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Lalalalala
The comment section to
this Jane Galt post is fun. When confronted with evidence of continuing racism in America, the response of some is analogous to pluggin ones ears and saying "lalalalalala-icanthearyou- lalalalalalala!!!!!"
posted at 12:27:51 AM on 10/20/2006
by
RAW -
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At the risk of sounding "lalalala"-ish, I'm not sure if I would characterize this as evidence of ongoing racism in America.
I haven't taken the time to look at the actual study, but this snippet from the Crooked Timber post set off alarm bells:
>>correlation between skin color and economic success among recent immigrants<<
Among recent immigrants.
That's important. And unless the model takes into account many variables, the study risks an error known as underspecification, which basically means that an independent variable other than "skin color" could be explaining the variance in the dependent variable (economic success).
For example, did the study take into account and control for IQ? I doubt it, because most studies don't measure that variable. But we know from Murray/Herrnstein's work that IQ is an important independent variable with explanatory power for dependent variables of economic success and criminality. So if you don't at least look at that variable, your model may be underspecified. And there may well be other variables that were left out.
Nah, I certainly wouldn't say that you are lalalaish. You're right that the study may be flawed. And the study involving African American names may be flawed, too, for one reason or another. Perhaps "evidence" is too strong a word.
All that said, even when the concerns are not unjustified, it's difficult (for me, anyway) to not read a lot of these comments and come away with the conclusion that racism* cannot possibly be the issue until every other possibility has been completely exhausted.
It's similar, to me, to the way that our friends on the left insist that the latest study demonstrating media bias is flawed for this reason or that. The individual study may in fact be flawed, but it's pretty clear that they're going to find any reason at all to disregard a study that has results that has the wrong results.
*- Except affirmative action, which according to some - the kinds of people the comment section reminded me of - is the only form of discrimination seen in America post-1980.
I don't necessarily see a "lalala" here.
First of all, they're shooting for "immigrants" - and yet, what do you get to work with? Asian countries (China, Japan, India, etc) where the education level of immigrants is fairly high and the immigrants coming over are likely to be college-types as opposed to the darker skin of southern Africa, where most "immigrants" are people who fled their countries from civil wars and had a minimal-to-nonexistent educational system growing up.
They say they "controlled for race and country of origin", but I don't buy it; I think their "control" is flawed.
"Hersch based her results on 2,084 men and women who participated in face-to-face interviews for the federally funded 2003 New Immigrant Survey." - I'd say there is a real problem of selection bias there, too. When you don't have a truly random sample, all bets are off.
As for the names, you've got a few problems to overcome in that. The first is, indeed, a possible "racial" factor. However, since they don't say what an "obviously African name" is, their criterion are probably suspect. The second problem is an unfortunate backlash against kids with what are perceived to be pretentious africanized-sounding names that are picked just to be different. The third is the problem of self-segregation and the unfortunate fact that the public face of the "black" community is the hip-hop community, a community that states in no uncertain terms that honesty, hard work, and education are not things they value.
Minorities and minority groups are often guilty of making things about race that are not really about race. Whites, on the other hand, are often guilty of the opposite: different races being treated differently is a product of something, anything other than actual racism.
The upside I guess to being a minority is that if you choose you have an excuse for every success. The good news about being white is that if you choose you're allowed to believe that affirmative action is the only significant racism that goes on in this country.
And both sides are upset that we can't have an "honest" dialogue about race.
Oh, I won't say that there aren't racists or that racism doesn't exist - in any direction.
However, to argue that it's somehow systemic in only one direction? That's hardly an honest form of debate.
One-sided? No. Deeply assymetrical in consequence? You bet.
Just because the consequence of a "dark-skinned" person's racism is different from the consequence of a "light-skinned" person's racism, does that make the dark-skinned person's racism less wrong?
If one of those is self-destructive (which I'd argue is the case; many times in my job I've seen racist 'minorities' who insisted they were "better" than their other-raced teachers and refused to come and ask questions on the material or seek academic help to do better; interestingly, the past couple years it's been targeted at asian professors), is it not still a very real problem that's going to contribute to studies on "racism" that try to intuit racism's existence by virtue of average earnings or educational achievement?
The problem with pointing out minority racism is that it is primarily used to dismiss white racism ("they do it, too!") or minimize the consequences of it. It's diversionary -- an attempt to equivocate or change the subject.
The next time I head someone argue that whites are uniquely evil because of their tendency to harbor racial prejudices, I'll line up next to you to knock that silly notion down. But right now the most severe consequences of racism flow assymetrically to the benefit of whites and to the detriment of blacks and Hispanics.
Minority racism is no less wrong, but it is decidedly less important at this time in our nation's history.
I disagree, especially on the importance. You don't get a good reaction by being belligerent and agressive towards someone.
I'm not saying that minority racism ought to be an excuse for racism of other sides; I'm saying that all of it has to be examined.
The problem as I see it is that the "studies" being done on the matter are not done well or in an academically honest fashion, because they automatically assume a result and then go out trying to find said result, but as Publius mentioned above, they create a study that's underspecified.
The result? Factors that have things to do with "race" but not "racism" get turned into "OMG Whites are so evil and racist."
"But right now the most severe consequences of racism flow assymetrically to the benefit of whites and to the detriment of blacks and Hispanics."
I'm not sure all the "consequences of racism" that you're adding up aren't related to other factors in the communities therein; my prime example would be New Orleans, where I'm sure a sizable portion of the city's majority-black population would claim that "white racism" was a cause for many of the problems of the city even while so many blacks in the city existed on welfare, participated in gang and drug culture, preyed on each other, and didn't take positive steps in taking education seriously and going out to find good jobs.
Put shortly, my argument is this: where you say that pointing out "black racism" is a canard to ignore white racism, I'll argue that no racism is ever a justifiable excuse for failure to improve oneself.
/I'm not sure *all* the "consequences of racism" that you're adding up aren't related to other factors in the communities therein;/ [emphasis mine]
See my first response to your first comment. We're talking in circles now.
*/The individual study may in fact be flawed, but it's pretty clear that they're going to find any reason at all to disregard a study that has results that has the wrong results./*
I think the larger problem is that I can't see a study out there that isn't flawed, and that the studies are invariably done by someone who's trying to "prove" some sociological theory.
I won't say that racism doesn't exist (because I'm sure it does). I won't say that racism doesn't explain some of the results, because I'm sure out of the test sample you can find some small percentage that the result might be the result of racism.
However, I'm not willing to take that and take highly flawed studies and allow, on the basis of "overall, X portion of the population makes x% less money", and turn the result into "therefore all whites are mean racist poopie-heads."
There isn't a social science study alive that can control for enough factors to withstand the scrutiny of those with an emotional investment in rejecting the results.
You are no less invested in shooting these studies down than they are in getting their desired result.
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I haven't taken the time to look at the actual study, but this snippet from the Crooked Timber post set off alarm bells:
>>correlation between skin color and economic success among recent immigrants<<
Among recent immigrants.
That's important. And unless the model takes into account many variables, the study risks an error known as underspecification, which basically means that an independent variable other than "skin color" could be explaining the variance in the dependent variable (economic success).
For example, did the study take into account and control for IQ? I doubt it, because most studies don't measure that variable. But we know from Murray/Herrnstein's work that IQ is an important independent variable with explanatory power for dependent variables of economic success and criminality. So if you don't at least look at that variable, your model may be underspecified. And there may well be other variables that were left out.