is there no difference in incarceration rate of blacks between democrat controlled cities and republican controlled cities? Blacks are incarcerated at a much higher rate every where, blue cities, red cities, America, Europe, even in Africa. They are generally athletically stronger because they are still at an evolutionary phase that genetically physical attributes are prioritised over intellectual attributes. It is like using a time machine to bring a person from Stone Age to the modern time, of course they are having a tough time adapting.
Frog:
The racial disparities in this study do not appear to be about IQ, because for black men the disparity between incomes for whites and blacks raised under the same financial conditions is significant, whereas for those same men’s sisters the gap does not exist. That is, if you take two families of equal finances, one black and one white, and compare a boy from one family with a boy from the other, you get a disparity in the adult incomes of those boys. If you do the same for girls, you don’t get a disparity. Presumably, the boy and girl in the black family have essentially the same heredity, so why the difference between the sexes?
That’s the question the study attempts to answer.
Frog:
Thomas Sowell is a good person to read on the subject of IQ and race. He’s written many articles on the subject, such as this one.
Your presumption of presumability in your counter is not scientifically nor statistically sound. Tut!
I’ve read a lot of Sowell, thanks. He is a very thoughtful and wise man, but he is not a statistician. Recall all the Bell-shaped curve data, which drove diversity lovers nuts.
Re the subject under discussion. A broader view needs to be taken i.e. what is happening to males–black and white–in general in our society?
I recommend the statistic filled–and very alarming–series that Tucker Carlson recently broadcast, which may still be available on his website.
P.S.–Back commenting on Neoneo Con after many year’s absence.
Was commenting on other conservative sites that use Disqus but, for no reason that I can discern other than my conservative viewpoint, Disqus has decided to flag virtually all my comments-no matter how innocent, no matter pro or anti the issue being discussed, to be “spam” and immediately “disappearing” them ; a “mistake” they say that “they are working hard to correct” but never do.
Is this part of the Left’s general, all court press to silence conservative opinion whenever it turns up? I don’t know, but I’m certainly suspicious.
Snow on Pine:
I can’t stand Disqus. It often fails to load properly, which is very annoying.
Welcome back.
Snow on Pine:
I agree, by the way, that men (boys, when younger) in general are having more trouble in our society lately.
Snow on Pine: I’ve thought about signing on to Disqus for years now but never pulled the trigger because of privacy concerns.
Lately I’ve read claims like yours about censorship and not known where to land. Some say Disqus just gives tools to site owners so they may moderate as they see fit — censoring comments, banning or shadow-banning participants. (Shadow-banning is where you can see your comments but no one else does.)
So behavior as you describe would be the responsibility of the websites, not Disqus.
OTOH, we’ve lately seen how untrustworthy and partisan these big centralized sites and services are. I wouldn’t put it past Disqus to put the kibosh on you.
I do believe the disappearing comment sections in sites like “The Atlantiic” and “The Daily Beast” are primarily efforts to censor conservatives, who all too often would demolish liberal talking-point articles.
One point that is rarely mentioned is how these single moms raise their boys. When I walk into stores here in Germany, I see displays of Hello Kitty, Frozen, and princess stuff. I imagine this is what the moms are attracted to. Where is the boy stuff? I’ve seen videos of moms braiding their daughter’s hair. Do they spend time teaching their sons how to build or fix things? I doubt it.
Kids need to learn self control. and one way this can be done is by recognizing their accomplishments and letting them know that their help in running the household is important. It takes quite a while, and it is not the same as today’s self esteem. Girls and young mothers have to be taught how to mother boys. Even if there is not a dad at home, you can look for coaches, Boys Clubs, Scouts, etc. where men are available as mentors.
People spend too much time analyzing the problems of men and teens. The real solutions will start with 2 and 3 year olds and how they are raised. Think of Ben Carson’s mother who made him read books and the librarian who recommended the book on rocks, which made him the rock identifier in his friendship group. His accomplishments were recognized.
Huxley–Looking for answers, Disqus does recommend that I “contact the moderators” of the sites that are flagging me.
Well, it’s been very hard to find any link that I can click on to communicate with these moderators, and the times that I have done so have resulted in exactly no return responses.
Disqus advises on it’s website that, if your comment is erroneously flagged as spam, just click on the line next to that comment that says, “This is not spam.” and everything will be hunky dory.
Unfortunately, I have never seen any such line next to any of the multitude of my comments that have a red spam flag next to them.
Moreover, a few days ago I asked the question on Disqus’ own “Admin” website of just who has the power to flag something as spam. This question of mine was apparently extremely impertinent, because it was immediately replaced by a red “Removed” flag.
So, you can see why I might think that immediately flagging 95 % of my many comments over the last two months or so as “spam,” and immediately removing them from view, might not just be a glitch in the system, not be a bug, but be a feature of Disqus, a deliberate action.
As has been said, “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
Snow on Pine: I take your points. Those sound like classic jerk-around moves. Someone up the chain made a decision.
I once demolished Rick Ross at his cult site in a few comments. After that my login stopped working.
Guess I’ll stick with not signing up with Disqus.
My experience with Disqus is that the following can lead to getting a comment flagged: too much time spent in writing comments, more than one link, a lot of HTML such as blockquotes, a relatively long comment.
Another thing which is CERTAIN to flag a comment is too many edits: two or more edits- or even sometimes one- will get it flagged. Unfortunately, you cannot preview before you post in Disqus, as you can w Neo.
Disqus is set up for short, pity comments. If your comment is too scholarly or pedantic- too many links or blockquote- it will get flagged. Or if you spend too much time writing it.
What really tees me off is Instapundit’s “Your comment has been flagged as spam. We’re working on it.” No, they NEVER work on it.
Several times I have been able to communicate w blog owners regarding Disqus flagging my comments. One reply was, “I have no idea why you got flagged. You made a good comment.” Another reply was, “I get VERY frustrated w Disqus myself.”
Sometimes I can get a flagged comment through by cleaning it up- not as much HTML or links. Also get it written elsewhere so I merely copy/paste onto Disqus. But then you have to spend some time getting the lines to work. You can copy/paste into practically anything except Disqus and not have to bother with getting lines aligned. But with Discqus, you do.
The Atlantic flagged a Disqus comment I made for using two links. I reposted without links: flagged. I tried another comment,a short two-liner elsewhere in the comments. It appeared that I got banned. Recently, The Atlantic informed us it is no longer accepting comments. Breaks me up.
My comments have not been stopped for ideological content, as I very seldom comment at lefty blogs.
I can’t stand Disqus. It often fails to load properly, which is very annoying.
Disqus only fails to load when I have brave blocking a website’s java script and other scripts.
As has been said, “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
Google Blade runner type Silicon Valley elites don’t like snow. It’s too White for them.
You can try using a virtual private network or VPN, that is free, to change your router address.
Disqus usually links to social media as a token login, thus those accounts are combined. So the problems might not be whatever you wrote on Disqus, but because the SIlicon Valley network has flagged your other stuff and behavior.
That’s why I tell people on social media not to do certain things. This ain’t the free net of the 90s.
But then you have to spend some time getting the lines to work. You can copy/paste into practically anything except Disqus and not have to bother with getting lines aligned. But with Discqus, you do.
Ever try using Notepad ++?
It has certain line adjustment features that people use for coding purposes, which works well copy/pasted.
Ever try using Notepad ++?
I copy/pasted MS Word and Notepad into Discus. Notepad lines up well. Thanks for the suggestion.
Go into any store where “blacks” and “whites” are present with their children. In an hour of observation you will learn all you need to know about which children will succeed and which won’t.
Based upon a quick look at the study I think I can offer several observations:
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* The measure of “household income” fails to capture income of unmarried co-habitating partners, child support payments, the fair value of non-taxable gov’t support to single mothers, unreported tips and other under-the-table cash income not ordinarily reported on Form 1040 among other sources of income.
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* The definition on “father present” does not differentiate between married stepfather and married biological father. Multiple parent fertility is unaddressed. The surveyed years span too short of a period of time to measure whether or not a married father is present in the family from a dependent child’s infancy to age 16 or 18.
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* It is unclear to me whether the measures of racism in a neighborhood actually measures “white” racism which appears to be assumed. It is interesting that the prospects of “white” boys in high racism environments lag as do “black” boys in such neighbors. Perhaps these measures capture instead cultural signals arising from reactions to dysfunctional underclass behaviors. Perhaps neighbors populated by traditional families are less racist?
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A few years ago Zero Hedge published a study demonstrating the a single mother with two dependent children often “earns” an income including the unreported value of government benefits that approximates the taxed income of approximately $74k-$75k of a married working couple with two dependents.
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It appears to be established facts that children do substantially less well in step-parenting families and boys do less well in the absence of their biological fathers and in multiple partner family situations.
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One might also ask, why would or should an unmarried “black” male work hard if the benefits of his hard work (to be reported on Form 1040) are so often forcibly taken from him to support women and children who are no longer in his life? Such a situation would seem to be more likely in our “black” communities than in our communities where more traditional families are present.