Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

Original Source of data: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org

Original Article and Visualization: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html

New article which lets you play with the data a lot at the end: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-your-own-mobility-animation.html

I don't want to say much about these, taint the interpretation and all, but the data and the visualization are very interesting, and the latter 2 articles are definitely worth a read. Haven't gotten around to reading the core data, if it's legible to an outsider. I'm curious how you guys feel about it tho?

This is really interesting. While I didn't find the original article that helpfully, particularly for its insulting of the American Dream, the NYT articles were very intriguing. One of the most defining features for this gap, in my opinion, is a father-figure. Fathers are essential to a young boy growing up, but many low-income family's lack this. A good example that many of you should know would be Soos from Gravity Falls.

He's one of my favorite characters, but anyone would admit that, if it weren't for his job at the Mystery Shack, he wouldn't be going far in life. He suffers from a missing father, and his father-figure eventually becomes Stan, who is certainly not a good role model. Moreover, Stan sees Soos as an employee, while Soos practically hero-worships Stan. If fathers can stay determined, I'm sure that the wealth gap can shrink

@American Ronin

The study had some interesting conclusions regarding fathers of black boys.

"The authors, including the Stanford economist Raj Chetty and two census researchers, Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to identify neighborhoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites.

“The problem,” Mr. Chetty said, “is that there are essentially no such neighborhoods in America.”

The few neighborhoods that met this standard were in areas that showed less discrimination in surveys and tests of racial bias. They mostly had low poverty rates. And, intriguingly, these pockets -- including parts of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, and corners of Queens and the Bronx -- were the places where many lower-income black children had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not."

It seems black boys tend to only get similar levels of success in areas with low racial bias, low poverty, and more black dads at home. The odd thing being that they themselves didn't need to have their dads at home to be more successful in said environment.

> If fathers can stay determined, I’m sure that the wealth gap can shrink

Man, this might be the most bullshit solution for income inequality I have ever fucking seen.

@Princeso Bubblegum

I don't agree with the tone you used with Ronin, but I do think the core issue is more along the lines of institutional racism than fatherhood yeah. That's how I felt on the data anyway.

Honestly, knowing how KYM feels about racial disscussion, I didn't mention it. But I truly do feel that racism is rooted in many people's minds, and those minds hurt black people.

"institutional racism"
What governmental body or business in the USA as part of their business practice discriminates against minorities? Like when was the last time we saw any business as part of their business practice going "fuck n*****" or such?

@YourHigherBrainFunctions

My interpretation of institutional racism is probably not the typical description. What you've described would be top-bottom institutional racism, which I do believe exists sometimes in areas of politics. It's more likely in politics as racism is a belief oftentimes, and can incorporate itself into political support. Minority groups also tend to have an affinity for one political party, so it could be profitable to some political actors to lessen their political impact. One would have to target minorities indirectly, as you mentioned no institution has obviously racist design behind it, but it's still a viable political strategy.

However, I don't believe top-bottom institutional racism is likely in public businesses in the area of hiring, where race usually isn't a metric that can help profitability and thus is typically disregarded. Perhaps in choosing what ideas and products will be sold it can be present, as that falls in line with appealing to the beliefs of the public. But in general, I believe it's more bottom-up in economic affairs.

I mostly believe that if one assumes a percentage of every race is racist, then minorities will be hurt more by racism than the majority race if they are not significantly more racist than said majority. On a national scale, minorities are more likely to interact with people of different races since they compose less of the population, and thus are more likely to interact with people racist against them. Regions where minorities are greater parts of the population have less of this effect internally, but if you bump the problem up to how wealth flows between regions, the effect becomes present again. I believe that is the main source of the economic disparity. The economic disparity itself can also reinforce this a bit, as it means the minority has less economic impact on average than the majority race.

@documents
That's not what the word institutional means.

@YourHigherBrainFunctions

TBH I mostly inferred it meant "of an institution", and I do think such effects take shape in institutions mostly. But if it's not that, fair enough. I'll do my own research and if there's a disconnect with how institutional racism is described I'll probably term it something else.

It seems wikipedia's definition has my view in its broad stroke, "Institutional racism (also known as institutionalized racism) is a form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions", but I'll have to look around more.