Map of America's Racial Segregation
wired.com
wired.com
If you see maps like that with strong segregation, one of the first attempts to explain it is "racism". However, if you divide your neighborhood in 9 blocks such that you are in the center, you have 8 neighbors.
Schelling's model now shows that even in cities where most people say:"I'd like to live next to only 35-40% of people who are similar to me (whatever that means exactly, could be ethnical background, skin color, income, ...) and I'd accept 60% of neighbors who are different from me", you would still get a segregation of 80-90% in the city.
So, the reason for strong segregation is not necessarily that people are racists. People can be very tolerant, but if you try to fulfill the minimum requirement (40% like me), you end up with strong segregation patterns just because there's no other way to fulfill the minimum requirement for most people.
Note: Numbers aren't exact, but pretty close.
Edit: Link to lecture: https://class.coursera.org/modelthinking-003/lecture/16
As a map of distribution, you would expect significant clustering from randomness alone. We've all seen the "which of these dot patterns is actually the random one?" tests, where few people guess the correct answer: the one with all the clusters.
If you take that clustered map as a seed, then add any affinities, you get positive feedback, increasing the clustering. Those affinities don't have to be racial selection but can just be in the general form of, "I make decisions based on what I hear, and I hear more from people I know than from people I don't know."
So, you hear from your cousin that there is a new apartment building opening across the street from him. You hear from several members of your church that X is the best school district. A factory in your town closes and the laid off employees discuss their options and decide to go check out a company in the next town that is hiring (with lots of reasonably-priced apartments nearby).
Just getting more information from people you know than people you don't know could be sufficient for Schelling's model, but add to that the tendency to get more information from people from your background (whether you actually know them or not), because it's likely to be more relevant to you, and you magnify the effect significantly. An urban liberal and his soccer-loving Mexican gardener don't have to dislike each other for the former to read more NY Times and the latter to watch more Univision, and the information about where the opportunities are as presented in those two media outlets are not the same.
This doesn't mean that there is no race-based component in deciding where to live. It just means that, as the Schelling model demonstrates, you can't tell how much there is by looking at how much clustering there is on a map.
isn't racial segregation is a very significantly skewed racial distribution?
>This doesn't mean that there is no race-based component in deciding where to live. It just means that, as the Schelling model demonstrates, you can't tell how much there is by looking at how much clustering there is on a map.
you very well described why race may be not a direct (or a reliably traceable at all) cause of observed segregation. And i'd agree that claiming strong causation here would require more strong arguments than just a map which to me clearly shows correlation.
But the most common (and very well understood by anyone educated here) use of that word is to describe the regime of laws in the US south designed to prevent racial interraction and preserve white priviledge.
Basically: it means something very similar to "apartheid", which is another word that probably had a neutral meaning once but now can only mean one thing.
Your usage is technically correct, but I think it carries an implication that is not necessarily supported.
That's the thing,in a truly color-blind society your cousin could be "black" while you could be "white", but this seems not to be the default setting in the States.
If it matters I have "light" skin (after my father) while my brother has "brown" skin (after my mother). I hadn't notice that until recently when my brother visited me (I live in an Eastern European capital city) and there were a couple of people in the tram who looked at me, and at us, differently compared to when I was just by myself. I only realized the probable reasons (my brother has the skin-color of a "gipsy") later on.
In case anyone's interested, here is a nice (if now rather old, although to be honest scientific writing was so much better back in the '90s) review on the whole business:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867400...
In which we find a paragraph describing this process:
"The selector genes do more than specify the pattern and the structures that the compartments will eventually make—they also specify, indirectly, a surface property. This property has been termed cell affinity, meaning that cells that share the same affinity, owing to the same binary code of selector genes, will intermingle during growth. There are a number of different experiments that lead to this conclusion, but perhaps the simplest is the observation that when the selector gene engrailed is removed, in vivo, from a posterior clone of cells in the wing, those cells gain anterior affinity: they now sort out from posterior cells and, if they are in contact with anterior cells, will sort into and mingle with them. Cells from neighboring compartments will have different affinities and tend to minimize their mutual contact, so that where the two compartments abut, there is a relatively straight line across which the cells do not stray."
I remember a paper from the 80s, the first one reporting the localisation of some cytoskeletal protein, vinculin or talin or something, where the authors present a set of microscope images showing that the protein is found exclusively at the ends of stress fibres (the main structural members of many kinds of cell). Great finding! And then they show a picture of a cell where it isn't, and is instead assembled into lots of little rings. The caption says that they have no idea what kind of cell it is, or why it's doing that. I just can't imagine that happening today.
In this case, this is a review paper, so that doesn't directly apply. But i think the ethos still pervades the writing; the authors are writing to explain what's known, not to advance some hypothesis or demonstrate how much they know.
Anyway, the equally interesting alternative to what you explained is what happens when everybody actually is super racist. If every person's requirement is that they refuse to live near anyone that is different, then you actually get a weird pattern where things are as mixed as they could be. The neighborhoods never stabilize, because there's always going to be border areas where each group can't help living next to a different group.
Actually, it just occurred to me that the model might not be accurate at that point, though, because people can't always move away like the model implies. Instead of people moving around chaotically, I wonder if the real result is violence intended to force the others to move.
EDIT: changed 'counterpoint' to 'alternative'
yeah... you know, the definition of racism is when you even take those categories as a differentiation attribute in people. So, it's racism after all.
If you'd say singles vs big families. rich vs poor. etc. it would be personal preference. The things you listed, racism.
you are thinking of hate-crime.
How is that not racism? Why do you care if your neighbor is a different race than you? Isn't it more relevant whether they're someone you'd enjoy living near?
EDIT: Exploring, I see the island I live on -- Manhattan -- has the four main dot colors well represented, though mainly in blocks. The main mixing is between whites and Asians and between blacks and Hispanics. Notably parts of the Upper West Side, East Village/Lower East Side, and Midtown west show significantly more mixing, at least by eye -- it would be interesting to quantify the data.
Some parts of Queens and Brooklyn show mixing of all four dot colors within the same city block.
Still, on the whole most dot colors remain in blocks with less mixing on the edges. Some dot colors rarely mix with other dot colors.
EDIT TWO: How they made the map is here -- http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/Racial-Dot-Map -- which describes the data sources and links to the code on Github.
Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots
Eric Fischer picked up Bill's project and ran with it, composing maps for most of the major US cities with census 2010 data. You can see them all on his Flickr page -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496....
I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.
(Link somehow got truncated; it should be http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496... )
...he mentions use of a summary file, "SF1", and there's some kind of PDF here:
--> http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html#y2010tecdoc
--> http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1.pdf
It's more or less, a user manual for roughly 300 other tables, but where are they? Is the actual census data itself available freely, in detail?
I think this is it:
--> http://www2.census.gov/census_2010/04-Summary_File_1/
New York, as an example:
--> http://www2.census.gov/census_2010/04-Summary_File_1/New_Yor...
--> http://www2.census.gov/census_2010/04-Summary_File_1/New_Yor...
Is this the original, actual source data?
The small talk I gave introducing python geeks to census data is here: http://files.meetup.com/3119472/census%20data%20for%20python...
* the 2000 census data
* the 1990 census data
* the 1980 census data
... and so on. If this can be visualized, and then maybe animated, that would provide some insightful results.
I'd like to see figures on racial division in the labor market. When I lived in NYC I couldn't help noticing how I would rarely see white people working in stores, on the streets or driving cabs (and if they were white they would be immigrants). Diners were mostly staffed with Greek people, except the guys who poured water and cleaned up after you - they would be latino. White New Yorkers mainly work in offices. Waiters in restaurants or bars are often white as well.
In the Western areas, there are very large Korean and Latin mixed population areas, so much so that most Korean restaurants are owned by Koreans, but all the cooks and staff are Latin American and the staff speaks Spanish and a little Korean, but no English and the owners are the reverse. In some ways, it's a little like K-Town in LA, known as "Korea town" but with large Hispanic minority groups mixed in. Also the home of the "Bulgogi Taco".
It's a very unexpected integration that somehow works pretty well.
Not to say that racism isn't worth fighting against, but the more free our societies become the more people on average will follow their natural instincts. A non-racial example of this is Norway, which is likely the most gender equal country in the world, but has also extremely skewed gender distributions in professions such as engineering and nursing; with almost only men in engineering, and women in nursing, despite massive attempts to balance the situation. This could be easily misinterpreted and claimed as evidence that Norway does not respect gender equality, but in fact it's more likely evidence of the opposite! People in Norway are more free to pursue what makes them happy.
When we use terms like "segregation" for cases where it might actually be just "separation", we risk causing unnecessary hatred and overblown illusions of racism - misleading us from what actually matters: freedom and equality.
"Physical attributes influence us as well" But which physical attributes matter and which don't is cultural. I'm tall. I don't only or even mostly hang around other tall people. I'm left handed. I don't hang out with left handed people.
"but has also extremely skewed gender distributions in professions such as engineering and nursing; with almost only men in engineering, and women in nursing, despite massive attempts to balance the situation. This could be easily misinterpreted and claimed as evidence that Norway does not respect gender equality, but in fact it's more likely evidence of the opposite! People in Norway are more free to pursue what makes them happy."
Or gender stereotypes which predated attempts at gender equality still persist and encourage people to think that certain jobs will make them happier than others even though this may not be true.
* What mechanism does this racial separation take?
* What sort of evidence shows that skin color or other ethnic identifiers in genetics are the thing that causes tribal separation vs them just serving as a simple proxy to more complicated factors?
* What explanations of exigent factors are there... for example why are there black and hispanic republicans, or white members of traditionally "black gangs". How do these less common (but not rare) group membership issues override the claimed genetic selection?
* What genetic factors explain the fracturing of groups within groups of seemingly genetically similar (at least on a racial/ethinc level) people?
The claim made here doesn't actually answer any of those questions - I'm not sure the validity of "separation of races is coded in our genes" makes sense given the scenarios highlighted in my questions.
It's not racial separation. It's all attraction in general. Like attracts like. Hackers tend to like other hackers.
Race is simply one factor that affects us. Being aware of this can help you avoid racism. If you don't recognize that your brain tends to prefer people who are similar to you, you're more likely to accidentally discriminate others.
>What sort of evidence shows that skin color or other ethnic identifiers in genetics are the thing that causes tribal separation vs them just serving as a simple proxy to more complicated factors?
The real extent of its significance is impossible to say, but based on these maps, it's obvious that such separation happens. The lack of any legislation in the US that requires people of certain race to segregate means that it has to be caused by other factors.
>What explanations of exigent factors are there... for example why are there black and hispanic republicans, or white members of traditionally "black gangs". How do these less common (but not rare) group membership issues override the claimed genetic selection?
The fact that there are black republicans is only evidence that race does not limit people into any certain categories.
>What genetic factors explain the fracturing of groups within groups of seemingly genetically similar (at least on a racial/ethinc level) people?
Why do brothers and sisters fight? Even if you're from the same family, you're not immune to conflict. Inarguably, family members are on average closer to each other than non-family members. I really doubt race is such a significant factor that it would make us immune to conflict. If you really get down to it, we're all basically identical and we still fight all the time. That's the real stupidity.
If you want to learn more, you can start with evolutionary psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology
We really don't know understand ourselves that well yet, but it's obvious that we discriminate each other. It's important to understand why, so we can become better.
What study did you find backing this? Actually, I have already read and heard the contrary, for exemple here is what one of the numerous articles on this subject[0] says:
>Heterosexual men and women with dissimilar genes are more likely to get married than people with a similar genetic heritage.
So it seems, on the contrary, that people genetically tend to want to live with people different from them. Except when they have a psychological aversion to them, in which case I believe we call that "xenophobia", which is usually synonym with "racism".
[0] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-secret-to-find...
A much more likely factor is your socioeconomic status (which is, granted, also related to your career), and race/class are not at all proportional in the US.
> People in Norway are more free to pursue what makes _them_ happy.
And why does engineering make men happy but women not? Put another way: are there women who are being made _unhappy_ with engineering? And vice versa for nursing? Is that not worth speculating upon and addressing, rather than taking for granted that the penis is the part of the brain responsible for enjoying math?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_XtboyO8jc&noredirect=1
Me, maybe I'm willing to pay more for my favorite architectural style and off-road parking for my motorbike. Maybe you're starting a family, you'll pay more to live in an area with a quality public school, and a park where you can walk your dog. Another person might pay a premium for a safer neighborhood with lower crime rates and more local shops.
We all take our preferences, decide what we're willing to pay, and you outbid me because I wasn't willing to pay any premium for that public school (or whatever).
> In one test, a white customer looking for a two-bedroom apartment was shown a two-bedroom and a one-bedroom and given applications for both, while a Hispanic customer who arrived two hours later was told that nothing was available. In another, a real estate agent refused to meet with a black tester who was not prequalified for a loan, while a white tester was given an appointment without being asked if she had prequalified.
I would be more interested in counter-examples: cities were the melting pot is the rule.
As far as I can tell, most European cities are predominantly white, so I wouldn't expect as much segregation in those cities as you see in say Chicago or Detroit or Philadelphia. London is one of the more ethnically diverse (large) Western European cities, and is roughly 60% white. LA is the whitest large American city at 50%. New York is 45%, Chicago is 30%, etc. New Orleans is around 25% white, and Detroit is 8% white. At the other end of the scale, Portland is 75% white. If you look at the map, the ordering by level of segregation follows that pattern: Portland is the least segregated, Detroit is the most segregated, and LA, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans are between, in that order.
[1] You can argue about whether this is racism or classism. As a practical matter, in American cities the two are tightly linked. Middle class people of both races tend to move to the suburbs, and of the people that are left, whites skew wealthier and blacks and hispanics skew poorer, even more so than in the general population. E.g. The median income of a white Chicagoan in 2009 was $64k (substantially above the national average). The median income of a black Chicagoan in 2009 was $29k (substantially below the national average). http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-muckrakers/2011/02/second-....
This is both true, and yet misleading and hence false.
Yes, by US racial/ethnic definitions the majority of european cities are majority 'white'. But we don't use the US categories (of white/black/latino/etc.) here in EU because it's not accurate. In fact EU law claims "The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races."[1], and anti-racism law talks about "racial or ethnic origins"[1]
Let's take the UK and their main point of ethnic conflict, Belfast in Northern Ireland. Both the "nationalist/catholic" and "unionist/protestant" communities would be counted as "white" under US racial terminology, but they are 2 different ethnicies.
So yes, "most EU cities are white" by US standards, but by EU standards there's a lot of racial/ethnic mixing and conflict, including full on wars (look at what happened in Yugoslavia!)
[1] EU law on discrimination http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
Oh I know. There is lots of disagreements about if subset of humanity X or Y counts as a different ethnicity (Irish Travellers are view as a separate ethnicity in UK, but not Ireland for example). However the existance of disagreements, nor a clear definition doesn't mean the word is useless.
I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of European social conflict, but I don't imagine there is a lot of catholic versus protestant tension in say London, nor do I imagine there are persistent and massive socioeconomic disparities between the two groups in London (or at least nothing comparable to the more than factor of 2x disparity between blacks and whites I cited for Chicago).
And running with your example, what do you imagine would have been the political situation in the U.K. if say London had consisted of 60-70% Irish nationalist Catholics in 1985?
Or is there still discrimination within categories of whites? Are Londoners whose families originally hail from say Poland still dramatically disadvantaged compared to ones who can trace their origins in England for centuries? And if so, what would the politics be in the U.K. if London consisted of 60-70% of these hypothetical disadvantaged poles?
Well Ireland was 95% Catholic, and had a terrorist guerilla war and seceeded from the UK in 1922. This often happens in Europe when there are ethnic disagrements (latest example: Kosovo). Or there's policial independence movements (e.g. Catalonia, Scotland).
Or is there still discrimination within categories of whites?
With regard to Polish people, there has been a lot of Polish migration to UK in the last few years since Poland fully joined the EU. So there'd be loads of "white Polish" families who moved there in the last 10 years. Not exactly comparable. There would be racism against ethnic Polish people. The UK does have a large Indian and Pakistani population, some third generation by now. And yes there can be racism against them. I suppose a pedant would claim the US racial definitions are still relevant by claiming things are different, but social and legally racism against Polish people, and Pakistani people would be seen as quite similar, not different types of discrimination. "They took our jobs" would a common type of discrimination in the UK against "white" migrants from Eastern & Central Europe. Racism between, what in the USA would be considered, "whites" does happen in Europe.
Do the info pages for individual schools in London prominently display "country of origin" information, so white British can ensure they don't accidentally send their kids to a school that's 90% white ethnic Polish? http://www.cps.edu/Schools/Pages/school.aspx?SchoolId=609951.
Or are Poles in London seen like say Jews in the U.S.? Sometimes the butt of a mean joke or nasty comment, but otherwise not situated fundamentally different from the majority group?
Remember, Europe and the USA are different and have had different histories. Europe has had a slightly different history of racial discrimination than USA. The have literally been wars.
Very clever. "We'll deal with the subject by pretending it doesn't exist!"
Some of the comments here seem to suggest that these maps come from measuring craniums and all that.
Fortunately that's one horror that didn't survive the boat trip across the ocean.
Actaully, Phrenology enjoyed brief but widespread popularity in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology#United_States
Or it could just be avoiding high-crime areas. Given the vastly different propensities of people of various races to commit crime, avoiding crime tends to make you look racist[1]
[1] http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/
There is something uniquely wrong in the black American community. Whites who notice it are called "racist". Blacks who notice it (like Bill Cosby) are called race-traitors or Uncle Toms. So nobody much cares about addressing anti-social behavior, because it simply cannot be discussed.
It's Smith and Jones almost everywhere, but in cities like London and Birmingham there are distinct groupings of Patel, Kaur, Begum etc.
I think your impression is flawed. Many European cities are racially diverse and quite a few are segregated. Paris comes to mind as a particularly good example of both.
I'm not denying that there are European cities that are racially diverse. But every single U.S. city over a million people, and most of the cities between 500,000 and 1 million, are majority-minority, usually by a large margin (say 2:1). I think that's a phenomenon that's alien to major European cities.
As an aside, I think Europeans unfairly jump to calling Americans racist, when they don't have to deal with the political dynamics of majority-minority cities. It's one thing for a city to be diverse. It's another thing when the dominant ethnic group of a country ends up being a minority in the city, in the process losing political control, etc. Add to that the layer of economic conflict that arises from tax revenues flowing from the richer majority to pay for municipal services for the poorer majority. That creates a wholly different political dynamic, one that is alien to Europeans.
Look at Paris. There is tremendous tension there between whites and Arabs. But the Muslim population of Paris is only 10-15% (estimated). What would the political dynamic in France be like if Paris were 60-70% Muslim and hadn't elected a non-Muslim mayor in 40 years, yet still relied on whites for most of the tax revenue? I would hazard a guess that the French would handle it a lot worse than the Americans have been doing in similar situations...
Also, the city population is only a part of the equation. Often the metro area skews significantly white (because of the suburbs) - which then stresses the balance more.
(The results present the first EU-wide comparable data on selected ethnic minorities and immigrants’ experiences of discrimination and criminal victimisation, including experiences of policing)
• On average, every second Roma and 4 in 10 Sub Saharan African interviewees was discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity at least once in the last 12 months.
• 82% of those who were discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity/immigrant background in the last 12 months did not report their last experience of discrimination anywhere – either at the place where it occurred or to a complaints body.
• On average, 1 in 5 Sub-Saharan African and Roma respondents were victims of what they considered to be‘racially motivated’assault or threat, or serious harassment, at least once in the last 12 months.
• Depending on the groups surveyed,between 57%and 74% of incidents of assault or threat were not reported to the police.
• Of those who were stopped by the police in the last 12 months, on average 17% of North Africans and 14%of Roma considered that they were stopped specifically because of their ethnic or immigrant background.
Source:
http://fra.europa.eu/en/press-release/2010/first-ever-eu-wid...
http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/664-eum... [ PDF ]
Edit: Formatting
Map: http://i.imgur.com/Z0X8Prs.jpg
A little hard to see from the map but although Asian is obviously predominant, the other races are sprinkled throughout besides for a few exceptions: a rich area in the bottom right and a few military bases/housing which have much higher white/black and very little asian.
Demographics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu_County,_Hawaii#Demogra...
For example: the Swedish crime prevention board (BRÅ) no longer publish crime statistics containing ethnic background information. They stopped a few years ago (2006) when the PC media found out that africans and arabs were way, way over-represented in all crime categories.
This is due to political correctness - something that the US seems to have been spared from. So far.
Since then, US government has stopped publishing PISA test scores by race. It's embarrassing for people on all sides of the aisle, including right-wing school reform movements that need the purported terribleness of American schools for their political momentum.
[1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4ify7vDXrDs/TRFeGl7ocuI/AAAAAAAAGz...
[2] http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is...
The US has a much higher tolerance for what in Europe would be considered pretty blatant racism.
I think that Political Correctness for the most part says we should treat everyone equally whether we like them or not which is the rational approach as I'm sure there are groups that don't like me (I'm a white middle class hard-line atheist so that probably gets me on a few lists right there).
I'd sooner live in a country with "political correctness gone mad" (a frequently cry of the right wing press here) than one where it hasn't.
We have politicians here condemning the Human Rights act because it makes them guarantee the rights for everyone even people "the majority don't like" which is exactly as it should be since the people "the majority don't like" can change so rapidly.
Of course in America you have been spared the political correctness gone mad but you are still executing mentally retarded people in some states so maybe you could do with the political correctness going a bit "mad".
“You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners”. - Dostoevsky
My view is that many mistake Scientifically Correct from Politically Correct. It is Scientifically Correct to say that there is very little difference, genetically, between Europeans, Asians, Africans, Latin Americans, etc. It also happens to be Politically Correct. However, it is also Scientifically Correct to say that there are huge disparities in victim reported violent crime rates between Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans. However, this is not Politically Correct. This is an example of where a problem is identified, but unable to be discussed in the public sphere. If a problem can't be discussed, it can't be solved.
An African-American male is over 7 times more likely to murder a person than a Hispanic or European-American male. He is also over 6 times more likely to be the victim of a murder. This is elementary statistics based on data collected by the FBI. If this problem (which in my opinion is cultural rather than this phony construct called "racial") can't be discussed in an honest fashion due to political organizations which will threaten politicians with boycotts/villification/etc due to their refusal to acknowledge inconvenient truths, then the problem will simply continue. Not talking about it makes the problem become uglier, because non-Black Americans in general have internalized the fact that poor Black neighborhoods are vastly more violent and dangerous. Any realtor can tell you this. They deal with people's ACTUAL prejudices every day, rather than the Politically Correct, aspirational notions of the desire to live in a diverse neighborhood.
I say this as a white guy who grew up in various poor parts of the south, and spent large parts of my childhood with mostly black friends in mostly black neighborhoods. Political Correctness prevents us from collectively helping the predominantly black victims of a large sub-culture of black America that celebrates crime, dehumanizes women and gays, views educational/career achievement as betrayal of black identity, and tolerate men who willingly abandon their families.
America will not succeed as a nation unless black Americans succeed, and political correctness throws them to the wolves by pretending a problem they are victimized by doesn't exist.
These statistics are discussed in an honest fashion, from Saturday mornings in the barber shop to academic works. The problem isn't discussion, the problem is that too many folks don't realize "blacks are overrepresented in crime" is not the same as "most blacks commit crimes" and use those statistics to justify policies like "stop and frisk" and "it's okay to follow a black kid a night because he's wearing a hoodie."
Political Correctness prevents us from collectively helping the predominantly black victims of a large sub-culture of black America that celebrates crime, dehumanizes women and gays, views educational/career achievement as betrayal of black identity, and tolerate men who willingly abandon their families.
This sentence would be equally true without the word "black." Political correctness indeed.
Sorry, but the phenomenon of being accused of betraying your cultural identity by peers if you succeed in school and get a job is mainly a phenomenon found in a sub-culture of black America. Anyone who has been immersed in an African-American community for any length of time can tell you this. The typical insult among school-children is "acting white" or "Oreo" and it is widespread enough to warrant heavy discussion within the mainstream black community. My best friend growing up was harassed and bullied constantly in this way. It was a particularly vicious kind of bullying that I've never seen Asian, Hispanic or white children ever have to deal with.
You only have to watch prime-time television to know that phenomenon is common amongst many demographics.
Anyone who has been immersed in an African-American community for any length of time can tell you this.
I'm black. I went to an upper-class mostly-white private school, and there was some pressure to "fail" but it came from both whites and blacks. One the other hand, my peers who went to the local inner city high schools found extremely supportive environments, so much so that I really regret that my parents sent me to the private school.
The typical insult among school-children is "acting white" or "Oreo"
It might be "typical" yet I never heard anyone say it out loud IRL. However terms like "nerd," "geek," "dweeb" etc were common occurrences IME. And it wasn't coming from black kids.
it is widespread enough to warrant heavy discussion within the mainstream black community.
Heavy discussion is not academic rigor. It's been studied by a lot of people (not just Ogbu) and as might be expected, the results are complicated. Quoting from an older post of mine:
Tyson et al found that reduced academic achievement was generally for a variety of reasons ("fear of not doing well academically" being the biggest) and not "acting white": http://www.tc.columbia.edu/students/see/events/Darity_et_al_...
Cook and Ludwig as well found that "acting white" was not much of a factor in academic perforamnce: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-66...
I had quoted from two other papers by Erika White and Roland Fryer (who is a proponent of the "acting white" hypothesis but had to adjust his definition to show any trends) but those links are dead now.
Holy shit, sir. I salute your patience and compassion as you dealt with this self-appointed expert on race relations. Your capacity for longsuffering is legendary, and if you are ever in the Bay Area, please contact me.
Seriously.
I would buy you a keg of beer.
They both make valid points, likely because they're coming at the issue from different directions. Listen to them both and balance your viewpoint but try to be a bit less snarky.
The black criminal subculture is unique in America. There is no equivalence in other groups. Black males between the age of 14 and 24 make up 1% of the population and commit 27% of all murders. It's shocking and astonishing, and well above what you would predict would be the effect of poverty alone[2].
1 in 3 black American males will serve a jail sentence.
[1] http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/whites_subjected_to_too_m...
[2] http://takimag.com/article/guns_and_race_steve_sailer/print
FWIW, people that study population genetics sound shockingly racist. Science is science, whether or not we want it to be.
[1] http://m.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/the-u...
its not a race problem, its a cultural problem.
Political Correctness prevents us from collectively helping the predominantly black victims of a large sub-culture of black America that celebrates crime, dehumanizes women and gays, views educational/career achievement as betrayal of black identity, and tolerate men who willingly abandon their families.
Everyone, including(maybe even especially) black americans, should watch this speech. Anyone who feels Obama is wrong after watching the video should closely examine themselves for why that is and what beliefs they carry that the speech conflicts with.
There is nothing in that speech which is not already common-knowledge or thoroughly discussed among blacks.
American black culture wasn't nearly so dysfunctional before the rise of the welfare state and the War on Drugs. Illegitimacy was under 30% in 1960 (compared to about 80% today). That has a lot of knock-on effects for other social ills.
And a quick side-note, there was a radio-host. A white woman I believe. They talked about gun-law reform. That's another thing that gets minorities in trouble. She made the comment that if someone started a campaign to get all black males in Oakland signed up with the NRA and obtain a gun legally, gun-laws would be changed immediately. Why don't minorities sign up with NRA to begin with? I don't know, but whatever the reason is, that's why gun-law hasn't changed. I believe that to be very true and I think laws in America are generally set in a way that lowers the likelihood that a non-minority will break them. It probably wasn't that way on purpose at first, but once some people noticed the money from prisons and correction-facilities - combined with American's fear of immigrants... the success of war on drugs in terms of who's getting ruined by it... again not saying there would be zero problems, but the disproportionate levels e see today wouldn't be happening. Don't forget the reason why a lot of black people are even in America to begin with...
It occurs to me that you could write a similar story of woe for the Chinese who have gone through a rough century or three, and they are the highest earning ethnic group in the USA. It makes one think.
No it doesn't. The Chinese were taken from their country, stripped of their culture, made slaves and to this day the main target of racism in America? And their home country is trapped in a pattern of greed & corruption for natural resources?
You and I both know what conclusion you're trying to force without actually saying it. Same thing FOX News does. You're talking exactly like the kind of media that's being described by this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnxnYEVp4U
I'm not an idiot. I don't blame "the Blacks" for the awful and continuing effects of 400 years of slavery combined with 100+ years of Jim Crow. Any cultural/ethnic group that survives a 500 year rape is going to have horrific and lasting effects to deal with.
But hey, I'm just a southern white man, so let me go pick up my banjo, and find my sheets for the klan rally tonight. We're gettin us some of that lectricity so we's a celebratin'.
Please, go on and enjoy your day feeling pompous and superior. I doubt you've ever even spent the night in a black person's house, let alone attended a black church, but you sir, are, by nature of your not being southern, more culturally enlightened than me. You smack of being the typical suburban raised white person who was raised in a de facto segregated community, and now does whatever he can to distance himself from it by pointing at others and calling them racist.
I mean, to trot out the "seven times" figure with no context and expect us to treat it like it provides justification for anything is a gross misapplication of statistics.
I also was not raised in the suburbs, but a place that is rural, white and very hostile to anyone who isn't.
EDIT: Moreover, the mere fact that you would trot out the existence of your Asian wife as proof of your non-racism against blacks is proof enough. It's demonstrative of your us-them mindset: see, you can't be racist, you're married to one of them. Nevermind that Asians are not blacks -- it's just that they're not white, and you can't be racist if you like a non-white, right?
(Hint: not right)
I mean, just the fact that you're bringing out nazis and the klan as your examples of most white racists is absurd. The white racists who are the problem aren't the people who go out of their way to how everyone how much they subscribe to theories of white supremacy. Between those people and, say, Rush Limbaugh listeners or people in favor of starkly discriminatory voter laws, the latter are much more of a threat to daily life. And those people don't think they're racists, because they believe racists have hoods and swastikas.
Jesus it's not cherry-picking at all -- there's a reason why "I can't be racist, my best friend is black" is a joke/gag/dead giveaway of racist attitudes. You should try hard to understand why that is. Presenting the Asian-ness of your wife as if it immunizes you from being racist, or proves you aren't now and can't ever be, is classic tokenization.
Maybe this is a new idea for you, but some white guys marry Asian women because they're racists. They project their weird stereotypes/fetishes into an entire race of women. Cross-race affinity, still racist. Not saying that's you, just saying racist behavior is more than "I don't like those people."
Another thought for you -- people can and often are more racist towards some groups than to others.
Can you imagine a politician giving a speech about that?
[1] http://takimag.com/article/guns_and_race_steve_sailer/print
Finding the root causes of the disparity would be a fascinating sociological challenge, if we had the courage to pursue it.
Please expand. Nowhere in Europe has anything resembling the 4/5ths rule or Griggs vs Duke Power, no European country has a visible minority community as large as Blacks in the US, and no European country has a policy of discriminating on the basis of race in university admissions, to the best of my knowledge.
I think the OP should point out to some actual studies about how much more blatantly racist Americans/America are/is than Europe/Europeans.
Really? Because it always seemed the other way around to me--Europe lacks the strong taboos against overt racism that America has evolved. Americans are crypto-racist, but they don't share the shamelessness Europeans seem to have when they show up to football stadiums and make monkey noises at African players or chant "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas" when playing a "Jewish" club. That kind of thing happens in countries like Spain, Italy and Holland but would be unthinkable in the United States.
Maybe in some spheres but not all. Look at sports, for example. Outright racism by fans against athletes is unheard of in North America whereas it seems pretty common in Europe. Perhaps my perception is biased by the media reporting on it?
I would love to see a reference verifying the causality that you are implying when it comes to the decision to drop ethnicity from the statistics.
Also, I sincerely doubt that those of African and Arab ethnicity are over-represented in all crime categories. Violence, petty theft, sure, possibly. This is generally the category which the low-income portion of the population tends to dominate. But I think you will be hard pressed to find a document showing that the ethnics groups you are referencing are more prevalent when it comes to tax fraud.
"media found out that africans and arabs were way, way over-represented in all [violent] crime categories" AND THEN "the Swedish crime prevention board (BRÅ) no longer publish crime statistics containing ethnic background information" is hilarious enough already.
[Citation needed]
Oops, statistics are secret. Doh!
The reasons for such a move are mixed. Some part is certainly PC, some other part is that the segregation along "race boundaries" is actually misleading. Income class and eduction is usually a way better boundary when segregating crime statistics. However, for a long list of reasons, africans and arabs (or people moving into the country in general) are over-represented in the poorer classes and underrepresented in the richer class which in turn makes them appear stronger in crime statistics.
Another reason is that statistics are often read the wrong way, a problem that occurs very often with the official german crime stats: The most often cited statistic is the "Polizeibericht [1]", but that lists reported crimes - so everything that ever gets reported to the police. Some of those reports never get prosecuted, some get acquitted at trial, ... The police report in Berlin used to list all reports where the perpetrators nationality was unknown as "foreign", an error that seriously skewed the stats for any cursory reader. Statistics like that are a very weak datapoint - useful if you know how to read them, useless or even dangerous for most cases where they're cited. This misrepresentation of public data leads to a certain caution in publishing stats by the persons in charge.
Back to the Topic: I don't think that maps of that kind would get you shot, hanged or made outcast in Europe. Quite to the contrary, such maps exist and do provide valuable insight - though the same caveats that apply for the statistics apply here as well. As an example here's a map of how many non-germans live in berlin by quarter: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/7/7d/Bev%C3%B6lkeru... (top left). It's not as fine-grained as the one discussed here, but that's probably more due to unavailability of finer data. More maps of germany in the official report by the "Statistisches Bundesamt" https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Bevoelke...
[1] The official name is Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (PKS) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizeiliche_Kriminalstatistik...
Stop and Frisk in NYC overwhelmingly targets blacks and latinos, to the point where it's been declared unconstitutional, for example.
[1] http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/whites_subjected_to_too_m...
I would suggest the complete opposite is true, on both counts.
Maybe there are cases where these statistics could be legitimately useful, but I'm not aware of any.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/lead-crime-rac...
For some reason whether you have a community of muslims or africans, it happens to be impoverished. On the other hand, if you have a community of asians or western europeans, it doesn't.
That's exactly the problem parent is trying to convey. It's not that africans are inherently criminal, it's just that they have dangerous group dynamics.
I might be mis-understanding the context here: I've been to a few impoverished communities composed of 98% descendants of Western Europeans. Think: white trash.
Really? Where I live they don't give the race of the assailant out, but its assumed and unfortunately all too correctly as to what it is.
I am quite sure a few high up in Washington would like it as such here in the US. Two in particular, our President and Attorney General, seem to go out of their way to jump on racial issues as if its some type of popularity thing, they unfortunately come across as desperate.
Spared my butt, we just do our best to tune it out because its bombarded at us through media and government daily. Like the boy who cried wolf, when you cry wolf so many times when there is none no one will listen when there is.
My heart bleeds for you persecuted middle class whites. Oh, the pain and injustice you must endure!
Page 46 of BRÅs 1996 report (http://galnegunnarsblogg.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/bra-199...) says the following:
"Invandrares överrepresentation i brottslighet beror inte på en ogynnsam fördelning vad gäller kön, ålder eller bostadsort. Den beror inte heller på en generellt sett låg socioekonomisk status (mätt genom s.k. SEI-kod) i Sverige."
"Immigrants overrepresented in crime is not due to an unfavorable distribution in terms of gender, age or place of residence. It does not depend on the generally low socioeconomic status (as measured by the so-called SEI code) in Sweden."
And now it's your turn: citation needed.
He lives in Belgium (I used to), and I don't know to which part of the world he was referring to (probably Belgium and/or surrounding countries).
--
0. http://progcours.ulg.ac.be/cocoon/en/enseignant/U191908.html
This map is not the "best" map ever of racial segregation, though it may be the most comprehensive. I'd argue that a more effective map would include some kind of time element, to show how formerly integrated areas slowly became segregated.
Also, this is what a history of segregation looks like. Its worth remembering that small towns, at least in places like Ohio, were so inhospitable to African Americans that they were referred to as "sundown towns" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town ).
When people think that racism is over, maps like these serve as a pretty good starting point for asking them to reevaluate their POV.
Of course, there's always this you could start with too:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/13/white-definiti...
From the map, overview of the Bay area: http://hackeress.com/ethnic-distribution-bay-area.png
1) Immigrants can't afford any housing.
2) Most rent is private and not reported anywhere; most immigrants are illegal and not accounted anywhere.
Moscow won't segregate because people are awfully un-mobile.
If this changes, we may share the fate of cities in USA/Europe.
The problem is that a lot of immigrants are flowing in (from central asia) and there is no political will to limit their influx / control their quality.
Right now all the immigrants work and only resort to crime in dire situations, but I'm afraid this is bound to change if measures are not taken.
God, I miss that town every now and then. I'd kill for a hot Krispy Kreme right now.
And in case it consoles you to know that others are living your dreams, I just had two donuts at the Krispy Kreme on Ponce earlier this morning -- in fact right around the time of your comment. They were delicious but I should really stop going so often.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
> "Not enough black folks, no black community" (aka "I want to be with my own kind")
Cool anecdote.
Good day to you sir.
Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots
Eric Fischer picked up Bill's project and ran with it, composing maps for most of the major US cities with census 2010 data. You can see them all on his Flickr page -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496...
I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.
It's such a degenerate, lazy, white-centric breakdown. It's a disgrace.
Nice map though!
Look closely at the map on this thread, and match it up to a Chicago neighborhood map. Look at the border between Beverly (where I grew up) and Gresham and Brainerd. Look at the borders around Hyde Park. Look at the border between Austin and Oak Park (where I live now). For that matter, look at Lawndale vs Little Village. The borders are sharp, they follow regular lines, and generally involve a 90+% majority black neighborhood on one side.
There are a bunch of reasons this happened:
* The Great Migration, during which Chicago was a giant magnet for rural black southerners
* Redlining, the overtly racist/segregationist practice of refusing home loans to black families in "non-black" neighborhoods
* The construction of the Ryan, which displaced black families who ended up moving to places like Englewood
* The construction of the CHA high rise housing projects, which were concentrated in areas that would eventually become majority-black
* The subsequent flight of white families from places like Englewood, which went from 10% black immediately after WW2 to 98+%(!) black in 1980
It's important to note that with the possible exception of Beverly, which really is a white Irish enclave, the non-black non-hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago aren't intolerant, and have black representation roughly in line with their representation in the population as a whole. If you live in Avondale or Rogers Park or Lakeview, it probably doesn't look at all segregated.
Also, Chicago isn't the most segregated city in the US.
Also, last time this was featured on Fark the map became quickly unusable. Would be nice if they could generate some KML files or something that could be used outside of their website.
I had anticipated this to some extent in daily life but it was driven home a few years ago. I lived in a very "latino" neighborhood, unusual to see anyone else...
When election time came around, I got in line of perhaps 50-100 people at a very busy polling place. Bored, I looked down the line at each person. Gone were the folks I was used to seeing every day, in fact I was hard-pressed to find any. I counted one or two latinos in the whole line, and they were not from the migrant-worker class... i.e. poorer Mexican or Central American Indians.
It is probable a larger percentage of these folks will submit to the Census bureau than registering to vote, but how much? As a whole they are not well integrated.
What We Mean When We Say 'Race Is a Social Construct' - http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-...
The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It by Noel Ignatiev - http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html (the stuff about "White Studies" (obviously contextual) and Marxist tie-ins are totally optional to understanding the central points, I believe)
Is there something inherently WRONG with people gravitating toward and feeling most comfortable around people who look like themselves?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation
"Segregation itself is defined by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as "the act by which a (natural or legal) person separates other persons"
If people separate, or group, themselves according to their own desires then that is not segregation according to Google and according to the Wiki which sites at least the "European Commission against Racism and Intolerance".
You may disagree with me but I've provided two worldwide known references both in agreement with each other and with me. The use of the word segregation was wrong by the original author and wrong by HN for posting it that way.
http://i.imgur.com/dBIBuCD.jpg
The Rock Creek Park divide is just as noticeable on the map as it is driving around the area. On a larger scale, the SE/NW divide is exactly what you'd expect. Keep in mind that the city itself is (or at least was, before gentrification) predominately black, and the SE areas are the poorest.
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I use white friends to make apartment inquiries for me in neighborhoods known for housing discrimination, do I exist?
150 years ago, white people were far more likely to know and live near black people. Did nature somehow change in the interim?
Separate but equal was a set of laws imposing a behavior from above. The equal part wasn't true, and it wasn't 100 years ago. It was the environment that my parents grew up in, and I went to a segregated school myself. It wasn't anything that black people had or have any choice over, or preferred.
Cool and interesting maps.
Not sure why you applied a sarcasm tag. I can't speak for all of Oregon, but Portland is quite nice.
It is, thanks, if you don't mind the crappy weather.