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Comment by kalendae | Hacker News Reader

If you are a black man between 15-24 with no high school diploma, changing the color of your skin (to white) has more positive impact than getting that high school diploma.

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Correlation is not causation...

I would guess that the important factor is instead your real-life social network. Most of those young, white, uneducated men are found in rural areas where there is a strong sense of community and people help out and get jobs for each other.

Whereas the young, black, uneducated men are more likely to live in urban areas where they have a weak social network that can't help them get jobs, so the best thing they can do is to become friends with people who have jobs, and if you flunked out of high-school, that's very, very difficult.

What I have seen is that there are a lot of white people doing well without college education. But this doesn't mean that they do not receive any education.

A lot of white people (in my part of the world) learn their parent's occupation. A good example is farming - a farmer will learn his sons how to farm. Or estate agents.

So they have an aweful lot of skills transferred to them (just through a university that doesn't grant degrees ;) )

Or professional certification programs.

Having a criminal past is also a huge factor.

This is anecdotal, but my neighbor's son is a black 35 year old male lacking a high school education and had a BS drug charge. It is very difficult for him to find a job, after all, who wants to hire an ex-con?

Also, his social network makes him very likely to be harassed by police.

I think the decriminalization of drugs will help the inequality, or at least fix a symptom.

Update, just found out my neighbor's son got a job working at the Port of Oakland for $8.50/hour. He also has a high school education (not that it has a big bearing on the employment rate of his peers).

What's even more interesting is that changing your race to Hispanic has an almost identically positive impact as changing to white.

Are we actually that much more discriminatory (as a society) against blacks as compared to hispanics? Is this purely racism, or is something else at work? Perhaps it has to do with the ratio of passport/green card holders between the two ethnicities, and the economic advantages of hiring non-citizens in low-end jobs?

The results are clear though:

White men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.6% Black men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 48.5% Hispanic men 15-24, no highschool: Unemployment 25.8%

For women:

White 15-24, no HS: 20.1%, Black: 36.8%, Hispanic: 29.9%

I wouldn't jump to racism right away, the system doesn't break down the numbers by locations. For instance rural people with no degrees may have an easier time finding jobs, whereas those in a city may not. I don't know the breakdown of rural hispanic, white, black, to the city but that might be able to explain it.

I think you are right that the difference is immigration. A lot of hispanics at that age range and with no high school education are migratory farm workers that come to the US with jobs. Bad jobs but nevertheless jobs.

And of course nobody will hire black people for those jobs. Those jobs are so hard and badly paid that they can only be performed by impoverished scared immigrants.

And as far as racism goes I think there is a difference between the way hispanic and black men are treated. Racists usually fear young black men and consider them all violent criminals, so they would not give them jobs. As far as hispanics, the usual racist stereotype of the hispanic male is somebody that is good for a low wage menial job. So racism does not really prevent hispanics from getting jobs, just good jobs.

I would wonder if there is a fear of hiring black men for extremely poor paying manual labour jobs for fear of the perception of slavery & racisim too.

I think fear of litigation is probably a significant factor. I have a friend who practices labor and employment law and he's kept on retainer at a few big companies to field calls such as "can we fire this person and not get sued?".

They literally have a point system. Race, sex, sexual preference and disabilities (basically any protected class) are all assigned a certain number of points.

Regardless if you're trying to fire someone for cause, if they are in some dangerous combination of protected classes (watch out for disabled black lesbians) and you want to minimize legal exposure, they'll advise you to keep them and put them in a position where they can do no harm to company.

He has one firm who has an employee who has sued them five (!) separate times for racial discrimination (according to my friend, anytime the person gets a bad review or reprimanded). They can't get rid of the person for fear it'll look like retaliation.

The whole situation is completely degenerate.

Sounds like a good reason for even a non-racist to avoid hiring minorities and other protected classes.

Actually, that's a generalized problem with firing protections of any kind; the harder you make it to fire anyone, the less likely they are to be hired in the first place. Another case where second-order effects can end up dominating the end results. "At-will employment" sounds like a worker disaster if you only consider first-order effects, but in my opinion it is actually the preferable scenario for a worker if you consider everything.

Well, for a good worker anyhow.

These second order effects are a big problem in Europe. The governments there make it very expensive to fire anyone; typically around 6 months wages for anyone laid off, I think. As a result, companies are loath to hire new workers, even when an economic upswing is under way. Result: chronically high unemployment rates and young people who can't get jobs and don't understand why, not to mention increased risk aversion for companies.

Unfortunately in most large companies that means "promote them to management".

Or the reverse may be true: that black men won't take those jobs because they perceive them as being "no better than slavery".

Racism is a sketchy explanation. As of a year ago, native-born black americans had 50% more unemployment than foreign-born blacks.

These racists make very fine distinctions: "I don't like African Americans. Nigerians and Jamaicans are ok, though. So I'll interview black people, but if they don't have a foreign accent..." [makes a 'get out of here' motion]

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.t01.htm

Uhh . . . dude. That's what you want.

I'm not trying to keep Americans out of jobs here, but isn't it good to require that foreign born people have jobs before they come here? I mean, I assume you are talking about immigrants. Why would you not want them to have some sort of employment related Visa before they get on the plane to come here and live?

This statistic, to me, says that the government is doing something right. Again, not trying to open up an immigration discussion, just saying that this statistic is a good thing. In general you want native unemployment to be higher than foreign born unemployment or you have a problem with your immigration program. In America Native unemployment is higher across every demographic, which is excellent in my opinion.

Just my two cents. I'm not an immigration expert or anything, but I am smart enough to know that I want the employable immigrants.

Uh, dude, I'm not making any immigration-related argument. All I'm saying is that those racist employers seem to have a really narrow kind of racism: "we hate black americans, but not black haitians or senegalese."

It's probably not racism then, but, umm, culturalism.

We don't have good vocabulary yet for distinguishing between race, culture and nationality because for most of history, these were very strongly correlated.

Very good point. That pretty clearly points to issues with education/culture (as it relates to dress, speech, expectations, etc...)/etc... NOT race.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a bit of personal history about the differences in native versus immigrant black perceptions. Interesting article.

http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_04_29_a_black.htm

Am I the only one who thinks breaking this down by race is misleading? Why don't they have it broken down into industry? Saying this is due to racism is a huge leap from the correlation here. A more apt comparison would be people with the exact same skills and background applying for very similar jobs. Well, I guess that would be too hard. Let's stick to dividing everyone into little groups to make this easier for our brains.

Am I the only one who thinks breaking this down by race is misleading?

No more misleading than breaking it down by age.

A more apt comparison would be people with the exact same skills and background applying for very similar jobs.

That just hides all the people who would never get the skills or background to apply for those jobs because of their race. These statistics are profiling a society, not judging whether a particular interviewer has bias.

Age in this case is just a proxy for year of graduation.

I know what you mean. A black colleague of mine was recently let go from my company and he found new employment pretty quickly. I wonder, if you graphed unemployment for developers would there be such a large difference between blacks and the other races?

I assume that the dominant factors are socio-economic rather than racial. The poverty rate for black americans is three times that what it is for white americans. I suspect if the unemployment rates were broken down by most recent household income that the correlation between race and unemployment would be much weaker than the correlation between previous economic status and unemployment.

In other words, I expect that the unemployment rate for the black middle class isn't a whole lot higher than for the white middle class.

How to grow larger minority middle-classes is a much deeper societal problem and is much less subject to relatively instantaneous fluctuations like unemployment rates.

That's exactly correct. I had a nice chat about this with my gf recently... her mom is the traditional "southern woman" aka "socially acceptable racist." (her words, not mine. 'I'm just a 'southern girl' i can't help it)

So I shared an insight with her that I'm not certain of but that makes sense to me:

Since Nixon, income growth in inflation-adjusted dollars for the average American has actually fallen. From something like $46k median income in 1970 compared to $44k today.

Anybody who grew up in the less affluent suburbs knows this just in their families and neighbors.

The real prosperty that actually created the middle class in this country--the real upward mobility--that happened between 1945 and 1965.

And it just so happens that while that was happening, most white Americans still treated blacks like 2nd class humans (at worst) and 2nd class citizens (at best).

They missed out on the last big push of economic mobility.

Lets hope that we all get a 2nd one in our lifetimes.

While this is a very large and complex issue, one of the major forces in that "big push" was veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill. Black veterans had a much harder time using its benefits, though - most universities were still segregated, for example.

I saw that. I thought that was crazy too! There is actually a demographic in the US for whom there is little incentive for education with respect to financial success. I would never have believed this without being presented with the data. It is so antithetical to my beliefs in my country that a large part of me wants to question the EDIT(sp):veracity of the NYT data. Even though I know that data is probably accurate.

Just . . . Wow!

It would be interesting to see what the salaries and job types are for all of these groups: education might help significantly there (or might not; I have no idea).

(also, I think you mean veracity)

Ooops! You're right.

Sorry I'm just so bothered by that data.

Also, your other point is interesting as well. If a young black guy can get an education, let's say a high school diploma. He will have less of a chance of getting a job than a white man who does not have a high school diploma, we know that from this data. BUT, will the black guy with the high school diploma make more money than the white guy without a high school diploma IF he can find someone willing to give him a job? That's a great question. Prior to being presented with this data I would have been eager to get the answer. Now, I almost don't want to know, that answer could be even MORE depressing.

Google Book result, you'll be after page 31, table 2.7. Doesn't include figures for high school dropouts though.

"Racial and ethnic diversity in America: a reference handbook" - 2000

http://books.google.com/books?id=xc-YEVDhC0MC&pg=PA30...

The scary table is number 2.9:

    homicide by firearm, per year, per 100,000 people

    age       10-14    15-19    20-24
    white      0.5      3.9      5.6
    hispanic   1.1     14.0     18.1
    black      1.8     29.1     55.6(!!)

I'm don't understand what you're saying. For both white and black, the employment rate approximately halves when you pass each of the two levels of employment. What discrepancy are you talking about?

The comment we're responding to is the one above that talks about young black males being better off changing their color to white, than getting their high school diploma.

This entire thread of discussion is on the topic of @kalendae's comment. The fact that the data indicates that it is literally better for a young man to be anything but black, than it is for a young man to be black, but educated. I was saying that what this data shows is contrary to what I believe about the country. That is, I believed that color doesn't matter, only education does. But color does matter, and to me, that is surprising. That's all I'm saying.

See @kalendae's comment.

Hmm, well I don't understand what you're getting at. You said:

"There is actually a demographic in the US for whom there is little incentive for education with respect to financial success."

This seems to me to be false, since college educated blacks have a higher employment rate than blacks who didn't finish highschool.

But maybe I'm missing the point. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Good point. Motivation/evaluation to benifits only applies to things the person can change.

Sure, you might be better off if you were white or a woman, but it is cheaper to get an education (well, here in the UK it would be cheaper, I hear education can be expensive in the US...)

I suppose this is a good way to look at it. The REALITY is these guys can only do what they can do. The fact that what they can do may not help them pull equal to whites is beyond their control.

The issue is that I was raised to believe that all Americans, regardless of race, have the same access to opportunities. Then, when I grew up, graduated college and took a commission in the USMC, this idea was further drummed into me. But this data is saying that this is untrue. Setting up serious conflict in my mind. Which is what my original comment was about.

Put another way, if you change the things you can change, you can make yourself the equivalent of anyone was my view of the US. But this is not the case, even if these guys get an education their chances are still slimmer than other guys without an education.

The general feeling of acceptance here is somewhat shocking to me as well. This is not what I thought America was about, or the American people. Don't get me wrong, I know there are bigots, but I thought they were in the minority. Perhaps more naivete on my part.

In short, I find it totally unacceptable for a black high school grad to have less of a chance at opportunities than a white non graduate. Saying that if blacks get educated they can do better than non educated blacks, though not as well as non educated whites, is lunacy. It's like saying, this is the best that YOU can expect in this society, so be happy, there is no problem.

Why does that seem so acceptable to so many people here? Or maybe it is just the few who are talking the loudest I don't know. Or perhaps a lot of these people commenting are not even American. Which I would bet on, given the content of some of these comments.

It could also be that I have been living in the uber-privileged la-la land of an ex-military officer.

Or maybe a little bit of all of these things.

This country has tried to right many (atrocious) wrongs and things have improved largely, but no, all things are not yet equal. Imagine a large maze of (forgive the analogy) rats, some gray, some brown. The maze has bits of food and even material for shelter building. If all rats were released into the maze at the same time, all things being equal - physical sizes evenly distributed etc., each color of rat would survive equally as well. Now imagine releasing only the gray rats into the maze, holding the brown ones back, and imagine all these rats are intelligent - they can pass on information about the maze like where to find food to their offspring, so they become trained. Let's say you conducted this experiment over a long period of time, several years, and then one day you released the brown rats. You can see they would be at a disadvantage, even though they might have the same physical opportunity to the food and materials, the gray rats have "set up shop". Slaves in the U.S. were freed, but essentially just "released". (the 40 acres and a mule was never awarded) This is a crude analogy, but can show how such statistics can exist.

E-gad not the "40 acres and a mule" meme again.

Do some research. This was a promise made by a Civil War General to a specific bunch of people which was later rescinded by the president. There was no general law or promise that such would be provided to every freed slave. It happened for a brief period, in a relatively small location (Georgia) And it happened 150 years ago.

Aside from whether somebody was put into harm's way because his great-great-great grandfather missed out on the free mules, I just wanted to clarify that historical point. It's one of those historical revisions that seem to grow with the retelling.

Yes, I know it was rescinded (after Lincoln's assassination) before it could be extended to the rest of the subset of freed slaves. I was pointing out the "imbalance of the maze" was apparent even back then.

The issue is that I was raised to believe that all Americans, regardless of race, have the same access to opportunities.

I think that is a very important message to send out. You have to get people to believe that they can (and should!) succeed, even once the opportunity is there, otherwise they might not try. [1]

Saying that if blacks get educated they can do better than non educated blacks, though not as well as non educated whites, is lunacy.

Worth pointing out that the numbers, though best for the white group, are not as bad as that.

For men and women, ages 25-44:

            none     high school   college
    white   17.5%     8.1%         3.7%
    black   26.9%    14.0%         7.4% [2]

So, for each step up in education, the black person has a better chance than the white person on the level below. 26.9% is still a scary large number, though I'd like to think that the no-high school group is only a small proportion of the overall population.

(Also, yes, I've only been to the US a couple of times, but I'm not sure in which that affects my interpretation of these numbers.)

[1] Reminds me of the "How to get women into CS" discussion, I'm sure all the same arguments apply. See: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/TransformingTheCulture.p...

[2] See what I did there, ignore half the data to make my point clearer? Because I felt bad about it, I'm going to include the whole set here:

              none     high school   college
    hispanic  13.1%     9.6%         4.9%
    other     13.6%     9.4%         4.8%
    white     17.5%     8.1%         3.7%
    black     26.9%    14.0%         7.4%

Now, before I did that, I hadn't noticed: if you're not going to finish high school, better make sure you're not white or black.

Eh, and there goes my unqualified optimism too. If you're hispanic/mixed/other and didn't finish high school, you've still got a better chance than a black person who did. Oops.

[3] And another point: I'd like to see the relative sizes of these "race" groups. I'm sure in the long term, that "mixed" group is going to become the largest.

Looks like you slowly talked yourself around to my conclusion. Black people, especially the young ones, seem to have a really unfortunate position. It seems qualified optimism is the only reasonable response to this data. At least if they get educated, they can do somewhat better for themselves. Though lesser educated people of other races will probably do better.

Also, for more good news, take a look at the numbers for blacks compared to others where the age is 15 - 24.

A sex change would apparently do wonders too; from 49% down to 37%.

Anyone have any speculations to why? Might it simply be that a lot of women for some reason don't register themselves as unemployed?

Quite a lot of this seems US specific. I don't think for instance the UK has anywhere near the same level of racism.

'Shocking' racism in jobs market [1]

The figures show black, Asian and other ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be unemployed, half as likely to own their home and run double the risk of poor health, compared with white Britons. [2] (from 2001 census, sorry, most recent I could find)

[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3885213.stm

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-today...

Correlation does not imply causation. http://xkcd.com/552/

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