When People will not be Judged by the Color of their Skin, But On Where Their Ancestors Were Judged by the Color of their Skin
The Wall Street Journal had a piece that made reference to this story in the Cornell Daily Sun:
Martha E. Pollack, nearing the six-month mark of her presidency, is facing her first major test at Cornell after hundreds of black students, responding to the arrest of a student who may be charged with a hate crime, marched into her office last week and hand-delivered a series of demands.
The most interesting of the demand is:
We demand that Cornell Admissions to come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students on this campus. We define underrepresented Black students as Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country. The Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students. While these students have a right to flourish at Cornell, there is a lack of investment in Black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America. Cornell must work to actively support students whose families have been impacted for generations by white supremacy and American fascism
That brings to mind this piece in the NY Times in 2004, or this one in the Chicago Tribune by Pullitzer Prize winner Clarence Page:
Harvard law professor Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of Harvard’s African and African-American studies department, reported that 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard’s undergraduates are black, but somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of them are “West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.”
Not counting those who are classified as “foreign students,” Guinier and Gates said, only about a third of the students classified as “black” at the nation’s most prestigious university were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country.
I was not surprised by those findings. Like many other African-Americans, I have been noticing for years how the children of black immigrant families tend to be much better represented among high school honor-roll achievers than their native-American black counterparts are.
Now that they are showing up in disproportionate numbers at selective colleges like Harvard, both advocates and opponents of affirmative action are raising a howl in their various ways.
Page goes on:
Now Harvard has to ask itself what its affirmative action plan is supposed to accomplish. If its goal is simply “diversity,” it may not matter how American the roots of its black and brown faces happen to be. But if its goal is to address historical racial inequalities in American life, Harvard may have to take black ethnicity into account in the way that some institutions have argued over which nationalities should be counted as “Hispanic.”
A bigger question to me is this: Why are black students whose families have been in America for generations being left behind by newcomers, including black newcomers from other countries?
Gates plans to organize a study group around that question. I can offer the group one easy possibility, no charge: Immigrant kids work harder.
They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder–and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism: Where others might see a dead-end job, immigrants of all colors see an entry-level opportunity.
I don’t want to comment on Page’s conclusions; that may be a post for another time. I do note that what probably derailed the thought process brought up by Lani Guinier, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Clarence Page was the meteoric rise of Barack Obama. But Barack Obama is no longer president. Furthermore, it isn’t clear that Americans descended from American slaves are better off relative to other Americans after eight years of Obama than they were before his presidency.
Mike,
Berkeley political scientist Martin Sanchez-Jankowski spent nine years on the ground in five New York City and Los Angeles poverty stricken neighborhoods (previously spent nine years with street gangs).
In poor neighborhood schools he made the insight that poor student performance was a factor of students (and teachers!) not expecting to find anything remunerative enough in the American labor market after they left school to make making a serious effort nor worthwhile.
I usually point out that American workers won’t show up for $10/hr — see my McDonald’s across the street. Those people work like mad all day and go home with nothing. Only thing that can explain their efforts is they came from situations much worse (Mexican corn fields?; Pakistani steel mills). 50% of Chicago gang-age males end up street gangs. 50% are not 1 percenters. Most of the jobs immigrants take (my old taxi driver job) could be taken by American workers instead if only labor’s price was high enough (in the case of my taxi job, if labor’s price returned to where it was in 1980).
So you given me an important double-insight. Immigrant kids work harder because they believe they will do better — immigrant kids are willing to work harder for less. Over generations immigrants meld right back into the discouraged ghetto populations as their expectations rise and their opportunities (compared to what they expected) decline.
Answer to all above: rebuild American labor union density (starting at state level today — First Amendment protects making-union-busting-a-felony from federal preemption: can’t preempt something effectual with nothing effectual with the constitution having some pointed things to say about it.
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-restocking-of-american-labor-union.html
Dennis,
These are college students in the story. And employers are always looking to increase diversity in their workforce, so unless these students choose to send a bad signal to potential employers, they should be able to get jobs. If they aren’t working as hard as others it isn’t out of lack of opportunity.
well, Mike
I was going to ask if black “immigrants work harder” what happens to your whole argument against allowing immigrants from poor countries into America?
But the fairy tale moral in your reply to Denis answers my question.
“Furthermore, it isn’t clear that Americans descended from American slaves are better off relative to other Americans after eight years of Obama than they were before his presidency.”
Motherf!cker, please!
This is, as always coming from a racist, standard racist Bullshit: :
“Its their own fault”
“They should make better choices”
“They'[re just lazy (which is why the slave mangers had to whip’em to get them to perform”).
Mr. Kimel was smart enough to recognize this in the piece he posted which is why he posted more racist ideology.
“Mr. Kimel was smart enough to recognize this in the piece he posted which is why he posted more racist ideology.”
I don’t know whether Mr. Kimel is smart or not. From what I can tell from his posts, he believes that human races are grounded in biology. That fact alone makes his judgement suspect. There’s something about the sound of a clock striking 13 that calls into doubt everything that came before.
I posted this earlier in support of emichael. I’ll try again here:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/10/14/progress-african-american-community-during-obama-administration
Joel,
Actually, not quite. I keep stating things like:
And
I did note that Dawkins stated that biological race is real. I also noted that it seems James Watson’s statement that got him into trouble is a heck of a lot less nuanced than what I have been writing, and is more interpretable as “race is biologically real” than anything I have written.
You were willing to apply this to me:
I assume, therefore, that you feel the same about Dawkins and Watson. And what do you call a geneticist who doubts all of Watson’s work?
As to the White House piece from 2016… shouldn’t the very first bullet point tip you off to the problem?
I was very precise about what I wrote:
Now, we don’t have data for income for 2016 yet, but Black Median Income / Total Median Income is not higher in 2015 than in 2008, it is marginally lower, which at best we can chalk up to mostly no difference. (66% v. 68% in 2008) If you see a difference in healthcare outcomes, or life expectancy, etc., relative to everyone else, let me know.
EMichael,
Eloquent as always.
Longtooth,
I actually don’t entirely agree with Page, which is why I mentioned this:
Nevertheless, if you find what I quoted from Mr. Page to be racist against Black people, you probably should look him up. But then I am sure you would find the views of Frederick Douglass or W.E.B. Du Bois to be racist if I quoted them too.
Coberly,
I don’t even understand your response. I will say only this… I have stated before that in my view, US policy (including on immigration) should, primarily, be geared to benefit Americans. That includes Black-Americans, White-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, etc.
I have stated before that I would favor limiting immigration in most cases to people who are high performers and/or bring in skills that are in short supply in the US. (Technically, that’s what the H1B visa was created for, though that isn’t how it is applied.) We also want people who will fit in well in the US and will not have trouble adjusting and thus become a burden on society or prove to be violent. (Again, technically that is part of the US immigration law.)
That means bringing in immigrants not because they have better skills than one or another group, but because they have better skills than just about everyone in the US. If a potential immigrant can be described that way and they haven’t been posting on social media about how they want to harm Americans, then I am in favor of them immigrating. I don’t really care if they are Nigerian, Caribbean, Japanese, Hungarian, Brazilian, or English.
But I don’t favor allowing in people whose social media presence indicates they wish ill on Americans (see the San Bernardino shooter) or those who are unlikely to ever have gainful employment.
” And what do you call a geneticist who doubts all of Watson’s work? ”
Who said I or any geneticist doubted “all of Watson’s work?” Watson never worked on race or the genetics of race. He opined on the subject, but being a Nobel Laureate doesn’t mean every opinion has the same merit as the work the earned the prize. In humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked. Watson illustrates this uncoupling.
Dawkins never worked on race or the genetics of race either.
The reason I linked to the Templeton article in a previous thread is the Templeton *is* a population geneticist whose entire career has been about genetic variance in populations. His article describes in detail how he used standard population genetics to test the hypothesis that human races exist in the same sense as races in chimpanzees. Your rebuttals have consisted of appeals to irrelevant authorities, but have left the actual evidence Templeton presents untouched.
@Mike,
Not to put too fine a point on it, in the world of science, we distinguish between scientific arguments made by a scientist and personal opinions of that scientist. Your attempt (again) at misdirection by pretending that I suggested Watson’s scientific accomplishments deserve to be questioned because of a silly opinion he expressed show (again) that you are unserious.
What I get out of Dawkins and Watson is something I think you are missing, and it speaks to your comment about whether they are talking about areas outside their expertise. As I noted on another thread, the very concept of a species is no less of a social construct, and has borders no less fuzzy than race. Here’s a nice article on how species are determined in birds: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/whats-in-a-name-how-genome-mapping-can-make-it-harder-to-tell-species-apart/?platform=hootsuite
The fact that something is a social construct doesn’t prevent it from being a useful proxy variable or a useful way to sort and organize data. And the fact that something is useful in this way doesn’t mean that something better won’t come along.
As I keep pointing out… use of this particular proxy is being used to save and improve lives right now. This is what the people who keep wailing about social constructs want to chuck into the garbage.
“As I keep pointing out… use of this particular proxy is being used to save and improve lives right now.”
Yes, you keep asserting that. You are wrong. Just because people refer to “race” in associating ancestry with elevated risk for certain conditions (e.g., certain African ancestries with sickle cell, certain Jewish ancestries with Tay Sachs, certain Scandinavian ancestries with cystic fibrosis) is not evidence that there exists an African race, a Jewish race or a Nordic race, nor does it demonstrate a utility to the social concept of race in medicine. Differences in a specific allele frequency do not define a race. Read the Templeton paper I linked to to learn how measured allele frequencies are used in defining “races.” The fact is, there is more allelic variance between members of the same “race” than between members of different “races.”
The fact that you keep pointing out your misconception doesn’t not validate it, it only repeats your error. Repeating something that is wrong, over and over, doesn’t make it right.
BTW, if you actually read the ornithology link, it doesn’t say that species are a social construct. What it actually says is that the evidence being used to define species now includes quantitative genomics, not just morphometry. That fact that new scientific evidence suggests that some avian taxonomy was misled by more limited and/or ambiguous data doesn’t make taxonomy a social construct. It simply means that when we have better data, we make better decisions.
Refinement of taxonomy through genomics has been going on for decades for bacteria and fungi, starting with the use of rDNA sequences. Indeed, the discovery of archea overturned a prior taxonomy, but it didn’t ipso facto make taxonomy a social construct.
In another post, I quoted from from this article:
As I noted to you in comments to that post:
In that same thread, I linked to this article and I mentioned BiDil.
It isn’t an unsupported assertion if I am providing examples of articles in medical journals doing what I claim they are doing. But I am waiting for your answer. You stated “…nor does it demonstrate a utility to the social concept of race in medicine….” So, all these studies that keep using a race as a variable, and keep finding actionable differences… they don’t have utility?’
As to the birds… the article contains paragraphs like this:
And this:
There’s nothing wrong with making a judgment call. But a judgment call is not a decision due entirely to hard, cold facts.
Then there’s this:
So a human need to categorize…
And this:
So not a construct, but rather a construct of a few official groups like the AOS committee.
” So, all these studies that keep using a race as a variable, and keep finding actionable differences… they don’t have utility?’”
Yes, in the sense that race classification had utility and provided actionable differences for Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa. That doesn’t make race not a social construct.
“There’s nothing wrong with making a judgment call. But a judgment call is not a decision due entirely to hard, cold facts.”
All of science is a judgement call. Science doesn’t deal in proof, it deals in the weight of evidence. If you believe that anything short of proof is a social construct, that’s your opinion. As a practicing scientist, I don’t find that taxonomy useful.
“So not a construct, but rather a construct of a few official groups like the AOS committee.”
LOL! So the fact that most of the scientific literature that drives progress is refereed by humans makes it a social construct. M’kay.
I look forward to hearing the reaction when you try to explain to African Americans that they should stop taking heart medication because it stemmed from researchers trying to a solution to heart issues unique to the Black community. May I suggest “Bye bye BiDil” as the slogan to your program?
As to how science works… there’s usually an attempt to get at some objective measure. (And yes, then bad actors end up gaming the system by playing to that objective measure… e.g., p-hacking). Without an objective criteria, decisions are made subjectively. Subjective criteria can be useful… hence, as I noted, “race” which you keep attacking as useless because it is subjective.