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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

I live in a poor-ish part of Maryland. The difference between my african american and ghana immigrant neighbors is striking.

The african american neighbors are extremely obese and _constantly_ eating McDonalds (I can tell from the litter I clean up in the parking lot...). My ghana immigrant neighbors on the other hand are skinny as rails and can be seen hauling 10 pound bags of rice/beans/etc. into their house.

It's often overlooked, but there's more than just money that passes between generations. Simple knowledge like "how to cook with unprocessed foods" is extremely valuable information to pass on to offspring. We need to somehow tackle that if we ever plan to help people entrenched in inter-generational poverty.

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I think you are really getting at a very American thing that happened. Fast Food implies that it is food, but it’s certainly not nutritious food. We didn’t eat a lot of fast food growing up because we were poor, so it was a lot of casseroles or other items that had a lot of whatever we had around mixed together. High processed items are very easy to get a hold of and keep long, but what people don’t realize is that rice and beans and other dry items keep for a long time and are not expensive. So I guess what I’m getting at is that with the move to Fast Food in the US people stopped cooking. Maybe we think it’s hard, maybe we’re just lazy. I’ve really taken a look at my diet and it saves a lot of money to just cook at home (something I’ve really noticed during this social distancing) and it’s not hard. But it’s not like my parents really showed me how, I had to learn on my own. I hope fast food is a casualty of pandemic but we need to find work for those people.

There is a distinct difference between people lived in real poverty and wanted a better life for themselves and more importantly their children than people simply being born into the poor area of their country. Surrounded by near instant gratification at a very good cost.

Compare the two and you will see their spending on all needs and wants is different. It won't just be the food they eat. One will plan long term for their gratification and the other will simply take what they can afford right now, that later comes from always having that option.

Go look back a hundred years or more when the Irish; my ancestors; got here. Many came here in debt to others working bare subsistence levels and they would have similar habits to your Ghanians, as in tomorrow isn't a guarantee so plan for the worst. I expect that the second generation after the move the attitudes will change but that is heavily influenced by culture

During the 2009 recession, a woman called into one of those financial advice shows on cable TV. She began to talk about how she was cutting back on her budget, and she was 'forced to eat beans and tortillas'.

My step-father, who is a Mexican immigrant, started laughing. He said that's all they ate growing up. He said it wasn't until high school when his dad got a job in a General Motors factory that they had enough money to eat hamburger and cheese along with their beans and rice.

Haha this is so funny, reminds me of the migrant caravans that passed through Mexico last year. At first people received them nicely but opinions quickly soured once they became very entitled in their attitudes. Particularly I remember a video of a woman complaining they "[We] are being fed beans, like if we were pigs or some animal!!" Needless to say, this was poorly received by us Mexicans.

This. It may sound super strange but when I lived in the states my roommate of 30 something years asked me these two question: how did you cook the lovely tea yesterday? And: I loved your scrambled eggs, how did you make them? No kidding. She was very nice and we got along quite well, but that lack of basic food preparation knowledge was puzzling to me. I wonder what these people have been doing during the lockdown

The distinctions between African-Americans and African Migrants are interesting. The migrant groups have higher incomes, lower use of welfare, better academic performance. There are some Black STEM programs in the US that are entirely filled with the children of African migrants.

Personally I think the African American community could use less BLM and more of the values and ideals of these migrant groups.

It's not quite that simple - you're comparing people from different socioeconomic classes, different environments of how they grew up, etc.

African migrants, unless they came as refugees, were usually upper middle or higher class - with college degrees and some degree of wealth in order to get here. They're typically not the average African, socioeconomically speaking.

Most Africans also haven't been weighed down by system racism their whole lives. For example, a Ghanaian friend told me that how never really understood racism until he moved to the US in his 20's as he had never experienced it in Ghana.

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