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Comment by neonate | Hacker News Reader

It's not so hard to understand. The issue is the legacy of slavery, and Nigerian immigrants aren't dealing with that.

Nigerians today have to deal with the legacy of colonialism, war, pogroms and famine. (1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War "The Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War and the Nigerian-Biafran War) ... between 500,000 and 3 million Biafran civilians died of starvation."

This is just scratching the surface.

I didn't mean to minimize any of that. There's no global ordering here.

You stated that American blacks had to deal with the legacy of slavery that happened more than a century ago. The epicenter of modern day slavery is Africa, with Africans enslaving other Africans. In 2018, about 62% of the African population endured some from of slavery.

If immigrants from Africa do better than native blacks, it isn't due to the legacy of slavery. Jamaicans, Dominicans, and Haitians have endured the legacy of slavery too, yet these immigrants do better economically as well. If systematic racism was real, it would hold back all blacks.

Most racial justice activists don't agree - they believe that there's significant ongoing racism in addition to the legacy of slavery.

They may well be right about that, and yet there's still an obvious difference there. Also, keep in mind that immigrants tend nowadays to come from the better-off strata of their home societies. There was a study about this making the rounds just recently, but I've unfortunately forgotten what it was called.

Additionally, it's important to note that modern day racism is more damaging to already marginalized groups or those that have historically suffered from it.

In other words, a well educated Nigerian immigrant may not be damaged as much by the same level of racism as a Black person decended from slaves.

There exists an underclass in Ireland who have the same origin as the other Irish - but have many of the issues that exist in the African-American community.

Live to about 50, developed a different dialect, very high crime rate - expected to be underestimated, constant violence, high domestic abuse, high illiteracy, very large families, living in squalor.

Doesn't fit neatly into any faction's magic box of solutions.

I'm not really sure what your point is? That other marginalized groups exist?

As a society, we unfortunately discriminate against people based on lots of different factors.

So there are three factors that explain people.

Biology, Culture, Environment.

Right explains the world by Biology. The Left explains the world by Culture. The Liberals explain the wold by Environment.

It is possible that you only need to scoop from one box to find a policy - but...

If a society has not solved a problem for a long time it's likely the solution is in higher dimensions.

Our political order is good at solving problems with 1 factor or 2 factors but I think our weakness appears when we need 3 factors simultaneously because it is not possible to select for that.

That is an odd definition of 'left', 'right' and 'liberal'. There are plenty of people on the 'right' side of the political spectrum who put far more emphasis on culture than they do on biology, I'd go so far as stating that this is the majority of those on the 'right' side. The same goes for the 'left' side, most people think in terms of culture instead of biology. It is only on the fringes of both sides of the chamber that you encounter people who put weight on biology, from 'white supremacists' and 'black supremacists' to followers of identity politics where people like Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo claim that 'white people' are by definition racist.

You need to define the term 'environment' to make clear what it is you mean here, it has far too many meanings to be useful. The essence is that the extremes on the 'left' and the 'right' bear close resemblance to each other, they use different symbology and make some different claims as to where they get their justifications from but if you remove those symbols and justifications their actions are more or less identical.

Error report. I should have switched Environment to the Left, Culture to the Liberal faction.

For the definition of Environment - it is used loosely but it is the physical facts of a location - climate, soil quality, material resources including non-human biological animals - wildlife and livestock.

Culture is a looser definition - it can mean food preparation techniques, language but also tools like combs and wheels and abstract tools in people's brains.

Slavery has occurred in almost every society over the years, until the last two or three hundred years, including in Nigeria

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Nigeria

See "Black rednecks and white liberals" by thomas sowell for more info (Thomas sowell is a black american economics professor and writer, for any in the audience who decide what is worth reading based on the skin color or ethnicity of the author)

No worries, people who decide who is worth reading based on skin color also introduced the oreo concept so their world view doesnt have to be challenged.

Pesonally I belive anybody should read Sowell

This offhand reason does not happen regularly. There are cases of places without historical slavery who perceived as poor workers and places with historical slavery who are known for their work ethics.

Maybe it's not only "the legacy of slavery".

Doesn't Nigeria still have lots of slavery?

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