[lbo-talk] economic mobility study: the horse's mouth

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Nov 14 09:58:10 PST 2007


Jordan:

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was saying you were making something up. I think what you were saying was that the lack of mobility in blacks was because of the 'gangsta culture' which I think we can agree is 98% marketing-driven and overwhelmingly white and suburban. If you're talking about actual criminality[*] then it's not a cultural artifact you're looking at, but a much, much smaller one. The overwhelming majority of 'gangsta culture' participants will never go to jail or commit serious crimes.

[WS:] I am not talking about criminality, and I have no idea where you got that idea from. I am talking about a phenomenon of Black kids being discouraged by the peer pressure from "acting white" that is from doing well at school. According to schoolteachers I know, this is a pervasive phenomenon among Black kids that they have to deal with every day. Whether or not that behavior leads to criminality is going on tangents in this context.

To counter that you need to show at least one of the following:

1. That the teachers whose opinion I quote are lying, i.e. that the peer pressure discouraging Black kids from "acting white" is nonexistent or marginal;

2. That the aforementioned phenomenon does exist, but does not affect academic performance and achievement;

3. That academic achievement has no effect on future position in the labor market and earnings.

Jordan:

Let's be clear: what I said was "much harder to spot" was overt racism. Your claim was that racism had decreased; I think it hasn't decreased, it's just less overt, but it's alive and well and kicking.

[WS:] We obviously differ on that. In my book, it matters quite a bit whether a person is legally or de facto barred from mainstream institutions or not. That is the real meaning of discrimination - and no sane person can seriously deny that it has decreased in the past few decades quite substantially.

If we get into subjective perceptions, however, we are on a much murkier grounds. Racist prejudice certainly exists, albeit it has decreased quite a bit over the past few decades as well. But these are mere feelings and perceptions - not reality. It would be preposterous to maintain that such perceptions and feelings have a greater effect on people's careers that legal or semi-legal bans and barriers. By that logic, if I were to take seriously and be offended by every Polack joke that I heard, I should be on welfare too.

So in short, racism has not only decreased but also become less institutionalized and thus virulent today than it was a few decades ago, albeit it still exists. But that is not a sufficient explanation in a decrease in upward mobility today.

Wojtek



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