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Comment by kneebonian | Hacker News Reader

> t's obvious that they're talking around it, especially when "culture" comes up.

I 100% think it is because of culture and has nothing to do with race. I have a friend who is black, he grew up in the Ivory Coast and moved to the US for school, he is hard working, contentious, polite, and all the other things that are associated with success. This is because he was raised to value education, to work hard, to do good for the world, the importance of family, etc.

In comparison I spent several years doing humanitarian work in the inner cities of northern Ohio. There I saw veneration of doing as little as possible, hostility towards education, glorification of violence, and a host of other things that lead to negative outcomes.

I won't pretend that some people aren't racist, but no person can tell me with a straight face that the inner city culture and everything that comes with it isn't part of the reason we have the disparity in our country.

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Why do you think that the inner city culture has evolved to be the way it is? Say, in comparison to, Menlo Park or NYC or Virginia suburbs culture?

At least in part, it’s the 20th century political alliance between black politicians and white social liberals. These are not problems that existed in the first half of the 20th century. Ironically, you’re now seeing the same social breakdown in working class white communities, who historically were aligned with white social liberals. Fatherless “barstool conservatives” are the product of that alliance.

Almost all the disparity in income mobility between black and white people is caused by disparities between black and white men. (Black women have similar mobility to similarly situated white women in terms of individual income.) And Harvard’s Raj Chetty has shown that the two things that eliminate racial disparities in income mobility for black boys is growing up in a neighborhood with (1) low levels of racism among whites; and (2) high levels of fathers living at home with their biological children: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353. There’s only a handful of places in America, unfortunately, that meet both criteria.

>I won't pretend that some people aren't racist, but no person can tell me with a straight face that the inner city culture and everything that comes with it isn't part of the reason we have the disparity in our country.

I'd posit that when the institutions of society disrespects, discriminates against, humiliates and murders members a group with impunity for generations, it's not very surprising when that group is disrespectful of society and its institutions is it?

And while, for the most part (leaving aside voter suppression, gerrymandering and other mechanisms that disadvantage/disenfranchise) the government mostly no longer murders/discriminates with impunity, there's plenty of anti-African American bigotry (I use that term instead of "racism" as there's only one human race, and we're all part of it) still around.

While I don't think it's constructive for those who have been/are being abused/discriminated against for nearly half a millenium to distrust the institutions that have done so, it's certainly understandable.

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