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Comment by sh4un | Hacker News Reader

Poor people are used to being victims so it's hard to trust other people. When you look at it deeper, if these are poor minorities in a white mans world, no matter what there will never be trust. Hard to trust the same people who are oppressing you.

Many policy maker are born well off, so it's hard to relate. When the social workers are driving in BMW's and talking to you like you're retarded...

It's ongoing. I have done a bit of outreach work in the past and it's totally wacky on so many levels.

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> these are poor minorities in a white mans world

If we're in the reality of accepting that culture, patterns of behavior, and what thoughts are inculcated in people actually impact the outcomes they'll net in life, then I hope we can start legitimately talking about the harm that comes from attitudes like the one you've laid out. The idea that, say, a black person need not even try, because they'll just be attempting in vain in what is ultimately a white man's world...it's horseshit, and it does far more harm than good.

The reality is that almost every elite institution is geared for precisely the opposite of what you're describing. For better or for worse, being a black person applying to college or a job at Google will actually be advantaged on the basis of their race. And if we acknowledge that the first step towards seeing a black person in poverty becoming a black software engineer is knowing that this is even an option for them, and that they have more than a realistic chance of achieving that goal, then maybe we'd be more cautious with the sort of oppression rhetoric we deploy.

Yeah it's very americano centric.

In China where I emigrated, white people arent poorer than their yellow counterparts in average because immigration is done differently (no slavery, no low income, leave if you cant make it etc).

The problem is more complex than color, it's just the immigration origin of the population that drive the current state. A better sentence maybe would be "to be a descendant of slaves in a world of descendants of masters", and even then would probably be unfair to people who actually wanted to end slavery and are now guilty of succeeding.

>In China where I emigrated, white people arent poorer than their yellow counterparts in average because immigration is done differently (no slavery, no low income, leave if you cant make it etc).

Not saying you're wrong about white people, but I've heard some very different stories about Filipino/Indonesian maids in HK, as well as Black and Domestic Migrant labourers holding a rural hukou on the Mainland.

As usual in the American racial discourse, this argument entirely ignores the huge gaping hole in its side that is the Asian community.

Casual racism against Asians is pretty strong, not just in the US, in Europe, too. (My own country has a significant Vietnamese community and casual racism against them was absolutely shocking in the 1990s. It has since become less pronounced, but is still there.)

And yet they thrive in your so-called "white mans world" and within two generations, sometimes only one generation, after arriving from formerly colonized and impoverished countries, they become MPs, ministers, professors and investors.

Indeed. And these are communities that were banned from immigrating at one point, put in camps and their assets stolen during WW2.

Clearly poverty and even oppression doesn’t explain a groups eventual standing.

It isn’t surprising that groups like descendants of chattel slavery who have had the same legal rights as white people for about half a century are systematically worse off than groups like middle class immigrants from East Asia.

"middle class immigrants from East Asia"

That is just a small part of the entire picture. Plenty of Asians arrived as low wage manual workers or refugees (boat people) from then-strongly underdeveloped countries. Sometimes as orphans or incomplete families with all male relatives killed.

Or you can look at Jewish people, terrorized, oppressed and killed by their neighbours for centuries. Expressions like "pogrom" and "ghetto" come from a long, bloody history of violent antisemitism.

There are clear differences between these groups that reflect their circumstances though. Indian Americans tend to be well educated offspring of the Indian elite, and they're also the richest Asian-American subgroup. Hmong, Laotians and Vietnamese mostly descend from penniless refugees, and surprise surprise, they're at the bottom of the income table. Working your way from nothing to owning a nail salon or a donut shop is an achievement, but in financial terms it pales compared to the income of the IIT grad Brahmin who did their master's at Stanford and went on to work at Microsoft.

Yes, undeniably so, but the same applies to non-Asian groups.

Nigerian Americans have the highest # of PhDs per 1000 people. Albanian Americans (white) are among the poorest Americans, while Russians are among the richest ones.

As usual, there is a lot more diversity within the big racially defined groups than among them.

And I would not discount the "nail salon" achievements at all. In my experience, it is the parents who build up these small shops, but their kids set their sights much higher than just inheriting those.

> Yes, undeniably so, but the same applies to non-Asian groups.

You’re the one who wanted to focus on Asians:

> > As usual in the American racial discourse, this argument entirely ignores the huge gaping hole in its side that is the Asian community.

But now that you aren’t managing to prove your point you (perhaps) want to broaden the topic again. Or?

> Nigerian Americans have the highest # of PhDs per 1000 people. Albanian Americans (white) are among the poorest Americans, while Russians are among the richest ones.

Ok? Racism is huge topic and can manifest itself in a lot of different ways. One type of racism would be to be mean to an African-looking person, and ~~an African~~ a Nigerian could be confused with an African-American. But that’s not really the kind of racism that is relevant here.

Again, not sure what point you’re trying to make with this specific paragraph.

> As usual, there is a lot more diversity within the big racially defined groups than among them.

What people like you (or people who make the same points as you do) fail to realize is that disparity of outcomes among non-whites does not disprove racism, or prove that group X just need to study/work harder.

One could theorize that the descendants of chattel slavery will have (for example) less family wealth than whites who are descendants of property owners and indentured servants. For example. And that’s a result of racist policies like slavery and lack of equal legal rights (of course blacks have less wealth to this day since blacks gaining equal legal rights did not even the playing field with regards to wealth…).

Take your point about Nigerians for example. An African-American descendant of slaves and a Nigerian expat PhD-holder who works and lives in America will have about zero common background. Zero! The common experience they will have while living in America is to be treated like blacks. But their family background and upbringing will be as different as that of another Nigerian and a white American. So does that mean that racism isn’t really a thing? Not really. The African-American will still have been held back by racism.

"One could theorize that the descendants of chattel slavery will have (for example) less family wealth than whites who are descendants of property owners and indentured servants. "

People have even less family wealth in less stable places, plagued by war, genocide, forced expropriation, violent regime changes, state bankruptcies etc. For example, both Germany and Poland were big heaps of rubble in 1945. Nothing to inherit there but destroyed, burnt-out cities.

The 20th century in general was pretty awful outside North America. If bad history was such a universal determinant of future failure or success, the world would be one giant hopeless poverty-stricken hellhole.

> People have even less family wealth in less stable places

But we’re comparing whites and blacks in America, so the old “but people are starving in Africa” doesn’t apply here.

So why is there a disparity of family wealth between whites and blacks in America? Any alternative theories? Because “but the bombing of Dresden…!!!” does not explain it.

It sort-of does, because America is a country based on immigration and many contemporary Americans, not just white ones, have relatively recent background in poorer, less stable, more violent countries. A lot of people who are now living comfortably are kids or grandkids of parents who came with nothing in their pockets.

As for your question, I do not have any theory. A viable theory would have to explain the variation of the black-white gap across the US.

Looking for data, I found a graph mapping the differences of average black and white income (not wealth) across U.S. states:

https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...

If racism was the only root explanation, Pennsylvania would be more racist than Georgia and Wisconsin more racist than South Carolina. That does not seem plausible to me.

> When the social workers are driving in BMW's and talking to you like you're retarded...

Man what social workers get BMWs?

As it happens, My neighbor in my apartment building is literally a social worker who drives a BMW.

I mean, it could be a 2006 318i with 200k+ miles. BMW means nothing.

Or they could have generational wealth. This whole thing reminds me of the ugliness that was the anti-welfare propaganda of the 70's

It could also be that they prioritize their car and have a budget adjusted for it.

the only Lambo owner I ever met had saved since he was 14 and had nothing else but his car...

Jesus christ, even a 16yo Lambo is $100,000 (which is an unthinkable amount of money for a British person on average salary).

For context my mums 2 bed house in Coventry was not much more than that, and she's still paying off that mortgage.

I guess a decade of sofa surfing would just about cover that!

What's wrong about it? I can only praise a person who has generational wealth and doesn't need to work, yet chose the socially beneficial occupation of a social worker (which is neither well-paid nor, let's be honest, well-respected, but necessary job), to do their part?

It's all trust. This is what makes this hard, and you can see here no one has experience in this field so everyone has a dumb ass comment.

A lot of people regardless of status will still try to have pride. I used to help homeless people and they would often have a lot of trust issues and often prefer to be homeless rather than help.

While a social worker may dress up and drive a nice car because they have money, the poor people they are helping don't have trust in them for many reasons. One is that they have nothing, and then they see someone that wants to help and that person is getting richer while they are getting poorer.

Same reason people get miffed at donating to the United way only to find out the CEO was making something like 750k a year and asking me to donate 10% of my pay automatically deducted to them. Lol

There are "tourists," well-off people who "slum" as social workers or on projects.

Managers can also do well.

And then there are the fraudsters.

Australians

https://au.indeed.com/career/social-worker/salaries

> Man what social workers get BMWs?

well, BMWs tend to last a while and very old ones are often affordable but reasonably functional used cars, so probably quite a few.

If you mean new BMWs, then ones that are wealthy from some other source and doing social work for self-fulfillment.

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