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Rich, Black, Flunking

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Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#21

Post by martincmartin »

abhinav wrote: post #17
kwamenum86 wrote: post #3

This is a problem for sure. There is so much in this story I could comment on but I will just say that children definitely get an idea of what they are "supposed" to be from several different sources- parents, television, teachers, peers, etc. When you are young there is a sort of penalty for being different or unusual and children often end up gravitating toward some role at least some of the time. I think certain e…

I intuitively like the idea of the "supposed" but atleast in the west there seems to be a way of counteracting these pressures. It seems to me that "white" children can choose from a variety of roles: nerdy, athletic, artistic etc and although there are penalties associated with each role there are rewards as well and each role is deemed valid by society. However, the article seems to suggest a homogeneous "black" id…

When I moved from Canada to the U.S., I was surprised how segregated the country still is. It's not legally enforced, of course. It's just that there are black parts of town and white parts of town.

So although I've lived in both Pittsburgh and Boston for a total of 16 years now, including grad school where I was very social, I haven't had much of a chance to have African American friends because I've met almost no African Americans.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#22

Post by silentbicycle »

randallsquared wrote: post #18
yardie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't have kids. Whether you do or don't like school is immaterial. The fact is, schools take up a majority of your kids' time until they graduate and get a life of their own. By default, you should be interested in what your kid is learning. No one is asking you to sit in class 8 hours a day, but at least get to know what it is they are learning. If my kid takes an interest in music, I'm there, wrestling?…

"I hope you don't have kids" is, as far as I can see, very nearly the worst thing you can say to someone, if you mean it seriously. So far, everyone dies, but at least there's a chance that part of them will live on through their children; saying you'd prefer that they never have any legacy is even worse than flatly wishing they'd die.

You can have a legacy without having kids.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#23

Post by ilamont »

Best quote:

"'I find it useless to argue with people like Ogbu,' says Urban League educational fellow Ronald Ross, himself a former school superintendent. 'We know what the major problems in this school system are: racism, lack of funding, and unqualified teachers.' Although Shaker Heights is in fact an integrated, well-funded, and well-staffed school district, Ross is nonetheless convinced that it suffers from other problems that contribute to the achievement disparities between the races."

Reading this, I was reminded of some of the things that were described in "Common Ground," the book about the Boston school bussing crisis in the 1970s, as well as "All Souls," a book about the struggles of an Irish-American family growing up in South Boston in the 1970s and 1980s. For those families -- black and white -- that had parents who were uninterested or unable to push their kids in school, the kids' peer circles tended to take over, with predictable results.

In the 30+ since the bussing crisis, Boston has spent huge amounts of money and effort to improve the schools and teaching quality, yet some of the high schools still have huge behavioral and crime problems. And guess what? Many parents still aren't invested in their kids' education, or even their extracurricular activities (there was an article in the Globe a few months ago about how few Boston parents show up for games, even when their kids are on the teams).

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#24

Post by radu_floricica »

thras wrote: post #20

Biological explanations, while non-PC, do a rather good job of explaining the available evidence.

I've seen precious little research on biological explanations. I'm betting all my money on culture. I'm in eastern Europe, and I feel parts of black culture familiar. And to be honest, I don't like it. We have here too a subculture in which people display gold chains and like songs about money and enemies, and pretty much to everybody's surprise it's socially determined, not ethnically.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#25

Post by mahmud »

randallsquared wrote: post #18
yardie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't have kids. Whether you do or don't like school is immaterial. The fact is, schools take up a majority of your kids' time until they graduate and get a life of their own. By default, you should be interested in what your kid is learning. No one is asking you to sit in class 8 hours a day, but at least get to know what it is they are learning. If my kid takes an interest in music, I'm there, wrestling?…

"I hope you don't have kids" is, as far as I can see, very nearly the worst thing you can say to someone, if you mean it seriously. So far, everyone dies, but at least there's a chance that part of them will live on through their children; saying you'd prefer that they never have any legacy is even worse than flatly wishing they'd die.

"I hope you don't have kids" could have two completely different meanings:

1) I hope you're not a parent at the moment.

and

2) I hope you never conceive!

The first is a lament over the fate of any children that the addressed might have parented. The later is wishing ill fate upon the addressed.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#26

Post by thras »

radu_floricica wrote: post #24
thras wrote: post #20

Biological explanations, while non-PC, do a rather good job of explaining the available evidence.

I've seen precious little research on biological explanations. I'm betting all my money on culture. I'm in eastern Europe, and I feel parts of black culture familiar. And to be honest, I don't like it. We have here too a subculture in which people display gold chains and like songs about money and enemies, and pretty much to everybody's surprise it's socially determined, not ethnically.

You've seen precious little research? I assume you've actually looked? Read things like The Bell Curve, etc.?

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#27

Post by mahmud »

tezza wrote: post #19

I would like comment on the economic and social aspects[1] of this article. .. * I) Underacheivement as a group Defense Mechanism :: Some social-groups actively encourage what I call "Perennial-Underacheivement". This is in my opinion based on a group defense mechanism[2]. This defense mechanism is to ensure the weak and sick and those unable to care for themselves are not left behind. They value support for the less…

tezza, a most profound statement this is:

Some social-groups actively encourage what I call "Perennial-Underacheivement". This is in my opinion based on a group defense mechanism[2].

But I must really disagree with you wrt to African American youth addressed in the article and its subject research: they came from well off families that didn't need to hold their children back.

What you're speaking of is something widely practiced against women, specially in the Middle East: girls are often talked out of higher education and told they will need to care for their little siblings, elderly, husband and whoever is in need.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#28

Post by kingkongrevenge »

Retric wrote: post #14
ErrantX wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the inherent problem I see in the modern "casual" approach to racism. It's "ok" now to be vaguely anti-white/anti-black in an "im not really racist, honest" way. With just the one attitude in the room your probably ok (just get a bit of awkwardness) but with both the divide is doubled and problems appear. I get frustrated with some of the big "anti-racism" campaigners; they strike me as making the smaller iss…

My first boss was a black guy who graduated from Yale. It took 7 years before I was making more money than he did. I tried to get him to move to a new company, so I could get a signing bonus, and he could get a 30k raise, but had little interest. My father grew up as a poor white guy and had the same attitude. "I make a lot of money why strive for more?" The people I work with have this attitude that 300k/year is exp…

I've seen the claim that black academic test scores are consistently one standard deviation below the norm regardless of the test: sat, gre, lsat, mcat, erb, afqt, whatever. Always one standard deviation. Unfortunately, that lends weight to the genetic argument.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#29

Post by natrius »

Retric wrote: post #14
ErrantX wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the inherent problem I see in the modern "casual" approach to racism. It's "ok" now to be vaguely anti-white/anti-black in an "im not really racist, honest" way. With just the one attitude in the room your probably ok (just get a bit of awkwardness) but with both the divide is doubled and problems appear. I get frustrated with some of the big "anti-racism" campaigners; they strike me as making the smaller iss…

My first boss was a black guy who graduated from Yale. It took 7 years before I was making more money than he did. I tried to get him to move to a new company, so I could get a signing bonus, and he could get a 30k raise, but had little interest. My father grew up as a poor white guy and had the same attitude. "I make a lot of money why strive for more?" The people I work with have this attitude that 300k/year is exp…

Switching jobs introduces a risk of not liking the new job. If you enjoy your current job and it pays you more than enough to make you happy, switching for $30k sounds like it would be a bad idea to me. Money can't buy happiness.

Re: Rich, Black, Flunking

#30

Post by TheElder »

cousin_it wrote: post #15
TheElder wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd also be very interested in similar in-depth causal studies on the gap between white and Jewish academic achievement I'm not sure what you mean here. There are European White Jews (They are the Jews with elevated IQ, Ashkenazi), African Jews, Oriental Jews, and so on. You can't say that Jews are not white or Jews are not black. You'd be surprised by the number of blond hair, blue eyed Jews in Israel. There are Je…

I'm interested in the academic gap between Ashkenazim and non-Jewish whites. Even if you're bad at distinguishing the two groups by naked eye, it still exists.

Of course it exists, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. This can be seen in the numbers at any top university, Noble prize winners, advancement in science, engineering, and and so on. That part isn't so interesting, what is interesting is how this elevated IQ came about.

There are a few ideas of why this happened. The slower, unable to adapt, were killed off over thousands of years. When finding a mate, it was recommended to marry the child of a scholar. Jews are one of the oldest groups to become fully literate, as it was required to read and study the Torah, which later gave them the name "People of the book". European Jews were regulated in the type of commercial occupations that they could hold, that being money lending. Money lending required higher IQ over other occupations. All of these compounded over hundreds and possibly thousands of years could have possibly affected the IQ of the Jewish population. There is one problem with this idea, in that most of that requires an elevated IQ to begin with.

I'll end with a quote from this article https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/jewish-ge...

>Insofar as I am suggesting that the Jews may have had some degree of unusual verbal skills going back to the time of Moses, I am naked before the evolutionary psychologists’ ultimate challenge. Why should one particular tribe at the time of Moses, living in the same environment as other nomadic and agricultural peoples of the Middle East, have already evolved elevated intelligence when the others did not?

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