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You're on the money.

Sadly, the only way to even discuss culture's role without being labelled a bigot is to discuss the cultural differences within white Americans. When you're talking about how cultural traits prevalent in Appalachian communities like the one I grew up in exacerbate inequality, suddenly you have an audience. See the author J.D. Vance who wrote 'Hillbilly Elegy', and has subsequently become a darling of the political left.

It's funny, because my time spent in poor white communities and poor black communities allowed me to see how radically similar the two communities cultural traits often are. And also very similar is the fact that these communities have mixed within them families who go against the grain and succeed by not succumbing to the cultural norms around them.

Thing is, if we're honest, it's a lot easier to become popular as a minister or a politician when you tell a disenfranchised group of people that they are victims of someone else than to tell them they need to fix their own culture. Poor white families whose fathers abandon them have the same issues as black families whose fathers are absent, but the media would rather focus on the edge cases where racist cops shoot black men without cause.

Nobody ever asked black Americans to vote for a spokesman. Instead the media has decided that Al Sharpton and his ilk should be the ones consulted as to what black folks care about. He's in New York like they are, so it's easy for them and lucrative for him. In the meantime, kids hold signs saying "Black Lives Matter", but nobody wants to hold a sign that says "Black Dads Matter" even though a movement like that would do more to help black America than any government program. 70% of children being born out of wedlock has a huge effect, whether anyone is willing to admit it or not. And blaming incarceration solves nothing. The majority of absent fathers in the black community are not incarcerated.

> Thing is, if we're honest, it's a lot easier to become popular as a minister or a politician when you tell a disenfranchised group of people that they are victims of someone else than to tell them they need to fix their own culture.

It's not just that it's easier to become popular this way: political figures that are _already popular_ but even pay lip service to cultural effects are sharply criticized by intellectuals. Just look at the spate of articles recently (and throughout his presidency) faulting Barack Obama for the handful of times that he's mentioned the potential for culture to have an effect. He's also been unusually candid for a national politician in talking about the direct effects of racism, so the usual complaint that talking about culture is only a tactic for ignoring actual racism falls flat.

So what you are saying begs the question, why are there so many absent fathers in the black community?

33% of black men go to prison. That creates a situation where there are far more unattached black females vs males.

What is the optimal mating strategy in an environment where the females vastly outnumber the males?

There is lots of evidence that black men are unfairly targeted by the police. So is the epidemic of absent fathers in the african american community an expected outcome of our current policies? Is this even a cultural issue or an issue that is created through government policy?

Stop blaming Black people for White people ignoring them.

Black people know that "Black Dads Matter", but White people keep stealing them.

http://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/

Why do you blame culture, but ignore historical practices like redlining, or the obvious correlation with poverty, or the fact that American black people have had scarcely 50 years of equality under the law? That drugs in black communities are treated as crime, but drugs in white communities are seen as a public health crisis?

There are hundreds of issues of infinitely more substance than whether black children are conceived in wedlock.

What makes you a bigot isn't that you see that as something worth addressing. You're a bigot because, of all the problems facing black communities, you choose that one to judge them by.

A bigot? Really?

"There are hundreds of issues of infinitely more substance than whether black children are conceived in wedlock."

This is where it's obvious that you are yet another non-black person who has never lived in a predominantly black community or extensively socialized with large groups of black folks in real contexts. I've attended black churches countless times, been a best man and/or a groomsman in two weddings with two very good friends who happen to be black, and my own wedding party was my brother, and white coworker, and two black men who are my oldest friends. I don't point out the lack of fathers in the black community because I'm a bigot. I point it out because I care and don't believe America can succeed without the betterment of black America.

Fatherless children are vastly more likely to end up in jail, dead, or at best drop-outs. You talk about drugs and poverty, and act as if being raised without a father doesn't directly impact that? Are you fucking serious? I'm not "judging" the black community for lack of fathers. I'm characterizing a real problem that is obviously a root cause of many others. People like you who reflexively jump to cries of "bigot" don't help. You hurt by enabling the demagogues to continue to act as if the real challenges imposed on blacks by systemic racism are equal to the challenges imposed by a broken culture that was created by white racism but has now, post Civil Rights Act, morphed into a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

Now if you excuse me I'm going to go home to my mixed-race children and continue to hate them since I'm such a bigot according to some dipshit on the internet. I'll have to kick my wife out too. Can't believe I didn't see she wasn't an Aryan before.

Do either of your black friends know you invoke their race in internet arguments?

I've lived in predominantly black neighborhoods and I've stepped over blood trails and crime scene tape to go to work, buddy, if that means credibility to you. I've taken cover during driveby shootings. Safe to say I don't idealize poor, black communities.

My question to you is: what are you going to do about absentee fathers?

If longwinded moralization about family values fixed anything, black communities would all be Beverly Hills by now, but it doesn't, so we have to look at practical and evidence-based approaches, like increasing access to family planning and drug rehab. These are measurable and reliable solutions, whereas the Bill Cosby approach has not yet demonstrated an effect.

These discussions about distressed communities are centered around recognition for identifying one singular problem, rather than holistic approaches to fixing problems in that sphere, so I don't come to HN with high hopes.

Anyway, my regards to your wife and kids.

I mean... jeez, again with the name-calling. Have you looked up the definition of "bigot"? It's defined as a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.

In the comments I've seen you post so far, the intolerant one is... you.

There is nothing intolerant in calling someone a bigot.

There is also this, by the same author: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/19/the-r...

Basically, when you control for education level, Asians come out just behind whites while black and Hispanic minorities still get shafted. And that this didn't used to be the case, that Asians used to have a similar gap, which indicates that Americans have simply gotten less racist towards them. Presumably on such a large scale there shouldn't be a significant discrepancy of income for the same level of education.

> Basically, when you control for education level, Asians come out just behind whites while black and Hispanic minorities still get shafted.

The Post conveniently leaves out important parts of the paper's findings because it contradicts the conclusion they wanted to draw:

The process of institutional economic discrimination against Asians in America was equal to and in many cases stronger than that against black Americans. Hillger's paper argues that, once institutional discrimination was lifted, high-gradient societal discrimination was no match for market forces (suppressed wages for the same productivity from an Asian employee is an opportunity for easy arbitrage by a competent capitalist). These market forces did not have a similar convergence-to-white-income effect on the black labor pool, and Hillger's paper uses measures of productivity not dependent on education to at largely explain the variation.

I'm of the opinion that statistical discrimination is pretty messed up too, so this doesn't mean everything is right with the world and no further problems with racism exist. I also get that many people think that statistical racial discrimination is warranted, which leads to the kind of mental backflips necessary to write an article like this. But that doesn't change the fact that pretending that productivity differences are irrelevant is simply bad reporting by the Post: At best, it's shockingly shoddy and at worst it's simply dishonest.

Hillger's original paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8J_qdFYwNJ6TXdRVkM5S3lMNUU...

Some more concise analysis with excerpts from the paper: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/11/upw...

>And that this didn't used to be the case, that Asians used to have a similar gap, which indicates that Americans have simply gotten less racist towards them.

Source? You have no proof that any of these differences are due to racism rather than the underlying culture of each group.

I suspect you'll get a series of high fives and fist bumps just for criticising "mainstream liberalism," no matter how valid the criticism, because that's in vogue right now.

You're living under a rock if you believe nobody is studying or confronting IQ and culture and how it relates to race. It's just it's not really intellectually profound to repeat and rehash the same old "scientific racism" that's been going on for the last century and a half, that's why you hear less of it.

Have you ever considered that there's a good reason for that fad?

I just graduated from an elite American college, and almost everyone there was extremely condescending about the idea that race and IQ were at all correlated. They felt similarly about racial culture and success. In these powerful people's eyes, the underperformance of non-White and non-Asian races is ~100% the fault of White people and their machinations.

It's telling you created a throwaway to post this.

Of course there's a good reason for that fad - scientific racism is a pseudoscience that was created in order to "prove" the inferiority of races and to justify colonialism, slavery, racism, social Darwinism, and racial eugenics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

The correlation between race and IQ is openly "admitted" right there in the into paragraph of the Wikipedia page! If academia is "hiding" it they sure are doing a bad job. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

>It's telling you created a throwaway to post this.

I rarely comment on HN and usually just register a new account when I do. I can understand why people would register a throwaway though, considering the blind hostility people like you have in these types of discussions.

>The collation between race and IQ is openly "admitted" right there in the into paragraph of the Wikipedia page!

Wha? The lead calls it a "contentious debate" and the body cites quality sources that suggest a causal connection.

Is there any standardized test where blacks do as well as whites or asians? Did white culture somehow bias the test so that asians score higher than themselves?

The entire argument (both parent and the article) is misguided at best -- a large fraction of Asians coming to the US are here for higher education (College, Masters, or Ph.D.). Therefore, many Asian immigrants are the cream of the crop, which skews the income distribution of Asian Americans significantly upwards. The comparison is simply not meaningful.

It's the subtle racism of low expectations. They see communities self-destructing, but rather than expecting them to improve as responsible individuals, they expect them to fail like helpless invalids until the more capable communities save them.

> "how does their nonetheless COL-adjusted near parity (still ahead!) vs. whites undermine the idea that minorities can succeed in the USA?"

The article never claimed to undermine the idea that minorities can succeed in the USA. It claims to undermine the idea that Asian Americans (and minorities in general) can be more successful than whites in similar circumstances. And it has done a pretty good job at that. As the article shows, after adjusting for COL, Asians make as much as Whites, and in fact, make less than whites who are similarly qualified. I've yet to see anyone dispute the math presented.

>This is such incredibly poor agenda-driven "journalism", with cherry-picked data used to (poorly) attack a sort of straw man argument

You just described the Washington Post.

I mean, they said in their "news" section that the Ron Paul Institute was Russian Propaganda, which was just a part of their McCarthyite agenda against political dissenters[1]

I'd avoid anything by the WaPo, it's corporate media fake news.

1 - https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgrace...

>mainstream liberalism is frankly bordering on fraudulence with its refusal to confront these topics.

I would say it is fraudulent. The taboo on addressing racial differences, especially intelligence, in academia and the media is only taboo if it concludes whites are superior to minorities.

For example, "white people can't dance," is a culturally acceptable racist remark. "Asians are better at math" is also culturally acceptable. Any comment that breaks that rule is unacceptable. It's the same in academia and in the courts. If you publish research or a supreme court opinion that minorities are of lower intelligence, like the book, The Bell Curve, or in Justice Scalia's case, you will receive ridicule (and whether just coincidentally or as part of conspiracy theory territory - will be certain of dying a premature death)[2]. Publishing that minorities are above-average intelligence is perfectly acceptable, though [3]. Teaching through a college course that being white is a problem is also acceptable - that's because it fits the rule [4].

Queue everyone calling me alt-right or racist or something awful just for pointing out the fact that everyone knows. It's like 1984. I really hate racism. My best friend I grew up with on my street as a child is black, and I can tell you, kids grow up color blind and are not racist. It's this toxic political correctness and government that perpetuates problems of the past. I have no idea what the further agenda is in perpetuating inequality and inciting further anger and inequality. Everyone should be treated equal, especially in eyes of government. Where we are headed is we are already getting close to Harrison-Bergeron'ing people because of their skin color and past injustice.

All racism should not be tolerated.

If the problem with government is even worse than I thought then I will end up on some kind of "political dissidents" list just for spelling out these problems.

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve 3 - http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi... 4 - http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-un...

Ahh "fake news" meaning "It's not something that corresponds to my preexsting political viewpoint", as opposed to the actual definition of "complete and utter fabrication."

Thinly veiled racism is thinly veiled.

Yes, lets talk about IQ and culture, and how centuries of slavery, oppression, and theft create adverse health conditions that lower IQ. It's much easier to develop a "culture" of education when the government doesn't deploy armed soldiers to lock you out of school, or throw your parents in jail on slim pretenses.

When do we start having an honest conversation about reparations for slavery? Why do rich whites pass on ancestral wealth to their children, but not ancestral debts?