Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#321

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #274

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Yes because they didn't immigrate. They were ripped from their homes. " Events that occurred well over a century ago. None alive today were "ripped from their homes"; they were born and raised in the US and most know next to nothing of their former homelands. And immigrants are ripped from their homes as well; they may have chosen to leave their homeland but they are bereft of all they knew.

Yeah...no Culture is generational, it doesn't exist in a specific individual. Considering African Americans are still discriminated against everywhere, they never had time to develop a strong local culture.

Yeah...yes. Immigrants have zero time to develop a strong local culture; they have to assimilate on the fly. Yet many of them go on to build successful families and wealth.

People can keep making excuses but they will only sound thinner and thinner as the decades go on. (The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified one hundred fifty five years ago; the Civil Rights Act, fifty-six.) Don't think that immigrants and other minorities aren't noticing these excuses and that the push for minority equality somehow applies less to them.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#322

Post by carapace » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

lopmotr wrote: post #289

krapp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Africa is an entire continent. It doesn't have "a" culture, it likely has hundreds, if not thousands, and none of them are African American.

What's the connection between your first and second sentences? You imply that a continent can't have a culture. What's the biggest unit of division of people that can have a culture, in your opinion? In reality, culture isn't defined in the clear-cut way you're using. There are subcultures as well as minority cultures. That's how Australian culture exists despite there being some foreigners living there doing things…

There are only seven continents and none of them are culturally homogeneous.

If you're interested in learning about the cultural diversity of the African continent I recommend: "Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles" by Richard Dowden

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4654716-africa

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#323

Post by banads » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

MiroF wrote: post #261

kortilla wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They weren't really allowed viable property access until the last 50 years or so. 100's of years of catch up to make up for. You don’t need property ownership to have a decent upbringing. It does mean there isn’t a lot of generational wealth to go around, but that’s no longer specific to being black because it applies to huge swaths of the population.

Yes, but if you're comparing black performance to the performance of other races - you can't leave wealth accumulation out of the picture. Sure, there are plenty of poor people who are white, but when you are looking at aggregate statistics, the gap is extremely clear. In my city, Boston, the average household wealth of a white family (excluding the value of the home) is $200,000. The average household wealth of a bl…

>In my city, Boston, the average household wealth of a white family (excluding the value of the home) is $200,000. The average household wealth of a black family is $5. (and no, I didn't forget to put a thousand after the 5)

Do you have a source for that?

Seems like you may be referring to this study[1] which only had a sample size of 78 white households and 71 black households. In that sample, the median net worth disparity was $247,500 to $8. I was not able to find how they picked their sample set.

[1]https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-o...

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#324

Post by carapace » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

trentnix wrote: post #159

jenkins6g wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but as a black man who grew up fatherless be mindful why black fathers are absent. Many times it's not by choice. There were and still are intentional systems in place to make it difficult for fathers to get jobs, stay within the prison system, and have access to quality education. I urge people commenting to ask their black friends for their insights. I came from an inner city and graduated from CMU. The two…

I struggle to buy this line of thinking that, somehow, the epidemic of single-parent (and no parent) households among blacks (or any ethnic or economic group) is the consequence of discriminatory systems or conspiracy or racism. Such systems of discrimination surely aren't more powerful now than when the government was enforcing Jim Crow, when schools were segregated by force, when the Ku Klux Klan was not only activ…

There was that crack epidemic started by the CIA.

As the wikipedia article says, "The subject remains controversial."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

> From August 18–20, 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published the Dark Alliance series by Gary Webb,[10][11] which claimed:

> > For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. [This drug ring] opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles [and, as a result,] the cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#325

Post by bsanr2 » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:33 AM UTC

fersho311 wrote: post #309

crimsonalucard wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why a lot of asians have this racial inferiority complex. I (being asian myself) grew up in an affluent asian dominated neighborhood of Cupertino. I had black, white and asian friends growing up and I never thought too much of racial issues. Maybe because in my schools asian americans were largely the majority. Again, I had the same experience going to school at UCLA which was largely populated mostly by asi…

You got downvoted, but I upvoted you. Thanks for bringing this up. My mom abused me when I was growing up and I was traumatized. So I grew up thinking I was inferior and then superior because I became successful. Both are bad traits that I had to delete. Many asian kids are abused, it is disgusting what happens behind closed doors. If you had a better childhood or if you overcame your hardships, it would be really ni…

I think this is important, as a black man. Reclamation is a mechanism for ego defense for marginalized people, sort of the flip side of stereotype threat: recognizing a negative aspect of your racialization, and then flipping it into a positive even as you exemplify it. Nigger becomes nigga; a word used to denigrate becomes something no one else can use in polite company. Nerdiness becomes a point of pride; "I studied and beat you out for the job."

At the heart of it is the hierarchical and competitive nature of race in America, which does not have to be a zero-sum game but is cast as one anyway. As in learning to fight and be aggressive when threatened with violence, reclamation is reasonable, given the circumstances, but altogether unfortunate. We would be better off without the ego-protective behavior AND the racist circumstances that necessitate it.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#326

Post by toasterlovin » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

jpster wrote: post #192

wayoutthere wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many reasons why this is the case; but they were almost all a product of racist social engineering in the 20th century. And when I say racist, I mean people whose main argument was the genetic inferiority of black people. Progressives consistently caved to their demands under threat of violence. Showing up is hard to do when housing policy explicitly forbids black people from living within a 2 hour co…

> Showing up is hard to do when housing policy explicitly forbids black people from living within a 2 hour commute of the few places that would hire them. And yes, the “progressive” Bay Area, too. For anyone who wonders why the Bay has so few black people - the house I live in on the Peninsula was built in 1948. And its original deed forbade “colored people” from living in it. This was eventually overturned, I believ…

FWIW, Asian immigrants, statistically speaking, basically all came well after the civil rights movement, and mostly came here without any wealth, which means they were also unable to participate in generational wealth accumulation. They also had a pretty fundamental disadvantage: they didn’t speak English.

Any hypothesis that attempts to explain the plight of black Americans needs to also adequately provide for the incredible success of Asian Americans. And, if you think it’s merely skin color, then you have to account for Indian Americans, who are often darker skinned than many black Americans, yet who out-earn white American households nearly 2 to 1.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#327

Post by bsanr2 » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

fallous wrote: post #297

kumarski wrote: post #49

3 things that are noticeable about black people in America. * They weren't really allowed viable property access until the last 50 years or so. 100's of years of catch up to make up for. * Accumulating disadvantage of fatherless and motherless households. * The blast radius of municipal violations disproportionately afflicts black people in the USA. Not saying I like these things, but they're core problems.

I'm unsure what you mean by "viable property access," but blacks owned some 14% of farms in the US and around 15M acres of land (not all agricultural) around the turn of the 20th century. Sadly that has shrunk to around 8M acres today. There is no doubt that the accumulating disadvantages of single parent households (or worse) have had a terrible and disproportionate impact on blacks in the US. Unfortunately that is…

> blacks owned some 14% of farms in the US and around 15M acres of land (not all agricultural) around the turn of the 20th century. Sadly that has shrunk to around 8M acres today.

This was not an accident.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/this-la...

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/losing-ground/

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#328

Post by BuckRogers » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

lopmotr wrote: post #272

BuckRogers wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't be a fuck-up. No one should be regarded as a fuck up. You'd be the result of a fucked up society. In a healthy society, people should end up nominally productive, cooperative and happy or content. We've taken the dog eat dog mentality and sell-something modus operandi too far, powered by unnecessary and unhealthy levels of greed, even for the winners. Most of our time over the last million years of evolu…

Those ancient people without stable homes also didn't get education or jobs beyond basic skills and tribal fighting. A hostile childhood environment is probably useful for making hostile tough men who can survive in a hostile world. But not for a happy life in civilization.

Do you need to be from an unstable to be tough? I don't think so. I was neglected and ignored, and I do think it helped make me persistent, resilient and self-sufficient but that's a lot of genetic nature coming through, simply influenced by environment.

Ancient people didn't have massive food supply industries making sure things were relatively plentiful. If you didn't have a stable home or tribe in east Africa in 100,000BC, you were probably dead. I don't think our industrial society and pre-industrial times can be compared 1:1. You can be sent a welfare card with some fiat currency put on it, and get everything you need to survive. That's a new concept, charity usually came from the church, and before the church, the tribe. But the tribe (100,000BC) might have chosen to simply let you die instead, depending on their culture.

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#329

Post by gdudeman » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:44 AM UTC

fallous wrote: post #297

kumarski wrote: post #49

3 things that are noticeable about black people in America. * They weren't really allowed viable property access until the last 50 years or so. 100's of years of catch up to make up for. * Accumulating disadvantage of fatherless and motherless households. * The blast radius of municipal violations disproportionately afflicts black people in the USA. Not saying I like these things, but they're core problems.

I'm unsure what you mean by "viable property access," but blacks owned some 14% of farms in the US and around 15M acres of land (not all agricultural) around the turn of the 20th century. Sadly that has shrunk to around 8M acres today. There is no doubt that the accumulating disadvantages of single parent households (or worse) have had a terrible and disproportionate impact on blacks in the US. Unfortunately that is…

If you’d like to learn more about the racism black farmers endure today, the 1619 podcast had a good story called the land of our fathers. Farmers live and die by credit and bankers and banks can be racist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/podcasts/1619-slavery-sug...

Re: Black boys don’t need more discipline, they need mentors (2018)

#330

Post by crimsonalucard » Sun, Jan 05, 2020, 3:50 AM UTC

kilroy_jones wrote: post #304

crimsonalucard wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why a lot of asians have this racial inferiority complex. I (being asian myself) grew up in an affluent asian dominated neighborhood of Cupertino. I had black, white and asian friends growing up and I never thought too much of racial issues. Maybe because in my schools asian americans were largely the majority. Again, I had the same experience going to school at UCLA which was largely populated mostly by asi…

Asians dating white people may come less from seeing other Asians as inferior, but from a desire to escape their own cultural trappings. Depending on how conservative (traditional) the family is, many Asian women I know prefer dating non-Asian men because it doesn't come with the same expectations from their family. They can escape the make babies, make money, deal with a mother-in-law pressures, which may be much hi…

This is not true. First of all if this were true you'd see tons of asian men dating white women to escape the cultural pressure. You don't see this at all, the phenomenon is largely among women.

Second of all, the pressures you describe are a bit exaggerated. The whole mother-in-law, make money and make baby deal is not very common at all. It exists and is more common among asians than westerners but it is still very very rare.

The stereotype on asians that does have credibility in modern times is the academic pressure. The pressures on a kid academically are enormous but after college the parents are just as human as the kid and it largely dies down later in life.

Third. No asian woman will ever admit this stuff to your face. Especially, if you're white. It's such a pathetic trait that they'd have trouble admitting it to themselves. Likely they'd make up some garbage excuse like "culture."